More Mid-Day Commuting

The rest of the family was home sick with the flu today, so I called in late to work. For Seattle commuters, it's often somewhat refreshing to commute during an odd hour. The traffic may not necessarily be lighter, but it's definitely different.

One major difference is the commute time. The "easy" feeder routes to get on the freeway aren't nearly as packed, so you can hop right on instead of fiddling around on side-streets. That one difference cuts 20 minutes off my commute time.

I know I've touched on this topic before, but the drivers are very different outside of rush hour. Much higher apparent idiot density during midday, although might be simply masked by that fact that the single-occupancy idiot are stuck in the parking lot that is the regular non-HOV lanes.

My gas mileage improves too, since the mid-day backups are rolling backups instead of stop and wait backups. There's times when my mileage gets down into the low-30s per US gallon, compared to the mid-40s I generally enjoy on the open road.

I'll see if I can backstop some of this with screenshots of the Seattle DOT traffic maps tomorrow comparing rush-hour and mid-day.

Commuting Gloves

I've been hunting around for a couple weeks now looking for a solution to a riding dilemma I have this season. I have two sets of gloves, one is a lovely "Seattle winter"-weight set of Olympia Monsoons that are holding up admirably even with heavy usage these past 3 years. The other set, was my first set of "real" M/C gloves, a pair of Joe Rocket all-leather gloves with an ungainly angled cuff.

Sadly, the JR's are worn out. The glove was unlined and the inner surface of the leather sticks to my fingertips when I'm riding. Unsurprisingly, this more than a little nauseating and all sorts of annoying.

My riding buddies all seem to like the Held gloves, most of them wax poetic about the Steve model of gloves. I'll probably pick up a pair of these, but they're a little more than I expected, both in budget and in construction. They're somewhat water-resistant and not quite summer-weight gloves either.

With the rather sagacious advice of another of the riders, I was advised to stock up on different kinds of gloves. Now, I'm never been much of a clothes horse, owning only a couple-three pairs of shoes and a half-dozen ties and but one suit. I think I might just along with this advice though. Here in Western Washington, as all the locals know, we have a strange climate combination caused by the Cascade Mountain Range. The west side, or wet-side, of the mountains gets all the rain, causing a desert on the other side, complete with sagebrush. And if you ride on both sides of the mountains, you need two different sets of gear.

Which brings me to the Alpinestars S-MX 3. I really hate the silly racer gloves with carbon-fiber on the knuckles and froo-froo bits of stuff tacked on here & there all over the glove. Puts me right off. But I might make a bit of an exception on the S-MX 3. I like the venting on the side of the fingers, which might come in handy if I do any riding in triple-digit (Fahrenheit, obviously) temperatures. And while it does have bits of stuff here & there, it doesn't have the uber-ridiculous CF crap on it.

Cager Clobbers Scooter in Portland Construction Zone

Sadly, we have yet another case of bewildered cagers unable to control their vehicles in challenging surroundings.

PORTLAND, Ore. - A woman was severely injured Wednesday when her Vespa scooter collided with a car near a construction zone near East Burnside Street and 14th Avenue in Portland.

Nearby witnesses say they tried to get the attention of the driver of the car before the accident, but were not successful.

The scooter impacted the passenger side of a red Subaru Outback Wagon, severely injuring the rider, who was wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet.

She is currently recovering from surgery at a Portland hospital.

Two witnesses say the woman driving the red Subaru was going through a construction zone when they tried to alert her that scooter was headed towards her, but she apparently did not see the warning.

Police cited the driver of the car for failing to stop at a stop sign.

The woman on the scooter is expected to recover from multiple injuries and surgery, but reportedly has no health insurance.

I particularly don't like the spin that the KATU editor put on the wording of her story. The story is written such that the reader assumes that the rider was at fault right up until the sentence indicating the cager was cited. Very sloppy journalism.

I'll see if I can find some more information on this story and post some follow-up. Something about this particular coverage doesn't ring entirely true.

Driving Doped Up

This one is absolutely disgusting. Cager doped-up on morphine drives his SUV into a group of motorcyclists participating in a charity ride to benefit the family of another cyclist who recently died of cancer.
While there's certainly no good news to come of this, the driver in question has plead guilty to all 16 charges against him, including vehicular homicide while under the influence, and is facing as much as 16 years behind bars.

Coverage from The Citizens Voice.

Borrin, 23, Hazleton, told Luzerne County Judge Chester Muroski he wanted to control his own destiny and avoid a jury trial.

"I would think you would be pleading guilty because you did it," Muroski said to Borrin.

"Yes, I did it," Borrin replied.

Borrin was accused of driving his Chevy Blazer while under the influence of morphine into a group of motorcycle riders on state Route 309 in Butler Township on July 24.

William "Butch" Delaney Jr., 41, was killed and his wife, Linda, suffered permanent injuries. Four other riders, Paul Huber, his wife, Helen, Mark Hozlock and Michael Jacobs, had to take evasive action to avoid the crash, Assistant District Attorney Michael Vough said.

