Bike commuting in Singapore.
The Illinois legislature recently passed a law requiring motorists to pass bicyclists with at least three feet to spare. (I think we might have to wait till the next century for something like this to be passed in Singapore.) Willow Naeco, a.k.a. Chicago Cycling Chick, has come up with a 3-foot-long “foam claw buffer” to put on her bike, so that any motorists that hit it will have broken the law:
If you drive carelessly in the City, eventually you’ll kill somebody. When you do, turn to us. Just call from the scene. We’ll deliver a fitting handmde Roadside Memorial in 30 minutes or less. Choose from our handcrafted collection, or personalize your own.
A Bob Fuller Roadside Memorial is a tribute to the person that you killed. A way to say, “I’m sorry”. And a reminder to passersby to drive safely.
From their FAQ:
Q. If I hit someone and left the scene, can I still go back and leave a memorial?
A. You should immediately report yourself to the police. But you should call and have one delivered to the scene in your absence.
From their ’safe driving tips’:
Killing someone with your car is very traumatic. Make sure you’ll never need our services. Please.
I only found out today that this gesture, the “Chicago Hold-Up”, originated in CCM. Reading the ‘founder’ of CCM’s account of how CCM began, I found this particularly instructive:
The day of the ride I was apprehensive. All along, skeptics had been saying “This is the midwest, not California. People just don’t DO this sort of thing here.”
I was told the same thing when trying to gauge interest in a Singapore Critical Mass. This kind of response enrages me due to its self-fulfilling nature, but since I didn’t want to keep at it like an internet troll I decided to let it go and try again in several months’ time.
A video of one arrest.
Why the change in attitude in the normally cooperative police? Afraid CCM would disrupt Jazz Fest? Didn’t want the cyclists to pass Mayor Daley’s house as planned? Some political reason?
There 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.
No, I’m not becoming a tree-hugging hippie. But I need boxes to ship my books back to Singapore in (having already filled two suitcases with mostly outdoor gear, and going to fill two backpacks with clothes), and the only really big one I have seems too flimsy to withstand the trans-Pacific journey. So I went cruising around Hyde Park, partly to relieve depression, with the side excuse of looking for abandoned boxes. After a few seemingly good prospects came to nought, I took a turn around the quads, knowing that dumpsters weren’t usually to be found there, but figuring that it was probably the place on my way back home that had the least negligible chance of having boxes lying around. It turned out that my having to stay for convocation wasn’t that bad after all — they were throwing away loads of unopened boxes containing convocation booklets. An utter waste. Luckily an empty one was near the top of the dumpster, so I took it home first — couldn’t hold more than one while riding. Didn’t have my cargo net with me, but I could rest the box on the front rack while grasping one corner of it with my left hand to keep it in place. Then I went back for another, but all the others near the top of the dumpster were full and unopened. I dragged one out with some difficulty and removed about 20 booklets to make it easier to handle. Then I took the box with the rest of the booklets to the recycling bins at the other end of the quad, and fed the booklets three at a time through the slit of the paper bin. Voila, a fraction (?) of a tree saved, and an almost-new box to ship my books back in. They’re a bit smaller than I would like, but with the limited success I’ve had, I’m not inclined to cruise around Hyde Park looking for boxes again.
In other news, my Knog Frog lights arrived. One white, one red, $20 for the pair. The first thing I did was to destroy the white one. I was trying to remove the inner body from the silicone body, and ended up breaking the bulb away from the inner body while trying to put it back. Argh. I really like those lights. Simple and extremely functional. Rather like my CETMA rack.
A friend remarked that I’d become more mellow after coming to the US. All too true, I suspect because I loosen up when I do not have to actively fight oppression. It would never have crossed my mind to actively offer help to strangers in Sg; in fact I used to find the idea nauseating. But yesterday, walking back from the Point, I passed someone trying to push a shopping cart full of boxes but having to stop every five steps to right the topmost box which kept threatening to fall off the cart. His progress was painful. I offered to help him carry that topmost box to wherever he was going. Luckily for me it was only two more blocks, for it turned out to be quite heavy. Suffice to say I’ve never offered help of my own accord to this extent before. That’s how impoverished a human being I was. But so many strangers have helped me, or offered help to me, in Chicago that I find it quite natural now, and nothing to be uptight about.
