Dillingham Haggblom

Commute—09/03/10

Way in, Kanakanak Road sidewalk at the Seventh Day Adventist Church drive.  A woman with black hair and at least my age (which is 47), drove her small white SUV (anyone notice a recurring theme of SUV drivers on this blog?) squarely onto the sidewalk from the church drive, stopped, and blocked the entire thing.  She was looking to her right (towards town) as she did this.  She did not see me, less than 50 feet away, and as my life flashed before me (I’m glad I tell my dog I love her every morning before I leave), I yelled, “Hey, hey!” so she would know I was there and about to hit her rear driver side door head on.  She turned her head to the left, saw me, her eyes widened, totally SURPRISED to see, horror of horrors, a bicyclist on what I’m sure she considers a “bikepath.”  I swerved to the right to avoid hitting her car, and I don’t know what way she pulled out onto Kanakanak Road.  I yelled, “Stupid” and kept on riding.  In retrospect, I should have stopped, opened her passenger door, read her the riot act, and gotten her license plate number.  My fight response this morning was limited to yelling, but next time, it won’t be.  I was still shaken up when I got to work, so acting on the “strike while the iron is hot” principle, I called the church, got answering machines, and left messages, which included liability facts.  I called 911 afterwards—there has to be documentation that motorists do not yield to non-motorized traffic at the sidewalks, which is illegal, and bicyclists are at high risk for getting killed because of it.  

Make up your minds, motorists—if you want bicyclists on sidewalks instead of road shoulders, then don’t try to kill us when we’re on them.  This is exactly why adult bicyclists who follow the rules of the road should ride on road shoulders, where they are 100% visible to all traffic.  Visibility means collision avoidance.

Loose Dogs—09/01/10

Might as well start the month off with three loose dogs on the commute in.  Dogs 1 and 2, a long-haired black lab type (could it be a flat-coated retriever?) and a dog I’ve seen before in this neighborhood, and it’s companion, a chocolate lab (I think), were carousing around mile 4.5 on the Lake Road at 7:30 am, at the private road intersection with the Dillingham B&B bear sign.  Dog 3 was a black lab (no dispute there), on the median between the Kanakanak sidewalk and the road at the “pedestrian crossing” at Kenny Wren Road.  It’s collar had a blue tag.  From my height, I couldn’t tell it’s gender.

“Pedestrian crossing” because that means motorized vehicle stop to let non-motorized folks cross here.  Uh-huh—I waited and waited last night for incoming cars to stop, none of which did.  So much for that bright idea—it only works as good as the motorized vehicle operators do!

To Blog or Not To Blog

Blogs are about opinions, and offer an excellent opportunity for opinions to be more far-reaching than one’s dog’s ears, say.  Not that dogs are not the best listeners in the world, as long as there is a tasty treat at the end of the monologues their owners trouble them with, but, their contribution to problem-solving is a bit minimal.  Here enters the larger cerebral cortex to limbic system ratio of the homo sapien neurological system—the ability to do something more than on impulse or fight or flight response or genetic propensity for.  And I love that blogs can be commented on—I think the comment feature still works on mine, so if you read something on my blog that you would like to comment on, please do.  It’s the only way I know that anyone is reading my blog, actually, since I’m soundly based in fact, not fiction, or heresay, or gossip, or the “did you hear”, and most of all, definitions and numbers.  If the comment section is unsuccessful, there’s always my personal email address.  The art of conversation, debate, and maybe even problem-solving.