Holy bejezus, it is cold outside. This morning was the first real test for a pair of gloves I bought in the fall when I realized that my last pair of winter commuting gloves (well, mittens over gloves) were no longer up to the task of the cold days.

Unfortunately, I knew pretty quickly that they failed in the extreme cold this morning. I really had expected them to make it. My commute is just long enough that frozen painful fingers are likely tear-inducing, but not life-or-limb threatening. I was lamenting this tragic situation and how not-enjoyable the rest of my morning commute would be and the impending awful evening commute when the solution appeared in the road.

There were two unopened packs of air-activated handwarmers laying in the street. The stoplight behind me had just flipped to a 4-way walk signal, and I easily stopped in the street to grab them. They were both covered with road salt, but otherwise in top shape.

So, if you lost some handwarmers on Lake St. recently, thanks. I owe you, one. I’ll try to find a way to pay it forward.

A transportation nerd will tell you that creating conditions for safe travel requires appropriate, maintained infrastructure, safe behaviors by all parties using that infrastructure (culturally ingrained and legally enacted), and appropriate use of safety enhancing equipment.

When bad things happen to cyclists, most people will ask about a few of these objects of safety. Did he have lights? Was she wearing a helmet?

People who care about everyday cyclists and cycling issues ask about the infrastructure and behaviors surrounding the crash so that they might be able to take that information and make the infrastructure better or make more people aware of the behaviors that led to a cyclist getting hurt or killed and made a family cry more than they should have to.

And these are big issues that make all kinds of people angry because someone isn’t taking the issue seriously enough, and somebody else doesn’t understand how that parking space is really a necessity, or that we truly need tractor trailers on narrow streets or whatever these things are that people care about this time. And then these conversations seem to pause and begin to move at the time scale of infrastructure, legal, and cultural change – slow, incremental, long quiet periods with short bursts of action.

Changing the big stuff is hard, but I can buy a new light or stick a shinier helmet on my head or buy an obscenely expensive object that claims to enhance my safety.

People keep focusing on objects of safety because they are small, and often pretty, and they are something that an individual can control  We can kickstarter a louder bicycle light, for whatever that’s worth. We probably can’t kickstarter 10 more miles of cycletrack or to actually complete the Mass Ave project (I promise to donate $5 if someone does manage to do this).

We rely heavily on these objects to do their job. I trust that my brakes will continue to function, and I put on a helmet just in case my tires slip on some slush.  Every evening, I count on some tiny LEDs and conspicuous bits of reflective plastic to keep tired, distracted people in multi-ton steel contraptions from accidentally running over me and thirty pounds worth of bicycle while I patiently wait to turn left across two lanes of Mass Ave traffic onto the neighborhood street that takes me home.

While driving my bicycle home, I see examples of people who adopt these objects of safety but haven’t consciously thought about the job these objects are supposed to do.

There’s some evidence that people who take efforts to make themselves visible over estimate their visibility to drivers.  This doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t try to be visible, but all of these measures – the reflectors, the lights, the high-vis material – work together to put together a picture that a human being with friends and family and hopes and dreams is on the road trying to go somewhere, just like everyone else. There are effective and less effective ways to do this.

Not all of these objects are equal. I don’t think a $100 bow tie with retroreflective threads is any more safe than a $10 pair of reflective/high-vis combo ankle bands (in fact, the ankle bands might be more usefully visible).

Here, the minuteman guy has graciously demonstrated in my place: but as a short person with jackets of varying length, I can’t reliably use a seat post light, as my jacket or whatever is on my rear rack will likely obscure it. I use lights attached to my rear rack, helmet, or bag, depending on what makes the most sense or is actually in use.

Reflectors, including any kind of retroreflective fabric or tape, are only helpful when positioned such that direct light that is brighter than the ambient light conditions will hit them. They also need to cover a large enough area to be distinguishable from visual clutter at a useful distance. The vests worn by highway workers have 2-inch wide bands of retroreflective materials. A little bit of decorative retro-reflective jacket piping might be enough for someone in a driveway to see a sidewalk speed walker, but is it enough for someone travelling at 40 mph to see you in the road?

