In this game there are no winners, only weiners and whiners

Traveling anywhere in the city is likely to cause even the coolest of Lukes to grow hot with indignation, fear, rage, or the impotent sensation of all three munged up together. Some of the most humorous things I've ever witnessed involved day-glo, neoprene, 17 flashing lights, a car and a lot of hand waving and swerving. But if you've ever been part of one of these encounters, on either end, you can probably attest to how unfunny they are. For the cyclist, you are all-too-aware of how perilous your grip on life is in the midst of all those rapidly moving tons of steel. It takes nothing more than a poorly-timed mirror adjustment or cup-holder-search-for-spare-change to send a car into you. If this isn't always in your mind when riding in the city, it will be soon. Once you've had that first close call you'll join the ranks of trembling, shrill cyclists that scurry about like so many mice running across a trestle between train crossings.

People that come down hard on urban cyclists lack this perspective. The biker/driver conflict experience for the driver, encased in their steel womb, is merely annoying, not life-threatening. And being in a car (I'm not sure how this works) seems to suspend people's behavioral compass in a manner akin to being in a lynch mob. That, and the sense of entitlement to the road, means that progress on driver/cyclist relations in this country essentially stopped about 20 years ago.

There are many that would point out that cyclists own their share of the problem. We evoke the ire of drivers, they say, by breaking so many traffic rules. Again, I think that this is purely a product of motorists' lack of perspective. It doesn't take many bike trips around the city before you realize that (1) you're doing rolling stops through stop signs, (2) never signaling and (3) blocking crosswalks.

I challenge anyone to take a ride across Seattle, or any other city, and behave exactly as though you were in an auto. Stop for every light and stop sign, use hand signals religiously, and yield when appropriate. I guarantee you will anger more drivers for this behavior than you will for being a scofflaw. What you eventually learn from experience cycle commuting is that breaking traffic laws occasionally is the best way to stay safe. Running red lights puts you out of phase with car traffic, so you aren't riding as close to or with as many cars.

It is truly a lose-lose, and whether you choose to abide by traffic laws or deliberately break them, you as the cyclist are going to be the loser. Obey the laws, and drivers will honk and yell because you're blocking traffic. Break the laws and they'll yell at you because that apparently bothers them (although I'm not sure why they don't had out similarly rough treatment to jaywalkers. Maybe they assume they're in a hurry to get to their cars).

Yes, many cyclists run red lights because they are cool. But most practical, habitual riders (all three of us) have learned that there is a place between the letters of the law and the lawlessness of youth that affords commuters the best chance of not being killed or maimed.

It's foolish to think you will ever please motorists. As a cyclist, you don't have the choice in the matter. You do, however, have a choice over what they get mad at you for. For me, I play the odds. The math is pretty simple.

Frigid Forks and the Winter Commute

The weather in Seattle has defied convention in this early part of December, with the usual drear and drizzle making way for beautiful, clear skies. It is also cold enough to shatter delicate rims, with temperatures hovering around the low to mid 20s in the early mornings and staying right around freezing during the day. if you drop any precip on this it'll surely be snow, although none is forecast and it looks to stay the same early winter desert condition for the next little while.

Those of us who depend solely on the bicycle for our commuting needs thus find ourselves fielding lots of questions, all of which are some sort of variation on "so how are you getting to work these days, since it is clearly unsafe to ride?"

While there are certainly conditions under which I am reluctant to ride to work, such as the day last winter when I had to stop and push a man in an electric wheelchair up a hill after he'd become stuck on a patch of ice, what we're experiencing is not at all dangerous in terms of riding conditions. It's just cold. And cold can certainly drive some people to change their behavior, but I am way too stubborn for that. Unless there is actual snow and ice on the road, and sometimes even when there is, I am riding, foolhardy or not.

I found this helpful guide for people who for whatever reason (geographic and climactic, personal or emotional) must ride in the snow, but anything beyond slush is a deal breaker even for me. I got kids to feed and can't affort a Horrible Accident.

Hybrids, Reputations and Leaps of Logic

If there is one thing that cyclists are sensitive about, it's the idea that we are probably responsible if and when (and if you ride a lot, it is certainly the latter and not the former). The impression amongst many on the other side of the glass and steel wall seems to be that since we often run red lights or otherwise disobey traffic laws (true) that we are inherently reckless (false) and are probably responsible or at least not entirely innocent in the event of a crash. This general impression is maddening enough for those of us who ride within inches of cars every day, but is even more infuriating when the finger wagging comes from the occassional self-righteous cyclist who doesn't, for whatever reason, run red lights, ride on the wrong side of the street, etc.

