07.11.09
Posted in blogging, info, safety at 2:54 am by Administrator
Needless to say, it has not been the ideal summer that I like to think of: hot summer sun beating down on my skin, tanning my body with weird tan lines that other cyclists could understand, stopping every few miles to drink water, checking out the cute guy on the bike next to me at the light. Nope, not this year. It has been quite cool, even during the day, and despite my best efforts, I haven’t really gotten a good tan. Perhaps it’s because by mid afternoon, I’m already covered in a light sweatshirt to stave off the cool breeze. Now I know some would say that that is optimal riding weather, and that may be. However, we can get that weather all fall and winter. I do not want to be cheated out of my summer!!
So I was riding behind this one woman on her bike who, thankfully was wearing a helmet, but I noticed that she was riding in a very strange way. First of all, she was wearing a short skirt. That said, she was riding with her knees held close together, for what I believe to keep people from seeing up her skirt. Now ladies, first off, let me say that if you are going to wear a skirt on the bike, please be prepared. Nowadays you can get short cycling shorts or my personal favorite, boy shorts. Believe me, I have worn some skirts that were scandalous to wear on a bike, but if you wear the proper shorts underneath, then you’ll be totally OK. Now, the problem with riding like she did is that the knees need to be square to the shoulders as you pedal, lest you risk the onset of tendinitis. Believe me, I have head tendinitis three times, twice in both Achilles tendons. That sucked. I can only imagine how it would be of the knee or hip. So please, do not ride holding your knees together, it is improper form. Knees square to the shoulders, pedal from the thighs, arches slightly high (like wearing high heels), and heel pointed down slightly in the downstroke. For a little more info on this, try this link.
OK. If one more pedestrian thinks that they can make it across the street before I pass them thundering down the road–they crossing against the light mind you!!–I’m going to brush them so hard, that I rip a button of their shirts. Maybe that’ll teach someone that they should freaking WAIT three seconds to let me pass.
I still have to scream at people walking in the bike lane on the Brooklyn Bridge. Freaking annoying.
But on a good note, a very good note, I have a treat for you guys. Coming soon, I have an interview of a rider that just recently returned from a cross country ride across Spain!! I’ll have some of his pictures and everything. I’m pretty excited about this article and I hope you tune back in for the story.
Cheers for now. Ride hard.
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11.06.08
Posted in blogging, gear, safety at 7:05 pm by Administrator
I am going to be blunt and just come out and say that I did not ride in the Tour de Bronx this year. Awww, I know, I know, I feel really bad, but I had to work the night before and I didn’t get to sleep until about five thirty or six and I snoozed for only about an hour or two, woke to the alarm, then realised that I wasn’t going anywhere after working the bar all night. Admittedly, two years ago I did the ride on one hour sleep and hungover, but that’s when I was working an office job. I had all the sedentary time I needed to be able to pull off a stunt like that. Not now though. I must use my incredible powers to entertain drinkers in downtown Manhattan. And the really funny thing is I have realised that I am able to work the way I do because I bike!! If I wasn’t as physically active as I am with the bike, I’d never have the energy to work late hours the way I do. So in essence, the biking has one more benefit for me: endless energy…
Yet even my amazing love for riding still hasn’t been able to keep me on the bike as much as before for the past three weeks. After the last fall, I got spooked as I usually do, but this time around, it got to me a little deeper. I don’t know, but I have stepped back and just taken easier. You’d think that as many daredevil falls as I have taken, I’d be used to them by now. And maybe I am, but skinning my elbow and knee on a lonely stretch of slick road in the middle of the night kind of freaked me out. Which also in turn has brought more of the Ghost Bikes more to my attention. I have even stopped to read the plaques that are mounted over them and read the name of the victim, the date they died and what vehicle they were hit by. Most of the ones I have read were fatalities by trucks. And lord knows I know how trucks operate…just like every other driver: they don’t pay attention. And being a truck, please!! The driver can pretty much do whatever he wants because the truck head to head with another vehicle is going to win. So that is a guaranteed death sentence for us cyclists.
I can say this: I have learned that never, ever AGAIN will I be riding on the right side of any vehicle on the road. Too much lately have I been pushed into parked cars by drivers making right turns and not looking in the mirror to make sure they can safely turn. Hell, I have been cut off on the left side by drivers too, but some catch you in their view and hit the brakes before shoving you off to the left while they complete their turns. But I find that it is safer to ride on the left, right next to the driver in their windows.
And no more daredeviling. I know, I have the compulsion to race other riders and do all kinds of adrenaline pumping feats in traffic, but I think I’m going to take it easier. I just cannot afford to get seriously hurt and I certainly don’t want to end up being remembered by another ghost bike in the city. Dare I say that I am becoming a more (GASP) casual street rider?!?!