This goes for lights, too. This might be groundbreaking territory: mystery urban sludgeydust is somewhat opaque.  Lights/Reflectors only work when they are mostly clean (I am talking to you, guy-with-eighty-dollar-reflective-walled-commuter-tires-who-hasn’t-washed-your-bike-in-six-months)

Fluorescent materials also need some actual light to be seen; they’re better during twilight and daytime than most other fabrics, but they don’t actually glow in the dark. Wearing a giant yellow anorak isn’t a panacea.

Traveling with a handful of these objects of safety might not be doing you any favors, if they are giving you more confidence in your visibility than they are contributing to helping other people see you. I can’t imagine that the girl I see at least once a week with no lights (but reflectors!) knows she is invisible, or that tall guy I see sometimes pass me on the way home knows that his tiny, road-mud-splattered, single-LED light is barely visible 25 feet back…

I don’t think you have to wear a safety vest or have 8000 lumens on-board or invest hundreds of dollars in lights to be visible to other drivers and pedestrians, but please do yourself a favor and figure out if the objects you bring to feel safe on the roads are actually helping you get from A to B in one piece.

Safe Travels. The winter is just getting started…

The offending frayed cable, from the most recent episode. I don’t have a camera with the capacity to take a good photo of small items.

3rd frayed rear derailleur cable leading to catastrophic failure on 2nd bike with Tiagra in the last 10 months. This is ridiculous. I had to add “check cables” every three months to my Google calendar, and will now waste a few dollars replacing them every 6 months like clockwork to prevent the un-fun experience of 2-speed cycling all the way home. I will have to seriously consider non-Shimano options for future upgrades…

I went errand running on the Minuteman trail, and at an intersection I stopped for a pedestrian crossing the perpendicular sidewalk and a skinny senior citizen roadie with a circa 1994 jersey on a steel bike of similar vintage making a left-hand turn from the roadway onto the trail, headed in the same direction as me. He stopped for me to cross, but I waved him through, as I figured he’d be going a lot faster than me.

It turns out that I was wrong, but as I passed him, he said to me “it almost looked like you were doing a trackstand there!”

I think he meant it as a compliment. I was fairly certain that I had done a trackstand at the intersection, but maybe on my ridiculous commuting bike wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and (also wrinkled) skirt, he really wasn’t expecting it? I just laughed like it was a joke, because really, what else could I do?

Then later,  I got on my road bike in the ridiculous clothes meant for that purpose and took the Minuteman again, this time to get to Lexington where these things called “roads” don’t have traffic lights and MBTA bus stops every 12 feet. After arriving in Lexington, one can ride on these roads, upon which people can use a conveyance to travel in the same direction at high speeds while following a similar code of behavior. Crazy concept, I know.

I was headed west on the trail with some uber-commuters, and this guy sat behind me for awhile and then as he came around to pass he made some choice rude comments about the pedestrians we had recently passed. Now, these were not the smartest of pedestrians — the ones who zig zag across the center line for no real reason (maybe due to texting-while-walking?), but it’s an MUP and they belong on it, and it’s okay. There are these things called roads, and they are for people who want to go really fast while on-or-in wheeled devices.

This guy was really angry. He really wanted me to agree with him that the path was filled with idiots. I expressed my belief that these paths were for all users, and you had to accept that some were small children and some were blind and some might just not be all together present in the moment, but I don’t think he heard me.

But beyond my two weird conversations on the bike path, the major highlight of the very same day was getting someone else’s farmshare. Dan and I didn’t sign up with a CSA because we are used to having our own personal garden and growing a farmshare worth of food for about $35/year. Our community garden application was rejected, so we’ve been growing about a 1/4 farmshare worth of food in containers on our apartments “lawn” (for about $50 for the summer). What our sad urban garden lacks in diversity, we make up in salad greens and tiny, container-stunted tomatoes and peppers.

Some friends are out of town and offered us their CSA allotment for the week. I picked it up today, and then when I was out riding in the early evening, I could only think about how amazing it was to have fresh beets and happy fresh eggs for the first time in forever. So,  I cut the ride short just to come home and cook fresh food.

Frittata made with farmshare eggs, tomato, carrot and basil, with Cabot cheddar and some prosciutto. Carrot Basil Spice cupcakes with beet buttercream frosting. mmmmmm.

I wish we could have a real garden and some hens; it would make urban living pretty much the best ever.