In Which Rodrigo Sees the Light

City worker doing something to traffic signal at corner of 29th and Prairie the morning of Feb. 4. No word on when the signal starts operating, the signs say "February," but have the date blocked out.

Am I biking? Nah. I know some on fat-tire bikes may be heartier souls than I am, but I’m not on two wheels—not since 10 inches of snow blanketed Cedar Rapids Feb. 1. I fell the year I first did RAGBRAI, and don’t want to mess up a knee again or suffer an even worse fate.

So, instead of Francis or The Beast, I’ve been making do with Rodrigo the Montego. It’s (under AP style, an animal with a name gets a gender-specific pronoun, but I can’t motivate myself to do that for a car) a Mercury that I inherited, sort of, from a daughter. She had been a social worker in Omaha, and now is attending law school in in Baltimore, and the life of a poor graduate student, apparently, is more practical without a Montego.

Say hello to Rodgrigo. and then ask yourself, why the heck am I talking to a car?
One should only talk to horses and bicycles. Parked this morning at MMU.

By the way, it was the daughter who named the car Rodrigo the Montego, and the name seems to work. Anyway, while I regret getting to work via car (sorry, Rodrigo), I do need more bare pavement before I try to cycle The Beast to work. I’m hoping maybe it might happen Friday, if the street scraping continues, but maybe not. Thursday is going to be freakishly cold, and we’re close to the point, days away from when the flakes fell, where the city will give up clearing streets and the sun and spring warmth will be required to clean pavement.

Drive in front of Warde Hall, MMU. Why I don't bike. And campus facilities does a better job then the city does at clearing snow from pavement.

Anyway, there is still some traffic news for MMU commuters, be they bikers or car users. A light! The city has installed a traffic light at 29th Street Northeast and Prairie Drive Northeast. This follows the addition some time ago of a four-way stop at 27th and Prairie.

Well, hooray. I don’t usually use Prairie Drive while cycling Francis (or The Beast), but with the light, it becomes plausible. I have gone that way just a few times, usually if I’m headed to the Noelridge Park area, and crossing 29th Street was always one of the challenges. At busy times, traffic often backs up on Prairie Drive, and there are near misses at this corner—so I think the light is a good thing. As would one at Old Marion Road and C Avenue, although that’s another ideas.

As this intersection, I hope they put in sensors that can “read” bikes, or that the walk lights are bike accessible, but we’ll see.

As a biker, by the way, I really like the four-way stop sign that they put right at the corner of the MMU campus. It means I have to pause while headed downhill on 27th Street on the way home, which is a minor pain, but that corner was always very scary to a biker becasue the Prairie Drive drivers weren’t always great at stopping at that corner for a bicycle. Now, since everyone stops, it’s safer to bike when I’m headed that way.

The all-way stop the city put in at 27th and Prairie.

And, while I would like my biking days to return, I have to give some praise to Rodrigo. The Montego does very well in snow. The car is a pretty sturdy, unsexy boxy green thing, but for winter driving all I can say is well done, Ford Motor Company. Your faux Taurus drives like a Taurus, which was always a fairly practical winter car.

Still, I do hope that winter biking days on The Beast return soon!

In Which Someone Tries to Harm CR Biker

Eastern Avenue isn't quite this well lit, but it's not dark, either, and I do ride with lights. Paris at night (with bikes) from pictalogue on Flickr.

I’ve had run-ins with rude drivers before—as I wrote on this blog some time ago, a lawn service van once pulled right in front of me on a slick street during winter, for example

But, tonight’s adventure was special and especially chilling.

I had bell choir practice tonight, which didn’t end until 7:30, so I was biking home in dark night. With, I hasten to add, lights on—a flashing red light to the rear, two flashing lights, one on my bike, one on my helmet, to the front.

I was headed north on Eastern Avenue. I had crossed 29^th Street, and it was a block or so before 32^nd Street that I had the first encounter. A cream-colored Ford four-door sedan passed me, a bit close for comfort, and stopped a few feet in front of me. A voice yell out: “Get your ass off the road,” and then the car sped on.

I approached it while it was stopped at the corner of Eastern and 32^nd. I was ready with some choice words of my own, but the car sped through the intersection, then turned around in the side parking lot of the Rockwell-Collins plant that is between 32^nd and 35^th streets on Eastern. The car entered the parking lot, sped to the next lot exit and turned left, south—towards me.

I had just stopped at the stop sign and had resumed riding north—and I was beside a parked car when the Ford in front of me crossed the center of the road and veered straight at me, heading south on the northbound side of the street.

It was intimidating, but the car stopped with inches to spare and then sped off.

Apparently, Mr. Ford driver forgot a few things. Like the fact that I wear glasses. Like when a Ford is behaving badly to me, I can recognize and describe a cream-colored Taurus to the police. And that I can read (and did read and recited on the way home) a license plate number.

I called the CR PD as soon as I got home, and they sent a patrol officer out very quickly. I had a brief chat with her, and, I thought, that was that. But no, about 30 minutes later, my phone rang and it was the patrol officer.

She had found the car. And the driver.

He told a dramatically different story—something about me turning right in front of him. His story is pretty ridiculous on the face of it—I ride north on Eastern Avenue all the way from 27^th Street to 35^th Street, continuing north on Zach Johnson Drive. Given where the car was and where I was when we had our encounter, I wasn’t turning in any direction and would not have “turned in front” of him.

And the jerk kid denied coming back at me at Rockwell-Collins.

Yes, a kid. The car apparently was driven by a 17-year-old boy who was out with one of his buddies. The buddy did the yelling.

Well, it doesn’t appear the CR PD can do anything beyond giving him a stern talking to—it would be a “he said, he said” situation, and the dumb young jerk had his jerk buddy with him too, so it would have been the word of two teens vs CR Biker.

Yet, as the officer told the kid, his story was not very believable. She reports that he at least was left in tears and was embarrassed in front of his parents.

Well, good. I hope he learned something and will grow, and I’m glad nothing worse happened to your biking correspondent for the sake of that life lesson.

The lesson: Even if you’re 17, it’s not OK to be a jerk behind the wheel. And kids, remember, if the old fart on the bicycle is healthy enough to pedal 10 miles a day, there’s a good chance he can read and recall license plate numbers.