please slow down on the MUPs

"Colorado Bicycler" wrote ...
"To the extent that your statement is true, yeah, this is the cause.
Ever
see anyone walking in the suburbs? "

Well, yes, actually.

We purposely chose to be located right on a walking/bicycling trail,
and we have tremendous usage of that trail in our suburb of Parker,
Colorado. People walk, bike, jog, inline skate and even cross country
ski all the time. Our subdivision of 335 homes has 55 acres of open
space, internal trails and lots of folks who know each other.

To get myself into more trouble -- I think this is a product of our
suburban
lifestyle, where we seek isolation from others rather than learn to
deal with
them. After a generation or two of this, we've forgotten how. Kids
don't learn
it from their parents anymore, because their parents are clueless
themselves.

Terrible, living where we can stretch, don't have to listen to the
arguments of others, don't feel claustrophobic, and can have privacy
when we want it. Nice not to have someone elses value system laid on
us as to our lifestyle and living arrangements.


I'm glad for your sake that you are able to live in such circumstances. The
whole point of this thread, though, is that people on a Denver area
walking/bicycling trail seem unable to use said trail in a way that does not
endanger or inconvenience others. To paraphrase Mr. O'Toole, they are unable
to be "mindful of others in public". When this kind of behavior shows up on
the shared use trails in Parker are you going to pack up and move to another
subdivision? Or are you going to do as the OP on this thread did and stand
up and ask that people behave themselves in public? I don't think there's
enough space on this planet for everyone to live as you do, but life would
be a lot more pleasant for all of us if more people would learn to be
"mindful of others in public" instead of isolating themselves as you seem to
have done.
--
mark

"When this kind of behavior shows up on
the shared use trails in Parker are you going to pack up and move to
another
subdivision? Or are you going to do as the OP on this thread did and
stand
up and ask that people behave themselves in public? "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why would you care what I do?

And to whom would I stand up? To a bunch of bicyclists that read this
USENET and already understand the problem? That would do a lot of good!

In article ,
"David L. Johnson" writes:

This sounds like a very unusual suburb. Where is it? Most suburban
schools in the US no longer have a place to lock up a bike, unlike the
large covered areas they had when I was a kid.

Heh. I just recalled the horrid 'wheel bender' bike stands
at the schools when I was a kid (50s and 60s.) Concrete slabs
with slots in them; one couldn't lock to them because there was
nothing to put a lock around. 'Locking' a bike back then
entailed closing a deep-throated, cheap padlock through the
front wheel and fork so the wheel couldn't turn. I think that
was just before the nadir of the popularity of cycling.


cheers,
Tom

--
-- Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca

wrote in message
ups.com...

Cathy Kearns wrote:

Approximately 30% of the students at our local school ride bikes or
walk to
school everyday. It should be higher, but 30% isn't nobody. Our
community
is one of those rural feel suburbs with few sidewalks. I still see
people
out walking all the time. Since I started reading this thread I've
seen 3
groups of people walk down my street, which isn't a thoroughfare, and
it's
raining outside. It's just a matter of having some place to walk to.

I'd be interested in a more detailed description of your suburb. I
don't know what you mean by a "rural feel suburb."

In my case, my suburb is a little old village, once separated from the
urban/suburban sprawl by 3 or 4 miles, now completely surrounded. But
it still has the tight network of streets, mostly with sidewalks, and a
few stores still survive in the village center, as well as a beautiful
new library, a post office, doctors' offices, banks, etc. We do get
people walking and biking, including kids walking and (a very few)
biking to school.

Sounds much like your village. I can walk to my little village by cutting
through the little league field, past the historical house and the library
sitting in the orchard. It's about 1/3 a mile away, and has drug stores,
coffee shops, some clothing, card, and knicknack type stores, a great
children's book store, and a store for equestrians, which comes in handy
more than I thought when moving here. We can also walk to two grocery
stores, which we did when the kids were small and took a wagon. (Now I tend
to bike to one a bit farther..) One third mile in the other direction is the
back entrance to my daughter's elementary school. The street between our
house and there is mostly used by walkers and bikers in the morning and
afternoon. It has no sidewalks, but the amount of pedestrian and bike
traffic slows any vehicles to a crawl, so it's very safe. It's a great
example of traffic calming by taking back the streets. High school is 1/4
mile due north, so my older daughter walks there every morning. I can't see
her ever driving, I think our driveway may well be the closest place she can
park to her locker.

