March 27, 2013 · 10:14 am

More bike parking, please

Check it out! Six shiny new bike racks!

Check it out! Six shiny new bike racks!

Late last week I went to pick up my son at afterschool with some trepidation. The 5pm pickup is the most crowded at the bike racks, and this is often a nightmare. However thanks to the much-appreciated efforts of one of the afterschool staffers, we now have a passcode to enter a secured courtyard at the side of the building with its own bike rack. I have been parking there most days, even though it means a lot of extra walking around the building.

I was shocked when I rode up and saw a bona fide miracle: an empty bike rack in front of the building. I sped up before someone else could get there first. Then I looked again: there were five empty bike racks! They hadn’t been there when I walked by earlier in the day. And they were not placed against the bollards—bikes could be parked on both sides! Our son’s afterschool program had installed six new bike racks as promised. (And despite the fact that they’d been in place for only hours, they were already filling up—one family had gotten there before me and parked at the sixth rack already.)

Last year I successfully advocated to have a new bike rack installed at my office, which filled up immediately on installation. And now this year the internet has scored some outstanding cargo-bike friendly racks at our son’s afterschool program. They were filling up by the time I came back outside with my son. If you build them, they will come.

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March 25, 2013 · 2:27 pm

Am I paranoid enough?

When I rode into work the other day I saw a man lock up his bike then look thoughtfully at the bike next to him. When I came closer, he said, “This bike here is unlocked, and there’s a lock on the ground. I’m wondering whether they forgot to lock up?”

This is a tough one: what do you do? The lock looked as though it had its key in it. Should we lock up the bike and then bring the key to security?

Evidently a standard U-lock isn't enough to prevent bike theft in San Francisco.

Evidently a standard U-lock isn’t enough to prevent bike theft in San Francisco.

Then we took a closer look. What we’d seen wasn’t actually a key but a piece of the lock, which had been neatly cut, probably by an angle grinder. It was one of the locks that secures only one end of the U, rather than both, so once cut it pulled right open. That was unnerving. The bike racks at my office are generally pretty safe, in part because there is a security guard patrolling the area on foot. But apparently not that safe.

We’ve long since upgraded our locks from a standard U-lock to a Abus lock that secures both ends, and that is made out of stronger metal so it’s harder to cut through (and that costs a fortune). Our bikes also have frame locks, and they’re Pitlocked, and they’re registered with the San Francisco police. And they’re listed on our renters insurance in the event that they get stolen anyway. But on some days I wonder whether I’m paranoid enough.

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March 22, 2013 · 9:42 am

To Panhandle or not to Panhandle

Who wouldn't want to ride in Golden Gate Park?

Who wouldn’t want to ride in Golden Gate Park?

On the western side of San Francisco there are many excellent bike lanes through Golden Gate Park, which stretches nearly half the length of the city. Even outside the park to the north and south the streets are pretty quiet (with a few exceptions), so it is very easy to get around by bike as long as you don’t mind the hills. Which whatever, where besides the Mission are there are not hills in this city.

Transitioning from the park to the Panhandle

Transitioning from the park to the Panhandle

At the edge of the park the Panhandle begins. The Panhandle is a one-block-wide, ¾ mile long stretch of greenway, and it extends even further east. A nightmarish three blocks at the far edge of the Panhandle then drop you into the Wiggle, and from there bike lanes, some protected, run all the way to the eastern edge of the city and San Francisco Bay. (Protected bike lanes for those three blocks of Oak Street have been in the works for some time and postponed repeatedly.)

Unfortunately the streets on either side of the Panhandle, Fell and Oak, are basically freeways in the middle of the city, and noisy. There is a break in the middle for the death highway of Masonic Avenue, which even with a dedicated bike signal is not the most fun street to cross. Supposedly Masonic is a designated bike route. Ha ha.

There is a lot of foot traffic on the shared-use path.

There is a lot of foot traffic on the shared-use path.

