The life of a Pro Cyclist

A ways back I was introduced to twitter when I was alerted to the Caltrain tweets being run by Ravi Pina, especially valuable for the bike car information. Slowly but surely I was sucked into the twitter vortex when people started to follow my (infrequent) tweets, I started following them, I learned the search function, etc...

The final straw was when I found out that Lance was on twitter. Maybe not so much that he was using twitter, but that he was using it a LOT. Now, being a pro cyclist most of what Armstrong does with his day is...

1) Ride
2) Sleep
3) Eat

So his tweets could be somewhat one dimensional. Armstrong being Armstrong - and as my friend Dan Connelly calls it ... "Armstrong 3.0", Lance actually does a bit more than just Ride/Sleep/Eat (and I don't mean "get EPO injection - though apparently it does include 15 drug tests since he's returned to riding). Number 4 on Lance's list is apparently "Send tweets".

What's cool is that Lance is really pretty open on his twitter feed. Sometimes I find he tweets some things to showcase his hipness - "Tough loss for Roddick down under" - does anyone really care about the Austrailian Open (or Men's Tennis for that matter). But I can forgive it because there is a lot more there that, in addition to reports from the Tour Down Under, and his performance with the Mash SF guys that has me really liking the guy. Right now what's he up to?

lancearmstrong Just did Smoke Free Texas event at the capitol. Great turnout. Fingers crossed on getting it passed. It's the RIGHT thing to do.

Maybe I just like Lance so much because he's preachy like me. And on this one, he is right, and if he can get the Texans to give up smoking in bars, maybe we need to have him work on Bikes on Board. I hear he'll be in Santa Rosa by the time of the JPB meeting!

If you aren't a Lance fan, in my book you're missing something (or you're one of his former paramours, but love's a bitch).

So anyway, following Lance's feed, I see he's replying to dzabriskie. And ghincapie. ivanbasso. TeamAstana. and so on, and so on, and they're all sending dozens of tweets per day. At this point, I think someone needs to tell them to get a room. I'm too old to process 100's of tweets per day - I am pretty certain I'm just going to have to say "That was interesting" and take them off my follow list.

Except for Lance of course.

Latest: @lancearmstrong rode into work today with my new Mellow Johnny's socks. Very nice! less than 5 seconds ago

The San Francisco Bike Plan EIR shows that bike lanes will slow MUNI!

But what about this?

(01-28) 17:11 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- An automobile collided with two Municipal Railway trains this afternoon, disrupting service on the N-Judah line at the start of the evening commute, an agency spokesman said.

The entire commute into cluster f**k because someone can't drive their car. Pull this guys license, force him to ride a bike (or MUNI) and we get back, in one fell swoop, years of "delays" caused by removing a lane of auto traffic for a bike lane.

Bike to Caltrain JPB Meeting Day

Next Thursday, Feb 5, is the Caltrain JPB meeting in San Carlos. This meeting is especially relevant because Caltrain Staff will be presenting to the JPB their plan/ideas/whatever on a short term expansion of bike space on Caltrain. Some folks from the SFBC have spent a lot of time - as you may know if you actually follow this godawful blog - trying to nudge Caltrain to give those Holier Than Thou Cyclists more space.

What we are up against? Reference @seanpile

"I know you guys are all green... I am 100% anti-green" 8:50 AM Jan 12th from TwitterFon

quote(s) from caltrain operator: "you guys need to start leaving your bikes at home" 8:49 AM Jan 12th from TwitterFon

The only reason Caltrain is bending is because we are overwhelming them with "requests" for better service. Caltrain is a public entity, subsidized by tax dollars and not motivated by profit. But if the ridership is on the board's tail like visigoths at the gate, the staff has to respond or there might actually be some wrath delivered. If Mark Scanlon, Mark Simon, Chuck Harvey, Michelle Bouchard, et all deliver some useless pablum, we need to make our voices heard or the board will assume they have shut us up and can move on. We need a big presence at the JPB meeting. Yokota Fritz already told me he's taking the day off.

My plan is to lead a ride from San Francisco's 4th/King Caltrain station to the San Carlos station, using the SF2G routing with a minor diversion starting on 3rd since we're coming from downtown. On a fast day we make San Carlos in 1:45, so my plan is to leave at 7 AM, potentially leaving time for a snack at Mary's Depot at the San Carlos train station. Pace TBD but I am volunteering to sweep as long as we make San Carlos by 9:30 - if anyone is really struggling I will deliver them to a Caltrain station (surely to get bumped, of course).

Don't screw with American Apparel

Ritual Roasters decided to go after American Apparel. Have to keep those chain stores out of the Mission District, this is San Francisco after all. Even if said chain store employs dozens of heroin chic models.



I showed up for a bike ride at 6:46 AM this morning. No, it wasn't scheduled for 6:46 AM, I was 1 minute late. Nobody waited for me because it was 38 degrees and the coffee shop was closed! No big loss for Ritual, the only people at Ritual at 6:30 AM are Trendy Google Professionals getting ready to ride to work.

But is there a correlation? Has AA put the hex on Ritual?

Update: Apparently not - it was the weekend of some big "Barista Competition"

The hard men (and women) of San Francisco

A second day of actual rain in the Bay Area. No way in hell this eco-terrorist is going to slag off and borrow the car, I'm getting on my bike and going to Caltrain. All summer long we've waited for the rainy and cold winter such that we could enjoy a leisurely, if wet, ride to our destination on an unpacked bike car.

