Dumb cop

Cop: Hey, what do you think you're doing?
Me: I'm making a left turn
Cop: You need to get out of there
Me: I'm making a left turn (thinking I hadn't been heard)
Cop: Well you can't do it there. You need to get in the cross walk (I'm in the left turn lane)
Me: I was taught you're supposed to bike with the flow of traffic
Cop: Well not here
Me: *Make left turn*

Here is the relevant bit of law:
257.660a Operation of bicycle upon highway or street; riding close to right-hand curb or edge of roadway; exceptions.A person operating a bicycle upon a highway or street at less than the existing speed of traffic shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway except as follows:

(a) When overtaking and passing another bicycle or any other vehicle proceeding in the same direction.

(b) When preparing to turn left.


(c) When conditions make the right-hand edge of the roadway unsafe or reasonably unusable by bicycles, including, but not limited to, surface hazards, an uneven roadway surface, drain openings, debris, parked or moving vehicles or bicycles, pedestrians, animals, or other obstacles, or if the lane is too narrow to permit a vehicle to safely overtake and pass a bicycle.

(d) When operating a bicycle in a lane in which the traffic is turning right but the individual intends to go straight through the intersection.

(e) When operating a bicycle upon a 1-way highway or street that has 2 or more marked traffic lanes, in which case the individual may ride as near the left-hand curb or edge of that roadway as practicable.

From m-bike.org

Here is the relevant bit of logic:
Bikes should ride with the flow of traffic.  On sidewalks they interfere with pedestrian traffic and if you use the crosswalks you will end up at least temporarily riding against the flow of traffic, which makes everyone nervous.  Out in the left turn lane you are visible and it is clear what you are going to do next make a left turn and as long as you follow traffic laws everyone should be fine.

Just passing this along:

I really liked the last bit of this article:

My nominees for some to-be-agreed-upon principles: cars and trucks are the most dangerous things on the road and should yield to pedestrians and cyclists.
Cyclists are the next most dangerous things on the road, and should yield to pedestrians and watch out for cars and trucks.
Pedestrians are the most vulnerable things and so should be very aware of cyclists, cars and trucks.
To ride a bicycle without brakes is a declaration of reckless indifference for one's own life and so is evidence of reckless indifference for one's fellow citizens' safety.
Everyone should always imagine, while being a pedestrian, cyclist, or driver, what the people doing the other two things are reasonably likely to think/assume/act on, and act accordingly.
We all want to get where we're going in one piece. No one wants to be talking to the cops, the insurance company, or the newspapers. And one fundamental fact of living in cities is having to deal with other people. Lots of them. So, can we all just get along?

Read the whole thing here.

Welcome to Detroit

After basically abandoning this blog since I returned from Nicaragua I have decided to try to revive it. I just moved to Detroit and already feel like there is lots to say. I envision to be a little bit observations about Detroit, a little urban homesteader, a little food blog and little bike blog.

So let's start with bike. I've been for those of you who may not know, my bike looks like this:
















It is a Surly Big Dummy with an Xtracycle rack system on the rear. It is pretty much the best thing ever. I use it for touring and lots of around town riding. I've been a bike commuter for years, but when I worked on the farm in Walla Walla still had to use a pick up truck often for farm errands. No more though. Now that I am living the city life in Detroit it is a different story though. I have zero car and am riding in a completely different environment.

So far the motor city has been good to my bike and I. There is a nice bike lane on my street and I get to go over a pedestrian bridge on the way to work (and the bridge and its street are named after my last name, obviously they knew I was coming). The drivers have been better than I expected as well. Only got honked at a couple times for riding with traffic and many folks went out of their way to give me extra room.