There are two paths on the Panhandle: the southern path along Oak is a pedestrian-only path, and the northern path along Fell is shared-use. For reasons that mystify me, runners and walkers mostly shun the southern path and so there are always multitudes wandering idly among the bikes. And there are always off-leash dogs. A couple of weeks ago I slowed when one came close, but not fast enough because it suddenly jumped right into my path, knocking me and my son to the ground. My son fell under the bike and although he was unhurt, he was so upset that he burst into tears. The dog ran off. Of course its owner was nowhere to be found.

Walkers blocking the Shrader Valve on the way out of the Panhandle

Walkers blocking the Shrader Valve on the way out of the Panhandle

So anyway, although the Panhandle has its appeal–no car traffic to contend with–it has some issues as a place to ride.

There is an alternative. Like all alternative routes in San Francisco, it is steeper. Heading east, Page Street runs above the southern edge of the Panhandle then drops down suddenly to join the Wiggle. In reverse, obviously, it goes up just as suddenly.  I know many riders who prefer Page Street to the Panhandle. They tend to be solo riders.

Recently, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, we headed out for Mexican food (eating out contrary to ethnic expectations on holidays means never having to wait for a table). Because we were already south of the Panhandle we took Page, which we don’t normally ride. It was nice; there were multiple sidewalk sales, and families were sitting out on their front steps chatting with each other. Even though there are lots of stop signs to slow you down, it is a pleasant alternative to the Panhandle in the downhill direction.

After dinner we had the choice of following the Wiggle back or turning around and climbing up Page. Matt had both kids in the Bullitt and to my surprise he wanted to take the hill. As he headed up, a pickup truck going down the hill slowed, and the driver stuck his head out the window. “GIT IT, OLD MAN!” he cheered. “GIT IT, OLD MAN!” I laughed so hard I almost fell off my bike. Oh how I love San Francisco.

Git it, old man!

Git it, old man!

We made it back to Golden Gate Park with only the usual stares that the Bullitt draws from families walking on the street. I scratched Matt’s back at a stoplight and said, “Git it, old man.” He laughed. “He was supportive,” I said, “That’s what matters.”

“He was ACCURATE,” he replied. “Like I care. I’m fitter now than I ever was in my so-called prime.” And this is true. We have been married for 14 years, and by any historical standard Matt is smokin’.

I’m used to the Panhandle and its quirks. But I can see us taking Page more often in the future too. Git it, old man!

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March 20, 2013 · 10:19 am

Turn that frown upside down

Is this really necessary?

Is this really necessary?

On Friday afternoon things were going terribly at work due solely to the machinations of campus IT, and not for the first time either. After a few hours of suffering I decided to do what everyone else in the office had already done and leave work early. I headed out to get the grocery shopping done, which in our brave new world of zero-waste is usually a pretty entertaining errand. But I was in a foul mood.

Even though I was on the Bullitt, which is a fun bike, the ride was not going well. It was windy and without kids in the bucket the rain cover kept catching the wind and threatening to tip the bike over. On my way down Post Street, there were cars parked in the bike lane roughly every 100 feet, pushing me out into traffic. My usual strategy when I see a car parked in the bike lane is to ring my bell, even though this is completely futile. I like to imagine my bell going: “WTF! WTF! WTF!” The drivers don’t even bother to look up from their phones but it makes me feel better.

Then thanks to yet another car in the bike lane I missed my turn and ended up winding back through the public housing projects south of Geary and their relentless, jarring speed bumps, which are short and sharp and which have sent the Bullitt to the shop with broken cranks once already. By the time I got back on route I was actually cursing to myself, and muttering: “CARS! I hate… CARS!”

I finally got to the Scott Street hill, which is a doozy, but whatever, I was on the Bullitt. To my surprise I saw a dad with his daughter on a trailer-bike preparing to head up that hill a few blocks ahead of me, which is no joke even when riding solo. I was impressed despite my bad mood. As I got closer, they slowed, and then he suddenly lost control and ran into a parked van, and both of them went over. Who among us hasn’t been there?

