“On bad days, a quarter of Los Angeles’s smog originates in China.”
From here, from which I also learn that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases later this year. They have arrived! Applause please.
Archive for July, 2007
I take the train to work on Tuesday and Thursday because I’m tired from biking to work on Monday and Wednesday. I happily get on my bike on Wednesday and Friday because of the horrible memories of the zombie-filled train ride. Today I took the train to work and biked back, because I’d left my bike with exploded rear tube at work overnight while I picked up a new tyre and tubes on the way home (by train) last night. So I’m now just about balanced on the see-saw: I’m not motivated to take the train or to ride my bike tomorrow.
In other news, after removing the Vredestein Fortezza SE tyre from my rear wheel, I still could not find any holes in it that went right through (there were several that went about halfway through). So the tube shouldn’t have exploded because it leaked out through the hole. But how did it become unseated then? The couple of revolutions when I felt my wheel go funny must have been due to the tube sneaking out between the tyre bead and the rim. But the bead looks as fine as ever. And if it was because the tube was just old and needed replacing, it should have just burst instead of sneaking out.
I’d noticed numerous small cuts on my Vredestein Fortezza rear tyre, but figured they didn’t pose a serious threat. Today the rear tube exploded on the way to work. The rear wheel seem to wobble for about two revolutions, and I was thinking “this doesn’t feel good”, then bang and I felt my arse rolling on metal. Pulled over, thanked the heavens that I was almost at the workplace anyway, and pushed my bike the rest of the way. Locked it there tonight and stopped by a bike store on my way home to get a new tyre and spare tubes. Vredestein Ricorso seemed to be the most commuter-friendly 700×23c tyre they had there, so I bought it. Only realised later I should have asked if they had one with the blue lining, so I could keep the Dutch colour combination around my rear triangle.
One silver lining to this: going back latish on public transport, I ran into a friend I’d been half-hoping to run into.
My Knog Frog light fell off unnoticed my seatstay some time during Monday’s ride. This after my clumsily destroying its companion almost immediately after removing it from the box. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Driver Aggression and Humidity vs Cold Weather
Published July 9, 2007 Bicycling , Chicago , Singapore , Traffic Leave a CommentThere was a curious phenomenon in Chicago, where driver aggression was particularly serious at certain junctions, but not at others in the same neighbourhood. This intrigued me, for while it was plausible that drivers in a certain neighbourhood all tended to be aggressive, such a segregation within the neighbourhood must somehow mean that drivers who were not aggressive at other junctions were aggressive at certain junctions. And, one suspects, they are aggressive at just those junctions where there is a general understanding that it is the norm to be aggressive there. An unwritten agreement that there, aggression just is the case, and niceness should take a back seat. I wondered if this was a universal psychological phenomenon — group conformity to certain norms despite no good reason for their application (as evidenced by their not being applied at other similar places by the same participants). I haven’t had the chance to witness this in Singapore, since drivers are bloody aggressive everywhere.
People often raise the humidity in Sg as a reason not to cycle here. I always tell them that they should try riding in Chicago winters before they do so. And as I commute more here, I become more convinced that humidity isn’t that bad. This was certainly not the case with respect to Chicago winters — I did not get more tolerant of winter cycling the more I did it. The thing about humidity is that although one gets drenched in sweat within 5 minutes of starting out, one hardly notices the sweat after that — it fades into the background as a minor discomfort. Cold and wind, however, don’t fade. If anything, one notices them more as one’s ride progresses. One starts out warm, then parts of one’s body start getting numb, then aching from the cold, perhaps even progressing to that stabbing cold that conquered me in that -29oC day last winter. The cold wears you down; becomes more noticeable and more painful the longer you are in it. Same for the wind. You begin all gung-ho pedalling furiously against it, but by the end of the ride you’re happy pedalling through molasses at jogging pace, your throat is dried out from breathing into it, you’re tired of having that sound in your right ear for most of the ride, etc. Humidity is easy in comparison, people. So you get wet. But you can’t possibly catch hypothermia, and a refreshing shower is waiting for you at your destination.
To overcome my Singaporean shyness and give all fellow cyclists I encounter on the road a friendly gesture.
I’ve commented before on how roads are heat sinks, and, especially in a climate like Singapore’s, are not to be encouraged, so-called travelling efficiency be damned. Alex Au has accounts of two places that used to be pleasant neighbourhood fields but were paved over and turned into useless heat sinks. Of course our city planners don’t care about heat sinks — they don’t have to deal with the consequences! They drive around in their air-conditioned metal boxes, live in greenery-filled private estates, don’t have to wait at bus stops near heat sinks, etc.
Today a family member was drooling over how speedy the new expressway was. But all I could think of, seeing the black strip of tar cutting through the surrounding greenery, was how we’d just made it more difficult for any form of non-motorised transport; how we’d legitimised motorised transport as the only form anyone should take. We like to channel people’s movements into predetermined, organised routes. Clearly marked covered walkways. No weaving freely and delightfully across an unmarked field. Everything must be boxed up; designated for some purpose or other. So we live in an island divided by expressways. Nicely planned and distributed expressways. Every day you have to go to work by this route. You have to sit in this traffic jam. Either that or sit in thathuman jam on that train line. So it goes.
Methinks Singapore needs a depaving movement. Amongst many others. But who would want to support a movement for inefficiency?
I often suspect that the biggest impact bike commuting has on people’s perspectives is through one’s acquaintances getting to know that one is commuting by bike. The usual reaction is that commuting by bike is dangerous. But why is it dangerous? Because people like them, people like those that one knows, drive dangerously. My mother, for example, once struck a pedestrian with her left mirror. Granted, the ped was walking on the road (not out of choice — the pavements were blocked by parked cars in driveways), but if she can have so little regard for the consequences of hitting a pedestrian that she clearly noticed, one can only imagine how she treats cyclists. The hope, then, is that having an acquaintance who commutes by bike reminds one that bike commuters are, in fact, living, breathing, humans, not just annoying obstacles that one should attempt to past as quickly as possible regardless of the obstacle’s safety. I would be satisfied if my parents drive with more consideration because of my bike commuting.
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