My plans for racing have not changed. And in fact, I am even more on track for racing as I have now curbed my need for speed through the grid. I have to save that energy for the trainer and for the races.
And on the issue of safety, here is a device I have mentioned before that I think is a solid weapon against foot and car traffic…
Ah yes, the air horn. I found this on Amazon, and it’s not expensive at all!! Ah, I can’t wait to use this on the pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge. Is it devilish of me to want to see those mindless tourists literally jump at the sound of a blaring horn behind them? Maybe then they’ll learn…. I have heard this horn sounded once before, and I’m sure that cars would be able to acknowledge you if you rang it. Especially now that cars are forbidden to honk unnecessarily. I really think that this horn is a good thing for us in the never ending battle on the road.
Ride safe out there….
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10.10.08
Posted in blogging, info, safety at 12:13 am by Administrator
Well, well well, I know I have not been blogging as much as I should have lately, but mitigating circumstances have made it so that posting regularly has become somewhat harder. I’d rather not get into it, but let’s just say that not only have I changed jobs so that I am not in front of the computer as much anymore, but I have been chillin’ in spots that don’t even have an internet connection. Can you believe it? There are still spots here in the city that I can’t pick up a wireless signal!! Needless to say, Murphy’s diabolical cousin is fucking with me. But, however much he fucks with me, how good do I look in this picture?!?! (Yes, Cycle Chic is very modest too.)
And fucking with me his is!! I just got some new ink last week–a super awesome dragon reaching into flames on my right forearm. Well I got it on Monday night. Tuesday night, I’m riding out in Williamsburg down McGuiness and this huge flatbed truck rolls in front of me on the road and takes up most of the space of the lane so that I can’t pass it stopped at the light. I spot a driveway on the sidewalk (to the right of course) and I think that I’ll roll up on the sidewalk and pull up in front of the truck. So I roll pretty fast up to the driveway and–it is also wet outside after the rain mind you–and I couldn’t see in the nighttime darkness that the bottom of the driveway didn’t slope level with the street. In fact, there was a three inch lip!! So I roll up, catch my wheel on the lip and slide both tires along the lip and then fall over and skidded both my elbow and knee!! The elbow I JUST got the ink on the night before!! So I immediately stand up, look at my elbow (which was gross) and my knee (which was even more gross) and did what every little kid that falls does. I look up, drop my head back, open my mouth and start bawling. I cried all the way over the Pulaski Bridge and to the nearest gas station and had my friend pick me up.
Now the friend that picked me up happens to be the very same friend I mentioned in the last post who drank, rode, fell and hurt himself. Well here is a picture of his helmet after the fall:
Now if you follow this blog, you know that I have repeatedly said that wearing helmets is important. Now look at the crack in that helmet. If he wasn’t wearing one, that crack could have been in his head. What more can I say people? WEAR YOUR HELMETS, or else they’ll be cleaning brains up off the street more often here in the Big Apple. Now I can’t wait for the space age suits of the future that stick to the body like a second skin and protect against skin scrapes when you go sliding along pavement at about fifteen to twenty miles per hour…
Anyway, going back to tattoos, I still am considering getting this kind of tatt on one of my legs:
You see, lately, after having the stitches from the accident, scrapes from falls and cutting my lower legs on various parts of my own bike, I have come to realise that my once perfect legs are no more. Really, I had perfect legs before I got this deep into cycling and now I have ruined them with the scars. Well…that and getting older. My skin just doesn’t look the same anymore. Hell, I used to get cuts on my legs before but I was young–the skin would heal right in front of my eyes. Now I brush up against my cat and BAM!! Looks like I went head to head with shark skin. I was told however that this stuff Mederma is great for taking care of scars. I have to get my hands on some as soon as these last two heal up fully and run the whole gamut on my skin. But I digress.
Also, the Tour de Bronx is coming up not this Sunday but the following. I’m registered and will be riding!! I’m looking forward to it and of course I will have my camera at the ready and will be taking pictures to post here. Also I will be looking for all kinds of biking information for posting so I will do my best to have a great read after the ride….
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09.23.08
Posted in blogging, info, safety at 2:28 pm by Administrator
I guess I’m obsessed now about finding the right cyclocross for training. I keep on the lookout for all kinds of bikes, familiar and new and while waiting for some maintenance on my bike this week, I sat in the store reading a magazine and came across this line of bike. I had never heard of them, but the picture impressed me so much I had to of course share it. If you’d like to check out the stats or view any of their other styles, check out the site, Redline Bicycles. You know, there are so many choices out there that I feel confident I will find a dope ride!!