By the time I reached them they were back up, uninjured and walking up the steepest part of the hill. “Go, dad, go!” I said as I passed, because that kind of effort deserves some credit.

From the top of the hill on, it was all downhill and even though car traffic was backed up all the way through the Wiggle (why are there cars on the Wiggle?), and some of them blocked my big cargo bike temporarily, things got better at Rainbow Grocery. I discovered they have bulk Easter* candy wrapped in paper and foil, which is going to be helpful in a couple of weeks.

It ended up being a major shop but as usual the Bullitt swallowed it all, and as usual the Rainbow employee-owners staffing the parking lot made sure that cars didn’t mow me over when I headed out (many San Francisco grocery stores staff their auto parking lots to prevent the unspeakable mayhem that ensues if drivers are left to fend for themselves). Then I headed home, and thankfully it was a quiet ride. “Where’s the kid?” a guy asked me on Mission. “I’m on my way to get them,” I said.

Some other things that make me happy

Some other things that make me happy

According to the Bullitt’s computer I rode about 15 miles on Friday between the school drop-off and work and shopping and pickups. With all that riding my mood eventually improved, as it always does. I don’t really remember what I did on days like these before we started riding bikes. Probably I drank? Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. And riding is cheaper therapy than either.

*We ceded Easter baskets last year when our son said he didn’t want to be Jewish anymore if he couldn’t have an Easter basket. Thanks to all the various holidays we now recognize/celebrate through his school (Oshugatsu Matsuri, Hinamatsuri, Cherry Blossom, Kodomo No Hi, Black History Month, Rosa Parks Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Holi, Diwali, Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, etc. etc.) he sees no reason not to pick up any holiday from any tradition. Fortunately California Judaism is pretty flexible about this kind of thing.

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March 18, 2013 · 11:27 am

Hello there, ad hoc San Francisco family bike

Front top-tube seat with an electric assist: this is a San Francisco family bike.

Front top-tube seat with an electric assist: this is a San Francisco family bike.

Here’s a bike I’ve seen at after-school pickup before, one of the bikes that led me on a merry chase until I eventually discovered that top tube seats are an actual thing. This seat is jury-rigged but holds a first-grader in daily use. Although it’s hard to see, there’s a small electric assist on the front wheel—the battery is in the rear bag. That’s because that first-grader goes to one of the many San Francisco schools on the top of a big hill.

I know that not everyone likes the ad hoc family rigs, which are sometimes not the most safety-oriented bike setups (although this one looks perfectly legit to me). But not everyone comes to riding with kids with a lot of money to spend. I’m impressed by the ingenuity of these riders show; many of them have limited resources. This strikes me as a more formal version of the bike I saw ridden by a dad who had put his son sidesaddle on a pillow on the top tube of his bike. (There is a lot to be said for having a traditional diamond frame when putting together a child seat on the fly.)

It is perceived as charming when families ride this way in old movies. My parents used to ride with us in the front baskets of their bikes. That’s not something I’d do with my kids now, but then again I don’t have to; we have a great cargo bike. These bikes aren’t our bikes, but their riders are our people.

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March 15, 2013 · 9:15 am

Bicycles and privilege

Sometimes The Onion says it best: there is a vocal contingent of people who claim that only privileged, able-bodied, middle class people ride bikes. I am usually dumbfounded when I hear this.

“We don’t need more bike lanes for trust-fund hipsters in San Francisco!” they fume. “Families can’t ride bikes! They need cars! We need to make it easier for families to drive in this city.”

When I tell them that I ride with my kids, as do many of the parents at our kids’ schools, they look aghast. “How can you risk your kids’ safety that way?” they say. “It’s not safe to ride a bike with kids in San Francisco.”

“I hope you’ll support more separated bike lanes, then,” I say. Then they stomp away.

This is an expensive bike, but it cost less than half of what we got when we sold our car.

This is an expensive bike, but it cost less than half of what we got when we sold our car.

