bunch of #pdxBikes#BikeFun tomorrow, #Portland 😎
Overlook Neighborhood ride at 9:30 from Stacks Coffeehouse, @familyride at 11:30 with The Street Trust's Día de las Madres Ride from Milagro's Zocalo
and @bikestuffpdx's Heart of St. Johns Peninsula Ride, 3pm at Columbia Park
Portland's toilet paper of record, the Oregonian reporting "Flood of 11th-hour donations, big outside spending boosts [Susheela Jayapal's opponent's name here] in race for Congress", like they're just impartially reporting facts and not fluffing the name recognition of AIPAC's candidate. 🙄
northern light from south of Portland looks the same as always, I thought the electromagnetic storm was supposed to bring power outages. #lightPollution
Cleaned out some leaves and junk from a few corners of the passat. Maybe there's a lake under the floor where they keep the computers. Definitely saw a bunch of ants everywhere I took it apart. Might be enough moisture in all the junk that's accumulated in twenty years.
Late question for the #BikeNite crowd: Do you have recommendations for clear wraparound glasses to keep from getting beaned in the eyes by gnats and larger bugs when cycling at twilight? When it's sunny, I have sunglasses, but I need something for darker times of day when I still need eye protection. Something for big heads, hopefully with customizable fitting around the nose/cheeks. @bikenite
@SRLevine@meganL the glare on some safety glasses might not be great with car headlights. You might find clear motorcycle glasses or goggles, or some sport sunglasses with a very light gray lens.
The Dutch invest €595 million annually on urban biking, resulting in €19 BILLION saved in public health care costs alone. That’s how smart govts do the math on investing in better mobility.
Let’s be clear — it wastes public money to NOT do it.
@BrentToderian@modacitylife but here in the US, we waste private money on health care and then waste 10x as much public money on the problems caused by that policy. But that doesn't even begin to account for what we waste on cars.
Monday, PSU students will be holding a drop-in open house to gather feedback on people's preferences between different alternatives for bike, pedestrian, and placemaking improvements along #SandyBlvd between 14th and 28th #pdxBikes#Portland#transportation
Drive back from Seattle took 4 hours, 49 minutes — car says average speed 45mph. (I can't say I didn't stop because the traffic was ass but I can say I didn't get back out of the car after I started.)
Good to be home but apparently it's summer now and I'm moist and I hate it.
@perigrin@genehack I'm sure if you tried to bike, you would find the state highway dept trying to convince you otherwise. I wonder how much they save+make when you ride the train instead.
Q5. Do you also ride when it's dark? And if so, what precautions do you take to be seen? Just what's legally required or much more? Battery vs dynamo lights? Multiple lights? Additional reflective clothes or stickers?
#BikeNite A5. On #eBikes, the danger of riding in the dark isn't so much about whether drivers see you as it is about correctly judging your speed. Two non-flashing headlights with distance between them, like on the fork and handlebar, seems to register more effectively than one. Similarly with spacing between tail lights, I get fewer sketchy passing attempts by drivers. Blinking lights make drivers perceive you as a stationary obstacle, besides blinding people on bikes. @ascentale@xtaran
@InkySchwartz@ascentale@xtaran a single point of light gives no depth cues as it approaches, even less if it goes out and reappears. Drivers might notice you, classify you as a pedestrian, and in my experience, cut you off because they could not judge your speed.
@trouble@InkySchwartz@ascentale@xtaran the advantage of two steady lights in my experience, is that they activate the driver's car-detected responses, which are much better at yielding to vehicles moving at the speed of traffic than their bike-detected ones. Many crashes with bikes or motorcycles are of the type "driver looked for cars and didn't see any".
@InkySchwartz@trouble@ascentale@xtaran the article I linked earlier goes into some studies target fixation, and it's just geometry that a single point of light approaching in a straight line gives no depth or speed cues. Blinking off just makes it vanish. That flashing bike lights are banned in some parts of Europe might just be because they're annoying to other riders.
@trouble@InkySchwartz@ascentale@xtaran some COB (chip on board) LED strips do a good job of spreading a low (~3W) wattage over the surface, though I would rather have it half as bright (maybe just needs a better regulator, it seems to vary a lot given 10.7 vs 12.8V.) #BikeNite A5
I'm having a hard time believing, not that a #transportation agency would come up with a plan that was to sweep the broken glass and gravel off of the sidewalks and leave it in the bike lanes for a few days before sweeping it up, just that it wasn't done with intentional malice or disdain toward people on bikes. (months after it snowed and they graveled everything while plowing the snow onto the sidewalks) #BarburBlvd#pdxBikes#Portland#BikeTooter#ClimateDenial#CarSupremacy#ODOTGTFOpdx
