They say love can be everlasting, but this little saga began with my wife impatiently imploring me to get more life insurance. After spending the first two years of the pandemic off the bike鈥攆or reasons I鈥檒l explain soon鈥擨 had begun to ride a bit around Los Angeles, a city with limitless sunshine, spectacular canyon roads, and the most cycling fatalities in America. I can鈥檛 blame my wife for wanting a safety net in case the worst-case scenario happened.

That鈥檚 why a nurse came to my backyard this past January, rolling a suitcase packed with diagnostic equipment鈥攖o give me my first physical in at least four years. And that鈥檚 how I would discover that my cholesterol, for the first time in my life, had entered the danger zone. I鈥檇 always had low cholesterol. But now, the blood samples would soon reveal, I had hyperlipidemia, which basically means too much cholesterol and other fats in the blood.

The diagnostic company sent me an email with a big color-wheel infographic that displayed nearly all my results as green (good), but my lipid data as a very loud orange (not good). My total cholesterol was 255 and my LDL鈥攖he bad cholesterol鈥攈ad soared all the way up to 184. Neither of these numbers is close to where it should be (roughly under 200 and 100, respectively). To add insult to injury, the insurance company then jacked up the already annoyingly high premium it had originally quoted me. I felt quantifiably less confident in my ability to stay alive.

Still, if I鈥檓 being honest, I already knew that my health had gone more than a little sideways. Two years in, the pandemic had fundamentally altered my routine at a point in my life鈥擨鈥檓 in my fifties now鈥攚hen I suppose I can no longer misbehave without consequences. For six years preceding the pandemic, I had commuted to work on a bicycle, pedaling between 140 to 160 miles each workweek without fail. Those tens of thousands of miles of steady riding had become the backbone of my healthy lifestyle, a daily adventure that kept my mind and body in a good place.

But then that damned virus came, and my commute dissolved into a 15-second walk to the home office in my garage. And for reasons that still are hard for me to understand or explain, I just stopped riding. I had pedaled roughly 50,000 miles in six years, but I simply quit cold turkey. I guess I felt that the bike life I had built, one that had given me a potent identity as a rider, had been taken away. It no longer seemed authentic for recreational workouts to center my riding life, and rather than wrestle with that problem, I let my road bike get dusty in a corner of the garage.

I hardly just sat on my ass鈥擨 went through a jogging phase, got disciplined about lifting weights, and eventually went deep on a walking and hiking binge that culminated in a one-day climb up Mount Whitney. And while in some ways my eating became more mindful鈥攊n my new WFH reality, I had more time to go to farmers鈥� markets and cook multicourse meals鈥攎y diet undoubtedly veered into comfort-food territory. The whole family was crammed into our small SoCal beach cottage. Everyone was trying to get through their Zooms and stave off ennui with streaming content, and I suppose I took refuge in thoughtfully composed cream sauces and grilled prawns and hundreds of perfect egg breakfasts.

So even before that friendly nurse unpacked her medical scale and the phlebotomy kit and the sphygmomanometer, I knew something wasn鈥檛 right. I had tacked on 20 pounds, partially kidding myself that much of it was solid muscle from all my lifting. More than that, I just didn鈥檛 feel great. My heart rate always felt a little higher and more labored than it should have. I wasn鈥檛 sleeping well. And without bike commuting to center my lifestyle, I felt a little lost.

It was peculiar, because I was keenly aware that American culture was seeing its greatest bike-riding renaissance in decades, as folks discovered or rediscovered cycling as sport, transport, and family fun. But I had gotten so deep into my transit riding that I struggled to get excited about throwing on spandex for a leisure workout without clear utility or a real destination. I genuinely felt that that part of my life鈥攁ll the decades I鈥檇 spent on a road bike exploring and chasing fitness as a sort of deeply meaningful hobby鈥攎ight be over.

A visit to my general practitioner changed that. The blood work from the insurance company was no joke, and I knew I had to take action. Fortunately, all this came at a time鈥擜pril 2022鈥攚hen my office reopened and my employer began not-so-gently encouraging staffers to come back at least a couple of days a week. As a result, I had already started riding my road bike again. I鈥檇 lost enough ground that it took me a few weeks to simply noodle the flattish 28-mile round trip without feeling as if I鈥檇 just survived an all-day fondo in the Dolomites. It was humbling to see that, despite all the exercise I鈥檇 done during the pandemic, I was in the worst biking shape I鈥檇 been in for decades.

Anyway, I was maybe six weeks into my tragicomic rebound when I finally got to see my general practitioner, and a new round of blood work brought unsurprisingly mediocre news: my cholesterol was lower, but not low enough.

No doubt lifestyle changes and little steps in the right direction should be celebrated, but I knew that losing a few pounds and cutting my cholesterol to 236 and my LDL to 172 was not going to hack it. In our follow-up consultation, my doctor shared a cool algorithm projecting that my ten-year risk of a 鈥渃ardiac event鈥� was 5.6 percent, and she recommended that I immediately start taking a statin drug to lower my lipids. When I asked her whether this would be temporary, she shook her head. Most likely, she said, it would be for life.

I鈥檓 not qualified to make authoritative generalizations about the male psyche, but I had an unexpected reaction to this news. When I had gone through the life-insurance application process, I felt seriously irked about all the invasive questionnaires the company emailed me, showing that they had records of every medication I鈥檇 ever been prescribed and every minor and major medical incident in my life. For example, there was the time I knew I had acid reflux but let the urgent-care center give me an EKG just to be sure, and now that test was in my file for life. I was possibly more preoccupied with this dystopian annoyance than wrestling with a 5.6 percent chance of a heart attack or stroke, but in any case I was determined to avoid a permanent digital record of statin use if I could do something about it.

To that end, I asked my doctor if I could buy a little time to take more extreme action鈥攖o seriously ramp up my fitness and get my nutritional act together. She paused for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. I knew she thought my cholesterol was nothing to dither about, and I鈥檒l bet she knows how many middle-aged men say they鈥檙e going to change their ways and then slide toward stagnation.

But in the end she told me I could give it a go for four months and then come back for new blood work and a recheck. I walked out of her office elated and pretty damn nervous鈥攂ecause I knew I鈥檇 have to totally reshape how I鈥檇 been taking care of myself for a while.

I went to work. I鈥檝e been conceiving, writing, and packaging service journalism for 25 years, so I immediately started structuring a plan鈥攕omething with clear rules and realistic ambition. (Over the years, I鈥檝e edited health- and medicine-related magazines and worked on a few features about statin drugs, so I thought I knew enough to devise a basic plan without expert assistance.) The fitness part was pretty simple: ride at least ten hours a week. And keep lifting at least twice a week. As you can see, I like big, round numbers.

The food part would take me into less familiar territory. I wrote a list of things I would stop eating altogether鈥攂eef, fatty pork, butter, cream (thus ending 25 glorious years of coffee with half-and-half), shrimp, and fried foods. I鈥檇 nearly eliminate eggs and restrict myself to brown rice and whole-wheat pasta and bread, instead of semolina noodles, sourdough baguettes, and so forth. I swore off cheese unless it was on a salad or an occasional veggie or turkey burger. I鈥檇 switch from real milk to oat and almond substitutes. And no more impulse-purchase surprises from Trader Joe鈥檚 that contain a lot of saturated fat. (I鈥檓 not going to lie; swearing off the Cacio e Pepe Ravioli hurt my soul.) It was weird and galvanizing how quickly all these rules came into focus, and how steadfastly I stuck to them. I still don鈥檛 love drinking black coffee every day, but it鈥檚 hardly a struggle.

Oddly enough, the riding turned out to be tougher than the diet. I鈥檝e been in love with bikes for 35-plus years, but getting back in the saddle after a prolonged lapse was disheartening. I was as slow and clunky on the bike as I鈥檇 ever been. Nearly all my cycling apparel鈥擨 have a lot鈥攄idn鈥檛 fit, and after an hourlong tootle, my ass hurt like a newbie鈥檚. At first I was bike commuting to the office only a couple times a week, so I had to get the rest of my hours on solo recreational rides. Where I live, that means going up and down legit hills, and at first it was pathetic. I鈥檝e been riding enough to know that nearly anyone can grind up any hill if they鈥檙e willing to go slow enough, but suddenly I was the guy everyone was blowing past. I haven鈥檛 measured myself in competitive terms in years, but I couldn鈥檛 help but think about what my former self could do. Current Me was getting his butt kicked.

But one of the great things about being out of shape and then returning to something your body has done for tens of thousands of hours is that improvement comes quickly and builds on itself. After four months of steady effort, my fitness has radically changed for the better. I can go out and ride three or four hours on hilly terrain without drama. I feel completely comfortable on the bike鈥攎y pedal stroke has returned, and I mostly feel rejuvenated by my daily commute. While I still can鈥檛 squeeze into some of my favorite jerseys, and I lack the fitness to jump on a fast group ride, there鈥檚 no doubt that the joy of riding is back.

