Chains and Drive Trains. . .

Okay, so today I see a post on Facebook from my friend, Manda.  She writes:

People on bikes:  we want all the rights of the road; respect us!  Except the rules don't apply to us.

I am a cyclist.  I don't ride as often as I'd like, but I am still strongly attracted to human-powered, two-wheeled transportation.  Unfortunately, I have also shared her viewpoint.  Drivers and cyclists are involved in this ridiculously complex love-hate relationship that began decades ago and, despite municipalities making positive strides toward becoming 'bike friendly', it shows no signs of getting any more amicable in the near future.

First things first, there are rules that govern bicycles.

Each municipality is different in the rules that they lay down, but there are some universal truths.  Bicycles are allowed on roads unless otherwise prohibited, and they generally are not allowed on sidewalks unless the rider is under a specific age.  Many cities and towns have put down bike lanes to keep the two-wheeled set out of trouble, and some have installed 'stop boxes' that allow cyclists to make left turns without having to pull the dreaded 'left turning lane against oncoming traffic' maneuver.  Cyclists, I might add, can also be ticketed for not obeying any of these laws or ordinances, just like motor vehicles.

With all this in mind, where does the problem lie?  I have experienced, first-hand, a lack of respect from both sets, whether I was a pedestrian, driver, or I was on the bike.  Granted, these instances have been few and far between, but the fact that they happened at all shows there is an underlying problem.  No, it isn't lack of respect for others.  I would go so far as to say that our problem here is education.

First of all, excluding professionals, there are basically three types of cyclists:

• I know the rules and follow them, regardless of how I am treated on the road, because it is my duty as a good citizen.
• I know the rules vaguely and follow some when it is convenient.
• Rules?

Then there are municipalities.  There are usually three types of those:

• We have devised an organized set of rules that takes into account the needs of both motor vehicles and cyclists, which includes well-marked and signed routes through our community.
• We have some rules that have been on the books since the sixties and have added a six inch-wide bike lane and some vague signage.
• @*#% bikes.

Now, let's get one thing straight.  Bikes are NOT toys, nor are they recreational items.  A bicycle is a vehicle, plain and simple.  It may be for the road, it might be an off-roader, or it could be a combination, but it is a vehicle.  Regardless of the fact that it doesn't have a motor, you can still visit a world of hurt on yourself or others, should you be careless with one.  You wouldn't dream of letting your children climb in behind the wheel of a car without first teaching them how to safely operate it, so why do people do just that with kids and bikes?  It seems like, once that momentous occasion happens where we take off on our two-wheeler without any training wheels, the guiding hand falls back and no other instruction is given.  Now, obviously, this isn't the case with all parents, but just the fact that it happens with some is bad enough.  Those kids grow up not paying attention to the rules or respecting others' rights of way, and so too will their children.  For our kids to care, we must care.

Two sides of this issue are illustrated in a struggle happening in Louisville, KY.  The Big Four Bridge, unused for decades, was recently turned into an Ohio River crossing for pedestrians and cyclists.  On the bridge, there were two lines painted, representing where the railroad tracks used to be.  In the beginning, marks were made on both the Kentucky and Indiana sides that indicated the lines were a marked bike lane.  Cyclists, for the most part, seemed to be adhering to that restriction, but trouble came in the form of young riders.  Children are curious and, of course, you can't see all the cool stuff happening on the river as well if you're in the center of the bridge, so they were straying into the walking lanes.  Where were the parents when this was happening?

On the other side of the coin, since the lanes are not marked over the length of the bridge, pedestrians would wander through the bike lanes, causing each to have to avoid the other, again causing resentment in each camp.  To top this off, Louisville Waterfront officials who had designated the lane for bikes said that "bicyclists were too zealous about using it", and that they "have been intrigued by a profound sense of entitlement that a designated bike lane engenders", and that [cyclists] "have no patience for children, strollers, wheelchairs, or any other obstacle that might breach the lateral limits that divide bridge space for bicyclists and the rest of civilization."**

I can imagine the vitriol with which that last statement was made.  In other words, just because cyclists are given their own lane, it doesn't mean that they are entitled to use it.  Oh!  Also, they can't breach the confines of the lane-they-should-not-use, but they better watch the hell out for anyone else who wants to be there.  After almost losing their right to use the Big Four in August, Waterfront officials deemed cyclists can still ride across, but there is no longer a designated lane.

Doesn't that sound like an educational problem to you?  

