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cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Mar 25

Reading about literacy

Catching up on grading today … seemingly an evergreen phrase … and I ran across a paper where a student wrote “We live through a crisis of critical thinking.”

I may wrap the class on that note — now, not at the end of the term — and spend all of my free time trying to remember the most direct route to get future classes to that same point. Some weeks ago I was trying to summarize our class conversation in the last few moments when I found, around the corner and down the hall, an opportunity to make just this point, and so I steered my riff that way. It was a great go home message, and it must have stuck with that student.

For this paper, I’d asked the class to look a few years into the future and try to project the problems of misinformation and disinformation that we’ll be dealing with, and how we might best cope with, and try to overcome it. Another student wrote, “Media literacy will also be an essential tool … As consumers, we can play a part by using critical thinking skills … Schools and universiti3es should also teach media literacy and teach students how to discern fake news from real news.”

It’s fun to read papers when the authors are trying to make these sorts of connections.

I went for a little bike ride this afternoon. I quickly realized that I need to rest up a little more. Sinuses, or whatever I get, don’t always make for a good experience when you get your heart rate up and start breathing hard. So it was a brief ride. I got in my 16 miles, just to spin the legs and see the sites. Like the irrigation system to infinity.

And the excavator at rest. I wonder what it gets used on around there. There’s not an obvious worksite, no scar in the earth. Just fields waiting to turn green.

If it’s active this year, I imagine it’ll be a sod crop. We’ll see.

Elsewhere, it’s just lovely pastureland, and these two paints enjoying a late lunch.

Now, I’m going to go back to reading the last of those papers.

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
20
Mar 25

My PR pursuit

Helped clean the garage. We have a too-small garage. But, then I think that every garage should have about 20 more square feet. And laundry room. Almost every laundry room needs to be larger, but I digress.

We have a little punch out in our garage, allowing basement access. And in that area we also have two 7-foot-tall shelving units. But it was all in the way, according to my lovely bride. I’m not the best with conceptualizing spatial arrangements, but I didn’t think it would provide the space she thought. But it is spring break and it was her idea so that’s what she started and I joined her for that and, wouldn’t you know it she might be right.

We’ll find out in a few days of using the new configuration, I guess, but the first impression looks promising.

I gave it the first test today. The bikes are now parked where the shelves were. And I went on a little ride this evening, just to spin my legs. It was down the chipseal road past the winery, onto the little cut through that has some of the newest asphalt around, a downhill stretch of two-tenths of a mile of pure ribbon, and then back up by the local park and into town, where I let the traffic decide my route. I was going to turn around once, but had to take a right because of what was behind me. And I was going to turn left later, but had to go straight because of what was ahead of me.

The last five miles were about getting out of town and through two neighborhoods and back home.

There is a nearby Strava segment, and I have the second fastest time on it. I should have the fastest time on it. This year, I’m breaking the record, which was set in 2020.

In my first try of the year I was one second off my PR and 11 seconds off the record.

I left maybe three seconds out there from a wobble, not taking the left-hander perfectly and sitting up a little too soon.

Felt good, until the end.

Even if that’s close to right, I need to improve by a lot. But there will be plenty of opportunities to improve. There always are.

cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
19
Mar 25

The miles ahead

One of the good and, at the same time, one of the bad things about the variability of the weather is that it dictates whether I go for a ride. And, today, it was just nice enough to take my second outdoor ride of the year.

Also, it was new glove day.

And when it takes more than one hand of fingerless gloves to count my outdoor rides, I’ll stop counting them. Maybe in another week or so. Because the weather forecasts are all over the place.

Anyway, I bought those gloves at a bike shop in Chicago. I went looking for helmets. While the store’s site had what I was interested in seeing, they did not have it on the floor. The shop was small enough that it would look awkward to go in, buy nothing and leave. So I walked around looking for that helmet and trying to think of what else I needed. What I needed was a new pair of gloves.

I don’t even remember when I bought my old ones, but they are old and crusty, even after washing them. The padding in the palms have lost their effectiveness. So it was time, I was at a bike shop, and the price at that bike shop was the same price I found online.

(I took out six paragraphs of observations and complaints about bike shops here. You’re welcome.)

And so I had a nice ride today, just 25 miles around the local roads.

It’s scenic and pastoral. Most of the roads are peaceful enough. But this is going to be the year where I go longer and seek out new roads routes. Gonna have to be.

Today, though, I got in just in time to see the sunset across the way.