On another note, I had a friend this week try to ride back to his house at night drunk. He fell. I still can’t get a straight story out of him, but he says that he remembers swiping mirrors of parked cars then falling. No matter what the story, he has a huge road rash on his right shoulder, swollen and scraped elbow, also right side, and of course his right wrist, which he says e couldn’t move. HE couldn’t move his elbow at all. When came morning, he had a big red mark on his forehead, which he swears that would have been worse had he not been wearing a helmet. Now how many stories to I have to ell in order to get riders all to see that these things happen? You don’t even have to be hit by an actual car to fall and hit your head and get hurt. And in fact, he has to go get a new helmet because he says it’s cracked on the inside.
And riding drunk? Just don’t do it. I learned my lesson last summer about trying to ride dunk. It took a deep tissue bruise on my right side, just above the pelvis (thank Jesus it wasn’t the pelvis), and a twelve hour stint in the ER to teach me. There is just no excuse for riding drunk now. Most bikes have quick release tires which you can pull off and fit into a cab–especially if you are like me and go NOWHERE without your baby–or at the very least, chain it good to scaffolding (my favorite) and come back in the morning to get it. Trust me, it’s worth it to get your ride hungover in one piece than risk riding at night and getting banged up…or worse, dead.
You know, I miss the old segment of The Daily Show at the nd in which Craig Kilbourne would say< "...and here's your moment of zen..."
...and here's your moment of zen...
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05.12.08
Posted in blogging, info, safety at 6:24 pm by Administrator
I can’t say that I can even begin to imagine whay anyone in this city, ANYONE, would set out to ride a bike without a helmet on. Even despite the warnings I’m sure they hear, even peripherally, yet also the rants that I myself have posted regarding the drivers here in NYC as well as other posts I have read by other bloggers in and outside of the city also ranting about careless drivers.
I have had this conversation before with folks that do not wear helmets. I get distressed when they want to argue against wearing helmets. It is quite disturbing the things people say, and even sometimes the blase arguements that they throw together at the last second when confronted about not wearing them. And I see all kinds of riders not wearing helmets, from pro riders to the average rider, to people riding on cruisers in the middle of traffic, just nonchalantly peddaling as if there were not semi-trucks whizzing by them so close, their hair picks up in the breeze.
What I have always said about driving I will now apply to cyclists: You cannot for one moment think that anyone else on the road is going to move around YOU. How can they when they are not paying attention to the road like they should? The best defense for navigating the road is to be hyper-aware of what’s going on around you and to treat everyone else on the road like they are out to get you. Think about it. If you are walking down a dark street at night to get home, you don’t just walk like it’s a bright spring day. You clutch your bag a little tighter, you perk your ears up for sounds of footsteps behind you, you may even, like me, keep an eye on the shadows around you to keep abreast of any sudden movements behind you. That is how you should treat riding your bike any time of the day. You have to treat it as if you are being followed down a dark street at night and you are prepared to protect yourself.
Now first and foremost, I believe that a lot of riders here in the city don’t wear helmets just for the simple fact that they have not seen an actual accident involving someone who has fallen without a helmet and has hit their head.
I have.
Consider this: the accident to which I am referring involved a woman who was on rollerblades. This was about a hundred years ago when I used to race and was training everyday in Prospect Park. On one lap around, there was a woman lying in the road, and I kid you not, her brain was partially hanging out of her head. Or perhaps it was just some scalp or something. However, it was a serious accident, she was bleeding profusely and was most certainly in shock. She was still conscious and talking, but you knew she was in shock because she was saying how she was fine and could get back up and go. Then she started rambling about something other than laying there in the road and it was quite scary to see that she was obviously not fully functioning. There was already a small crowd around her (those of us that could stand to see this horrific sight) and waited until the ambulance came for her.
Now I brought that up not only to demonstrate that head injuries are real from road related falls, but the fact the she was on rollerblades is even more sobering for us cyclists. Why, you ask? Because we are moving at higher speeds than a person on rollerblades and if this poor woman could bust her head open on rollerblades, imagine the effect of moving at 30 or more miles an hour!! Yeah, I get that queasiness in my knees too.
I also happen to know of people who got into biking after watching a lot of Europen races. Now those races can get anyone jazzed about riding, if even not for racing, but just to get on a bike. And I am all for that. However, it is very misleading, I think, for Americans to watch these races as the riders–what seems a lot of Italians–do not wear helmets, but those cloth hats with the floppy rim and tons of logos on them. I have had people tell me if the Europeans can wear those cool hats, then they too will want to wear those and look the part of the suave Italian racer. Oh boy.
