DANGER! at Kerley and Cornwallis.

As a blogger I get to see Google searches that land people on my site. For example people looking for a Carhartt hat often land here, or nude cycling, or free beer.

A couple of days ago I got a couple of searches that caught my eye, then got me thinking, and searching the internet myself for information:

You see as much as I could see, but I will almost guarantee that the intersection in question is Kerley and Cornwallis.







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I love flying down hills at top speed!

Right before this intersection with Kerley, Cornwallis has an excellent hill to get your wheels spinning. However, halfway down the hill is the intersection with Kerley. Cornwallis traffic has the right of way, Kerley has stop signs.

Legally, as a cyclist you have every right to fly through this intersection at full speed. Realistically, SLOW THE F DOWN. This is not the hill to fly down, you'll get your ass killed. Trust me.

Cars stopped at this intersection, espescially in the morning, can't see shit when they look up this hill. One, you're a tiny bicycle, two, in the morning the sun is at the top of the hill.

Recipe for disaster!

If you're flying down the hill at 40 mph, and a car on Kerley doesn't see you, you're toast.

I have now heard of one confirmed accident at this intersection, I also have the search result from a couple of days ago, and I almost got in an accident at the intersection myself.

For me it was the exact situation described above, morning, me flying at 40mph, car stopped on Kerley pulls out having not seen me. Fortunately I was able to yell loud enough to get their attention, so they didn't make it all the way in front of me, and I swerved around the front of the golden Prius.

Remember: You're invisible to the folks in their motorized boxes. Be safe.

Clegg's Pest Control

I'm not a heavy user of the pest control industry. I have a distaste for the chemicals they use. I was, however apathetic to their ubiquitous presence until today. Today I was nearly run off the road by a truck belonging to Clegg's Pest Control. You know the company with the tank logo on their trucks?

Yeah, that's a tank, not a raccoon skin hat.

I would refuse to use their services until they showed a good faith effort to train their employees about road rules, but like I said, I don't use pest control services. So I'm stuck writing a blog post about how crappy their drivers are.

And then I can just hope that my blog post makes it to the first page of google results for Clegg's, and those who ride a bike regularly or love somebody who rides a bike regularly (I fit both categories) will think twice about using their services.

How bad was it? The truck passed me at about 35 mph, and gave me maybe 6 inches of room. I've been buzzed before by vehicles, but this was ridiculous. One little wobble on my part and I could have been clobbered by the side mirror.

Nude Cycling

Warning: this post may be a little NSFW due to censored cartoon nudity and genital mutilation.
Why do people bike naked?

If you read the Wikipedia entry the goal is to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world." 


Sounds like a terrible idea to me. Bikes have a lot of sharp bits that I'd rather not have contact my tender bits. 

Sure, it wouldn't happen like the above picture, but you could fall and get yer niblets caught somewhere.


On top of it not being a great idea because of the dangers involved, in my opinion it also doesn't really deliver the message it's aiming for. I've never thought bringing out the crazy was the way to get your message across. And I fail to see how a bunch of naked/semi-naked people riding bikes through town "deliver[s] a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world."

I could protest obesity by going out in public and setting fire to bologna and mustard sandwich on nutrient deficient white bread...

...but I'd probably end up spending the night in a rubber room. While the activity of burning the sandwich was related in a way to obesity, it really does not convey my message. 


I see naked biking in the same light. The message is in there somewhere, but between the people who are offended by the flapping genitalia, and those who just didn't realize there was a message to be seen, nobody save the cyclists themselves really get the message.


And I'm guessing half the cyclists don't even understand the message.


Ok, time to go for a fully clothed ride.

OW OW OW OW OW OW!

The other day it was hot. My jersey zipper was obscenely low as I rode home at around 5:30 PM.

My chest hair blowing in the wind, the little I have. I rode down the big hill. This hill is big for flat ol' Chapel Hill, it is in fact the hill referred to by the town name. I can get up to 40 mph on this hill, don't tell the cops (Speed limit is 35.) I was going 40 this day, did I mention it was hot, the breeze felt good.

Then along came a little bee...

It flew into my shirt, bypassing the chest hair, right straight to my armpit.

So I'm flying down the Chapel Hill, at 40 mph on a bicycle being stung repeatedly in the armpit by a small bee, that I'm sure just wanted out of my shirt.

To top it all off, I already had a scrape on my arm and a bruise on my leg from a prior spill. In reaching frantically for the bee in my armpit with my scabbed over arm, I managed to open that wound. I did not however manage to kill the bee that continued to sting my armpit over and over and over. That whole thing about bees stinging once then dying is horseshit by the way.

When I got to the bottom of the hill, I pulled up on the sidewalk, retrieved the bee out of my shirt and squished it. Several times.

It was still a hot 95°F, and now I was paranoid to ride with my jersey wide open, and my armpit, elbow and leg were all throbbing. But I got that bee dammit.

WELCOME BACK STUDENTS!!!!!!!!!

Welcome back to the Triangle, UNC, Duke, NCSU, and NCCU students. I have recently had a small uptick in google searches about biking in the Durham/Chapel Hill area, I will assume these come from new students in the area wondering about using bikes to get around the Triangle.

With the return of students to the area comes a lot of automobile traffic. So if you're a student driving a car around: Don't hit me.

For students with bikes, this blog has information about getting around by bike. I commute from Durham to Chapel Hill by bike almost every day, so here I have compiled a list of all the routes I've used with descriptions of the roads and traffic.

I also bike through the winter, and have biked on the coldest mornings that the Triangle has to offer (16°F). For these mornings I have written posts about the clothing I wore and how well it protected me from the weather.

On top of those useful posts I post random crap, rants about whatever, tidbits about my bike, and even a post about a bike trip through The Gambia I did almost ten years ago.

I hope you can find a useful bit of information here. Have a good school year!

Velos et le Vin

Kyra and I have started a new activity, which we really enjoy, and I hope we do several more times over the spring and summer months. It started on a beautiful Saturday in February, when we loaded the bikes on the car and headed west to the small town of Saxapahaw, North Carolina. I knew we had biking and dinner plans, but there was also to be a birthday surprise for me along the way. Turns out the surprise was a wine tasting excursion near the end of our ride at Benjamin Vineyards. It was a very nice end to a lovely ride through rural North Carolina.
    Well today we did it again making it almost a tradition. Today we parked the car at Horizon Cellars and Winery, just south of Siler City, NC. We went on a 23 mile ride and at the end we did a wine tasting and sat on the Winery's deck to each sip a glass of wine chosen after the tasting. Again, it was a lovely day, and we had a very nice time riding among NC farmland. We saw cows, horses, llamas, goats, and heard some roosters along the way.
     At the winery we sat in the fading afternoon sun and sipped red wine and relaxed. I think we'll do that again soon.