Jerks like this really make me wish we still had "hard labor" as a sentencing option.

Cagers Flying Solo.....In the HOV Lane

I saw a lot of this particular scofflaw behavior this morning on the way in. I try to avoid the freeway for the obvious reason (straight, boring, crowded, etc.), but I was in a hurry this morning and took the quick way in.
One thing I noticed right off though, was the really high percentage of cagers driving solo in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane on the freeway.

Now that's one really odd thing about the HOV lanes on that freeway. That freeway's busy and the HOV lane is well used. Rarely do you get to pick up more than about 50 spots along that entire section of road. The HOV lane is just as full as the others. Yet here they are risking a $400 ticket in order to go 2mph faster and get a full eigth of a mile farther along than the other 4 lanes. Idiocy.

The best part was watching the HOV lane come to a full stop as about 1/4 of the traffic suddenly merges out of the lane everytime they come up on a parked traffic officer or a traffic stop in progress. It was terribly amusing, really, as I got to waggle my finger at some of the cagers as I coasted by them once through the rolling stoppage.

More Road Photos -- Mountain View Dr

Here's two photos from my scan job yesterday. Kind of odd, since it was really foggy that day back in October. The twisty little road is Mountain View Drive, about 5-6 miles from my house.

Triumph Trident 900

The Triumph Trident is a bike that I've always found terribly intriguing, but I've never gotten a chance to ride.As most motorcyclists know, triples are odd ducks, especially in the US where it seems that if it's not a air-cooled V-Twin or a high-output Inline-4, you're a loser.

I really want to ride one of these some day though.



Photo from www.rhiwlas.demon.co.uk.

Cagers and Speed Limits

Here's a ironic bit of BS coming off the Wichita KAKE.com website.

"We hear the squealing of tires, we hear the ambulances come, there hae been too numerous to mention accidents on this corner," said Seaburn.

Seaburn says drivers coming off I-235 are moving too fast, and many drivers barely slow down off 37th street turning right. Bus driver Jim Reitler says he sees it every day.

Okay. This doesn't surprise me. Cagers do this stuff all the time. One of my co-workers got hit by an Olsmobile that was doing about 40mph heading across an intersection into an on-ramp while she was crossing the street to catch a bus.

But it gets better.

"We would really like to see something done about the speed limit," said Seaburn. "Being brought down and maybe law enforcement enforcing it."

Seaburn says the accident is especially painful for her because her cousin was the driver of the SUV that hit the motorcycle.

"She is okay but she's very very torn up," said Seaburn.

Okay, I can buy that. People in the But I'm sure she's nowhere near as torn up as the family of the motorcyclist she killed with her SUV.

One thing I simply don't understand is the number of people who believe that "something must be done" by the goverment, usually meaning some new law or other. How about a little enforcement? I'm well aware that there's a vast segment of the motorcycling public that gets extremely wound-up about law enforcement "revenue generation" activities regarding speed limits. But a speed limit on an off-ramp isn't one of those unreasonable places, and motorists whether cager or motorcyclists, need to learn to keep the speed down when they get off the freeway.

We may not like speed limits, but they're there for a reason. If the clueless cagers see us zooming through traffic at 30 over, they do one of two things: a) they call the cops, which is reasonable or b) they try and do the same in their big, heavy cars. This latter one isn't so good, as they're vehicles can't stop as well as ours assuming equal skills, and to put it bluntly, those skills are rarely equal.

New Roads & Found Photos

It's nice when I stumble across old disposable cameras and rolls of film that I've forgotten about. Kind of like opening up the presents of Christmas Day when you open the cover on the envelopes of photographs.

Some of the photographs in those disposable invariably don't turn out, such as those taken in grey weather, but a few are really nice. I'll be scanning those in this weekend and posting them periodically.

And also, a bit of sobering advice from a rider in Texas:

"When approaching intersections, probably take it down a notch or two, lower your speed," he advised. "You have to be overly cautious on a bike because people don`t really seem to pay attention."

Lubbock police say the accident was not Duncan`s fault; the driver in the car made an illegal turn. Duncan is glad the driver wasn`t hurt, but he hopes other drivers in Lubbock will learn from her mistake.

"She was just not paying attention to see that there was oncoming traffic, and we are traffic," he said. "We are not just someone riding a bicycle that shouldn`t be crossing an intersection ... it`s a means of transportation."

A bit optimistic there, I'd say. Using the word "learn" when referring to cage drivers is a bit of a stretch, IMHO.

Driving While Distracted

I'm not surprised by this little blurb from HometownAnnapolis.com. It's the same crappy driving I see the time from the drivers around here. They're not paying attention to their driving, they're changing the radio station, talking on the phone or (worse) fiddling with the DVD player to shut the kids up while hurtling down the road in their 3-ton SUVs.

Caution urged after motorcycle crashes
By SCOTT DAUGHERTY, Staff Writer

A Baltimore man was critically injured yesterday in the county's second motorcycle crash in three days, a grim signal that motorcycle season - and motorcycle accident season - has begun.