Still, I wasn鈥檛 ready to celebrate my comeback until I went back to the doctor. I did that in mid-August. Since the day of my backyard physical for the insurance vultures, I lost about 20 pounds. In that time frame, my cholesterol dropped from 255 to 197, while my LDL fell from 184 to 129. (If you鈥檙e wondering, the doctor offered no congratulations鈥攖ough love, I guess. But she did tell me to come back for a recheck in six months.) I did this without taking medication鈥擨 simply rode my bike a lot and ate better. I feel better all around. I鈥檓 sleeping well and the sluggish, labored feeling I had is gone. For now, I鈥檓 on a path where a statin doesn鈥檛 seem necessary; with continued effort, I plan to get my lipid numbers even lower. Who knows what will happen in the future, but for now I feel happy that I could change my cardiac health simply by doing something I love, and by eating more carefully.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I went for a long ride in Palos Verdes, a peninsula in southern L.A. County with big hills and bigger ocean views. It was a pretty toasty summer day, and I did two climbs that each took about 30 minutes. There were quiet, sustained stretches where I could really settle into the effort鈥攈earing the depth of each exhalation and feeling each thump of my heart. The feeling of that discomfort gave me strength. It was the feeling of being alive.

The post My Doctor Prescribed Medication to Lower My Cholesterol. I Used My Bike Instead. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

It was about 11:20 a.m. on a cold day last November, and Jonathan Chase Adams was on his bicycle, riding from downtown Bend, Oregon, toward his office. He was in the spacious bike lane that runs along the northbound side of Wall Street, cruising down a moderate downhill stretch fast enough to be passing cars backed up at a traffic light up the road. As he approached the corner of Olney Avenue, the signal turned green, so Adams kept pedaling; he was on his way to work and planned to ride straight through the intersection.

He never made it. When the light turned green, the driver of a FedEx semi-truck who had been cued up at the signal initiated a right turn. Witnesses would later testify in court that Adams bounced off the side of the truck several times before falling to the ground. Moments later, the rear wheels of the tractor trailer ran over his body. Adams was pronounced dead at the scene.

Sadly, this kind of crash鈥攚hat traffic experts would call a right hook鈥攊s hardly uncommon, and when it involves a large truck and a cyclist, the end result is often horrific. But while most cyclists would not be surprised by the grim details of this fatal 2017 crash, many surely would be shocked by the legal proceedings around it.

In a decision announced October 17 by Deschutes County Circuit Court Judge A. Michael Adler, the driver of the FedEx truck, who had never听been charged with a crime, was found not guilty of a traffic citation. In May, the district attorney had . Adler ruled that he had . He also told the court that, since Adams had been 鈥渟peeding鈥� through an intersection, the cyclist was not exercising due care鈥攁 term intimating that Adams hadn鈥檛 the necessary steps to avoid harm. In a nutshell, the judge ruled that Adams did not have the right of way and that the bike lane effectively ended at the intersection.

Experienced cyclists already know that a conventional bike lane鈥攚here government officials paint stripes on the road to demarcate a dedicated space for riders鈥攐ffers few real physical protections from motor vehicles. But the case in Bend offers a window into how the legal protections they offer are extremely limited, too.

The problem extends outside of Oregon. After the October ruling, I spoke with two attorneys who specialize in cycling-related law鈥攐ne based in Colorado and the other in Ohio鈥攁nd both said that existing laws in their states do almost nothing to define cyclists鈥� right of way in bike lanes or protect them in a crash.

鈥淲hen there鈥檚 a collision, drivers, cyclists, and law enforcement don't have clear legal guidance to figure out who was at fault,鈥� says Megan Hottman, a cycling attorney who practices in Golden, Colorado. 鈥淚t's amazing to me that a cyclist can be going straight鈥攐ften on a green light or through an intersection鈥攁t or below the posted speed limit, and a car can come up from behind, attempt to pass but then whip a right turn into the cyclist, and then somehow the cyclist is deemed at fault.听It鈥檚 baffling to me.鈥�

Steve Magas, a cycling attorney who practices in Cincinnati, agrees. 鈥淚 keep telling folks that unless the bike lane rules are written into local ordinances, cyclists can be at risk of having no rights,鈥� he says. 鈥淚n Ohio, there鈥檚 no provision in state law that defines 鈥榖ike lanes鈥� or the rights of those in bike lanes compared to other lanes.鈥�

Cyclists have good reason to think that they have the legal right of way when they鈥檙e pedaling in a bike lane. 鈥淭he entire point of the traffic algorithm is to develop a system of rules that prevents folks from crashing into each other,鈥� Magas says. 鈥淎nd the main rule is the right of way. If you have the right of way, you have the right to go straight without interruption.鈥�

This right is typically codified for pedestrians crossing a busy street in a crosswalk. But that鈥檚 not the case for cyclists.

Both attorneys expressed considerable frustration that cyclists don鈥檛 yet have more rational, legal protections. 鈥淚f we are going to spend the time and money building bike lanes for cyclists, they must come with some level of protection,鈥� says Hottman. 鈥淚f bike lanes are where city planners want us riding, and if we agree that collisions and tensions tend to decrease when cyclists get dedicated places to ride, then we have to be granted some level of protection when we ride in them. My perfect world would be a state statute that says motorists turning across a bike lane must yield to bikes in bike lane.鈥�

If such a statute existed in Oregon, the FedEx driver who hit and killed Adams likely would have faced criminal charges more serious than a traffic citation鈥攅specially one that didn鈥檛 even survive a legal challenge.

Instead, the cycling attorneys I interviewed say that their clients are often blamed in similar circumstances. Hottman describes an ongoing case in which her client was riding straight through an intersection in a bike lane and was hit by a car that approached from behind and turned directly into the rider. 鈥淚 just got a call today from an insurance adjuster and the insurance company is blaming the rider for the collision,鈥� she says, getting heated. 鈥淭his sort of thing seems to happen every damn day. I mean, what the hell else is a cyclist supposed to do when a car approaches from behind?听If we鈥檙e going straight鈥攊n a bike lane, with a green light, while going below the posted speed limit鈥攄oes the legal system expect us to have eyes on the back of our heads at all times?鈥�

To add insult to injury, the judge in Oregon cited witness accounts about the cyclist鈥檚 speed as evidence of 听an act of negligence. I studied the Google streetview of Wall Street in Bend and, given the moderate grade, it seems unlikely that a cyclist could have easily exceeded the posted speed limit. 鈥淚n this case, the cyclist was seen as 鈥榬acing鈥� down the hill past a bunch of other traffic and the judge viewed him as negligent for not noting the big truck had its signal on,鈥� says Magas. 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 the thing with the true right of way: you don鈥檛 have to worry about anyone else. You are legally entitled to presume that people are not going to interview with your right of way. That鈥檚 the magic of having the right of way.鈥�

As more cities paint more bike lanes and more cyclists use them, the urgency to address this legal grey area will grow. Obviously, protected bike lanes鈥攚here cyclists and motor vehicles are physically separated鈥攇ive riders more physical protection, but even then, the chaos of intersections needs to be fixed. For bike lanes to offer real protection, legislatures need to pass laws codifying riders鈥� right of way, then law enforcement and the judicial system needs to enforce those laws.

Until then, it鈥檚 on cyclists to be vigilant鈥攆or now, there鈥檚 no one else to protect us.

The post The Deadly Problem with Bike Lanes appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Jennifer Lloyd was riding next to a friend when the Ford 500 sedan raced past. The two were pedaling through an area of California鈥檚 Riverside County known as Indio Hills, on an undulating stretch of Dillon Road, a little more than 20 miles into the Tour de Palm Springs, an annual 100-mile century ride that attracts thousands of cyclists. It was about 9:25 a.m. on Saturday, February 10.

Lloyd, who estimates the Ford sedan was going about 100 miles per hour down a two-lane road without a paved shoulder, turned to her friend and offered a blunt assessment: 鈥淭hat guy is going to kill someone.鈥�

About a mile ahead of Lloyd, another one of her friends, Terri Buryanov, 34, was pedaling alone, closing the gap on a group of roughly 20 riders. Though she had only started cycling five months prior, the Las Vegas鈥揳rea resident was already hooked. The Tour de Palm Springs was her first century.

