Reaching Out to Motorists

ATTENTION PARENTS: The comments on this post contain colourful language that you may not want children to read.

One of the things I find frustrating about cycling stuff online, especially the "educate cyclists and/or motorists" stuff, is that we Internet cyclist types, in the main, debate amongst ourselves on the finer points and rarely seem to reach the people who hate us most, the angry/misinformed motorist.

When people do comment on mainstream newspaper articles and such, the tired old arguments begin anew, with the way over the top, rude and stupid proponents of cycling or motoring turning what could be a good discussion into a big stupid mess.

I'm going to try something. It may not work at all, but if it does, I think it could be kind of cool. I am going to stick this sign on the back of my bike:

I hope some of the motorists who see me will show up here and comment. If they do, it won't be about "those cyclists", it will be about this cyclist and possibly the specifics of how I behave on the road. Now here is the important part, and the reason for this post: If you can't comment on what these people have to say without being COMPLETELY polite and diplomatic, please don't. I have been praised in the past for my diplomacy in responding to comments from people who really disagree with me, and I want to try and get real discussions going, not rude and thoughtless shouting matches.

If someone is being mean or derisive or crude, please don't try to defend me... I will kill them with kindness and can take care of myself if that doesn't work.

Of course, there is an excellent chance that nobody will ever comment on my stupid little sign, in which case I am sorry for having wasted your time and mine yet again.

Wish Me Luck,

R A N T W I C K

Safety in Loudness

One of the very cool things about riding a fixed gear is that they can be almost perfectly silent. One of the reasons that Monday's post was so late was that I was doing an overdue chain replacement on my fixed gear bike in the early evening. A clean fixed gear with a new chain makes about as much noise as a whispering ghost on Valium, which I can assure you is very quiet indeed. You know how a perfectly tuned geared bicycle can be super quiet as you pedal along? Fixed gears can be even quieter since they have no derailleurs or freewheels of any kind. Thanks to this quietness, I need to take special care to announce myself as I come up behind people on a path, because otherwise I may startle them badly, and startled people jump around in sometimes unexpected ways:

The silence thing scares me when the silence is on the four wheeled side too. A world full of nearly silent electric cars may pose some new risks. I forget whose blog I read it on, but apparently in some parts of the world electric cars are being fitted with noisemakers of some kind for precisely this reason. I rely heavily on my ears when I ride and use my eyes for confirmation when it comes to overtaking traffic.

So far I have used my voice (or human honking) for all of my audible communication needs. I don't really like bells, not sure why. Some cyclists use whistles, but I don't want to ride around clenching anything between my teeth other than a bubble pipe.

Yes, the pipe thing just screams high society style, but unfortunately it doesn't make any noise. Those insanely loud air horns seem like "startle in a can" to me, which I don't want. Maybe I'll just hang some pots and pans from my handlebars...

image source

What freaks me out sometimes is that just about any nonsense I can think of has been photographed and posted online by somebody, somewhere. It reminds one of how many stinkin' people live on this planet. Let's hope we don't all honk at once.

Keep It Cranked,

R A N T W I C K