The Art of Cycling, by Robert Hurst
Nov. 8th, 2008 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aIn looking for fun accessories for my bike (I want an odometer/speedometer), I came across a book, The Art of Cycling by Robert Hurst, which said it was about urban cycling in the 21st century. Intrigued by those points, I immediately picked it up (at my local library).
It had a lot of material about a suggested style of writing in the city, but it turns out that it's already how I ride. The author calls it a hybrid of the "vehicular style" and the "invisible style".
The vehicular style of riding is what's been pushed by bicyclist activists over the years (to an increasingly militant degree). They believe that you should ride like a vehicle on the street (or at least they do until they find fascist laws like stop signs and red lights too heavy a burden), and they're pretty much totally unwilling to get off a main street, dismount from their bike, or otherwise show any throat to The Man.
The invisible style of riding suggests that you're invisible to some cars, and so you have to ride like that. So, you take bike lanes and bike paths and quiet streets. If traffic is too heavy, you walk.
By combining the two, the author suggests that you should always move toward enjoyment, calm, and quiet when you can, that you should map out a safer route even if it takes more time, that you can make a left hand turn by dismounting from your bike and walking around the crosswalks if traffic is too heavy, etc. But, he says that you also need to be an expert vehicularist, for when you need to ride the busy streets. In other words, the writer is very much a pragmatist, where I think many riders are blind idealists.
And, as I said, that's how I ride already. I'm not afraid to ride Telegraph or Broadway, and I know how to interact intelligently with cars, but I'm also not afraid to get off my bike or to take a quieter street when I should.
I'd say that it's just plain common sense, but the attitude of bicyclists at Critical Mass suggests that there's nothing common about sense.
I did pick up two pieces of useful safety advice:
First, the writer suggests that whenever you're on the street and there isn't a car straight behind you, you should drift from the shoulder to the center of that first lane. The idea is that this "default position" is safer, because you're most likely to be surprised by something coming at you directly from the right, and this gives you an extra couple of feet to react.
Second, the writer suggests that you "mind the gap"--which is to say that if you're in a big gap between cars on an otherwise busy street, you really have to watch for drivers turning into you (particularly, making a left-hand turn into you) because they might get all hot and bothered about what looks to them (in their blind, half-assed driving) like a true gap in the traffic.
I also realized that I should really have a pack with some tire levers, glue, and tire patches permanently in my backpack; I've been quite lucky to not have picked up a flat in years. I thought it was just these hybrid bike tires (as opposed to the older racing bike tires that I used to have), but the folks at Missing Link assures me there are still plenty of flats out there, waiting to leap at your bike.
It had a lot of material about a suggested style of writing in the city, but it turns out that it's already how I ride. The author calls it a hybrid of the "vehicular style" and the "invisible style".
The vehicular style of riding is what's been pushed by bicyclist activists over the years (to an increasingly militant degree). They believe that you should ride like a vehicle on the street (or at least they do until they find fascist laws like stop signs and red lights too heavy a burden), and they're pretty much totally unwilling to get off a main street, dismount from their bike, or otherwise show any throat to The Man.
The invisible style of riding suggests that you're invisible to some cars, and so you have to ride like that. So, you take bike lanes and bike paths and quiet streets. If traffic is too heavy, you walk.
By combining the two, the author suggests that you should always move toward enjoyment, calm, and quiet when you can, that you should map out a safer route even if it takes more time, that you can make a left hand turn by dismounting from your bike and walking around the crosswalks if traffic is too heavy, etc. But, he says that you also need to be an expert vehicularist, for when you need to ride the busy streets. In other words, the writer is very much a pragmatist, where I think many riders are blind idealists.
And, as I said, that's how I ride already. I'm not afraid to ride Telegraph or Broadway, and I know how to interact intelligently with cars, but I'm also not afraid to get off my bike or to take a quieter street when I should.
I'd say that it's just plain common sense, but the attitude of bicyclists at Critical Mass suggests that there's nothing common about sense.
I did pick up two pieces of useful safety advice:
First, the writer suggests that whenever you're on the street and there isn't a car straight behind you, you should drift from the shoulder to the center of that first lane. The idea is that this "default position" is safer, because you're most likely to be surprised by something coming at you directly from the right, and this gives you an extra couple of feet to react.
Second, the writer suggests that you "mind the gap"--which is to say that if you're in a big gap between cars on an otherwise busy street, you really have to watch for drivers turning into you (particularly, making a left-hand turn into you) because they might get all hot and bothered about what looks to them (in their blind, half-assed driving) like a true gap in the traffic.
I also realized that I should really have a pack with some tire levers, glue, and tire patches permanently in my backpack; I've been quite lucky to not have picked up a flat in years. I thought it was just these hybrid bike tires (as opposed to the older racing bike tires that I used to have), but the folks at Missing Link assures me there are still plenty of flats out there, waiting to leap at your bike.