Just as Buryanov was about to latch onto the group, she heard the speeding car behind her and instinctively squeezed her brakes and steered onto the shoulder. Up ahead, she saw the driver of a small pickup carefully passing the pack of cyclists鈥攇oing slow and positioning the truck halfway into the opposing lane to give the riders enough room. The Ford was headed right for it. 鈥淗e flew right past me,鈥� Buryanov told me later. 鈥淗e didn鈥檛 hit his brakes or anything. The driver decided to swerve left to avoid hitting the pickup. If he had swerved right, he would have plowed right into me.鈥�

Buryanov watched the Ford听hit a berm on the shoulder, then careen听in front of the pickup. A massive cloud of dirt obscured Buryanov's vision for a few seconds, but she could hear what happened next as the sedan sideswiped the cyclists. 鈥淚t was this unbelievable crunching noise,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t was a horrible sound. Two months later, I鈥檓 still hearing that sound over and over again.鈥�

When the dust cleared, Buryanov saw that the Ford had slammed into the berm on the right side of the road and rolled over. Two cyclists were tending to a woman who had crashed into the side of the road. 鈥淗er face was totally covered in blood鈥擨 really couldn鈥檛 even see her face,鈥� says Buryanov. 鈥淚 could tell she was struggling to breathe.鈥� Then she looked to her left and saw a man on the shoulder. Only seconds had elapsed from the moment of impact and already five or six cyclists were trying to resuscitate him.

As the riders waited for emergency personnel, a young man stood beside the Ford. 鈥淗e was freaked out,鈥� Buryanov says. 鈥淗e had both hands up on his head and was crying and screaming. He was asking for his mom. You could just see pure devastation and fear on his face, like he already realized he had just ruined his whole life.鈥�

A few cyclists formed a loose perimeter around the driver as he screamed and walked around his car. 鈥淧eople were yelling at him, 鈥楪et down, you mother effer!鈥欌�� Buryanov says. 鈥淣obody went near him, but everyone held their positions to make sure he couldn鈥檛 run away.鈥�

After paramedics arrived on the scene, they airlifted the woman, Alyson Lee Akers, a 50-year-old aerospace engineer from Huntington Beach, California, to a regional trauma center, where doctors treated her for a head laceration and other major injuries. She would survive, but the听man wasn鈥檛 so fortunate. Medical personnel pronounced Mark Kristofferson, a 49-year-old father of two from Lake Stevens, Washington, dead at that scene.

Early that afternoon, the California Highway Patrol arrested the driver of the Ford鈥�21-year-old Ronnie Ramon Huerta Jr. Later that day, Huerta would be charged with vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, according to court documents.

In the days after the crash, the prospects of Huerta鈥檚 defense would go from bad to ruinous. Within 48 hours of his release (he posted his $75,000 bond the same day as his arrest), news organizations published reports that itemized a lengthy history of speeding and other vehicular infractions. According to stories by the and the , Huerta had been pulled over for speeding at least four times in the previous two years. He had also been convicted of other recent moving violations鈥攖alking on a mobile phone while driving, running a stop sign, and making an unsafe lane change. Court records indicate that Huerta had been convicted of driving over 70 miles per hour on residential streets at least three times in 2016 and 2017, and he was once pulled over doing 89 miles per hour on Interstate 10. His license had been suspended two months before the February crash after he failed to appear in court to face a negligent driving charge.

Then, on April 11, the Office of the District Attorney of Riverside County filed three new charges against Huerta for the Palm Springs crash: driving on a suspended license, alleged to be , and . Huerta was taken back into custody, and his bail was reset at $1 million.

On average, motorists kill two to three cyclists every day in the United States. According to , a majority of these cases involve negligent drivers. But as long as the driver wasn鈥檛 on drugs or alcohol during the crash, they are rarely charged with听homicide.

More often, they鈥檒l come away with a misdemeanor charge. In California, for instance, the law states that a motorist commits misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter when he or she negligently causes the death of another person while violating a traffic law (like speeding, running a red light, or reckless driving) or 鈥渋n commission of a lawful act that might produce death, in an unlawful manner.鈥� For the crime to be elevated to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated鈥攁 felony鈥攖he motorist must be proven to have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol and acted with a high level of negligence and recklessness that go beyond normal carelessness. In other words, they must have demonstrated a blatant disregard for human life.

In California, for gross vehicular manslaughter to be elevated to murder, the person must be accused of an 鈥渦nlawful killing with malice aforethought鈥濃�攎eaning he or she committed an intentional act with conscious disregard for the risk it posed to others. That explains Huerta鈥檚 murder charge, says Megan Hottman, who runs a Golden, Colorado鈥揵ased law firm dedicated to representing cyclists. 鈥淚n the Palm Springs case, the murder charge was filed because the driver [is accused of being] under the influence of drugs and he was also believed to be going 100 miles per hour,鈥� she says. 鈥淭his goes far beyond 鈥榗arelessness鈥� or 鈥榥egligence.鈥欌��

Murder charges have occurred in other extreme cases. Charles Pickett Jr., who killed five cyclists in June 2016 near Kalamazoo, Michigan, while under the influence of methamphetamine and multiple prescription drugs, was in May. Cody Hall, who killed a 58-year-old cyclist in Pleasanton, California, after that he had driven 140 miles per hour and was going on a 鈥渄eath ride,鈥� also got a murder charge. (At trial, Hall accepted a plea bargain and pleaded down to vehicular manslaughter with a great bodily injury enhancement.) In October 2015, Neil Stephany was and sentenced to 15 years to life for killing a 30-year-old cyclist in Orange County while driving with heroin and lorazepam in his system (and a DUI in his driving history), then leaving the scene after the fatal crash.

But these are the exceptions. With staggering repetition, motorists who kill cyclists with obvious negligence鈥攎anic speeders, drivers who are shown to be using their phones during or right before a crash, people who willfully leave someone to die on the side of the road鈥攐ften slither through the judicial system with seemingly ridiculous charges and convictions.

Consider the case of Heather Cook, the Episcopal bishop in Baltimore who . According to court documents, Cook had a blood-alcohol content nearly three times the legal limit and a DUI history, and she left the scene of the crime twice, yet was able to plea down to a charge of vehicular manslaughter (a misdemeanor in Maryland that isn鈥檛 classified as a violent crime, provided the accused does not have prior convictions). Cook was later able to participate in a parole hearing after 18 months in prison. Then there鈥檚 the story of John Giumarra III鈥攁 member of a wealthy family that owns a large winemaking conglomerate in California鈥攚ho killed a cyclist in Bakersfield last year. Even though records show that Giumarra had a blood-alcohol content of 0.18 and a previous DUI conviction and left the scene of the crime, he was in early April (though he was found not guilty of the collision) and sentenced to 90 days in jail and 100 hours of community service.

鈥淲e have an unbelievable public-health crisis with so many cyclists getting hit and killed,鈥� says attorney Peter Wilborn, whose practice is devoted to representing cyclists who have been injured in a crash. 鈥淟ots more people are riding, which is good, but infrastructure has been slow to catch up. And now we鈥檝e got this surge of distracted driving.鈥�

Hottman听describes a legal system that struggles to recognize the crimes committed by motorists who kill cyclists. 鈥淒istrict attorneys and judges face criminals every day who intentionally went out and did bad things,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey robbed or raped or murdered someone on purpose. These are crimes with intent, and so, understandably, the system focuses on those issues. Judges are under immense pressure to save resources and jail cells for the worst repeat offenders, and they often consider that drivers who killed or badly injured a cyclist didn鈥檛 leave their house that day intending to murder someone. Many elements of the system still look at these incidents as accidents.鈥�

The easiest way to kill someone and get away with a slap on the wrist is to make sure your weapon is a car. But there has been some recent progress in how fatal crashes play out in the legal system as the problem gets greater attention from judges, state legislators, and police departments. 鈥淭en years ago, it was really rare to get a felony conviction if a driver killed a cyclist,鈥� Wilborn says, noting that his own brother was killed in 1998 while riding a bike after an underage driver ran a red light. 鈥淣ow I鈥檇 say that in cases that involve death or catastrophic injury, close to 50 percent of the time we get felony charges. I see a system that isn鈥檛 perfect, but also one that鈥檚 caring more than it ever did before.鈥�

Wilborn asserts that it's a logical fallacy to call the majority of these crashes murder. 鈥淚鈥檝e been at this every day for many years and see the negligence and its impact,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 have seen the surge of distracted driving, and I know how a six-inch deviation in a car鈥檚 line can lead to a cyclist dying. We have a public-health crisis that needs to be solved, but it鈥檚 also true that very few motorists are using a car as an intentional weapon. So it鈥檚 only in extreme cases that the charge is murder.鈥�

Ultimately, cyclists won鈥檛 be much safer on the roads until U.S. society starts treating them with more respect. 鈥淭here鈥檚 this underlying belief that cyclists always somehow did something to contribute to the collision causing their death,鈥� Hottman says. 鈥淯ntil all road users know and understand that cyclists have a lawful right to be there, bike lane or not, and until due caution is exercised, and until the system does actually punish drivers who harm or kill cyclists, I don鈥檛 believe we鈥檒l see a broader shift toward justice.鈥�

After medical personnel arrived on that scene at Dillon Road, Buryanov realized there was no further help she could give. So she got back on her bike. 鈥淚 know now that cycling can fix almost anything,鈥� Buryanov says. 鈥淚 think in retrospect I was lucky that I still had 70-something miles to go.鈥�

Buryanov says she pedaled in a fog until she got to the next aid station on the course. 鈥淚 remember there were a couple hundred people there, and none of them knew yet what had happened,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 had been under control, but as soon as I clicked out and put my foot on the ground, I completely lost it. I had to go sit in the corner of the parking lot so I didn鈥檛 make a scene.鈥� In the end, Buryanov finished her first century. And she鈥檚 kept riding, despite the trauma of the experience.