I think it’s easy to confuse people who ride bikes with people who write about riding bikes. Am I privileged, able-bodied, and middle class? You betcha. But that’s basically what defines a blogger, not what defines a bike rider. If you look at blogs, everything from riding bikes to dumpster diving to gardening to worrying about money looks middle class. Talking about ourselves and our first-world problems is just what we privileged, able-bodied, middle class people do. It’s appalling, I know.

Who do I see riding bikes in San Francisco? I see families like ours, and road racers, and homeless guys carrying giant bags stuffed with aluminum cans on their shoulders, and men in suits going to work in the Financial District, and last week, a dad in a security guard uniform with his son balanced on a pillow over the top tube.  I see the man with no legs passing me when I ride along the Panhandle, and the grandfather with his oxygen tank in his trike on the Embarcadero. I’m least likely to see other moms with kids, but we’re out there too.

I like that when I ride my bike I’m part of a community that isn’t defined by privilege. I work with surgeons who complain about how poor they are, even though a first year surgeon at my university earns (much) more than my husband and I do together. They’re comparing themselves to investment bankers at their kids’ private schools and they feel poor. But riding around the city I see how lucky we are.

These are some of the ways parents like us get to school (at Rosa Parks Elementary).

These are some of the ways parents like us get to school (at Rosa Parks Elementary).

At our son’s school I was talking with a friend who just started riding her daughter to school last year. Like us, she sold her car when she bought a cargo bike. Unlike us, they are a one-income family, which is painfully difficult in San Francisco (except for investment bankers). “I’m so happy now,” she said. “We maxed out the credit card trying to maintain that car. For the last repair before we sold it, we had to pull money from the savings we’d managed to put away for our daughter. Now we’re paying off our debt and I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”  Matt and I both work, and we’re not that close to the edge. We’re lucky! But there’s no question that getting rid of our car made it easier to live in San Francisco, where even surgeons feel poor. Owning cars is expensive, and especially so in San Francisco. It’s not something you can afford if you’re not privileged.

Bicycles aren’t just for the middle class, or even just for the able-bodied. However, for now at least, they are still just for people willing to look at the world a little differently, whether by choice or by necessity. We chose to ride bikes when we could drive, and being able to make that choice is what makes us privileged.  But when we chose, we joined the legions of people who have no choice but to ride bikes or transit. When we ask for more support of alternative transportation, we’re asking to make their lives better too.

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March 13, 2013 · 9:53 am

We ride ALL THE BIKES

Oh, the places we go

Oh, the places we go

It sometimes strikes me as excessive that Matt and I have four bikes between us. Yet we are close enough in height that we can share, or perhaps we would have even more bikes. Matt rides the Kona MinUte to work, and I am the only one who rides the mamachari (it’s too girly for him). We both use the Bullitt to haul our kids around and for major shopping. And the Brompton, although it’s kind of slog getting it the hill where we live, is handy for multimodal trips (and it’s not actually necessary to ride it up the hill, not when there is an elevator, and buses).

Home storage of the Brompton (with my sneakers for scale)

Home storage of the Brompton (with my sneakers for scale)

Although four bikes, even if one fits in our boarded up fireplace, feels like a lot, we do actually use them all. Admittedly, our kids also each have a bike, and then there is the trailer bike. But when I thought about it, it didn’t feel outrageous to have all these bikes because we actually used them all last weekend. And this weekend wasn’t that different from most weeks.

Yes, the MinUte is a real cargo bike.

Yes, the MinUte is a real cargo bike.

Matt rides the Kona MinUte to work by preference, although he sometimes takes the Bullitt and has occasionally taken the Brompton. The MinUte is most useful for his commute because it can carry one kid and stuff like work supplies and groceries, but is roughly the size of a normal bike. The bike traffic on Market Street, which is his route downtown, can be pretty heavy, which makes a full-size cargo bike tough to maneuver, and there are often heavy winds, so although taking the Bullitt is nice for the kids, it isn’t the greatest without them. (Last week he had to take the wind cover off the Bullitt while he was downtown to keep it from blowing over once he dropped our son off—with weight in the bucket, wind isn’t an issue, and even if it were it would be worth it with kids aboard. But without them that cover is like a giant sail.) Matt also takes the MinUte to his martial arts class in the evenings, so he can pick up groceries on the way home. It’s not bad for dropping off library books on the weekend either.