People who propose that argument fail to realise that for one, the hats are worn to keep longer hair out of the eyes of the racers. Yes, being that they had something else on their body for advertisers to cover with logos was what happened, it did not spring from an idea for another cool accessory to wear with thier logo covered jerseys. The hats came from a need to help a rider with loger hair be able to see. Yet also what seems to elude folks watching these races is the fact that the riders are riding on closed courses!! If the rider so chooses not to wear a helmet, that is his choice, but he is riding in a controlled environment (for the most part) and they are not riding in the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn, contending with traffic and spaced out vehicle operators. They are NOT on city streets: I cannot stress that enough!!
Track riders seem to be the worst offenders. They believe that their own control keeps them safe. Again, I don’t care how controlled you are, there are drivers on the road driving with shitty brakes, and will hit you. Or perhaps a driver may hit an oil slick left on the road from a car or truck leaking oil onto the street. Again, this is something beyond your control. And in fact, what will you do if YOU hit that oil slick left in the road? What happens if god forbid (and it has happened to me) an important part falls off the bike, your chain splits, you go flat during your “patented” corner turn?
You have to think ahead. You have to think in a way that you will protect yourself at all times on the road. And as such, we want to road to be safer for all that use it, and make potential riders want to be out there too, enjoying the same high we get from riding!!
And trust me, I feel like SUCH a dork when in dusk I have to slip those nerdy lights onto my bike–both front and back. But you know what, I have gotten a much different response from drivers when using the lights. They actually acknowledge me, which is important. Same thing with helmets. That helmet on your head shows that you are serious about protecting yourself on the road.
Don’t ever give anyone else the chance to decide your own fate.
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05.06.08
Posted in blogging, safety at 6:10 pm by Administrator
What IS IT with the drivers here in NYC?!?!? I mean seriously, getting sideswiped on me bike not twice, not three times but FOUR times on my way to work this morning? One dude sideswiped me on the drivers side, had his windows open and his kid was in the back seat also on the drivers side and heard me go, “Whoa!!” as he grazed past me, and I swear I think even the kid got scared for me!! Another driver rolled down a long street with me on his right, knew I had to be there because (YAY!!) they just put a brand spaking new bike lane on this big street near my house. They took out the second lane to give us riders our own lane!! So anyway, here I am rolling on the right and this dude speeds up to the light so he can cross into the bike lane at the corner to make his precious right turn. However, it’s a red light. Um…yeah….so what’s the point of trying to overtake me at a red light? I had to slam on my brakes to keep from speeding right into the back right side of his van.
Now, I have no energy to argue with people, I really don’t. It’s just not in my nature. I pick and choose my fights and if I argued with every driver that did me wrong on the street, I’d never get down a mile of an avenue. Usualy what I do is to try to roll up into their sight and give them a dirty look. This guy wasn’t even looking in my direction, so I had to roll on without displaying my fury with the carefully crafted “Don’t fuck with me” look that I have. You should see it, it’s genius…..or maybe you shouldn’t…..
Luckily, or thankfully, however you’d like to look at it, I do not freak out when cars come too close or just turn me off my path. I think cyclists that freak out and tense up end up falling or making a bad move and make things worse for themselves. Like scaring themselves more or even worse, getting hurt by falling. All I do is go Whoa!! and then contemplate the near miss later….like on here.
Fucking NY drivers. I don’t know how half these people got their licenses or even stay on the road, but there has to be more to getting your license than just being able to move a few levers…..like any trained chimp can do. Drivers don’t respect cyclists, they NEVER pay attention turning, they think speeding through a red light in traffic is going to get them where they’re going faster. They park in the bike lane!! I want to break out all their lights and windows with my lock and chain when they do that, then leave a sticker right on the windshield in front of the driver’s eyes that says, “Don’t park in the bike lane!!!”
Hey, that may not be a bad idea. If I got those reverse stickers that say the words on the sticky side….but wait, no. I can’t go to a place to have those made up and then get caught by someone who’d track me down by finding me through the printer. Hmm. Maybe then just regular stickers that I can stick on cars that say don’t park in the bike lane. It’s a really good idea, but risky. If caught by drivers, I’d get my ass kicked. If caught by the authorities, I’d probably be charged with defacing property. Maybe I can find some psycho riders that would be willing to do that…..
Must meditate on this one……..
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05.02.08
Posted in info, safety at 5:36 pm by Administrator
I came across this wondeful page by reading another blog. And being the hopeless information whore, I must post and share!! If you click on this link you will come to a page that details how to do things like making left and right turns in traffic, yielding (by both you and drivers) and defending yourself against mindless drivers.
I am already an urban rider and I knew a lot of things on this page. There were a few new things I picked up which made the read enjoyable, but also I just recommend reading something like this anyway, even if you DO know all the rules. It’s good just to reiterate and get info back to the forefront of your crazy (helmeted) biking head.
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