New Year's Eve 2012

Looking back at last year's posts, remembering the course my life was about to take, I'm very, very glad to be where I am now.

I meant to try a day-trip over the border before the end of the year, but the weather has been too stormy and I've been tired from working extra hours.  I'll try again soon - I like to take my passport across the border every now and then, just to make sure it still works.

Birch Bay is said to have a New Year's "fire circle" or "fire walk" when people light beach fires or torches and then walk around the bay.  It sounds like a peaceful, contemplative alternative to loud, drunk parties and I've meant to try it for several years.  But I was too tired after work for a 40-mile round-trip night bike ride.  Another item for my "maybe next year" list.

other news

Just read Adventure Cycling Association's email newsletter, Bike Bits.  Which reminded me that although I will probably ride more than 6000 miles in 2011, I haven't been outside of Whatcom County since August of 2010, when I went away to Bicycle Mechanic School in Ashland, Oregon.  I'll have to do something about that very soon.

The ACA newsletter includes excerpts from a journal kept by a young man, much braver than I am, who took off on an extended bike tour after losing his job.  His journal looks like a true work of art.  Here's a link:  http://www.coldsplinters.com/2011/11/pct-moleskins

Also, some medical speculation about the health hazards of cycling:  http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/274/16/1320.1.full.pdf+html.  I've read before that doctors were concerned about the affect bicycling might have on women's moral character, as well as our mental and physical health, but never realized that balancing on a bicycle could be so mentally taxing for men.

Stocking Stuff

This isn't meant as a hint at all - just a few ideas for thoughtful, practical, relatively low-priced gifts for bike commuting loved ones.

Lights & reflectors - I might have mentioned this before.  And batteries, too.  And spare tubes and tire levers.

Smart Wool - I've tried lots of high-tech sweat-wicking, insulating, wind and rain-resistant fabrics.  This winter I'm trying out wool.  Now I have new Smart Wool glove-liners and a helmet liner; they are thin and light, good insulators, but need a more wind-proof layer outside.  Though it pains me to pay $18 or more for a pair of knee-socks, they work well with full-length bike tights or knickers.  On a cool fall rides I can feel the wind through polyester knickers, but not through my wool socks.

NEVER FORGET:  KNEE SOCKS WITH BIKE SHORTS

IS A FATAL FASHION FAUX PAS!

Try the ski and snow-board department for socks, gloves and glove-liners.  I've found Manzella Windstopper gloves are more rain-and-wind-resistant than any comparably priced cycling glove ($25-30).  I have several pairs of liner gloves for insulation, including cheap fuzzy-wuzzy grocery store gloves, and find they're warm enough for all but the worst Pacific Northwest winter storms.  If the gloves get soaked through or smelly, they can be rinsed and wrung out, then worn with a fresh, dry pair of liners, instead of taking days to dry, like thick padded gloves.

Cargo-net and shopping bag - With the movement to ban plastic grocery store shopping bags, carless people who need to buy only as much as they can carry, may need to carry their own bags at all times.  A cargo-net is a net about 18" square, made of elastic cord with hooks at the corners; it stretches over parcels and hooks on to a bike rack.  It's not so good for carrying bags of potato chips or loaves of bread, but will hold a couple of shopping bags securely on a rack, maybe with an extra bungee cord for safety.

Mile posts

The odometer on my new bike turned 1300 miles on the way home from work Sunday evening.  That's since the beginning of August.  My old bike is about to turn 6000, but I can't remember how far back that goes.  I think I've only ridden it about 4000 miles this year.  I plan to reset both of them on New Year's Day - I still haven't reset the time for daylight savings and I think reprogramming one setting will reset everything.

If it snows tonight, which it might, I'll take the K2 out for a ride in the snow tomorrow, and make the odometer roll over.

We've been having some sort of weird weather inversion, with a layer of warm air above, holding down a layer of cold air, which has caused poor air quality and pollution warnings.  I've smelled more car exhaust near the freeway and in town, wood smoke at night along Northwest Drive, and downtown Ferndale smells a bit like a brewery because of the granary (not that unpleasant).  But the skies are clouding up.

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

I hate to sound like a snob, but sometimes I can't help it.