Loading up: three kids in the box of our Bullitt bicycle.

Loading up: three kids in the box of our Bullitt bicycle.

The Bullitt, ah the Bullitt. We take the Bullitt when we’re riding with the kids. At this time of year, they are positively obnoxious about the thought of riding on any other bike. They like the comfy seat and the weather cover and the fact that they can sit and read in the bike and talk to us. They like asking their friends to join them in the bucket. The wails that ensue when our daughter learns that our son got to ride the Bullitt to school are matched only by the wails that ensue when our son learns that our daughter got to ride the Bullitt to preschool. We also take the Bullitt for trips when we know we’ll be carrying heavy loads.

Half a dozen pizzas? Please.

Half a dozen pizzas? Please.

On Saturday morning, while Matt and our daughter were taking a martial arts class, I loaded up our son and headed to Rainbow for groceries. Taking the Bullitt to Rainbow is fabulous because we can do all our shopping while cars are idling outside waiting for a spot to open up in the lot. Also I enjoy riding to Rainbow because their lovely, cargo-bike friendly racks have stickers on them saying, “Thank you for biking!” It was a lot of shopping and thus a little cramped in the bucket for our son on the way home, but we’ve yet to throw a load at the Bullitt that it can’t handle. However, like any cargo bike, the Bullitt can be a bear to park in San Francisco—parking is our number one topic of discussion with other cargo biking parents in San Francisco. I also worry about it being stolen in certain neighborhoods.  And without the kids, it can be a lot of bike. Even so I’d probably ride it all the time if it weren’t for the parking issue.

Parking wasn't a tight squeeze on this trip, but you never know.

Parking wasn’t a tight squeeze on this trip, but you never know.

The mamachari is what I ride when I am going someplace where I’m worried about bike parking or bike theft, or when Matt has the Bullitt. It is slow but assisted and can carry either kid. I rode it to the Rosa Parks school auction on Saturday night because Matt rode the Bullitt, and also because the mamachari has a step through frame and I was wearing a dress. Then I took it to the farmers market on Sunday morning, because it’s a small enough bike that I can walk it right up to the stands, at which point I can dump whatever produce we buy directly into the baskets. As a result, our farmers market shopping takes about 15 minutes these days.

Our son is now well over four feet tall and he still fits on the Brompton.

Our son is now well over four feet tall and he still fits on the Brompton.

I rode the Brompton down to Golden Gate Park on Sunday afternoon to meet a lovely family considering buying their own IT Chair (and not for the first time, either). I would ride the Brompton more if it weren’t for the big hill we live on, but I’ve taken it to the park many times because it’s easy to stash it in odd corners and because the kids love to ride it when the weather is nice. If they can’t be in the Bullitt, the other bike with a front seat is the bike they choose. Even at seven years old, our son still likes riding it. And for days that involve a bus ride or a train ride or meeting Matt somewhere after he’s taken a business trip that involved a rental car, there is no better choice than the Brompton. It is also our alternate farmers market bike, although the bag is not quite as great for produce as the mamachari’s double baskets.

Two adults and four bikes: we could certainly survive with fewer, but this turns out to be the right number to make our lives easy. It’s true that added together, our four very nice bikes cost almost as much as a cheap used car, but they cost almost nothing to own and maintain (we could have bought a fifth bike with what it cost to replace the tires on our old minivan). Plus it’s easier to get around the city on our bikes than it was with one car and transit. And given that we literally swapped our car for our bikes—plus a car share membership for trips out of town—we feel like we’ve come out ahead.

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March 11, 2013 · 10:42 am

One less fixie

Truthfully, the mamachari is better as a "ride right up to the farmers market stand and dump stuff in the baskets" bike.

Truthfully, the mamachari works best as a “ride right up to the farmers market stands and dump produce in the baskets” bike. I’ve got a reputation.