Most the schools here have bike "cages" which are fenced in areas that lock
the bikes in during school hours. The bikes are still supposed to be locked
inside the cages, but the cage at the elementary school is in the middle of
campus, and I've never heard of a bike being stolen during school. The high
school does have bike stealing problems, and between that and the uncool
helmet hair factor, my daughter never rides to school.

In general the city does not have sidewalks, as the city was originally the
country (though horses are no longer allowed to be ridden to school...) and
folks like the country feel. This does not discourage people from walking
in the streets. There are parks and small local shopping areas spread
throughout the town, and MUPs crop up on the edges, taking you places like
the San Francisco Bay and Stanford University. This is Los Altos, which is
right next to Palo Alto on the San Francisco Bay penninsula in California.
My years on the city bicycle advisory committee makes me quite aware that it
is not a pedestrian/bicycle nirvana, but it's not too bad either.

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:57:18 GMT, "mark" wrote:

And yes, the burden of safety and courtesy is on the overtaker, whether
walking, cycling or driving.
--
mark

My favorite one is when they do the "MUP" dance: Two people walking abreast
taking up the whole trail hear you coming, both turn around and see you and
the guy on the right goes to the left side, the guy on the left goes to the
right side, then they look at each other and then each runs to the other's
side of the trail, bumping into each other in the middle. har, har. ;-)

jj

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:14:54 -0800, Tom Keats wrote:

This sounds like a very unusual suburb. Where is it? Most suburban
schools in the US no longer have a place to lock up a bike, unlike the
large covered areas they had when I was a kid.

Heh. I just recalled the horrid 'wheel bender' bike stands
at the schools when I was a kid (50s and 60s.) Concrete slabs
with slots in them; one couldn't lock to them because there was
nothing to put a lock around.

We had, as I recall from elementary and junior high school, those grate
things you could stick your wheel partway through. They were covered, too,
more to keep the bikes from baking in the sun than protection from
rain, since it didn't rain much in central California. Locks? I don't
recall using a lock, but if so it would have been a cheap thing with a
chain. This was from maybe 1958 to 65, at which time there was a guy in my
class who was old enough to drive.


and fork so the wheel couldn't turn. I think that was just before the
nadir of the popularity of cycling.

Odd that, at the nadir of cycling popularity, so many kids rode bikes to
school. I was not unusual for riding to school; maybe 50-100 kids rode
every day in a school of maybe 300 students. Most of the rest walked.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | "What am I on? I'm on my bike, six hours a day, busting my ass.
_`\(,_ | What are you on?" --Lance Armstrong
(_)/ (_) |

In article .com,
Fritz M wrote:
jj asked regarding left-leaping peds:
When this happens what do you do?

I try to call out far enough behind so that if the ped leaps left, I
have time and space to manuever through. Also, for peds I'll usually
say "Passing to your left." I might even include a friendly greeting.
The terse "On your left" sounds too much like a command for the
uninitiated. Air horns are just plain sociopathic.

If every passing path user said "On your left," I think the training
would eventually get through.

During my brief stay in Amsterdam last summer, I noticed that the
practice seems to be to ring the bicycle bell on approach.

And I've *never* seen that many bicycles, nor bicycles moving that
slowly . . .

hawk
--
Richard E. Hawkins, Asst. Prof. of Economics /"\ ASCII ribbon campaign
111 Hiller (814) 375-4846 \ / against HTML mail
Find commentary on law, economics, and X and postings.
other issues of the day at dochawk.org! / \

"David L. Johnson" wrote:
(snip)
Odd that, at the nadir of cycling popularity, so many kids rode bikes to
school. I was not unusual for riding to school; maybe 50-100 kids rode
every day in a school of maybe 300 students. Most of the rest walked.

--

David L. Johnson


Same as my experience in early-mid 60's. Town of 14,000. "Townies" were not
bussed; only kids who lived outside town were bussed. Nobody I knew was ever
driven by a parent, except e.g. one with a walking cast. So while most townies
walked, the rest of us - and there were many - rode a bicycle. I liked the bike
because I putter around on the way to/from school but then ride like a demon to
make up the lost time.