During our interview, Buryanov told me that one of her new cycling friends, the one who convinced her to ride the Tour de Palm Springs, got hit by a car a few weeks听earlier. The friend, who was training for a half Ironman and got right-hooked by a woman who got out of her car and yelled at her, hasn鈥檛 been on the bike since. She鈥檚 not hurt, but she is scared, Buryanov says.

Buryanov can relate. A month after the Palm Springs century, she was driving in a neighborhood near her home鈥攐n a wide street with a bike lane and a 25 mile per hour speed limit. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the kind of street where people routinely go 40 or 50, but it鈥檚 a residential area where people ride bikes and kids are out playing,鈥� she says. Buryanov was going the speed limit and could feel an impatient driver behind her. That driver eventually put his foot on the gas and passed Buryanov on the right鈥攕peeding past her car with his car in the shoulder and bike lane. 鈥淢an, that hit me hard,鈥� she admits. 鈥淚 just started bawling while I was driving. I was completely freaked out that someone was driving like that, just oblivious that a car can be a weapon.鈥�

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Really, it was just a matter of time.

On Sunday night, the听tragic scenario that many cyclists and tech writers have been over for years听played out in Tempe, Arizona, as an autonomous vehicle hit and killed a woman who was walking her bike across the street. A spokesperson with the Tempe Police Department identified the victim as 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg.

The vehicle that caused the deadly crash was a Volvo XC90 that was part of a fleet of self-driving vehicles that ride-share giant Uber has been testing in multiple Arizona municipalities. Uber quickly announced that it would suspend testing of these vehicles. The company鈥檚 CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, tweeted a statement of condolence:

Initial news stories reflected many of the institutional biases cyclists and pedestrians face after serious crashes with motor vehicles. Parroting initial reports from the Tempe Police Department, dozens of stories听(like and) blamed the victim, saying that听Herzberg was crossing Mill Avenue outside a crosswalk鈥攚hile failing to give information about the speed the Volvo was traveling or why it听did not detect her presence. Few stories mentioned that a human was in the vehicle or听shared preliminary information about whether that individual had any role in the crash.听

Tempe Police have promised a thorough investigation, but some of the most frightening questions raised by this case won鈥檛 be solved by simple forensics: Are these vehicles truly ready for prime time on public roads? What are the companies that are designing and deploying self-driving cars doing to prevent crashes like this? Why is Arizona allowed to be a hotbed for autonomous vehicle testing?

Self-driving cars appear to be really good at detecting other motor vehicles, but numerous researchers and writers have about how existing autonomous systems struggle to sense and understand cyclists. Part of it has to do with the relatively small mass of a bike and part of it relates to the difficulty programmers seem to face predicting the movements of riders or听pedestrians. For instance, a cyclist might shift left to avoid a giant pothole or a mound of glass. Just as such simple movements can often surprise motorists, software systems have not yet proved adept at predicting or reacting to such behavior.听

The concerns over the safety of these vehicles听was enough for California state officials for the company鈥檚 test fleet. But top officials in Arizona have openly , regulation-free environment for the testing and use of driverless cars. Last November, a spokesperson for the non-profit Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety about the state鈥檚 lack of safety, data-reporting, and liability provisions to The New York Times: 鈥淚t鈥檚 open season on other Arizona drivers and pedestrians. There is a complete and utter vacuum on safety.鈥�

Despite all the very real concerns cyclists should have about the rapid and unfettered deployment of autonomous vehicles that might not yet be safe enough for our streets, the technology,听of course, holds promise to make roads less dangerous. After all, computer-driven cars can鈥檛 drive drunk or get distracted by a smart phone, and they surely are less likely to speed or run lights than human pilots. In short, it's been听hard to imagine that autonomous cars could be worse than human drivers.

But events in Tempe this week suggest that it鈥檚 too soon for even such tempered optimism.

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If you live in the听U.S., you鈥檝e surely heard an oral history of naughty cyclists. There鈥檚 a widely held perspective that city and suburban streets are overrun with lawbreaking riders鈥攁 swarm of oblivious,听entitled cyclists rolling red lights, blasting through stop signs, slaloming听down one-way streets, then (hypocritically!) flipping off drivers.听

As someone who has driven hundreds of thousands of miles over the past 34 years, and ridden a bike for even longer, my point of view is different.听Everyone seems to break the rules, whether they鈥檙e on two wheels or four. The big difference is that some do it on an 18-pound bicycle and some do it in a 4,000-pound SUV that can cause exponentially greater harm.听

But people who don't bike don鈥檛 see it that way鈥攖hey just see people on bikes听charging through those stop signs. And it鈥檚 nearly impossible to combat their perceptions or even engage in meaningful debate without hard evidence of a different reality. And to听date, very little research has produced quantifiable data comparing how drivers and cyclists actually behave on the road.

That鈥檚 why 鈥攃ommissioned by the Florida Department of Transportation and conducted by scientists at the University of South Florida鈥檚 Center for Urban Transportation Research鈥攊s so damn interesting. The report, the largest of its kind ever attempted, concluded that cyclists were slightly more compliant with traffic laws than drivers.听

Conducting what鈥檚 known as a naturalistic behavior study, the听researchers outfitted the bikes of 100 cyclists with multiple sensors and cameras,听then recorded data as those participants went about their normal riding lives,听pedaling听roughly 2,000 hours in the Tampa Bay metro area. After the test period听ended, the听researchers and their grad students scrutinized the video footage and sensor data, tabulating how often cyclists and drivers failed to yield, rolled through stop signs,听or otherwise broke the rules of the road. They paid听special attention to instances in which a crash or a close call occurred.听

In the end, the听results indicated that cyclists were compliant with the law 88 percent of the time during the day听and 87 percent of the time after dark. The same study determined that drivers who interacted with the study subjects complied with the law 85 percent of the time. In other words, drivers were slightly naughtier than the cyclists鈥攅ven without measuring speeding or distracted driving.

In a conversation with three of the researchers who conducted the study, I asked if they had any insight into why the findings vary so significantly from public perceptions about scofflaw cyclist behavior. 鈥淢any drivers simply don鈥檛 know the rules that concern people on bikes,鈥� says Cong Chen. 鈥淎bout how much space to give cyclists, for instance, or when riders should get the right of way.鈥�

Even more damning, 20 of the 21听close calls that were听recorded involved a driver who failed to yield properly while turning,听or didn鈥檛 give a cyclist the three feet of space mandated by Florida law. 鈥淭he bikes were equipped with proximity sensors,鈥� says research associate听Achilleas Kourtellis. 鈥淪o we could measure exactly how close the cars got to the cyclists. Some of them were really close calls.鈥� (In the only exception, a cyclist had a near-miss听after crossing a street while a 鈥淒o Not Walk鈥澨齪edestrian signal was blinking.)听

鈥淓ven though the cyclists in close calls were almost always compliant with traffic rules, there still were instances where they could have been more cautious,鈥� observes听Program Director听Pei-Sung Lin, who led the study. 鈥淚 mean, it鈥檚 obviously not foolproof to assume drivers will follow the rules.鈥澨�

There was only one crash during the study period, and that too was caused by a negligent driver. In that case, a motorist rear-ended a cyclist as she waited to make a left turn. In the published study, researchers noted,听鈥淭he driver was impatient and tried to pass at a relatively high speed since the oncoming traffic was about to stop for the bicyclist to turn.鈥�

In another component of the same research project, participants were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire about their cycling behavior. The goal was to examine how cyclists describe their own behavior on the road鈥攈ow and when they might take risks, for instance, and听what kinds of situations might distract them while they ride.听

The resulting data was largely unsurprising with one big exception: these self-evaluations revealed that young riders (between the ages of 18 to 25) took more risks and were more frequently distracted than older cyclists. And riders who had completed formal rider-training courses (from the听organization听) were even more compliant with regards to traffic laws.听

Another interesting point: Female cyclists who completed the self-assessment rated themselves as greater risk takers and as more frequently distracted than their male counterparts. The study authors acknowledge that this data is counterintuitive, as numerous studies have documented the higher likelihood of risk-taking behaviors in听young men, but speculate that women may more honestly听assess their behavior or attribute more risk to a given action than men.