Timing, they say, is … something.

adventures / cycling / Friday / Rowan — Comments Off
14
Mar 25

Presenting some cycling research

I gave a presentation of our research today at the Summit on Communication & Sport today. The session was titled Perception and Representation. One of our colleagues presented on topics titled “When Soccer Meets Streetwear: A Critical
Analysis of Soccer Shirts’ New Cool.” Another, a good friend presented on an interesting topic, “Interaction and Gamification – The Media Audience’s Perception of Reality and Virtuality in New Sports Formats. A Mixed-methods Study using the Example of the Baller League in Germany.” Another research team discussed “From Geek Kingdom to Non-Gendered Utopia? The Gendered
Representation of Esport on French Sports Media L’Equipe.fr.”

In between, I talked about the research The Yankee and I conducted last fall. We titled it “Doing this may Kill Me: A Mixed Method Approach to Perceptions of Cyclist Safety.”

Here are some of the slides.

On a beautiful evening in August 2024, two brothers were heading home on bikes when they were killed by an aggressive driver who, police say, had a BAL over the legal limit.

It happened by that power pole on the right.

They were local boys. Two guys done good. Both were hockey players, they became folk heroes at Boston College. Matthew, the younger one, had a short professional run on the ice before returning home to coach his high school team. His older brother Johnny was an NHL star. The family said they were always together. Shoulder-to-shoulder. They were together on that particular day to celebrate their sister’s wedding the next day.

Johnny had two children. He and his wife were expecting their third. Matthew and his wife were expecting their first child.

The driver of the vehicle hit them so hard that his Jeep Cherokee died a tenth of a mile away, as he tried to flee.

We conducted a survey of local cyclists. Using snowball sampling, we aimed at people in the tri-county area, but our instrument quickly reached into the tri-state area. We wrapped it with 1,296 respondents.

Here are a few numbers from the survey …

Of those 1,296 respondents, all cyclists, 66 percent reported near misses with other vehicles on their bike rides. Eighteen percent said they’ve had bike crashes involving vehicles. Nine percent have had more than one accident involving vehicles.

That’s something like 116 people!

Sixty-one percent reported that drivers pass too closely more than half the time. This is, admittedly, a tricky question. As a cyclist, I recall the dangerous passes far more clearly than the safer interactions. (Boy do I!) But … this gets to perception, and the intrinsic motivation involved in Self Determination Theory.

Our survey asked about aggressive drivers, and 13 percent said they have to deal with them on more than half their rides.

Also in this survey, 67 percent of cyclists say they fear they’ll be in an accident when they ride their bikes. And two-thirds of them also told us the infrastructure at their disposal for road riding is inadequate. (The implications here are fascinating.)

Of the 1,296 people who took our survey, 83 percent reported that they feel unsafe riding by some combination of drivers and poor infrastructure. We didn’t break that down further, but it’s there for future study.

When we asked cyclists about their perceptions of law enforcement, the numbers were not good; 64 percent perceived the utility of law enforcement toward helping to ensure their safety was “terrible.”

We’ll unpack this in a moment.

This is not a percentage, but a real figure. A third of our respondents, 453 cyclists who took our survey said the risk was so great they have stopped, or would not, ride on the road.

Here’s some other data. The various state departments of transportation use the term “vulnerable road users.” That’s how they define cyclists, pedestrians, or anyone else not in a car, truck, or SUV.

This, so you know, is the state law on passing vulnerable road users. National advocates who monitor these things say this is one of the best in the country. One of the best laws in the land means you have to give me four whole feet when you pass me. But you have to know that law, honor it, and understand distance and vehicles at different speeds (and a lot of you don’t). So, just think on this for a second. Four feet.

Four themes emerged in our qualitative work. In the first theme, people discuss how road systems are set up, first or exclusively, for motorists. That’s problematic. The US Census says 870,000 people commute by bike. People for Bikes, in their most recent research, says 112 million Americans rode a bike last year. The discourse is due a change.

We saw a great deal of frustration within the law and law enforcement theme. Cyclists complain of law enforcement officers who don’t know the laws or aren’t interested in policing them. They’ve been told that without video evidence there’s not much that can be done. Sometimes that’s difficult even with video.

Infrastructure is a recurring theme in our survey, advocacy, and in national conversations. Cyclists and other vulnerable road users frequently complain about it.

Boil it down to money, political will, and time. Most places are several lacking quality infrastructure for all road users. (Again, not just motorists.) There’s also an urgency problem.

Our final theme, I just called it personal. Hands go to chests when I talk about the bike shop owner who fixed a customer’s flat, and, minutes later, the cyclist was killed by a motorist.

“What if I’d told him I couldn’t do it then? What if I repaired it slower? Or faster?”