The idea of being uptight about such things is ludicrous. But I did grow up in a ludicrous country. To which I now have to return to spend a few more insufferable years. Will I tighten up again, now that I’ve been loosened?
One of the perks of bad weather is seeing people in inappropriate dress and footwear suffer in it. I was much amused watching opera patrons in inappropriate footwear squeal through icy puddles. Yesterday, while walking to TJ’s from my bike, I was similarly amused watching two girls in high heels and their male patron titter in dismay at the edge of a 1.5m wide puddle at a road crossing. I merely ran a few steps and leapt over easily. When I reached the end of the block and turned back to look, they were still tittering in dismay at the edge of the puddle, stuck by their own vanity in the middle of honking traffic.
Wonderful bike ride tonight. Had itchy legs, so decided to go to Trader Joe’s downtown and get cheap alcohol. Not that there isn’t cheap alcohol in the neighbourhood, but biking to 53rd St just isn’t as fun, and I love the atmosphere of Trader Joe’s (probably the only supermarket for which I can say that).
Weather looked ominous. I only enjoyed about 10 mins of cool dry weather before the storm began. At first I rather enjoyed the drizzle, but the wind grew in strength and the rain grew in intensity and the raindrops grew fatter to the point that when I was between 35th St and McCormick Plaza, visibility was close to zero and my face was stinging so much I was wondering if it was hailing. Soaked to the skin. I still enjoyed it though, in the perverse you-can-hit-me-but-not-hurt-me sense.The rain was a drizzle again by the time I reached Shedd Aquarium, where I stopped in the mouth of the inflatable Komodo dragon to pack Wittgenstein and my Chicago maps into the Peapod plastic bag containing my flat repair equipment. Going over the bridge just before Navy Pier, I had to pass through curtains of water dripping from the cracks overhead. I found this rather fun, though I doubted the cleanliness of the water. It turns out that I was right to do so:
I also acquired the familiar line of dirt just above the sockline, which I have not had for a few years:
I biked back with two six-packs on the sturdy Cetma rack. Was a bit nervous about the floppy steering and the clinks of glass on metal (and glass) as I went over bumps, but they survived, and I survived.
I forgot to bring my camera. Pity, because the endpoint was the best I’ve been to. Montrose Harbour. Lots of space, and people were dancing to the music from the trailer-boomboxes on the grass, with the tinny flashing ferris wheel of Navy Pier and the pink-lighted Hancock and Sears towers on the horizon.
Critical Mass is a street party on two wheels, but without all that artificial stuff people do at parties to have fun: there the fun is had by simply pedalling. The most primitive of enjoyments: endorphins from physical movement.
I wasn’t sure if I should leave the after-party at Montrose Harbour. I liked the atmosphere and the scenery, but I wasn’t completely enjoying it because of the ache knowing it was my last time at such an occasion. If anything was bittersweet, that was it. When I’d agonised over it to the point where I was about to blub, I decided to leave. Pedalling against the wind was, as usual, sufficiently distracting that I didn’t blub on the way back. Too exhausted when I reached home to blub either.
The lake was stunning, etc.
I will not meet such a wonderfully crazy group of people in Singapore. I will miss them.
I will try to start one, but I am not optimistic.
One of my biggest missed photo opportunities in the last Critical Mass was to take a shot of the line of male cyclists lining up to pee against a fence in the south side (I think this was somewhere along King Dr, or close to it anyway). After the mass, there was a discussion on the listhost of how to deal with the need to pee. Someone suggested that rather than stink up alleys with pee, to do it between parked cars instead. This prompted the following suggestion:
The Kneel Technique
Back in the day a friend and I developed the kneel technique for males urinating outdoors in conspicuous places with autos around. (This may satisfy an additional urge for those on this list.) One lowers themselves next to a car tire, the inside knee on the ground and the outside leg with
the foot on the ground and bent at the knee–assuming a posture as though one were inspecting the tire (”inspecting tire” thoughts help the scenario). Be mindful of the slope of the ground and let nature run its course from there.
Update: A masser sent a link to the following photo:
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