Carry All Everything Day -- the 1st of November

Today/November

Swimming: 0/0 yd.
Riding: 11.59/11.59
Miles Running: 0/0
Walking: 0/0 Miles
Number of days without driving a motor vehicle: 3

Me screaming at the top of my lungs, her driving less than inches from me, as if I was not less than a foot from her; she was totally oblivious. Some people should not be driving. That's all there is to it. The Gateway area in San Mateo is really kind of scary; the City of San Mateo should really consider some bike lanes on the main streets there. There is a big presence of cops in the area to keep business people from driving up and hiring day workers, but it seems that the enforcement of driving rules might be secondary to this. The City should have some sort of campaign to increase the awareness of the presence of bikes on the roads (I wonder if they are doing that?) . In one particularly bad stretch around the freeway they have put the bikes on the sidewalks, which is still a bad idea. If you live in San Mateo please contact these people and complain that the city bike policy (I couldn't find one) is mostly about making it hard on the rider, and not very much about making it safe to ride or easy to lock up a bike. A good comprehensive plan that includes bike lanes on all the roads and enforcement of auto/bicycle safety would be good places to start. Be sure to lock your bike securely and not leave it sitting on the sidewalk, where it might get stolen picked up by the city. At least if you lock it, they will have to get help to haul it away.

Palo Alto, a trendy and cool city, is bike friendly. Woodside, on the other hand is not. Would it be cool if San Mateo were? I think so. Trendy upscale apartments, cool, bike friendly city, excellent food and transportation, walk to downtown ... are you with me here? ...

Personally, I need to do more research before I drift into a serious rant. They may have a plan and I just not know about it. If you happen to know of the City of San Mateo Bike Plan, feel free to forward it to me. Enough of this, I survived another day.

Today was a haul stuff around day. Haul stuff to work. Miss train home by microseconds, grumble to no avail. Get on train early and sit around. Get coffee, go to grocery store, and select deluxe dinner offering for parents. Haul food across town, using stretchy cords to attach shoes to bike, carry lock over shoulder. Replace dinner in deck bag with large amount of mail. Cook scrumptious fresh wild ling cod dinner for my parents. Reminisce about trying to catch them (ling cod, not my parents) in the pacific ocean in 16 foot outboard boat with crazy old codger (not my father -- a different codger) who had shark teeth on his key ring. Eat, clean up, gotta-go bye.

Get groceries for home and haul them home. Strap groceries atop rack bag with heavy duty stretch cord. Think about cargo bikes for a bit. Sit in front of computer and drink heavily relax. Look around generally toward hot tub and become too weak to move.

This wasn't supposed to be a rant. Almost getting hit today reminded me that it's important to instruct drivers in the most obvious way possible, that cyclists have a right to be on the road. And it's the duty and responsibility of vehicle operators not to hit each other. Whether they are on skates, bikes, scooters, bikes or cars -- or just pedestrians with dogs on a leash.