He lives with that.

It’s not his only story of that sort.

Let’s talk about impact. The Yankee and I were invited to share the initial version of this research with the local community soon after the Gaudreaus were killed. The crash, and this data, helped inspire the creation of a local safety committee. They are now doing advocacy. That group’s work has them in front of youth organizations. Bike safety and road awareness are key for everyone. They are also taking part in a county safety committee as well.

We’ve also shared the data with the state DOT and talked messaging with a variety of organizations. This research also caught the ear of a state lawmaker, who ran with it. And with good reason!

One criticism we saw a lot is that not everyone knows about the state’s relatively new Safe Passing law. The Center for Sports Communication and Social Impact. We take the title to heart. This is research with real impact. In part because of our research, the Safe Passing law will now be taught in Driver’s Ed and appear on the driver’s license exam.

Please be careful on the roads. We’re all just trying to get somewhere and safety is the goal.

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Mar 25

A day in sunny Chicago

Yes, we are in Chicago. Spring has arrived here with us. (It will snow here this weekend.) But today is beautiful, and if there’s one thing I learned in the Midwest, it is that you live for the day, because tomorrow could be an entirely different kind of problem.

But this trip is great, because we are with friends and colleagues, most of whom we haven’t seen in a year. Sadly, some aren’t here for international travel reasons, but maybe in a few years more reunions will be had.

We had lunch with friends from South Florida and UNC-Chapel Hill today. Lovely, lovely people. The sort you should see more than once a year. Two, maybe three times would be much better — and still keep me at low risk of being found out. We walked down to an Irish pub, where everyone working there was Irish, or at least had worked out a good accent. I had the shepherd’s pie, because I’m a sucker for the stuff. In the back of the joint, near the restroom, was this sign.

I glanced at that, thought, They oughta know and took a good picture.

Down the street was a bike shop. My lovely bride had a meeting and I had nothing to do, so I walked down there. Look! Bikes!

The application of that bike lane warning was hasty, and there’s probably an end-of-the-work-week story that isn’t that good, but I had a two block walk, which gave me plenty of time to invent a better story.

I went to the bike shop to look for helmets. I’m due a new helmet this year. Past due, in fact. And they have one I like. And since it’s not at my local store, and I had a few minutes I figured, why not? Except while this store had it on their website, they didn’t have it in the shop. Now, it’s a small enough place that everyone sees you come and go, and so I felt a bit silly about being in there and walking out without buying anything. I need new fingerless gloves, so I bought some. They made a sale, I didn’t leave empty handed, everyone was happy.

And I saw Didi the Devil! He’s a German superfan. A car mechanic by trade, holder of 17 world records for bike inventions and he’s been on the side of the road for all the big races in Europe for 30-some years now. The story goes that in German broadcasts, the old 1 km to go flag, a red triangle hanging above the race, was called “The devil’s flag,” and that inspired the costume. The riders say it’s good luck to see him in the race.

I’ll never see him in a race, of course, but I do see him when I watch the races. And since I’m talking about bikes tomorrow, maybe he’ll bring me some good luck.

The photo was taped to the customer-facing side of the receipt dispenser, so if I had not gotten new gloves I wouldn’t have seen him today. The guy that made the sale flipped that photo up and showed me another one taped beneath it. Double good luck to all their customers who know what they’re looking at.

After the day’s pre-conference work, we went out for dinner with a friend from St. Bonaventure. We headed to another pizza place, but it was a two hour wait for some mysterious reason. Looked dead, sounded quiet. No one wanted a wait like that, so we went to Billy Goat’s Tavern.

It was legendary before it became a bit on SNL.

The place is steeped in Chicago history. This is beneath the old newspapers, and so all of the reporters and the people that wanted to be seen came here. The walls are covered in the city’s history. The picture frames jammed next to one another like a wood and glass wallpaper.

We first visited in 2008, when we were there for another conference. We stopped by at lunch time, when the line wraps around the restaurant and the old man was doing his cheezborger shtick for his guests. That guy is, or was, the life of the party, and he knew it and reveled in it. He could also take one look at you and guess what you were eating. It doesn’t hurt that it was a relatively small menu, but he could just tell. It was great. Also, the borgers are pretty good burgers.

At the time of night we visited, it was quieter, the night crew didn’t need to do the gimmick. And there was plenty of room to sit and have a quiet meal. Also, the borgers are still pretty good burgers.

Now I’m going to go finish my presentation. I have to deliver a concise 12 minutes on this research tomorrow. It’d be better if they would allow me 14.