Richard Colt Wells, 41, was in critical but stable condition this morning at the Shock-Trauma Center at University Hospital in Baltimore.

He suffered serious injuries after a minivan rear-ended his 1979 Harley Davidson bike in Ferndale, knocking it forward and pushing him under a 2005 Ford service van, county police said.

Mr. Wells was stopped on Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard at Broadview Boulevard behind James J. Paschke's van around 11:15 a.m. yesterday when he was struck by a southbound 1990 Plymouth Voyager driven by Ernest Lee Williams, 40, of 4110 Duane Ave., Brooklyn, police said. The minivan continued on after the impact, swerved to the left and stopped about 20 feet in front of the full-size van.

What is disconcerting is the increasing frequency of these inattentive drivers is the gross display of irresponsibility when they not only don't call 911 for the motorcyclist they just severely-injured or killed, but instead take off and flee the area. I still think this vehicular assault stuff is bullshit, run them up on negligent homicide charges and let them spend 3-5 in the state penitentiary. A car is a weapon, and it's high time somebody explained that to the somnambulent cagers.

How to Get Away with DUI Vehicular Assault in 7 Easy Steps

Well, I'm rather used to cage drivers getting away with a slap on the wrist here in Washington whenever they cause death or grievous harm to a motorcyclist, but getting a pat and run on the head is a little ridiculous.

This story has received quite a bit of coverage on this site previously, and I'm quite disgusted to hear exactly how lightly this guy got off for driving THAT drunk (.17 BAC) and hitting a motorcyclist and pretty much wrecking his life. The following quote from the News-Tribune.

Longtime Bethel High School football coach Eric Kurle pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of vehicular assault and was sentenced to three months incarceration with work-release privileges for triggering a 2005 accident that left a motorcyclist seriously injured.

I suppose we now know exactly what our life is worth to the powers-that-be in Northern Pierce County. This quote from the victim (courtesy of the Herald) sums up what I think of this whole mess.

"I'm broke from my ankles to my neck," Christopher Butts said after Thursday's sentencing hearing, which he called "insulting to me and my family."

Another typical case of small-town injustice. The success of the bloody high-school football team being more important than making sure you get drunk drivers and felons off the road. I don't know the name of the judge yet, but he or she clearly needs to be thrown out and somebody who understand the law and the concept of justice put on the bench instead.

Sources: News-Tribune HeraldNet KGW.com

Icy Conditions

I'm not really sure what's up with the weather in Seattle this winter. It's terribly unusual for us to have conditions that are consistently below freezing, but that's exactly what we're getting this year. We're getting entire weeks (sometimes two) where the temps drop into the upper 20s at night and only edge into the lower 40 or upper 30s during the warmest parts of the day.

I remember several seasons where I could ride to work in downtown Seattle every morning and the temperature gauge on the bank would invariably be in the upper 30s, usually 37F exactly.

That's definitely not what we're getting this winter. The temps this morning were so chilly that I had to do some creative routing so that my trip didn't go over any seldom-traveled overpasses that might be below freezing and not have the benefit of the warmth of the ground to keep it above freezing.

Having had one icy mishap on the roads this season, I'm not terribly keen about the concept of riding around on the ice. Granted, I got my tires replaced with newer and therefore stickier Avons, but that won't do a whole bunch of good if the road's a sheet of ice.

Well, here's to hoping spring comes sooner rather than later.

Two-Footed Drivers

I've been seeing a lot of these cretins running around lately. They seem to be especially plentiful, or at least espeically annoying, when you're behind them on a narrow twisty two-lane blacktop and they're ambling along for miles at 5 under the limit with their brakes dragging ever so slightly the whole time.

I don't suppose I need to include a photo, you know who I'm talking about.

Return to Commuting

Anyone who lives here in the Seattle area knows about the monsoon-like winter season we had recently, where there was significant rainfall for 29 consecutive days. I pretty much parked the bike for most of this, as I needed new tires (12k on the Avons) and then I had to wait for the rain to stop to break in the brand new skins and not crash in the attempt.

Well. Apparently I got rusty in the interim. I've found myself relearning all those wonderful moto-commuting skills, such as the following.

• Watch the blind spots. Especially those stupid SUVs and Minivans with the tinted or solid windows in the back, those people can't see squat when they're lane-changing. The slower the traffic flow is, the easier it is for those people to swerve directly at you. And without those windows, they can't do a shoulder-check.


• Watch the mid-lane oil strips, especially when leaned over. While you may not crash if you hit one of those, those 10" tire slides will wake you up in a hell of a hurry.


• And of course, the cagers. They're not used to seeing motorcyclists again, so they have to once again remember that we're out there. And we all know how dense the American morning commuter can be. Especially if they've only had two or three cups of coffee instead of their usual four or five.

Really, the whole thing just makes me jealous of California, actually. Not only is lane-splitting illegal here, but the other drivers don't tolerate it either. I get enough people attempting to harass or strike me with their vehicles as it is.