Haulin' loads, part II

In part I, I talked about the first two big cardboard hauls, and showed pictures of the load for the second haul. Here is the scale paperwork on the second haul:

Shortly before that load got taken, we started getting our 2015 preseason bike order. The store was low on bikes (a good thing, in a way) by then, so we built a lot of bikes to fill holes in the display area. It's now been six weeks since that September load went to RockTenn. I had been wanting to make a run with the stack of cardboard in our shed, but various events prevented my doing so (customer bikes due out, out of town company, weather) until today. Consequently, I had a larger load than I had planned to haul two weeks ago, since I've had a couple of weeks to build more bikes for the sales floor.

I knew within the first block that this load was going to be one for a personal record. This was a load that would not accelerate. I had to gather momentum instead. I got to stop at just about every single traffic light on Breckinridge Street, and because I was using the fancy new bike lane, I got to enjoy some of the worst pavement defects on Breckinridge Street (longitudinal crack centered in the bike lane that has been (badly) patched with goop of some sort).

Yes, that scale ticket shows five hundred pounds. A quarter-ton. No wonder I could only gather momentum instead of accelerate. The bike felt AMAZINGLY light once I unloaded it!

Haulin' loads, part I

When Bluegrass Bicycle closed in May of 2012, I decided that I would do some handyman stuff as a stop-gap measure while finding more meaningful work (unless the handyman stuff proved wildly profitable, which it did not). To that end, I bought a Surly Big Dummy and a Bikes at Work trailer for use when the jobs didn't require use of my pickup truck (which has since gone to the salvage yard, the engine having blown enough expensive-to-replace gaskets that repairs were not economically justifiable).

Several months ago, I took a job in a bike shop, after the prior mechanic left the company on short notice. One of my occasional duties has become "haul the stack of bike boxes to the recycling place." A bike shop generates a LOT of cardboard, since every bike sold comes in a large cardboard box, and since lots of other inventory comes in cardboard boxes.

The car that Jenn and I have won't carry many boxes, even broken-down boxes. None of my coworkers have cars. Carson, who owns the store, has a mini-van, but isn't at the store on a daily basis.

In May, I hauled my first load of cardboard to RockTenn, on 11th Street near Broadway. When I left the house, I figured that I'd be hauling a couple hundred pounds, so didn't take my camera. The load felt a bit heavier than I was expecting, but was not unmanageable.

The process at RockTenn is a common one: Weigh the vehicle on arrival, unload, weigh the vehicle again, and the weight difference is assumed to be the amount of cardboard left for recycling.

I was a bit surprised to learn that I had hauled four hundred sixty pounds of cardboard that day, and disappointed that I hadn't taken a picture or two of the load. I did take a picture of the scale ticket when I got home, though:




It was September before we had enough cardboard to justify another trip. This time, I brought my camera. This is what a four-hundred pound load of cardboard looks like:

Continued anger

I'm so disgusted I cannot even choose a good title for this post. I may figure it out, and update the title later.

The League of American Bicyclists needs to find a new name. Their new name should more clearly relate to its current mission, which has been diverted from its historic mission. I'll admit that I don't feel like making proposals to the League, as I don't really want anything to do with the League any more.

I so distrust the League now that I am not willing to pay dues to League affiliates, either. This includes any local bicycling club (read: Louisville Bicycle Club, of which I was once the VP Education).

This is not a new feeling for me. I ceased paying League dues (required to keep my League Cycling Instructor certification current for teaching purposes) a couple years ago--once Jenn and I started with Cycling Savvy, I doubted I'd ever use the LCI credential for teaching again (although I am still able to use it for the purposes of establishing my subject matter expertise, which does not require currency).

I had, however, kept in the back of my mind that I may find it useful to regain currency for teaching, in some odd circumstance. My internal description was "doubtful, but it might happen."

Now I'm sure it won't.

The League has its "bicycle friendly community" program. Others have discussed an laundry list of problems with it, mostly that it shows a bias toward (often poorly-evaluated) infrastructure "improvements" at the expense of better enforcement or education. The current head of that program, Steve Clark, was in Lexington not long ago, and apparently got dared to ride with Cherokee Schill (about whom anyone who has read my blog recently knows).

His opening line was bad. Characterizing Cherokee as strong and fearless, or at least more fearless than he considers himself, discounts her mindfulness in how she chooses her lane position. As I sometimes quote Keri Caffrey, founder of Cycling Savvy, "I control my lane BECAUSE I'm risk-averse." Clark fails to understand that Cherokee's lane position is due to her consciously examining the alternatives available to her. She took the League's class, and put that education to use. She eventually took Cycling Savvy, which mostly reinforced her decision-making process. That she could ride faster that day than he could is irrelevant, except as a sideline to considering her "fast and fearless" in the Roger Geller model (more about the Geller stuff in a bit).

It got worse from there. While acknowledging that Cherokee is doing "as the League's education programs teach," the League clearly disconnects in terms of how Kentucky law affects things and "what the League should do about it."

Ken McLeod then wrote about Kentucky laws as they affect bicycle operators. And missed a few details due to his own bias about cyclists' rights to roadway travel. He clearly thinks that "far to the right" laws are somehow an improvement over "right to drive as operators of vehicles." While consistent with the League's acceptance of the idea that cyclists are not fully-empowered or fully equal road users, the assertion that "far to the right" laws "tell cyclists where to ride" in some positive way is irksome.

Then it was time for "Uncle" Andy Clarke to make his pronouncement, that the League would do nothing to support Cherokee Schill. This was not a surprise, given the dearth of support the League "offered" for Reed Bates (Reed himself has said that there was never any offer like the one described in the linked post on the League's site, suggesting a level of disingenuous behavior on the part of the League--also, the shoulder was not viable as a lane choice, but someone who only looked at it on Google Maps might have missed the layers of sand, gravel, and other detritus that made it so bad) and Eli Damon in their struggles.

After seeing how Andy Clarke explains his positions on bicycle driving, Eli Damon made this comment: "His (Clarke's) idea of what's good for cyclists seems to be something like a little walled garden where you can ride around circles to your hearts content."

The League does not speak for me. I am not "strong and fearless," as the Geller model would call me, but rather "mindful and educated." I consider myself a peer of every vehicle operator, not subordinate to them. I'm just as valid an operator as every other road user. I took the time to learn about crash causes and avoidance techniques, rather than accept "conventional wisdom," since the latter assumes I am something less than a full member of traffic society.


About the Geller stuff: Roger Geller is a marketing whiz. He came up with a taxonomy (or "whackonomy" as friends have called it) shown here, that describes people as they fit into categories of "transportation cyclists."  His categories are "Strong and Fearless," "Enthused and Confident," "Interested but Concerned," and, last but not in the least sensible, "No way, no how." How that last category can be considered a "transportation cyclist" is beyond me. It makes no sense at all that a person who will not do a thing can be considered as one who does that thing.

One of the problems with Geller's whackonomy is that he discounts anyone with subject matter expertise as "strong and fearless," as if our opinions are irrelevant to the discussion (of primarily where to put more bike lanes or how such lanes should be designed). He, and the people who have glommed on to his ideas, have decided to set public policy based on the fears of those who don't know what they are talking about. It's as if to say, "Let's base all our policy and engineering decisions on stone-age mythologies."

Or maybe that's a discussion about "biblical law."