ding ding!!!

There is a long story involved in why I got my new bike and how long it took; I don't have the patience to sit down to cover at the moment. For the record, though, I insisted on getting the cute, little, thumb-activated bell so I could stop yelling to pedestrians ahead of me on the bike trail to let them know I was "Comin' up on your left!"

The first time I took to the path and actually used the bell I noticed that it really didn't have the effect I was looking for. Don't get me wrong, it is still effective - it's just that it puts out a rather, how should I say this, dainty but loud 'ding ding' sound. Now, rather than just move to their right when I yell, people kind of turn around with this "what?!?" look in their eyes. So, it gets the job done.

There are times when it just doesn't cut the mustard though. Since I have to ride an alternate route now, I end up having to ride on streets and cut across a couple of major streets. There is one where I have to be very careful when I cross. The street I'm riding on comes out of an area with several apartment buildings, crosses the major street that has all the construction that I'm trying to avoid and turns into the main entrance for our office park. I always wait my turn and only ride across with a green light. Problem is, the traffic on the main street that wants to turn right into the office park has been diverted a bit and 9 times out of 10 people are pulling up to their red light and just slow down and turn ... without bothering to look to see if anyone is, say, crossing the street on a bicycle.

All that to set up my issue from a couple days ago. I get my green light and start to cross, some gal pulls up to the red, slows and goes; missed my by about a foot. ding ding! goes my little bell. Just didn't seem to express the emotion of the moment. Perhaps I should have rang it three times. ding ding ding! No, probably wouldn't have helped.

Anyway, here is another example of a radio station trying to do something offensive in order to generate some word of mouth. I still think that being offensive isn't a very good, um, offensive strategy...

Hit 102 degrees today

The nice thing about biking to and from work when it is this hot out is that there aren't many other folk out on the bike path. It is taking me a little longer than the normal 30 minutes to make the 5 mile trip, but I'm coasting more and taking a few water breaks. Even the squirrels and rabits were moving slow today.

Like my info says, I tend to deal with radio and bicycling a lot so was saddened to see the following story on another blog:

Local radio show promotes hatred towards cyclists.