Black Friday was a work day for me, but I read online about mobs, pepper-sprayings, bloody noses and other mayhem.  I also happened upon a music video about "Walmart People."   It celebrates  tolerance, acceptance and individuality, but some of the candid photos were of people whose behavior and appearance was so bizarre and unattractive that I imagine they only go out in public at night, to shop at Walmart.

Downtown Ferndale at rush hour

Monday I crept out to the mall myself, and found a bargain DVD, Bad Santa starring Billy Bob Thornton.  Now I am utterly cured of any lingering sentimentality about the holiday season.

I feel surprisingly cheerful.  I'm going to avoid shopping and dippy holiday soundtrack music, feast moderately, and appreciate the colorful lights that are beginning to brighten my ride home from work.

Thoughts on Mark Twain

Bicycling certainly keeps me keenly in touch with the rising and setting of the sun, the length of days, and the weather, but regular reports on the weather days after the fact aren't much use unless they're from a writer as clever as Mark Twain.  I happened upon the previous quote from Twain while looking for a good read to curl up with after coming home from work on a stormy evening.  The passage gave me an excuse to skip the weather report, and also brought back some strange but fond memories.

For Christmas one year my parents gave me copies of the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.  I was a little young for them, only about seven years old, not long past the school primer adventures of Dick, Jane and Sally, and accustomed to simple, direct, declarative sentences.  For the first few pages of Huck Finn I struggled with the ungrammatical dialect, reading where I'd dropped on my knees and elbows on a pile of clothes, toys and gift wrappings on my bedroom floor.  It was the first time I'd read a first-person, present-tense story written in the character's own voice, and I was amazed.  I must have been reading out loud, because I remember looking up at my parents peeking in my bedroom door.  "But this is REAL.  This is a REAL BOY talking to me in my head RIGHT NOW," I gabbled.  Then I had to get right back to reading the book, because that boy and his whole world disappeared from my head when I stopped reading.

After that I loved reading, and started saying I was going to be a writer when I grew up. Inevitably, I grew up to be an English major, but I've always been more of a reader than a writer.  All through school no one ever told me I was really a very clumsy and dull writer.  I had lots of ideas, but struggled to organize them into words and sentences; I would get impatient with the mechanics of getting words in order, and forget what I was trying to say.

Mark Twain was a writer who could handle his words.  Of the two candidates for Great American Novelist from my school English classes, F. Scott Fitzgerald was the verbal writer, while Ernest Hemingway was the visual one.  This is something that occurred to me after I'd been blogging for a little while:  when I want to show the odd and lovely places my bicycle takes me, my first impulse is to just paste in a big, colorful, digital Polaroid shot.  Turns out I'm a visual thinker, not a verbal one, and writing doesn't come naturally to me, no matter how strongly reading grabs my imagination.  Maybe I need to re-learn to write like Hemingway did.

See and Be Seen

Students can get discounts on bike lights and free clothing reflectors Wednesday the 16th from 10am to 1pm in Red Square as part of WWU's "See and Be Seen" safety campaign, and I urge all who can to take advantage.  This is prompted by my bus ride home this evening.  I rode the #27 about 5-6pm, and at several stops along Northwest Drive, people getting on or off the bus commented on their own poor visibility - including me.  We were all wearing black jackets and jeans, and were barely visible on the unlighted roadside.  I'll be getting out my geeky reflective jogger-vest tonight.

Earlier in the day on the way in to town, I saw a young man, possibly on the way to the community college, riding against traffic in the bike lane on West Bakerview Way, which is illegal.  I've seen a lot of this lately; maybe new students, or newcomers to Bellingham, are still making the transition from riding for play to commuting in traffic.

Most smaller communities in Washington base their bicycle laws on the state's.  You can look it up under Revised Code of Washington 46.61.750-790.  Basically, bicyclists are required to ride as far as safely possible on the right side of the road; if there is a separate bike lane or path they must use that instead of the sidewalk, and they must yield to pedestrians.  It is legal to ride on a sidewalk, pedestrian path or crosswalk if there is no designated bike lane, except in Bellingham where a city ordinance bans cyclists from sidewalks in the downtown business core (there are "no bikes" symbols painted on the street corners).

Many parts of the state's bicycle law seem ambiguous and conditional to me, but I think that's meant to allow cyclists to use their judgment about their abilities and what is safe under particular circumstances, for instance whether to make left turns from the car lane, or use pedestrian crossings.  Also, the street system and lane markings are inconsistent and still evolving, some intersections are asymmetrical, and bike lanes, pavement markings, and even pavement sometimes disappear abruptly, making it impossible to write a law for every circumstance.