In any case, based on the study findings, the researchers offered a number of recommendations to help mitigate the frighteningly high rate of close calls. For听infrastructure improvements, they suggested听wider and protected bike lanes;听reflective green markings on bike lanes;听improved lighting on roadways that see significant bicycle traffic;听and so-called “through lanes,” which听reduce conflicts between bicyclists and turning vehicles at intersections by letting riders be safely positioned before cars turn. 鈥淏ased on what we saw and measured, we recommend measures that promote separating more than sharing,鈥� says听Kourtellis. 鈥淲e think creating buffers between cars and bikes is smart.鈥�

It's evident something needs to change to keep riders safe, at听least in the area where the study took place. The two counties included in the report听saw听a total of 1,084 bicycle crashes and 22 fatalities in 2013. And as the study notes, cyclist fatality rates in Florida are three times the national average. According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, a total of 7,077 bicycle crashes in 2014 left 135 cyclists dead and another 6,680 injured鈥�78 percent more fatalities听than in 2011.听

鈥淭here鈥檚 no doubt there鈥檚 a problem with safety here in Florida,鈥� says听Kourtellis. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why the DOT asked us to do this study鈥攖o help figure out what we can do to change people鈥檚 behaviors. There are too many people getting hurt.鈥�

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Anyone who thinks pro cycling fans lack a sense of humor doesn鈥檛 watch pro cycling. Following the sport demands an appreciation of the absurd. In last year鈥檚 Tour de France, the man in the yellow jersey jogged up a long portion of Mount Ventoux . In the recent Giro d鈥橧talia, the overall leader had to pull off to the side of a Swiss mountain road before a global television audience and under a road sign. Numerous athletes who have been caught doping have offered public, harebrained explanations for their positives. I have loved pro cycling with all of my heart for decades, but at times it can seem like a living, breathing caricature of a professional sport.

Into this morass, just days after the reigning world champion was told to pack his bags and for possibly causing a bad crash, steps a short film that is an actual parody of pro cycling. , which debuts on Saturday, July 8, is a mockumentary from Andy Samberg and Murray Miller in the style of their previous film , which mocks championship tennis.听I found 7 Days in Hell to be quite funny, but it is worth noting that I lack a deep emotional investment in grass-court tennis. For a lifelong cycling fan, Tour de Pharmacy felt considerably more personal. And by personal, I mean painful.

Andy Samberg talks Tour de Pharmacy on the 国产吃瓜黑料 Podcast

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The film takes direct aim at the sport鈥檚 doping problem by revisiting a 1982 Tour de France that never really happened鈥攐ne in which the riders are so shameless that it becomes known as the 鈥淭our de Pharmacy.鈥� I think people who know little more about the sport than the public rise and fall of Lance Armstrong will enjoy the film鈥檚 easy laughs, but passionate cycling fans will have quite a bit more to chew on. Tour de Pharmacy takes sloppy punches at the sport鈥檚 governing body and anti-doping agency; stages an elaborate set piece that mocks Armstrong鈥檚 infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey; and cracks jokes about blood doping, motor doping, lying dopers, honest dopers, and dopes in bad spandex.

I found this sort of comedy considerably thornier than watching a piece of cinema that exaggerates the , but I would be lying if I said I didn鈥檛 laugh out loud. In particular, Kevin Bacon is delightful playing a character who runs the UCI; he at once drips with absurdity and bears some unmistakable resemblance to the idiosyncratic Hein Verbruggen, the former UCI president who . Mike Tyson has a memorable cameo as a closeted cycling fan who discovered his aptitude for fighting through a bike incident. Jeff Goldblum, J.J. Abrams, and Joe Buck all take decent swipes at bicycle comedy, too.

The cycling footage is less believable than that in the Armstrong biopic The Program鈥攚hich is a roundabout way of saying it has no verisimilitude whatsoever鈥攂ut it is charming in its unapologetic inauthenticity. Tour de Pharmacy is going for easy laughs, and it often succeeds.

But now we arrive at the obligatory portion of this story in which the writer thinks deeply about Lance Armstrong鈥檚 role in this mess. His appearance in this movie was larger than I had expected鈥攁n extended, escalating gag in which he plays an interview source whose identity is supposed to be protected but isn鈥檛. Armstrong simultaneously makes fun of himself鈥攈is past sins, his ego, his gullibility鈥攁nd takes stabs at the establishment that banished him to the world of unsanctioned mountain bike races and podcasting studios.

For the record, I don鈥檛 hate Armstrong. Though it is presently unfashionable, I still believe he won seven Tours de France, and I also think he has a legitimate right to try to rehabilitate his legacy in most any manner he sees fit. In short, I don鈥檛 think his well-documented history as a sociopathic asshole should erase his sporting record more profoundly than the other cheating liars of his era. I don鈥檛 think he has any obligation to go away because people hate him. But when I watched Tour de Pharmacy, I couldn鈥檛 help but look through the funny props and lawyer jokes and see a man who is still angry, voicing his thinly veined discontent in a campy shtick that airs a week into the Tour. It鈥檚 both funny and sad.

In a way that evokes the so-called Armstrong era, the film鈥檚 plot revolves around a historic rendition of the Tour de France contested by a dubious crew of competitors. A familiar thicket of questions arises: Can anyone win without cheating? Are we watching just for the competition, or is the circus part of the appeal? Can a sport make its most passionate fans laugh and cry at the same time? Is a joke about a light-colored spandex cycling kit ever not funny?

The answers matter even less than knowing who wins this faux Tour de France. For people who follow pro cycling, these are 41 minutes that do not demand a deep inward gaze. It鈥檚 pointless in a good way. And in the end, I suspect most cycling fans will appreciate the humor in Tour de Pharmacy and find it almost as farcical as the real thing.

The post ‘Tour de Pharmacy’ Is a Cycling Spoof Ridiculous Enough for the Real Sport appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Peter Flax loved bikes. His father taught him to ride without training wheels when he was five or six, and he convinced his parents to get him a bike with drop bars when Gerald Ford was still president. That feeling of freedom he got from riding around the neighborhood as a kid鈥攊t never went away. He rode to school, he rode to work, he rode from Seattle to New York one time.听

He died on his bike one night in early May. He was just beginning his daily commute home on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. Most of his 16-mile route was pretty safe鈥攊n bike lanes, down quiet side streets, or on bike paths鈥攚ith most of the risk contained to a half-dozen sectors of distilled chaos. Crossing Olympic was one of them: in L.A.鈥檚 mid-Wilshire district, the boulevard is seven lanes wide and has fewer traffic lights than other nearby east-west thoroughfares. The posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour but traffic tends to flow at 50 or faster. 听

On the night in question, he had waited for a safe moment to cross at an intersection midway between two lights. It was dark, meaning no one had the sun in their eyes and it was easy to spot headlights and tail lights. Traffic lights in both directions turned red. There were no cars heading westbound and only one going eastbound. At the moment that car passed the corner where he straddled his bike, he did a final look both ways鈥攃lear, clear鈥攁nd rolled into the street.

But then he heard the sound of squealing rubber. The car that had just passed going eastbound was a Porsche 911 and the driver, perceiving an empty roadway, decided to execute a U-turn on all seven lanes of Olympic Boulevard at highway speed. The headlights were on Flax in a heartbeat. He always had imagined that he would sprint out of harm鈥檚 way in such a situation but the truth is he froze there like a deer. The man in the Porsche slammed on his brakes but the car simply couldn't stop in time.