Now, some cities have gotten it right.  New York City, one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world, earned Bicycling Magazine's top spot in their 2014 "America's Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities Roundup".  It was noted that, despite cycling opponents arguing that bike lanes would slow down traffic, motorized traffic speeds have increased while the number of bike-related accidents has decreased.  All this while the city's number of cycling commuters doubled from 2007-2011.**

The bottom line is, we need to teach and we need to be taught.  As I said, a bicycle is a vehicle.  Cyclists need to respect pedestrians as much as motorists do, but cyclists and motorists have to respect each others' needs, as well.  Maybe if drivers' manuals took more than a couple of paragraphs to cover cycling rules. . . that would be a good start.  Why not give classes to train people how to operate bicycles safely?  I'm pretty sure that any plans to license cyclists would be met with open revolution, but what's so unattractive about learning how to share the road with thousand-pound chunks of metal that can turn you into gooey paste?

Now, where the heck did I put my helmet?

Do yourselves a favor and go visit Mandawritesthings.  She has some crunchy, blog-filled goodness to share and she likes followers as much as I do (hint-hint).

*Article: Louisville Courier-Journal "A Threat to Make Bicyclists Walk the Big Four Bridge"

**Bicycling.com--"Study:  NYC Bike Lanes Don't Slow Down Car Traffic"

Time Out. . .

Despite what anyone may try to tell you, there are no guarantees.  None.  Life is like that.

You may grow up to be the most wildly successful human on the planet, having had no formal training in anything, possibly being a high school dropout, after merely having had one good idea or an astronomical stroke of luck.  You may have degrees in several sciences and have the ability to make any piece of technology sit up and beg, but struggle through life, paycheck to paycheck, never quite making it to that 'financial comfort zone' that everyone tells us we should reach before retirement.  You could live to see all your children grow up and start families of their own, enjoying your grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, or in a one in one octodecillion chance, you take a shot to the head by a piece of meteorite while taking the garbage out before you go to work in the morning.  When it comes down to it, life can't even guarantee you'll be born.

No guarantees.

Well, there is one.

Eventually, life stops.  At the risk of sounding like a bad internet meme, When the end comes, what determines if we actually lived our lives or merely existed?  With that thought in mind, I took the day off yesterday.

"Okay," most people will think.  "You do that a lot."

The fact of the matter is, I don't do it often enough.  I work a full-time job, along with working to start my own business, and of course there are also the day-to-day projects that come with raising a family and keeping a hundred year-old house from succumbing to time and the elements.  I've run my own businesses before, but this time I'm shooting for full independence.  The gloves are off.

Among all the other things I love to do in this life, my writing has always been at the heart of the matter.  Even the long stretches where I wasn't able to really put pen to paper (yes, I still write in notebooks), I was constantly jotting down notes for new stories and plot twists for those in progress.  The desire to live off of my own work has become such a dominating presence that even in my dreams I am working feverishly towards an end.  The thing that makes me chuckle the most is the reaction I get from a lot of people who follow me on Facebook and my fledgling You Tube channel.  Since I am outdoors a lot, working with various crafts, or demonstrating and explaining scientific principles, many seem to think that I am constantly in a state of leisure.  "That looks like such fun!"  I get that one a lot, but yes, it is fun.

The thing is, none of it ever ends.  One thing leads to another.  As you are finishing one story, part of your mind is already devoted to the nuances of the next.  For a writer, the simple act of sitting on a sofa is difficult work, as you are constantly devoting brain run time to your stories.  Even though I've just started with the video channel, it has already sucked me in to a similar degree.  As I'm working on one video presentation, I am thinking ahead to the next.  I have enough ideas to carry me through the winter, all the while hoping that I start bringing in enough residual income to make it worth my while to continue.

Yesterday, though, I made a choice.  No Sci Fi stories, no cookbooks, no video blogs, no home improvement projects.  The only reason I posted an Instructable was that Kim and I were up till all hours the night before, experimenting with a project she would be working on with her Girl Scouts (and with a group of about 60, you want to make sure you have every step correct).  No, yesterday we fished and cooked and shared stories.  That was enough.

