Braving the Deep, Deadly South on a Bicycle

Mott the Hoople said:
That's a strawman argument they're making. If your paying taxes, both State, Local and Federal, your paying your fair share for the roads. Bike or no bike.
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It's beyond strawman. It's as if someone gave a drooling living brain donor a keyboard. I pay all those taxes. I also own a car that I register every year, I travel through the tri-state area often for business and pay tolls. I didn't even address that nonsense because why argue with a person who doesn't have a brain.
 
Tyrion the Imp said:
The American south is subtropical, other parts of north America like Panama are indeed tropical. As well, it often gets to 90% humidity and 100 degrees in the dog days of summer here, you can't get a lot worse than that.
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The only thing worse for heat and humidity than Mississippi in the summer is the monsoon season in the tropics.
 
Tyrion the Imp said:
We don't have sidewalks in most of the south, and, again, the most dangerous place for a cyclist to be is on the sidewalk. Lot's of pedestrians are killed by cyclists who choose to take their bike onto the sidewalk, but cyclists only pose a minor annoyance on the road. IMO, cyclists should be banned from the sidewalk, and required to ride on the road. As for a shoulder, yeah, I ride on a shoulder wherever it's present, but it's usually not.
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Cyclist are banned from riding on the sidewalk here in Dublin. We have plenty of bike paths here which, ironically, aren't very bike friendly. To many pedestrians. If you ride 5 mph, as Billy describes, they're a great place to ride. Anything over 10 mph and you need to be out on the road. Fortunately even our smallest tertiary farm access road is at least chip and seal paved so lots of empty roads to go out on once you get out of town. That's where I do most of my riding.
 
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Tyrion the Imp said:
This is why I hate bike lanes. They're for pansies, real men ride on the road, and bike lanes for pansies give the impression that bikes don't belong anywhere but on them to entitled auto-drivers, which couldn't be further from the truth.

This is also why cars should be banned from the road. Cycle or stay home.
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Can't agree with you there....bike lanes are awesome. Share the road! :)
 
Darla said:
It's beyond strawman. It's as if someone gave a drooling living brain donor a keyboard. I pay all those taxes. I also own a car that I register every year, I travel through the tri-state area often for business and pay tolls. I didn't even address that nonsense because why argue with a person who doesn't have a brain.
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That's true. It's like trying to teach manners to a pig. You don't get anything accomplished and you frustrate the pig.
 
Threedee said:
It's still fucking Texass.
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Naaa Austin is totally different than the rest of Texas. People even walk around wearing tie dyed shirts that say "Keep Austin Weird". Austin is a modern oasis of liberality surrounded by a vast desert of anti-intellectual southern conservatism. San Antonio stands apart from the rest of Texas too.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Naaa Austin is totally different than the rest of Texas. People even walk around wearing tie dyed shirts that say "Keep Austin Weird". Austin is a modern oasis of liberality surrounded by a vast desert of anti-intellectual southern conservatism. San Antonio stands apart from the rest of Texas too.
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Yeah that's all true about Austin, but they still live under the right wing laws and policies of a right wing state.
 
Abraxas said:
Anywhere that has a festival as cool as the South by Southwest (SXSW) can't be all bad.
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Austin is a lot like Columbus, OH. It's the State Capital.About the same size/population as Columbus. It has a very diverse population, both culturally and ethnically. It's site of a large State University, it has a very diverse economy, finance, industry, technology, corporate centers. The only real major difference between the two cities is our winters suck and their summers suck.
 
Threedee said:
Seattle's pretty awesome, too, WM. If you get your engineering degree, you should head up this way and land a job at Boeing. If you go the programming route, then there's plenty of tech jobs as well. Plus, Brent and I live up here, and Grind flies out here periodically, so Seattle is the ideal Trinity destination.
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I already have my degree. O_o
 
Mott the Hoople said:
YUP...Your Dad is right. My father taught me the same thing....dead right but still dead. As for listening to music when riding....wherever your riding.....not a good idea, not safe. Besides nature has it's own sounds to enjoy that you're missing out on. :)
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I listen to lectures on my right ea, I disagree that it's unsafe.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
That's a strawman argument they're making. If your paying taxes, both State, Local and Federal, your paying your fair share for the roads. Bike or no bike.
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The gas tax is designed with it in mind to reward lower emissions vehicles... obviously, zero emissions vehicles get rewarded by paying no tax. It's doing it's job when it comes to bicycles.
 
Tyrion the Imp said:
I listen to lectures on my right ea, I disagree that it's unsafe.
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It's intrinsically unsafe as it is a distraction and because you can't hear the crazy mother fucker in the pick up truck coming up behind you.

I also don't like it because I get far to much artificial noise during my daily life. Riding is my moment of zen.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
It's intrinsically unsafe as it is a distraction and because you can't hear the crazy mother fucker in the pick up truck coming up behind you.

I also don't like it because I get far to much artificial noise during my daily life. Riding is my moment of zen.
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Well, I can hear them. It's only in one ear (the one facing away from the road), and lectures aren't particularly noisy anyway. If I were wearing noise isolating in-ear headphones in both ear and listening to heavy metal at a blasting volume, yeah, I'd agree that there'd be a danger, but as it is, I have no problem hearing them a long ways away and keeping an eye on them in my mirror. Usually a head turn as well just clearly to signal that I see them (if I just use the mirror, I think a lot of people just think I'm oblivious and unaware of their presence, as most aren't aware of/don't know what that contraption attached to my glasses is, and assume I'm blind behind me).

Lectures are Zen for me, I get to learn a lot about the world during my bike rides. I would indeed prefer nothing to some generic blasting music that doesn't really improve me in any way, but I prefer the lectures to nothing. I'm more into the visual of biking anyway, the natural beauty around me. I used to think this place was ugly before I started biking, just a bunch of nondescript trees whizzing by you at 65mph that you watch through dirty, tinted windows while your on your way to somewhere important. On my bike rides, well - there's so much that just takes my breath away. I've practically become a neo-luddite, I love biking the undeveloped and agricultural areas, any dense human settlement just looks like an ugly, grey, dreary pox on the land.
 
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Tyrion the Imp said:
Well, I can hear them. It's only in one ear (the one facing away from the road), and lectures aren't particularly noisy anyway. If I were wearing noise isolating in-ear headphones in both ear and listening to heavy metal at a blasting volume, yeah, I'd agree that there'd be a danger, but as it is, I have no problem hearing them a long ways away and keeping an eye on them in my mirror. Usually a head turn as well just clearly to signal that I see them (if I just use the mirror, I think a lot of people just think I'm oblivious and unaware of their presence, as most aren't aware of/don't know what that contraption attached to my glasses is, and assume I'm blind behind me).

Lectures are Zen for me, I get to learn a lot about the world during my bike rides. I would indeed prefer nothing to some generic blasting music that doesn't really improve me in any way, but I prefer the lectures to nothing. I'm more into the visual of biking anyway, the natural beauty around me. I used to think this place was ugly before I started biking, just a bunch of nondescript trees whizzing by you at 65mph that you watch through dirty, tinted windows while your on your way to somewhere important. On my bike rides, well - there's so much that just takes my breath away. I've practically become a neo-luddite, I love biking the undeveloped and agricultural areas, any dense human settlement just looks like an ugly, grey, dreary pox on the land.
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Yea, I had the same experience when I started cycling. Realized how much I missed seeing riding the highways. I also became a master of navigating the back roads up here.
 
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