The Hordes are De-hibernating!

The week started slow weather-wise, and has exploded into some awesome, warm and sunny true spring days. Within that same explosion, however, the throngs of fair weather folks have also splattered out across everywhere. Now, I should say that most have been pretty civil given they must be absolutely stir crazy, what with waiting and waiting and waiting for all the grey, cold and rain to move aside.

You know all those stories about how for such a rainy area people cannot seem to figure out how to drive in this stuff? Well, I don't think that behavior is limited to just driving, because I see that same behavior with cyclists, walkers, joggers and the other asundry wanderers. Just today, I saw a driver and scooterer get tired of waiting for the train so they could turn right (tracks were parallel to the road) and blast through the red light to go straight. The really stupid thing is they went one block, that's right just one block, to the next red light! I mean, really?

This morning I was riding up on another cyclist on his fixie. At the light, he stopped about a bike length back and seemed to be practicing his track stand, he was a bit wobbly. I moved left slightly and rode up to the crosswalk line. After a bit, he either got tired of waiting or just could not track stand, he rode through the red light - what? - a bit later the light turned green and I proceeded on. Next light, he actually put his foot down.

Oh, so here's a good one for you. That ramp is actually normally going down to the floating section of the Eastbank Esplanade. There is so much water right now, the floats of the ramp have the ramp higher than the bike path. That's a lot of water!

Oh, hey, this week is Bike to Work Week in Portland and tomorrow (Friday) is Bike to Work Day. Since this is our first year at work in downtown, a couple of us wanted to have some kind of inaugural event, so we are having a waffle breakfast on Friday. To entice more to bike to work we had an informational brown bag on Monday. That was pretty well received and we had some great questions. The really interesting thing is about attitude though. There is definitely room to grow in terms of how people, even ones that cycle, perceive the relationship between vehicle drivers and bike riders.

Their perceptions perpetuate the idea that cars have priority over the roads and streets that  spread out across town. And if they know there are official bike ways and routes they believe cyclists should be there and not where they want to go. I mean, how inconsiderate of those cyclists - really? That's why, for me, I think we have maybe too much infrastructure and not enough re-education. Our travel medium, typically paved routes, is designed to move people, not just cars. They are basically for everyone.

I want to say share, but that is not really correct, because the drivers don't want to share, that's the big problem. The attitude change needs to be "Hey! Mellow out, this is a multi-use people mover." And that's not just targeted at drivers. Just  the past few days, I have seen cyclists blow across the crosswalk when everyone else is stopping for pedestrians. I made cars behind me stop because I yielded to some pedestrians. Come on, what gives?

I have to admit that I do miss the cold, rainy winter times because being out there is so much more mellow - because no one else is really out there.