Bicycling

Millions of trucks, buses, taxis, and privately owned vehicles have been squeezed into narrowed streets. Months have been sliced from the lives of drivers and passengers; a drive from 30th Street to Central Park south is now five to 10 minutes longer — God knows how much longer it is if one begins in Greenwich Village. Access to nearby shops is more difficult, and neighborhood dogs, answering nature’s call, are terrified to venture toward the curb.

In fact millions of pedestrians, standing at crosswalks, have experienced real terror, exposed as they now are to the mercy and moderation of bicycle riders, people whose lawlessness and viciousness are a matter of record…

Not only are bicycles dangerous, they are as antiquated a form of transportation as the rickshaw. In no advanced city on earth will you find civilized people cycling to work. The urban cyclist is generally a crank, either profoundly antisocial or hopelessly narcissistic and following the strenuous life in hopes of achieving immortality or a legendary sex life. When you encounter him give him a wide berth and never turn your back on him…

Now, I will acknowledge a certain felicity of phrasing and tendency towards what some might call outrageous hyperbole that could lead one to believe that the author of this screed was attempting to be humorous. But then I looked closer at the byline, and saw that said author was R. Emmett Tyrrell, the founder of The American Spectator, one of the pillars of the modern right-wing propaganda establishment, and a name likely to be quite familiar to Salon readers who have been hanging around these parts for more than a decade.

But in case you weren’t around back then, the Arkansas Project, in which the American Spectator, funded by right-wing philanthropist/evil mastermind Richard Mellon Scaife, spent millions of dollars in a mostly futile effort to dig up dirt on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s pre-White House days, played a role in the national conversation somewhat analogous to that fulfilled by birthers today. In other words, rampant, unhinged conspiracy theorizing! Good times, good times.

Anyway, to learn that R. Emmett Tyrrell hates bicycles is an epiphany-causing event that tempts me to believe that there is a greater purpose to the universe than I am normally prepared to contemplate. Maybe there is a god, and if so, she is laughing at me.

I made it to the store, returned my DVD, and was unlocking my bike to ride back home when a tall stranger called out to me.

“I want you to know that you have convinced me to buy a bike.”

My brow furrowed. What new scam was this?

Then I noticed he too was holding a DVD in his hands.

He continued — “I was behind you back on Shattuck…”

I interrupted. “You were driving the white car!”

Yeah, he said. And then, noting that we had arrived at the rental store about the same time, he said that watching me zip through traffic had convinced him he needed to get his own bicycle. He talked about getting in shape — he even mentioned the magic words “carbon footprint.” I told him about my favorite bike shop — which happened to be just a block away from the rental place. He gave me his name, Joel, and I gave him mine. We discussed the always delicate intersection between cyclists and car drivers out on the open road: My moment of tension, wondering if the white sedan driver would get aggro when I took the lane; his moment of impatience wondering whether I was just going to sit in the lane and slow him down.

“I hope I see you out on the road, Joel,” I told him as I headed home. He smiled.

You may be wondering why I decided to share this tiny urban cycling vignette. In the big scheme of things it’s not all that important. But it brightened up my day like a ray of afternoon sunshine breaking through a blanket of San Francisco Bay Area fog and I just had to share the glee. Real human contact with a complete stranger is much rarer in our lives than it should be. And any time someone decides to ride a bike instead of driving a car is good for them and does the world a favor. And might even be good for someone else too, who isn’t riding a bike … yet.

On my 100-mile ride in West Marin yesterday, I signaled for a left turn on a rural highway, and I got yelled at by a woman who was irritated at having to slow down to accommodate me. A blasting headwind for the last 20 miles of the ride did not improve my mood after that all too familiar demonstration of our ability not to get along. This morning I woke up sore, and not really crazy about the idea of getting back on the bike at all.

But I did, and lo and behold, the fog lifted! Today is a good day. Go ride a bike.

I got the bike last night. Then, this morning, I woke up and learned that Google has added a layer of biking directions to Google Maps. The bike gods, truly, are smiling. Because adding a layer of biking goodness to Google Maps is an unadulteratedly fine thing.

This is something that cyclists have been hoping for and working towards for a long time. Oh sure, I know there will be bugs in Google’s routing algorithm, which is designed to automatically suggest the most bike-friendly route to get you from point to point. It’s a lot trickier to figure out the best bike route for a trip than the speediest, most direct route for a car. Bikers will go out of their away to avoid high traffic streets or will purposely seek out especially scenic routes. And, if the alpha bike geeks who swarm in the Bay Area are any example, they will not be shy about exposing Google’s failures and trumpeting them to the heavens. But Google’s representatives are taking pains to stress that they will be welcoming user feedback to correct any errors or add additional info: My hope is that a properly designed and administered system will marry Google’s algorithmic-fu with localized human intelligence and, over time, we will get a platform of bike-rich geography that just keeps improving. That, more or less, is how the distributed knowledge-base that is the Internet keeps evolving.

However, I did think that Google’s geeks, especially those based in Seattle, were made of tougher stuff than this:

Uphill slopes: l don’t know anyone who enjoys biking up a hill, especially when you’re trying to get somewhere you need to be. Going uphill is worse than simply being much slower; it’s also exhausting and can take a toll on the rest of your ride. Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you’re biking on. Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you’ll require and the speed you’ll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion. Sometimes the model will determine that it’s far more efficient to make you ride several extra blocks than to have to deal with a massive hill. My teammates in San Francisco were relieved to see that this does indeed work!

He doesn’t know anyone who enjoys biking up a hill, in Seattle?! I respectfully suggest that these cyclists are not living in the right city. OK, maybe “enjoy” isn’t quite the right word to capture the exhilaration of burning quads and an aching back and black existential despair as you struggle in your lowest gear to get up an endless 15 percent grade. But there’s no downhill joy without that uphill pain, and how else are you going to get stronger?

I fully expect that the next iteration of Google Maps will include a feature that allows me to seek the hilliest route between two points. But I’ll be patient while I wait. Because I have a new bike, and now the whole world is a lot more shiny.