you can lead a horse to water but if you teach him to fish he'll eat forever
October 8, 2011
There’s a small quiet stretch of a street called Boylston that channels a little bit of oneway local traffic but is fed a consistent stream of highspeed vehicles from Exit 168A off Southbound I-5. For one little block it’s an estuary of residential, arterial and freeway traffic. But that one little block is an essential chunk of a bike route I ride to work uphill both ways everyday.
As I ride northbound on Boylston around 6:34am with my little blinky lights operating under the assumption that I am invisible there’s a transition from a two-way street to a oneway peeling off from the left turn lane into freeform upstream travel that may involve a little bit of sidewalk riding (just past 50’s house) if the off ramp is dumping cars into my path. If exiting I-5 drivers see the green light at Roanoke they carry their highway speed all the way through the intersection and they surely can‘t see me in the misty rainy groggy foggy Seattle morning dark. By the end of the block, past the mouth of the off ramp it’s generally safe to ride in the street again. If there’s a lull in traffic I roll right on through in the street all the way aware of occasional cars coming up at the next intersection to turn right onto Boylston with drivers glancing left but not right because it is a oneway street and not everybody learned to look both ways at intersections learning to drive like a messenger because there could always be a bike messenger rolling from any direction and traffic signs, signals and streets are just serving suggestions not rigid recipes to follow.
In the last house on the North end of the block lives an older gentleman who goes to work about 6:35am. He comes down his front steps and through a large gate in the high wall that encloses his yard. Big bushy hedges and trees in the parking strip make the sidewalk an evergreen tunnel-like deep forest experience that I sometimes roll through on autopilot.
One morning this gentleman addressed me and asked me if he could ask me a question. “You already did” I thought, but I stopped and said “sure” He expressed his concerns and anger and fear of potential collisions with all the cyclists who ride down his sidewalk at unsafe speeds. Speaking not just for himself but for the proverbial little old ladies that live in the area. I said “if I’m ever on your sidewalk it’s just to get past the off ramp” right there to our right and “if I’m on the sidewalk then I ride at sidewalk speed”
It was a short and civil exchange and I clearly understand his perspective and concerns. I’m not sure he learned much from me about a cyclist’s point of view of his little stretch of street. But at least I stopped to hear him out and didn’t just spill his coffee riding by and then give him a behind the back bird as I might have when I wore a younger man’s cutoff shorts making us all look bad.
I see the guy two or three times a week. But I think he only sees me bimonthly. Once I said “good morning” and startled him as he made his way to his car. Some mornings I pause and slow in the street as he backs out of his driveway glancing to his right not his left because it is after all a one way street.
It’s Get off the Sidewalk vs. Get out of the Street. A little catch-22 day-in-the-life of a bike commuter. It’s like a win-win situation except I’m the only one winning. Either way I’m on my bike.
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those beers half empty beers or half full like you said a while ago can really kill the motivation to do some yard work on a Saturday and if I rode by your house everyday I'd stay off your lawn