Over the summer the senate passed SB-5362, the "Vulnerable User Bill" which increased penalties for car drivers found at fault in seriously injuring or killing a pedestrian or bicyclist.  Not much comfort to the victim, but it might have some preventive power.  The state also has RCW 46.61.667-668, banning hand-held cell phones and texting while driving.

It's not that bad

THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK

     No weather will be found in this book.  This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather.  It being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood.
     Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather.  Nothing breaks up an author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather.  Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.
     Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience.  That is conceded.  But it ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative.  And it ought to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, amateur weather.  Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article of it.  The present author can do only a few trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good.  So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and recognized experts - giving credit, of course.

-Mark Twain, introduction to

The Unabridged Mark Twain

Adventure Commuting

Usually I work the second shift, beginning around eleven, noon or one o'clock, until six or seven in the evening.  Last Saturday I was scheduled for 8am-5pm, and was surprised to find it was still daylight when I left work.  Dusk was just beginning when I got home to Ferndale.  That will be the last time I see light skies after work for several months - Saturday night was the end of Daylight Savings Time.

On Wednesday morning a cyclist was hit by a car pulling out of a driveway on Northwest Ave.  Apparently he wasn't badly hurt, though he did go to the hospital, and the driver has been found and charged.  The cyclist did have legal lights and reflectors on his bike, but I often see (barely) cyclists in dark clothing with no lights.  Once I almost rear-ended someone walking in the bike lane wearing jeans and a dark hoodie, and one night a young deer crossed the road close in front of me, but I only saw its silhouette in the headlights of a car coming the other direction.

I'm always careful to wear light-colored clothing and put head- and tail-lights on my bike, and wear a helmet of course.  I think reflective wheel rims, reflectors on spokes, and light-colored, reflective clothes are especially important because they are recognizable as a person on a bike.  In dark, rainy weather small bike lights can easily get lost among all the other little spots of light along the road or look like stray reflections in rain spots on a car windshield.

I also try to vary my route and the time I leave work or home.  This is an old habit left over from being a single woman in the city.  A street bad-guy who spots a commuter walking, riding a bike or catching a bus at the same place and time every day sees someone with a regular paycheck, and could become a stalker to get a piece of it.

I was always glad to get to work in the morning at my old job.  I'd arrive early to get out of my layers of rain-gear, change clothes in the bathroom, clean the grit and rain-spots off my glasses and my face, put on warm, dry socks and shoes, then fix a nice, hot Ovaltine mocha in the breakroom.  The day could go straight to hell after the first twenty minutes, but I always walked in the front door smiling.

Winterizing

Rosebud & Baby Blue at home

They say this will be another La Nina winter so I'm getting ready for snow.  I've already found it can be a fair bit of fun to ride in fresh, light snow if you have the right clothes, good tread on your tires, and a solid, reliable bike.  I'm resolved to make the best of it.

Last week I had my first flat tire on my new bike, and had to patch a punctured tube on the road side at night on my way home from work (at least it wasn't raining).  I discovered the knobby tires that came on the bike aren't as rugged as they look - they're actually so soft and thin I could almost take the tire off bare-handed.  I was glad at the time, but I'll need something tougher for everyday commuting.

So I spent an afternoon swapping parts between my old and new bikes.  The Surly now has nearly-new Vittorias with tire liners, and the knobby tires are on the K-2.  I also added fenders, except the Planet Bike set I bought didn't exactly fit either bike.  I ended up putting the front fender on the Surly, which will help keep my feet dry.  The rear fender is on the K-2. I had to use some miscellaneous mounting hardware left over from old accessories, plus a couple of rubber-bands to keep the rear fender from rubbing the tire.  I haven't road-tested them yet, but I think things will hang together.

The K-2 has been re-christened Rosebud, the snow-bike.

Highway 539 Revisited

The photos of Highway 539 from last week's ride to Lynden are posted on a new tab (above).  I still say the highway isn't a very pleasant bike ride and I'd rather avoid it, but it's a fast and direct way to get from Bellingham to the border, and points between.  The new bike lanes and roundabouts are a huge improvement.