Since Flax had moved to L.A. three years earlier, he鈥檇 logged way more than a thousand hours of riding without getting hit. He was always pretty damned careful.听He also was aware that statistics indicate that bike riding is getting less deadly鈥攑articularly in America鈥檚 larger cities, where than the number of serious crashes. On paper, it鈥檚 getting safer.听

Yet as Flax knew from riding city streets on dark nights, it can feel less reassuring out on the pavement. Hundreds of cyclists are getting killed; last year at least 32 cyclists were lost to alone. There are more bikes on the road and , a disconcerting combination. And thanks to social and digital media, it鈥檚 nearly impossible to sidestep some scary issues鈥攖he victim blaming, the number of fatal hit and runs, the disregard many drivers have for cyclists and pedestrians.听

Flax understood the dangers. Whenever he thought about death, he thought there was a very real chance it would happen on the bike. That sad truth never made him want to stop riding his bicycle. Bikes were part of the fabric of his life.听

Flax had raced bikes a little bit but never was any good at it. But he loved being part of the pack, the feeling of winding up a sprint, the taste of a cold beer after emptying himself in effort. He did his share of the work and rode through suffering and he almost always held his line. He never got to post up at a finish line but he once came in third in a Cat 5 race with five official finishers. He saw so many metaphors for the rest of his life in bike racing鈥攅specially the way you can ride through a rough patch if you just keep turning the pedals.听

He got to ride with some of the giants of the sport鈥�, , 鈥攁nd drank wine with guys whose last names were and , and . Flax stood on and the and alongside cobbles and witnessed the spectacle of human performance. He saw cheaters get caught and other cheaters not get caught and he saw the sport struggle to find its way but he never stopped loving it.听
听
He wrote and edited a ton of stories for people who ride bikes. He loved telling stories that tried to capture the way that cycling and the truly important things in life intersect. Flax wanted more people on bikes; he wanted cycling culture to embrace everyone who rides. He wanted everyone to be able to feel empowered to fix their own flat tires.
听
After he moved to Los Angeles, Flax crafted a different sort of riding life, one that revolved around utility rather than recreation. His wife and kids wanted to live near the beach, nowhere near his new office, so he decided he would sell his car and ride to work every day. In this manner, he logged 24,000 miles in three years. Some men respond to the doldrums of middle age with material or lustful indulgence, but he had an affair with a bicycle. He lacked a strong social circle, and found that the hours of solitary riding became a sort of glue that helped him keep his life together.听

Flax had expressed the hope that his family, in reading this memorial, would find solace that he always had been thoughtful about safety. He took the lane when necessary, he rode hard but avoided risky moves, he treated the perils posed by distracted drivers and harried bus drivers with respect. He made a calculated gamble to keep riding because it gave him joy. He believed that safe streets for cyclists and pedestrians are a civil right, something that is worth fighting for.听

He asked that you not dwell on the horror of his final moments. Feel free to seek justice for the driver responsible for his death, but otherwise Flax hoped people contemplate the thousands of hours of riding that proceeded that dark episode.

He believed that the bicycle is magical. He spun circles and carved turns and coasted and suffered and laughed and made friends and found things within himself. He did all that on a bike and he would like that to be remembered.

Author's Note: In real life, the dude in the Porsche slammed on his brakes and skidded to a stop a few feet from where I stood. I have occasional moments riding in the city where outrage pours out of me, but this time I was too stunned to do anything but walk my bike back to the curb and gather myself. The Porsche guy parked on the side street and came over and said sorry about six times and then sat on the lawn running his fingers through his hair. When I got back on my bike a few minutes later and resumed my journey home he was still squatting there on the grass, muttering to himself.

The post A Cyclist Writes His Own Obituary appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

As the former editor of Bicycling magazine, I have tested many hundreds of bicycles. But this was the first time I have ever been able to pick up a new bike and a bag of Swedish meatballs at the same time. I was at my big blue local Ikea store, in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, to try out the Scandinavian retail giant鈥檚 entry into the bicycling space鈥�.听

The name, which weirdly means 鈥渟kid sideways鈥� in Swedish,听doesn鈥檛 exactly seem handcrafted to the American vernacular, yet听Ikea seems to be throwing its substantial weight behind the bike category in the U.S. market. In my early April visit to the Carson store, a crew was putting the finishing touches on a large display in a prime position near the register banks. There, customers can test ride the bikes鈥攚hich come in two sizes鈥攐n trainers. The听store did not offer an opportunity for curious riders to take the new rigs outside for a literal spin. (I was told they鈥檙e concerned about liability.) To complement the bike, Ikea鈥檚 display was packed with an unexpectedly wide array of Sladda accessories. I was ($169), a ($9) and a ($29).听

But I was there for the bike, and minutes later I was hoisting a big cardboard box into my car. Just like almost any large item you buy at Ikea, this flat-pack bike must be assembled at home. There, I put the meatballs in the freezer and got to work. The hardest part of the whole process might have been unpacking the bike鈥攁 tangle of zip ties and cardboard and little baggies full of hex screws and those Ikea instruction manuals that we all know and love.听

Truth is, this is听not a hard bike to assemble. I am hardly qualified as a bicycle mechanic, but I have put together partially assembled bikes many times before. It took me 43 minutes to build up my Sladda, including breaks to recycle waste, drink seltzer, and take Instagram-worthy photos of the process.听

I have built Ikea beds and TV consoles and one memorably large wall unit that were far trickier and more time consuming to build than this bike. The rear wheel and the drivetrain come assembled and the rest is up to the consumer. You must attach a kickstand and the saddle; install fenders and lights; mount pedals; loosen and rotate the stem; attach the handlebar; and set up the front wheel.听

People who have zero experience in assembling bikes鈥攚hich, I鈥檇 venture, describes many people who would be drawn to a $399 bicycle at a big box furniture retailer鈥攎ight find certain steps frustrating or daunting. You鈥檝e got to mount a front wheel with a disc brake and properly install a quick-release skewer. And you have to puzzle out the highly adjustable stem and handlebar setup. The box was adorned with a giant sticker that recommended the use of a torque wrench but the instruction manual offered no further wisdom on that smart idea.听

Still, it was a straightforward build and in under an hour it was shining on my patio, ready for a spin. The bike (which only comes in a whitish grey color, pleasantly free of big logos or typography) has a distinctive shape; a sort of cross between a step-through frame and a flat-bar bike. I imagine that the Ikea design crew put some hard thought into making a bike that looked as gender-neutral as possible. Visually, I鈥檓 not a big fan of the two big hex bolts that sit on the head tube, but they allow the handy integration of Ikea鈥檚 rack system. It's a听clean look, though something of a听hodgepodge听design.听

The spec is at once thoughtful and curious. I think many city-bike riders would听appreciate the belt drive鈥攚hich is as smooth and grease-free and low-maintenance as a drivetrain can be. At this price point, it鈥檚 also pretty hard to get a decent bike with front and rear fenders, an integrated bell, a kickstand, two lights and a disc brake. I must admit, I was perplexed by the choice of brakes and gearing鈥攖he Sladda is set up with mechanical disc brakes up front听and a coaster brake in the rear (meaning you have to use a hand lever and backpedal to get maximum听braking power). And the SRAM internal hub has two gears that automatically shift based on how hard you pedal. On paper, these sounded like inventive marketing concepts that were likely to go sideways to the road.

But it was time to stop speculating and start riding. Or so I thought. I pedaled 40 yards and had to stop because the brake rotor was rubbing against the caliper. This took only a few minutes to fix鈥攖he caliper just needed to be centered鈥攂ut this is not the kind of minor repair that a typical Ikea customer would be psyched to tackle. This kind of tweak is one good reason many people like to buy bicycles at a bike shop.听

After that slight adjustment, though, I was ready to ride. The silicon belt was silent and had a nice, smooth feel, the rotating stem and handlebar set-up made it simple to find a comfortable position, and I found it easy to scrub speed with the coaster brake. On flat ground, it鈥檚 a totally pleasant city bike. The auto-shifting two-gear system was less pleasant to use. The bike needs an easier gear鈥攖o get up little hills in the smaller gear was tough. Given that Ikea is cross-marketing the Sladda with a cool trailer that can hold 108 pounds, this is a problem that needs to be fixed.

The听SRAM hub auto-shifting works well as听you pick up speed on a descent, but it's听unnecessarily tricky if听you downshift on a climb. The Ikea brochure offered no instruction to master the shifting, but I quickly discovered that coasting for a second and then pedaling lightly triggered the hub to shift into the easier gear. Hopefully, other Sladda users will figure this out on their own.听

At 33 pounds, the bike is heavy, but it鈥檚 got a nice feel on the road. The aluminum frame (which has a bold decal proclaiming the bike鈥檚 Swedish design and a tiny hidden sticker disclosing the frame was made in China) and wide Kenda tires handled rough pavement with ease, and the bike rolled through fast corners with more agility than I expected. In short, it was fun to ride鈥攁t least until the angle of the road tilted up even a little.听

I鈥檓 glad that Ikea is offering a simple and utilitarian city bike, especially when I think of the smart-looking, integrated accessories like panniers and a trailer. The idea seems like a good extension of the Ikea brand. But at this price point, the Sladda has strong competition鈥攚ell-made belt-drive bikes like the and the deliver similar function with more refinement, more logical gearing, and a lighter weight. And if I were new to cycling, I鈥檇 want someone else鈥攕omeone who knows what to do with a torque wrench and how to tweak a disc caliper鈥攖o build my听bike. Perhaps someday in the not-too-distant future, an Ikea customer could have the option pay a little bit extra and walk out of the store with a professionally assembled Sladda.听

The post We Tested Ikea’s New $399 Bike appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

I am one of thousands of people who can say with pride that they raced with once.听

In my case, it was an inconsequential cyclocross race held after dark about a decade ago. Steve, being an immortal cycling god, crushed the field and lapped me. But through some merciful turn of fate, I got to share a podium step with Steve after being named “fastest slow person”听of the night. I have ridden with and and 听but the memory of standing next to Tilford, both of us splattered in mud, him whispering in my ear that I had done awesome, is something that will forever make me smile.听

. A man who long had embodied invincibility perished in a bizarre and tragic incident on Interstate 70 near the Utah-Colorado border. News reports indicated that shortly after a big rig overturned in the early morning hours, Tilford's van crashed into the trailer. At that point, no one was badly injured. But soon after, a second tractor trailer plowed into the wreckage, leaving Tilford and the driver of that truck dead. He was 57. Steve is survived by his wife, Trudi, who was in Europe working as a soigneur with .