WRONG.

Yesterday on NB #322 we had issues when the conductor mistakenly allowed 17 bikes on a 16 bike bomb car. He threw a fit about 5 in one rack, we pointed out (after the train had left the station) that there was no 3 bike rack to move to. He grunted but we rolled off. So he had actually bumped people, this continued at 22nd St, I expected to see maybe 5 of us. NB 230 apparently bumped people too per Adam Aufdencamp's twitter.

This AM, more wetness. More wet cyclists.



Not full, but close.



The passenger counter was there, good to see that everyone took my call to arms to heart!

I think there are 2 things in play. The cyclists are in fact getting a bit harder - selling their cars/etc... and have committed to the transit/bike commute. But there are plenty of faces that will disappear now - the thing is there are just so many MORE cyclists that the reductions brought by the rain aren't enough to solve the capacity issue.

Chapeau!

Take your bike on Caltrain this week!

I rode to Redwood City this AM with Ted and Trinh and then hopped on Caltrain instead of watching the Inagural. I campaigned for the guy, he won, but even though I am sure the speech was very inspiring the sunrise over San Francisco Bay was pretty damn inspiring too, and not being broadcast over and over the next few days. In fact, the next few days it is actually supposed to rain, which we badly need.

So like I said, I went riding because it's supposed to rain tomorrow, I got on the Caltrain, and what to my wondering eyes did appear? Caltrain's annual passenger count has started! How can Scanlon cook the books?

1) Holiday week.
2) Inaguration Tuesday.
3) Rain finally coming.

OK, I'm sure Scanlon isn't that devious but certainly he won't be claiming that the bike counts were lower than typical this week because it's raining and half the bike car is in Washington DC.

Anyway, if there ever was a week not to decide to "just drive" or check your bike at Warm Planet, this is it. Suck it up, take your bike on Caltrain and if you get bumped make sure you tell the peon with the clipboard to write it down.

Clipper Street/Portola Drive area neighbors comment on Bike Plan

A group called the "Clipper Street/Portola Drive area neighbors" has submitted a comment on the Bike Plan EIR. I've never heard of this group despite having lived on Clipper at Grandview for a year, and having lived within 10 blocks of this intersection for 6 years. Google search shows nothing (for reference "Noe Valley Neighbors" shows 265 hits).

Rob Anderson posted the letter on his blog (I feel no need to drop him any link love).

There is a lot of general commentary about the bike plan in similar style to Rob. "We also request that the comment and response specifically disclose the amount of anticipated delay to the nearest second so that the decision-makers and citizens in San Francisco have full knowledge of the actual delay that they will soon experience." Amusing. I request that the City estimate it's budget to the nearest tenth of a penny as well. This line sort of makes the whole letter less than credible - basically making an impossible request to see if a Judge buys the troll. Given the similarity to Rob's style I wonder if the "Clipper Street/Portola Drive area neighbors" are basically a sock puppet.

They then go on to analyze the Clipper/Portola intersection. Clipper from Portola to Douglass is basically a super-freeway, the speed limit is patently ignored as people zoom over the top of Twin Peaks and into Noe Valley - this is the primary route from the West neighborhoods to 101. Not as dangerous as our other Noe Valley internal freeway - Eureka St - because Clipper doesn't have high pedestrian or bike traffic compared to Eureka.

Anyway, they basically claim that traffic will back up on Clipper if a lane is removed. We do own a car and the most frequent place we drive is Tower Market in Miraloma Park - taking us right through that intersection. I also ride through here frequently to get to Twin Peaks for hill repeats or to head to work via Skyline. I don't see the problem. The author asserts that "some cars will queue up for 2 signal cycles". I don't buy it. It goes on to predict lines of cars on Diamond Heights Blvd waiting to get onto Clipper because the cars are backed up from the light. The cars in the PM commute are coming up Clipper, not from Diamond Heights, but generally I don't consider this to be a choke point. Regardless, the flow of traffic through this intersection is moot - all of that traffic is going onto Portola Westbound, where it then hits the REAL choke point - the intersection of Portola and Woodside, where the 280 traffic coming up O'Shaugnessy merges in with the Upper Market/Clipper traffic that came onto Portola.

Their expertise is definitely impugned when they claim that AM congestion would be worse than PM congestion. Having lived on Clipper - I know that all the traffic is basically from the Sunset to the East in the AM, and vice versa in the PM. They claim that traffic backs up 3 light cycles in the AM. If true, it's most likely because Clipper has a longer red cycle because the light is prioritized to get traffic moving from West to East on Portola to Upper Market. After my wife has the baby, I might just have to go analyze the intersection myself on one of my "down days".

The most amusing part of the whole letter? They offer an alternative. Build an underpass of Market at 24th St. 24th St is a 25% grade. So the alternative being offered "a more desirable and attractive Class 1 bicycle facility connecting Noe Valley to the Portola Drive corridor, improving the bicyclists connectivity to the Noe Valley business district", requires cyclists to ride up, and more dangerously DOWN a 25% grade. Thanks buddy! Maybe for effect we can scare up some of the homeless that live on the Cesar Chavez "Underpass of Broken Bottles and Dreams" to style it up!