This is a shameless attempt to save the the most advanced civilization in
history from imminent self destruction by eliminating carbon emission,
dependence on foreign sources of fuel,obesity, hypertension and diabetes.
Cycling accomplishes all those things at once and helps us develop a better
understanding of ourselves, each other and our relationship to the cosmos.

Oh, horse puckey!
I like to ride bikes, have been doing it all my life.
The rest of that crap is just a fringe benefit,
and the blogosphere gives me a chance to share my interior
monologue with virtual rather than imaginary friends.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Loose screws are tightening on the Big Apple

    The madness over bicycle infrastructure that continues in NYC keeps me thinking...not really good things.  Saul Bellow once said "it's as if the country was stood on end and whatever wasn't screwed down properly rolled into southern California."  Wrong coast, I know, but I can't get that image from my head when I think of NYC these days. The latest is this commentary by CBS 2's  Marcia Kramer who has exposed the proposed bike lane on 2nd Ave as a thoroughfare for terrorism.  After all it does go right past the Israeli consulate, and everybody knows that people capable of hiding from the CIA for years and aiming 727's at office buildings would need a bike lane to find the Israeli consulate.  Ignoring the idea that a city that size might be the source of better content for a journalist, this is really one of the more sane things I have heard from this mess.  After all, this city, which can barely afford to pay its police and firefighters in the current fiscal crisis, is staking out Central Park for speeding bicycles and ticketing women for riding in skirts.
     Here in the Midwest, I have been hearing objections against cycling infrastructure for years.  People citing environmental damage or property infringement is common.  A couple of my favorites were the protests that "it will become a major corridor for drug trafficking" and (my all time favorite) "gypsies will use it to kidnap children from our yards!"   Fearing that a bicycle lane would become an international funnel for al Queda  is relatively sane.
     Saul Bellow was wrong, it's not just southern California
they're everywhere,

everywhere...they're everywhere!

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