Last week Matt left the Bullitt in his office for a few days when he was away on business, so I ended up taking my son to school on the mamachari. Our kids prefer to be in the Bullitt for every trip so this never makes him happy. (I could go either way depending on the day: the Bullitt is faster, has more range, and carries more, plus there’s less whining, but then again it’s harder to park.)

No question that as rear child seats go, this one rocks.

No question that as rear child seats go, this one rocks.

On the Bullitt I’m used to a lot of attention by now—sometimes it verges into dangerous attention, as passing cars will slow and veer over when they see us—but to most people the mamachari just looks like an old bike (although parents are always asking me about the child seat). But on Friday on the Panhandle, at Masonic, another rider stopped to ask me about it. “Just how old is that bike?” he wanted to know. “I haven’t seen a Bridgestone sold in decades.” I think the idea of a decades-old bike with an electric assist was throwing him off.

I told him it was probably ten years old, but it came from Japan where Bridgestone was still selling new bikes. But I was completely distracted because his bike had a large “One Less Fixie” sticker on it even though the bike itself looked like a fixie. It was weirding me out. It was only when he grabbed onto a sign at a stop and spun the pedals backward without actually moving that I realized it was a single-speed non-fixie. As he rode ahead (everyone rides faster than I do when I’m carrying my son on the mamachari) I thought: a single speed bike advertising against fixies; now that’s really, really obscure.

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March 8, 2013 · 9:25 am

Yes, but…

They don't always fight.

They don’t always fight.

A couple of years ago we went to Copenhagen and rented bikes. The first day we rode with our children through the city was one of the best of our lives. They were single speed bikes and they were as heavy as boat anchors, and we got lost more than once, and it rained. I did not care. We could go anywhere we wanted, and the kids were screaming with joy and hugging us from their child seats behind us, and sometimes the sun came out, and it was glorious. We have had many memorable days with them since, and a surprising number of them were on our bikes, but that was the first. With the memory of that day and that feeling it seemed impossible not to return to San Francisco and buy bikes and ride them everywhere. Most days it is as good as we had hoped it would be, some days it sucks, and some days it is better than we could have imagined.

We stayed near these gardens, one of the few places no bikes were allowed.

We stayed near these gardens, one of the few places no bikes were allowed.

There are lots of reasons that people tell me it doesn’t make sense for them to ride bikes (not that I ask). I think of these now as the “yes, buts.” They are all the reasons that we didn’t think it made sense to ride our bikes before that day changed our lives. It’s too hard to ride with kids and groceries. San Francisco has too many steep hills (and we live on the side of a mountain). The city has too much car traffic to feel safe, and the roads are so terrible that they destroy bikes, and bike theft is rampant. For parents, there’s the loneliness of having so few families in San Francisco anyway, with even fewer of them on bikes. Yes but, yes but, yes but. Our reasons not to ride made perfect sense and they kept us in our car until that day in Copenhagen when suddenly they no longer mattered. We came home and we started saying: we can and we will. And we did.

Yes, but San Francisco has hills!

Yes, but San Francisco has hills!

I hear the “yes buts” all the time when we talk about our lives now. In San Francisco people say the same things that we used to say. When they come from people outside the city the things people say are different and yet they’re still the same. Yes, but you can ride your bikes everywhere because San Francisco has nice weather (after a fashion) and here it snows. Yes, but there are lots of bike lanes in San Francisco and there aren’t any here. Yes, but the drivers there are friendly to bikes (if sometimes clueless) and here they’re aggressive. Yes, but the city is so small that nothing is very far away. Yes, but you can live without a car because San Francisco has great public transit and two car share companies and all those ride share services.

Everyone’s life is different. There are families riding in hilly cities with worse weather and less bicycle infrastructure than San Francisco. There are families riding in smaller cities that go massive distances or face bigger challenges. There are families that deal with snow and aggressive drivers.

Walking is exhausting. Let's ride bikes instead.

Walking is exhausting. Let’s ride bikes instead.