WSDOT is getting better with experience at accommodating bicyclists.  Thank you, wizdot!

Hwy. 539 / Guide-Meridian

Hwy. 539/Axton Rd. intersection, with the Canadian Rockies in the distance.
The site of the 2010 Winter Olympics is up there somewhere.

Meridian Street is one of the main streets through downtown Bellingham.  After it crosses under I-5 is called Guide-Meridian, or "The Guide" for unknown reasons.  The segment of Meridian next to Bellis Fair Mall, between the freeway and Kellogg Road, is the worst in the county for traffic congestion and accidents.  (It is currently under study for planned traffic improvements, but the emphasis will be on improving vehicle movement, not adding features for bicyclists.)  There are no bike lanes, intersections are badly laid out, and there are many driveways for businesses and shopping centers.  On the west side of the street, by Bellis Fair Mall, there is no sidewalk or shoulder, only concrete barriers next to the traffic lane.  Heading south into town, if you're fast and brave you can ride in the traffic lane, and cross the main entrance to the mall, plus three freeway on/off ramps.  I almost always cut through the mall parking lot, or ride on the sidewalk going the "wrong" way on the "wrong" side.

The bike lanes start at Kellogg Road, but traffic speed also starts to increase there.  Once you get out of the business district, the speed limit goes up to 50mph with two traffic lanes in each direction, plus left and right turn lanes at some intersections.  Car traffic is heavy and fast, and there are also lots of farm and construction vehicles, and large trucks to and from the Canadian border crossing.

The first roundabout, at Hemmi Road.  The bike lanes are designed to send cyclists up on to the sidewalk going through the roundabout, and with good reason.  Signs warn car drivers not to drive next to trucks in the roundabout.





Still, it's a bit awkward for a bicyclist to use the crosswalks.  If you're stiff in the neck and back, like me, it's hard to look back to make sure there are no cars coming before making a sharp turn off the sidewalk into the crosswalk.

But I guess that's the purpose of roundabouts:
to force people to slow down and look - truck drivers, car drivers and bicycle riders alike.

Views of Mount Baker are (usually, on clear days) visible to the right as you travel north.

Looking back south to Laurel Hill

The Pole Road roundabout

A tourist shop on the southbound side of Hwy. 539 promises indigenous arts and crafts.  The gravel and cable divider was added last year.

This is the northbound view.  Going home, southbound on Hwy. 539, I turned right on to W. Wiser Lake Road, which connects to Northwest Road, which connects to turn-offs to Ferndale at Axton or Smith Roads.

To the right is the public boat launch at Wiser Lake; the entry is two quick right turns at the Wiser Lake roundabout.  Wiser Lake is really a pond, mostly surrounded by new McMansions.  Water-skiing is allowed, but it's hard to see how anyone could get going fast enough to get up on skis for long.

Wiser Lake Road roundabout

Bridge over the Nooksack River.

The right side is the old bridge, which used to be two lanes and two directions.  Now the highway is divided into two northbound and two southbound lanes, with a new bridge on the left.  The bike lane still narrows crossing over the old bridge; there is a sidewalk which can be used by bicycles as well as pedestrians, but I wouldn't feel any safer there than riding by the roadway.

River Road roundabout, just past the bridge

Looking back at the bridge

A geographical footnote:  I usually think of I-5 as running north-south, but coming through Bellingham to the border it really mostly goes northwest.  Northwest Road, my commuter route, also runs northwest, more or less parallel to the freeway.  Otherwise, the road grid mostly runs north-south and east-west, with Guide-Meridian, Hannegan and Everson-Goshen roads being the main north-south routes in the county.

Still Life with Pumpkins

Half-full:  lunch at the Lynden Dutch Bakery

Another one of those glorious October days.  I had it in mind to ride until my odometer turned one thousand miles.  After forty-seven miles, I'm still nine miles short.

Tomorrow for sure, even if it rains.

I rode to Lynden by way of Hwy. 539, the main state route through Bellingham, also known as Guide-Meridian, which runs to the Lynden-Aldergrove border crossing.

This year the state completed improvements to the highway, adding a divider between the north and south bound lanes, roundabouts at several main intersections, and wide paved bike lanes.  Northwest Avenue or Hannegan Road are still more scenic, and possibly safer routes to the border, but there are interesting sights along "The Guide" and if you're looking for a fast, straight bicycle-express route from Bellingham to Canada it's a good choice.  (I'll post more technical-type photos of the route and roundabouts under another heading.)