Here is a perfect example that is two years old and comes from a site that attempts to subvert  the uncleverness of its name by intentionally misspelling it:

These helmeted wonders answer to no one. With their flashy pieces of aluminum and rubber, they wobble and coast through city traffic like God's gift to the ozone layer. When you're saving as much energy as they are, you're obviously totally free to run red lights, turn in front of oncoming traffic, and knock people's side mirrors around. They know they can ride right along side your car without a care in the world, because if you hit them, you're the careless, SUV driving, ball-scratching gasoline whore. 

While I am not claiming to be anything but a self-righteous "helmeted wonder", the common perception that cyclists see themselves as swashbuckling outlaws is laughable, and certainly doesn't stand up to simple scrutiny. It is terribly obvious to me that the best way to survive city cycling is to minimize the odds against you -- there is always going to be an element of uncertainty, a variable quantity of madness in the air that, when it reaches critical mass, is going to strike you down no matter how carefully you ride. So when I break a traffic law, it is generally to minimize the chances of an unfriendly encounter with a car (or to get home faster, or to thumb a finger at cars stuck in traffic, or to escape). I don't want to oversimplify this, since of course there is the point to be made that most people who commute by bicycle do so because we are control freaks and don't want to be held captive by the whims of traffic. So we cycle in order to bypass traffic jams, and so that we can leave whenever we want instead of waiting for a bus that will almost certainly be late and full of steamy stinky wool-wrapped-human burritos. But the fact is it is usually safer to ride illegally than legally. By breaking laws, I minimize my risk of death. So it is a calculus I make based on the need to keep my body alive, not my image.

So I am naturally predisposed to call bullshit on things like this Treehugger article, which makes a subtle argument along the lines of the commutofascists that will stop at nothing to defend their sacred cow, hybrid cars.

The implication seems to be that the "data" is "no good" that shows hybrids hit more people and bikes more frequently than regular autos by virtue of being so quiet. While I don't really have a say in the matter, and am frankly too lazy to read the full study, the casual way in which Treehugger brushes the claims aside, single-minded in its glowing praise of the bepedestaled Prius is similar to the way Sean Hannity doesn't let poor turnout ruin his coverage of crazy-as-Quixote Michelle Bachmann's tea party protest.

I don't care who you are, if you refuse to entertain information that lands outside your predefined boundaries, you're a close-minded prig-- a label that applies to most cyclists, unfortunately, as well as the Treehuggers and Sean Hannitys of the world.

The Tired Wheel

Probably one of the most popular activities pursued by bike people is "flipping" bikes. This is the process of buying something (in this case a bicycle) at one price, then selling it at a higher price. Occasionally you will do something like "fix" the bike in between the buying and the selling, but this is not always true.

While "flipping" can of course be done with anything, it is more prevalent with bicycles than with other goods for a variety of reasons, but the most important are that there are:

1. a lot of bicycles sitting in basements that are spontaneously slated for sale by owners ignorant of their bicycle's value
2. a lot of lazy hipsters and bike shop employees sitting around waiting to pounce when aforementioned bikes appear on craigslist at prices well below their real value.

There is some danger in this. Many of the people flipping bikes are seasoned or out-of-work mechanics with the ability to take a rusty and mistreated bike and restore it to past glory (or at least give it a modicum of functionality), the reality is that most flippers are newjack morons with an adjustable crescent wrench and non-metric allen tools. while these folks may be established experts at switching out the cog on their color-coordinated fixed gears, their ability to create a safe and functional 10 speed is unproven, leaving the purchasers of their flippery as the guinea pigs in their doomed laboratory of bicycle experimenting. the results, of course, can be terrible.

So it goes without saying that I flip bikes. And while my reasons for doing so are varied, the principal motivators can be summed up to this: Getting Over. Even though I have a lot of bikes and don't need another one, rather than let someone else score a good deal on some cheap wheels, I'd rather swoop it up and sell the bike at an inflated price, not because I like to restore bikes, but because I like money.

Well, perhaps that is not entirely true, since there is the whole issue of being a cycle pervert and wanting to rub my hands all over as many bikes as possible before I am ultimately struck down during a ride to work.

Whatever the reason, I've been doing it for years. And while I don't really call what I do flipping, since it implies that I don't put any love into it, that's what an outsider would call it and so that's fine with me. It is true that I do the vast majority of both the buying and the selling on craigslist, and that I always sell higher than I buy (although the bike I sell is always vastly improved over the one I bought).

Recently I started taking pictures of my projects, which I'll begin sharing here. If you're lucky. Which, as any cycling commuter knows, is what it takes to stay alive, even on the relatively non-mean streets of a city like Seattle.