Personally I don’t care if people want to drive everywhere, although I love having company when families join us on their bikes. I do have issues though, with the claim that our lives enjoy some magical convergence of necessary possibilities. There are things that make it easier for us to ride our bikes and we are grateful for them, and there are things that make it harder for us and we deal with them. There is a man in San Francisco who rides a tricycle up and down the Embarcadero with the oxygen tank he needs to breathe in the basket. I have been passed more than once on the Panhandle by a man with no legs, whose bike is powered by his arms. Who knows what’s really possible? We didn’t know until we tried.

Change feels hard and scary and unnecessary until something happens and it becomes impossible not to change. Before our children were born it seemed impossible to live without sleep for over a year, and after each of them was born we learned to live with it. It was unpleasant but it was possible and they were worth it and now we couldn’t imagine life without them.

Some changes are impossible to miss or to avoid. And some changes could slip away without grabbing onto them. We could have spent that time in Copenhagen and come home and despaired that San Francisco will never be anything like it–San Francisco, for example, will never be flat–and felt the loss of it at some level forever. Instead we came home and bought bikes, and less than a year later, sold our car. Standing over The Pit and watching garbage stream out of the city I could have returned to living and shopping the same way and pushing away a nagging sense of guilt. Instead we embraced zero-waste (which is a work in progress). And it has been… fun!

When I think of what I’m most grateful for about that trip, it is that it started to break me of the habit of saying, “Yes, but…” We tried something new to us that seemed crazy to everyone at the time and it worked. I’m still not really a big fan of change, but change and I are working it out. We can and we will, and we do.

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March 6, 2013 · 8:20 am

Women and men

Results not typical

Results not typical

Riding around San Francisco I’ve noticed a difference between women and men on my daily routes. Put in the starkest possible terms, the difference is that women follow traffic rules. It’s not true for everyone, but as a percentages game, if you’re wondering whether a rider in San Francisco will stop at a red light, the odds are pretty good that she will and he won’t.

I am one of the tedious people; I stop at red lights and stop signs. It doesn’t seem to slow me down much compared to the people buzzing through them—I always catch up to them by the next intersection—and I figure the extra margin of safety is worth starting and stopping more often. I understand why some people don’t; it is beyond tiresome to be honked at regularly by drivers behind me who did not expect or want me to stop at traffic signals, which happens at least once a week. But I guess I’m just a slave to authority.  Plus I figure I have my hands full already dealing with the thousands of drivers in this city who think they have the right of way when they’re turning left at an intersection and my bike is going straight in the opposite direction. Which for the record, they don’t. So if you’re in a car and wondering why I don’t just go already when the light turns green, now you know.

Sometimes I am simply appalled what I see. Last week while riding to work I ended up behind a man on an Xtracycle with, yes, a child seat and stoker bars on the deck, but thankfully, no kids on board at the time. He jumped every red light on our route, but sadly never got far enough ahead of me that I didn’t have to see him anymore. While he was running one red light, the driver of a pickup truck that had started to cross the intersection on the green braked suddenly as he popped out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!?” Xtracycle dad screamed at the driver. At the next red light, he actually stopped, but only to take a drink of water and spit it out onto the car stopped next to him. It was closest thing to bicycle road rage I’ve ever seen, and it was deeply unnerving to think that this man rode with children.

Someone's going to run this light.

Anyone going to run this light?

The next day I rode the same route behind a woman in the full roadie kit. Unlike the dad on the Xtracycle, she stopped at every red light, occasionally sighing like I do when men on bikes jumped past us to run the red light. Then she’d calmly reel them before we reached the next light (I usually ride this street with the electric assist turned off, but I was so interested that I turned it on to keep up with her).

I have days when every intersection is like this. I stop at a red light, and if there are any women on bikes nearby, they stop too. If there are men on bikes nearby (unless they happen to be my husband), they blow through the red. Then I catch up with them at the next intersection and we do the same thing all over again. What on earth do you think you’re gaining? I think. Why is this difference so gendered? I wonder. But there it is.

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