Sometimes you just have to walk away from the day-to-day minutia and learn to breathe again.  I caught an article this morning about just that; how a man walked away from his New York City office job, sold everything but his van and some bare essentials, and now lives as a nomad, touring the country and, apparently, surfing for a living.  That may seem a little drastic, but by comparison, my taking the day off to go fishing doesn't seem like much of a stretch.  When you stop to think about it, the average person with a full-time job will spend between 2000-2600 hours at work over the course of the year.  That's 30% of the year spent trying to afford the other 70%.  It's easy to see how the time can get away from us.  Before too long, the kids are grown and you're wondering why you didn't go fishing more often; especially since you can't now, because you have to work through your retirement to pay for their astronomical college tuition.

Yes, money is a factor.  Until life is like 'Star Trek' and people no longer use money, getting enough to be comfortable, or even just get by, will be a driving force in our lives.  My point through all of this is to find a way to live that you like.  Thirty percent of your year is an awful long time to spend doing something you dislike while daydreaming about the things you want to do.  We may not all be able to do what the New York fellow did and walk away from it all, but I have found that life is easier to understand when we just take a step back and ask ourselves, "what could I have done better today, and how can I do it tomorrow?"

I wonder how he affords his gas?

Re-engineering our Ingenuity. . .

One of the most challenging aspects of being an inventor living on the fringes of civilization is the difficulty in obtaining materials. One thing that has been weighing heavily on me these last couple of weeks is finding out that someone beat me to the patent office on an idea that, innocently enough, we were apparently developing at the same time. The sad part is, this person is selling the item for nearly $100 more than I was intending to go to market with, and making a killing doing so. Where I'm not certain that so excessive a price tag is necessary, I have to applaud him. He is a fellow inventor.

On a side note, don't get me wrong; I do not regret being here. As my fellow Sci-Fi buffs know well, self-described space bum, David Lister said, 'you have to have a plan'. Though mine isn't to get a sheep and a cow and raise horses, it was to make a life on these fringes and maybe awaken the inventive fire that lies dormant in so many of these small communities. Hence the vision of the Makerspace.

But I digress.

It wasn't very long ago, I was talking with one of the best friends I've ever had in this life about how society has had all of its creativity choked from us. Enormous corporations force disposable technology down our throats on a daily basis. We have become used to throwing things out because nothing is 'user serviceable'; nothing is repairable. As a steampunk I find this frustrating, because the mantra 'Don't pitch it, wrench it' doesn't apply. I have repaired computers until they were as technologically relevant as a boat anchor with a keyboard, but try to do that with your television or tablet. It's not quite as easy as going after your old transistor radio with a soldering iron. It might be different if the technology were more durable nowadays, but in that respect we've gone backwards. One of my hobbies is repairing old video game systems. I have soldered and desoldered ATARI consoles, modified them for stereo sound, even miniaturized them into odd cases (because I was bored). I once experimented with an ATARI game cartridge, which included taking out the chip, dropping it from varying heights, boiling it, running over it with the truck. . . The only thing that finally stopped it from working was a hammer. With that in mind, how tight do you clench your backside when you think of your game console maybe getting knocked off the entertainment center?

I am beginning another grand experiment this year in personal sustainability, which I will well document in the hopes of sparking an idea or two among you, my friends and contemporaries. I hear a lot of people complaining nowadays that this country, nay, the world, is 'going to hell in a hand basket'. It's not the fault of any government and it's not the fault of any corporate entities; the blame lies solely and squarely upon us. We LET the government start calling the shots, instead of the other way around, and we LET the corporate world dictate to us what we need and what we should buy.

I'm tired of it. Aren't you?

This is a calling, not a simple rant. This nation was built on ingenuity and the desire to be free, not only from religious and governmental persecution, but from any shackling of ideas and ideals. We are constantly saying things like 'if only I could. . .' or 'I wish I could. . .' What's stopping us? We haven't lost our ingenuity, we've just been taught not to use it. The answers are simple: If you have an idea, build it. If you can't, ask for help from someone who can. Statistics show that the average American produces approximately 1600 pounds of garbage in a year. That averages out to about 4.4 pounds a day and, out of that, 42% is paper textile (toilet tissue, paper towels, etc.). According to WM Recycle America, the United States alone throws out enough recyclable aluminum in a year to "duplicate the full commercial air fleet of the U.S." Now let's think about this in another direction. . . How much additional spending on our part to the producers of those products does that waste represent? How many replaced items that should have lived longer, could have been replaced, or just flat out could have been made by the consumers, themselves? I don't know about you, but with four kids in the house, I save a bundle each year just by making my own laundry detergent.

What am I tired of?  I am tire of 'experts' telling me how to live a better life and make the world a better place when we already know how to do it. Who's with me?