Of course, with a bike like mine I get a lot of comments. Here are some choice ones:
- Guy on a Harley with his girlfriend on the back rode at 10 mph with me for 2 blocks to talk to me about the bike and the possibilities for carrying people on the back.
- Guy asked me if it was homemade. I said I wished.
- Guy in front of CADILLAC PLACE in the MOTOR CITY told me that my bike was "A Cadillac on 2 wheels"
- Guy at the bus stop jokingly asked me for a ride, I turned around and told him I could take him down the block. He said he had to go farther but said he'd catch me some other time.

Food Webs

It is that early morning time, when the dew still hide on the west side of grass blades and the birds are still the dominant sound in the air. This is the time of cutting flowers and picking spinach and checking irrigation lines. This is the time for a cup of tea and a deep brearth of air. This is the time that makes farming the best job on earth.

That time before most people are working is the peak of your day, your rush hour. Before the heat begins to rise and sun to beat down you have to move all the cut flowers into buckets of cold water and coolers. The leafy greens must be picked and plunged into cold water and the peas hidden in buckets placed in the shade. The quality and keeping power of your wares relies on your ability to beat the sun and work with water shade and breeze to preserve freshness and moisture. At the same time you are filled with business and eagerness, the rest of the world is only barely stirring, thinking not of heat and crisp heads of lettuce, but of coffee and starting car engines.

This fails to capture the reason that I love the morning, and also my job though. Perhaps it is that the morning is new and filled with energy. I will never feel so good for the rest of the day as I do the moments after finishing morning stretches and shaking the sleep from my limbs. Maybe it is the anticipation of what is to come, the Farmers Market oohs and aahs at the bouquets, or the crisp salads yet to be cooked. There certainly is much satisfaction in the mother who buys your spinach to make baby food. For the restuaranters, co-op and families that I well to, there is certainly an element of trust, in purity, nutrition and quality, that fills my work with a certain meaningfulness and purpose.

But what is sometimes perhaps even more satisfying is seeing the land that I work, rather that what most people think of as a farmer's “finished product”. Undoubtedly part of the reason that I so love the morning is that I am not the only part of the farm that is feeling most lively first thing in the morning. Beetles scuttle from bark chip to fallen leaf. Pill bugs look for a place to stay wet through the day. Bees buzz happily about my fingers as I cut the flooms that they are hurriedly harvesting from. Robins, starlings, storks and numerous other birds flit in the air, and quails running out of the brush pile as I walk by.

Being able to be a part of this piece of land, finding my livelihood among so many other livelihoods is really what makes the whole endeavor worth while. As farmer perhaps it is best to say that I am the bridge, between a human food web of restuarants grocery stores farmers markets and dinner plates and a wilder food web; of bird eat bug eat bug eat leaf.

Another good reason to deliver flowers by bike

Rather than in the truck:
It is easier for the owner of Graze to shout at you from the sidewalk: "HEY! Are you selling those flowers?"

And of course the answer is "Why yes, yes I am."

Time

Time is such an interesting thing. There are so many ways of marking and so many reasons that it is a good idea to pay attention to it.

I don't mean in the way that most people pay attention to time, the minutes and seconds of the day, the day of the week, how many hours until the next event.

I am thinking more of passage of the earth through the cosmos and the rest of the cosmos around each other as well. I can't say that I am very good at paying attention to these things, but the cards imply that I should pay more attention.

As a farmer, I already pay attention to the sun more than most. I know the times that it goes up and down, and how that will change as the seasons do. I know how it passes through the sky during the day, much lower in the winter, barely rising above the large trees in the front of the property. During the hotter months it will stary behid the eastern trees only until 8 AM, and then start to make the spinach wilt.

I wish I knew more of the stars and the moon though. The constellations of the zodiac which I plant by, but rely on a calendar to tell me what they are doing. I can't pick out more than a few, and don't recognize a single planet. I can usually remember if the moon is waxing or waning, but not whether it is falling or rising.

These are the things I need to know if I really want to understand time. Time means nothing without movement, and the movement of the large things is important to understanding that.

I also hope to see the movement of the smaller things as time passes, but that is a series of thoughts for another day.