In an instant, American cycling lost one of its all-time greats. A quick summation of his professional and elite highlights does not really capture what made him extraordinary, but it's valuable context. He , represented the U.S. as a road cyclist in four World Championships, , and came in second at the 1996 Olympic Trials and earned five Masters World Championships in that discipline.听

It's fair to say that Steve ripped people's legs off for more than 40 years. He began racing at the age of 14, when he was a student at Topeka High School听in Kansas'听capital city, and never stopped. Multiple friends guess that he might have contested more than 2,500 bike races since his early days in Kansas. For decades after his professional career was over, Steve would show up at elite races鈥攆our-corner crits, road races, cross races, mountain-bike races, whatever鈥攁nd often triumph over competitors who were half his age.听

During and after his professional career, . His career racing on the road in Europe intersected with the start of an era of unprecedented biochemical shenanigans, and Steve harbored unmitigated hostility to racers who doped. For years, he wrote a blog that explicitly expressed his view that people who cheated didn't just violate some cherished values of sport 鈥� they took life opportunities from other deserving athletes. While some observers saw nuance and shades of gray in the challenges and flaws of the sport, Tilford tended to see things in black and white鈥攕ome people were cheaters, period, end of story. He never was afraid to call someone out; in fact, he seemed to relish it. I didn't always agree with his point of view but it was impossible to question his passion or his intentions to improve the sport.

After hearing the news of Steve's death, I spent part of the day talking to people who knew him well鈥攆riends, teammates, competitors. The picture that emerged from these conversations is of a man who built his life鈥攁 wonderful life鈥攁round his joy of racing bikes. A man who had childlike qualities and passion that most of us cannot sustain for a lifetime, someone who seemed to have no conception of retiring from sport. A man who said what he believed and lived how he believed.

I talked with retired , who has known Tilford for a couple decades and found inspiration in the way he lived on and off the bike. “He had this personality where he was all-in for every moment, every race,” Johnson said. “Whether he was 28 or 48, if he showed up at a crit or a cross race, the guy looked at it as today's opportunity to do his best. I'm telling you, that guy was never afraid to jump in any race.”听

“Steve lived and breathed bike racing,”听said Bill Elliston, a retired pro who also raced with and against Tilford in multiple disciplines for two decades. “I mean the guy had a huge engine and could win races on any terrain or surface, but what impressed me the most was how he was a lifer in the sport. Most people who race think at some point they need to stop and get on with the real world, but Steve showed me and other people that you can make a life out of it. I鈥檓 48 and still racing against pros鈥攈e taught me that you can keep at it if you love it.”

Mark Legg, a former pro and husband to , admits that he didn't like Tilford听until he got to know him well. “We came to become friends and I never got to express my mistake to him鈥擨 wish I did,” admitted Legg, who also said he'll miss Steve's “slightly goofy”听personality. “He was such a good guy inside and out. The way I want to remember him is with those groovy 70s flowing locks under his helmet, cruising around on his bike making it rain pain on the guys trying to hold onto his rear wheel.”

Mountain bike legend Ned Overend, another guy who has rained pain for decades, recalled his former teammate's solicitous side. “The reason so many people will miss Tilford is because he genuinely cared about other people and went out of his way to help them,”听said Overend. “When he was racing on the Specialized mountain bike team, it was like he was a self-appointed member of the support staff鈥攈e was always positive; he wanted to see other people succeed. We used to share hotel rooms and the night before an important race he has other people's bikes in the room and he's wrenching on them, friends of his from wherever, that he was helping out. He was a sensitive guy but tough as nails.”

I talked with a couple that was among Tilford's closest friends鈥�reigning Olympic triathlon gold medalist Gwen Jorgensen and her husband, . Steve attended their wedding and goaded them into biking 100 kilometers to pick up their marriage certificate. (He came along, of course.)听Both Jorgensen and Lemieux talked with great admiration about Tilford's handy side鈥攅specially his elaborate skill laying tile鈥攁nd how he had a plan to visit their new house in Portland, Oregon, next week to help with some remodeling projects. Then we got to talking about bike racing. “He was so in the moment and so aggressive at every race because every race was important to him,”听said Lemieux, who first remembers meeting Steve at a 2006 that Tilford won.”鈥淗is mind was not floating around the way normal people would. He was fully in the moment of every minute of every race.”

Jorgensen still stunned by the loss, talked about the annual vacations they took with Tilford, his exuberance of jumping in a cold lake at 10:30 p.m., the time she woke up at 1 a.m. and found him tinkering in the garage. “I learned a lot from Steve鈥攁bout patience, the way he didn't make plans, the way little things could make him so excited,”听she said, choking up. 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry, it鈥檚 been a tough day.鈥澨�

Also mourning was , who first met Tilford in the mid 1990s when he was doing neutral support in races for Shimano. He remembers that unlike many pros, Steve was “friendly, polite, and respectful,”听and fully engaged in giving product feedback. “Steve raced every discipline but, man, did he shine in mountain bike criteriums,”听DiStefano recalled. “He would just hammer on those narrow, slick mountain bike tires and grind everyone off his wheel. I have this loop in my head 鈥� 听it'd be a sweet GIF these days 鈥� of him at the nighttime crit in Scottsdale just flying through this series of corners on a line no one else could handle.”

DiStefano took a stab at describing his grief. “Losing Steve feels like a familiar place has been taken from me,”听he said. “I don't go to races year after year any longer and it might be several years before I find my way back to the or . While I never thought directly about it, I guess I knew Steve would be there and, at some point walking around, I'd see him. He'd stop to say hello. He was always coming from somewhere and about to head off to somewhere with stories about both. I'll miss those conversations about the journey he was on and the mutual friends we had, about how one of us had seen someone the other knew. I'll miss seeing the continuation of the forward and upward trajectory he was on. Every cyclist on Facebook shared, commented, or saw the story about the听105-year-old Frenchman who set the new record for 100+ this year. I'd bet all of Steve's friends expected to see him in a straight up elite field at some race somewhere when he was 100.”

Davis Phinney, an American road cycling star in the 1980s and early 90s, wrote me from Europe to share his memories of Tilford. “The thing that stands out for me with Steve was his undiminished enthusiasm for bike racing in any form,”听said Phinney, who first raced against Tilford in the late 1970s. “Back in the day, Steve was always the first rider to attack off the start line鈥攈e was just so fired up to get the race going. And in later years, the stories are legendary of him patching himself up after crashing and getting back in the game. Always in the game. I ran into him a few years back at a criterium where after a fall in the final turn he was torn up. Bleeding. But when he saw me he excitedly launches into a story from when we were racing together years ago and wouldn't let Trudi attend to his wounds till he'd finished the story. That was Steve鈥攋ust irrepressible.”

Former pro Adam Myerson said he “cried at his desk a lot” when he heard that Steve had died. When asked to describe Tilford's racing ability, Myerson had plenty to say. “Steve was just really, really good at bike racing, and really good at squeezing every ounce of energy out of himself,”听he said. “He wasn't a sprinter, but he could sprint. He wasn't a TT rider, but he could ride away at the perfect moment, solo. He wasn't a climber, but he wasn't going to get dropped, either. When it was the right time to attack, he attacked, regardless of how good he did or didn't feel. I'm going to miss him being the crotchety old man he's been for decades. Yelling at me for no reason, trying to get me to do something in a race that benefited him more than me.”

Then Myerson tried to explain how or why Tilford remained a top racer for decades after he left the professional ranks. “Steve was, in many ways, cycling's equivalent of surf or ski bum,”听Myerson said. “But I don't want to use those terms in a negative way, because I relate to it so strongly, understand intimately why he stayed out there, and can't imagine denying him the happiness it gave him. Racing was a lifestyle for him, so work and relationships sort of formed around that, not the other way around. He never stopped caring.”