 The gateway to Lynden doesn't look very promising - you turn right off Hwy. 539 at the cemetery, go past the Lynden WTA park-and-ride, the Northwest Washington Fairgrounds, and a Dutch-themed strip mall on Front Street.  Then you get to about a half-mile of handsome, wide main street lined by tidy houses with perfect lawns and a canopy of old oak trees.

This is the main downtown street, also known as Van Frontsma Street.  Lynden has a reputation for being a very straight-laced Dutch-Reformed-Church town - businesses are closed on Sundays, and there are blue-laws that ban dancing at places that sell alcohol.  But people are friendly, definitely not humorless, and  many shop-owners or workers speak Dutch as well as English.

A lot of the shops are vacant right now, but the Dutch Bakery and Dutch Mother's Restaurant have been in business for many years.  Both are good for brunch or lunch on a long bike-ride.




The windmill is also a hotel, with a complex of shops, a restaurant, and a theater below.  An indoor pond is home to the Van Koi family.

In spring there's a tulip festival, the Northwest Washington Fair in summer, harvest festivals in the fall, and at Christmas there's a parade featuring Father Christmas and the three Magi.

There's only one bus route to Lynden, the number 26, but sometimes in winter I take the last bus in the evening to get a tour of the Christmas lights on Van Frontsma.

. . . maybe not all that straight-laced.

The petunia baskets are still blooming in Lynden, but they're not as big as Ferndale's.

The Coast of Bohemia

Kayakers in Blaine Harbor

Mount Baker again, this time from Tennant Lake Park.  The old heap didn't lose much snow over the summer, and the first winter snow came last week.

Naturally, it's pouring rain on my days off so I'm spending today baking cookies and messing with the computer.  These are a bunch of photos from Bellingham, Ferndale and Blaine on some recent sunny-day rides.

The Burlington-Northern railroad bridge over the Nooksack River.  This is also where Ferndale's Main Street crosses the river.

To improve access to the city center, a roundabout has been put in at the Portage Way underpass to I-5, and the road has been widened and repaved, including bike lanes, sidewalks, and a dog-walking path.

The granary dominates the Ferndale skyline.

The Hub Community Bike Shop in Bellingham, between North State Street and the Interurban Bike Trail, on the way to Boulevard Park, is inhabited by inventive, talented and committed bicyclists and mechanics.

Whatcom Transit Center
- another hub for the carless

Boulevard Park.

Public fishing dock

The Interurban Trail crosses the railroad tracks to a small outcrop into Bellingham Bay that is one of the most popular parks in the city.  A new boardwalk connects it with Taylor Dock in Fairhaven, but it's usually so crowded with elderly walkers, moms and small children and bunches of tourists that it's best for bikes to stay off.  Maybe on a rainy Wednesday morning in January or February . . . but it's bumpy, too.

The Woods in Boulevard Park may have one of
the world's most scenic locations for a coffee shop.

 Jugglers, and the Bellingham Fire Department Pipe Band practicing after work (sorry they're so blurry, it was getting dark).

And some downtown scenes:

The Mount Bakery Cafe opens very early in the morning in July to offer live coverage of the Tour de France.

Find the radish in this picture.

Old City Hall is now the old museum.

The Whatcom County Courthouse.
Don't go there if you can help it.

This sign explains the tree
in front of the courthouse
(click on it to enlarge).

 At Whatcom Community College:
This sculpture was made from the Donovan Rock, a glacial eccentric that was found at the south end of town, in Fairhaven.   Donovan Street was split down the middle to go around it, but when I-5 came through, the rock was blown up into several pieces and dragged away.  A technology class at WCC used a laser cutter to make this sculpture.  The globe floats on a film of water forced up from below, and can be spun around in any direction.



A traffic roundabout was put in a coupla few years ago at a high-traffic (and high-collision) intersection near the college, the north end transit center, Bellis Fair Mall and a couple of other major shopping centers.  Students and Canadian shoppers complained at first, but it has helped slow down traffic.

That's Mount Baker in the distance again.

I felt a lot better about riding my bicycle ten miles home in the dark when I saw gas prices above $4 a gallon at this station.

The End.