Normally when you see a school bus on the road you usually quitely remember the times of your youth spent riding in school buses.  Or at least I used to think these things.  Now that I bicycle everywhere that I used to drive to, when I see a school bus I start emergency planning.  You see the only drivers that have ever come close to endangering my life are public school bus drivers.  They consistently pass when it is dangerous to do so and have run me off the road a half dozen times already.  I've even had one driver try to tell me it was OK that she ran me off the road because  I was moving to slow (the fact that I was 100 yards from a red light didn't seem to matter). 

    Now this bothers me for several reasons.  First off this means that a public institution is creating my biggest daily safety concern.  And secondly, how the hell are school bus drivers getting their jobs without knowing how to deal with slower vehicles!  I mean you would think that a job as resoponsible as shuttling our children would require that they have an above average knowledge of the laws.

Anyway, I complained, and hopefully it's not just going to fall down an administrative black hole.

    I actually didn't cycle today as everything I had to get out and do was less than a mile away and the weather was perfect(70 degrees F and sunny). So instead I just walked, pushing my daughter in the Bob. And I noticed, far more new people, cycling than I've ever seen out before, which is great.

    But, most of the new people I saw cycling where using the sidewalks. This is something that is actually pretty dangerous, more so most of the time than riding on the road. You see sidewalks are designed specifically for pedestrians, who move at 1-2mph, even joggers typically don't break 6mph. Which is slow enough for pedestrians to be able to safely negotiate passing and emergency collision avoidance on a 3' wide path. But even a casual cyclist will travel 8-10mph, and a cyclist moving at a good cruise will achieve 12-20mph. At those speeds the sidewalk is dangerously narrow for a bicycle, there simply is not enough time or room to safely pass pedestrians and other cyclists.

    To be fair, there are a lot of roads in the suburban environment that are also fairly dangerous for cyclists where the sidewalk might be a better choice. But realistically to be safe on a sidewalk a cyclist needs to slow down to less than 6mph and be much more alert than you would be on a street. Did I mention sidewalk designers don't care about blind turns either?

    While exploring new routes for my summer commute by bicycle today I found 3 out of 4 routes that proved to be five minutes faster at a mild pace than the normal commute by car (30 minutes). That's mostly due to less traffic lights, and a more direct route, still makes me smile though.

    I also found out that, unintentionally, that dragon flies taste worse than grasshoppers!

More doom and gloom(Russia Today), but look at the bright side, if your reading this chances are you are rich enough not to be starved to death by imminent market pressure!

A turn key solution for home ethanol production(product site) is soon to be available.

A very impressive story(active.com) of what something as simple as getting on a bike can do.

Keeping things aesthetically pleasing doesn't have to be unproductive.

Oh yeah, it's a really nice day out. I'm going to go ride my bike.