Almost everyone I talked with at some point mentioned 鈥攁nd the people he felt were in the wrong. “He was never afraid to call out bullshit, and he often knew the backstory to support his claims,”听said Myerson.听

One person who , the . Even though the two did not always see eye to eye, Vaughters said he had deep respect for Tilford. “I respected Steve even though he pounded on me because, end of the day, he was after the same end goal, regards doping, that I was,”听Vaughters said. “And he was uncompromising with听his words pursuing that. So, while I was hurt by his words, I knew what he was saying was coming from a good place. And I respected that. Always.”

When asked to assess how Tilford was able to race competitively for so long, Vaughters said “the dude was the quintessential road warrior his entire life” and then relayed a funny story. “As part of our ongoing debates, I invited Steve out to get tested by our sports science crew,”听Vaughters recalled. “So, I can tell you as a matter of fact: the reason he ripped people's legs off is that he had a very big motor. He was very physically talented. Very big. The sports science dudes were a bit shocked a guy that age still had so much under the hood.”

Then Vaughters and I got to talking about the horrific scene out on I-70 early Wednesday morning. Out of the blue, Vaughters said “I keep wondering why he was still out on the highway. Bet you anything he was looking for his dog in the wreck.”

I had no idea so I made some calls. Multiple people told me that had heard that Tilford had moved away from the wreckage, but, deeply concerned that his beloved dog, Tucker, was loose, had walked back toward his truck to find a leash. (Steve would be relieved to know that Tucker is fine.)

I wrote Vaughters back and told him what I'd heard. “Fuck,”听he replied. “Shows he was a good guy鈥攁ll the way to the end.”

All the way to the end. From the start to the finish鈥攐f thousands of bike races, in every discipline, over 40 years鈥擲teve Tilford was in the moment, not floating around, just doing the thing he loved most, pushing others to do the same. Often he won, but the most impressive thing is how often he showed up, how often he laid it down. This seems true about how he raced bikes and also how he lived life. He drove it all the way to the end.

. It's just a few paragraphs long, talking about hitting听the road from California to Utah. (With two pictures of Tucker, of course.) It is impossible now, one听day听later, to read that post without staring at those photos or the sentence that opens the final paragraph. In it, Tilford wrote: “I'm short of time, so that is about it.”

The post The Cycling World Loses Steve Tilford, All-Time Great appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

One morning in late July 1967, a听Davis, California, public works employee听loaded a marking machine, letter stencils, and big containers听of white paint into a city truck and drove over to 8th Street. It didn鈥檛 take long to stripe both sides of 8th between A Street and Sycamore Lane鈥攁 distance a little less than a mile long. After the paint dried and stenciled lettering was applied, the 10.5-square-mile city had the first bike lane in U.S. history.听

This early project integrated concepts that still qualify as progressive. San Francisco got its first protected bike lane鈥攚here cyclists are separated from auto traffic by cement barriers and听parked cars鈥攊n 2010. Chicago didn鈥檛 have one until 2016. Davis had one five decades earlier鈥攏ot to mention a two-way bike lane and a so-called contra flow lane鈥攚here riders can travel against traffic on a one-way street. This early building set in motion an actual revolution, one that resulted in a single city like New York having听more than听.听听

Davis, a flat, compact college town blessed with temperate year-round weather located a dozen miles west of Sacramento, was ripe for a transportation transformation. The first advocate was newly appointed school chancellor Emil Mrak. In the early 1960s, the university, recently named the seventh general campus in the University of California system, was poised to have its student body expand exponentially, from 2,000 to 10,000. Mrak was determined to encourage cycling to avoid an influx of cars. 鈥淚 have asked our architects to plan for a bicycle-riding, tree-lined campus,鈥� he said in 1961, as an expanded UCD campus was being surveyed. Incoming students received letters encouraging them to bring a bike to school and officials drew up plans for a network of bike paths around a largely car-free campus. 鈥淏ike paths and tunnels were built in some neighborhoods before those neighborhoods were actually built out,鈥� says current Davis Mayor Robb Davis. 鈥淗ow cool is that?鈥�

Suddenly Davis seemed to be pulsing with young people on bikes. Still, it wasn鈥檛 exactly a cycling paradise. Bikes were a dependable, fun, popular way to get to class, but many locals and city officials were not open to sharing the road, so the police launched a ticket-writing crackdown and the number and tenor of bike-car conflicts grew worse.听

Into this simmering conflict stepped Frank Child. An economics professor at UCD, Child had just wrapped up a summer sabbatical in the Dutch city of the Hague in 1963. There, he and his wife, Eve, had spent many afternoons on bicycles, riding around the city with their four children. That experience left such an impression that the couple sold their second car as soon as they returned to Davis.

Inspired by their Dutch experience and the road conflicts they saw in Davis, the Childs wrote a letter to the local newspaper, proposing separate lanes for bikes on a few local streets. They would be a win-win for everyone, the Childs wrote. They started a vibrant organization with local supporters called the . 鈥淧eople met over their kitchen tables and got mad and expressed determination that things would change,鈥� says Ted Beuhler, a Portland-based bike advocate who wrote his UCD graduate thesis听on bicycle policy in Davis, a document that established the city鈥檚 historic primacy in the bike-lane universe. 鈥淭he Childs had seen how these things could work in the real world when they lived in Europe. They said 鈥楾here鈥檚 no reason we can鈥檛 do this here, right now.鈥欌�澨�

The CBSG submitted a formal petition to install a handful of bike lanes. But their proposal was rejected by engineers, police, planners, and the city council, which had the power to authorize road infrastructure.听

What happened next might seem familiar to contemporary readers, but it was novel for nascent bike advocates in the mid-1960s: the CBSG supporters protested at the ballot box. Two pro-bike candidates ran for the three-seat city council. One of them, says Beuhler, put little cardboard discs on supporters鈥� bicycle wheels that proclaimed 鈥淢aynard Skinner for Council!鈥� The candidates wound up winning more than 60 percent of the vote听in 1965.听

By July, the new council had approved all the bike lanes in the original petition. But more hurdles remained. More important, since California laws did not yet recognize bike lanes as a legal part of city streets, officials were concerned they didn鈥檛 have the authority to set aside part of the roadway for riders only.听Fortunately, one city council member鈥攁 professional lobbyist in Sacramento鈥攈elped introduce and pass a bill in the state Assembly. Governor Ronald Reagan signed , which allows cities to establish bike lanes on local streets, into law in 1967.听

The bike lane required one more team of unlikely advocates before it could advance: the engineers. 鈥淒avis was really fortunate to have a public works chief who was open to change,鈥� says Susan Handy, director of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation at UCD. 鈥淚n many communities, that person is typically conservative.鈥澨�

Beuhler agrees. 鈥淚n this case, the city鈥檚 engineers graciously worked happily with the city council to develop something that hadn鈥檛 been done before, and they actually figured things out in impressive fashion,” he says. Within the span of a few months after the 1967 law went into effect, officials in Davis installed four lanes: on Sycamore Lane, 3rd Street, 8th Street, and J Street.听

In the early 1990s, Davis became one of the first U.S. cities听to install dedicated bike-signal lights. The city started branding itself as , and in this case, the civic cheerleading didn鈥檛 seem overstated. Today, Davis has more than 100 miles of bike lanes and shared-use paths and 25 bike-only bridges and tunnels. 鈥淚n terms of cycling infrastructure and usage, Davis still outshines nearly every other city in America,鈥� says Handy. Local advocates say that more than 20 percent of all trips within the community are done on a bike.听

“You can cross the whole campus without interacting with cars,鈥� says Mayor Davis, who says the bike lanes鈥� anniversary will be 鈥渜uietly celebrated鈥� as part of the city鈥檚 centennial throughout 2017. 鈥淭he history is great and we鈥檙e proud of it, but the best part is to see how many kids in Davis ride their bikes to school.鈥� Recent counts indicate that more than 33 percent of all teens in town ride to high school and nearly 25 percent pedal to elementary school.

As a testament to the outstanding cycling culture in Davis, the , moved from Somerville, N.J. to Davis in 2010. Inside, a visitor can view rare 19th century bicycles, race trophies from the 1920s, and exhibits honoring such legends as Major Taylor, Connie Carpenter, and Greg LeMond. Upon exiting the Hall, one could stand on the plaza in the sunshine, and watch riders stream by 3rd Street鈥攚hich, like all of the four bike lanes built in 1967, is still in operation.

The post The Small California City Responsible for America’s First Bike Lane appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.