BikePortland: Meet the guy who circumnavigated Portland’s urban growth boundary by bike
Jonathan: Tell me about the pro tip you unlocked with the loaf of bread hanging from your bike for safety [something I saw Linus post on his Instagram story yesterday].
Linus: I had reached maybe mile 125 or so and desperately needed a store stop. There was a 24-hour Plaid Pantry in Oregon City, and then it was just closed Safeway after closed Safeway, until I got to Sherwood. Sometime after dawn, I desperately needed food, and so I’m walking around this Safeway, I see the like, you know, pile of clearance baked goods. And being a medical student, wanting to save some money, I reached for this loaf of bread and didn’t have a great way to carry it on on my bike when when I was riding. So I tied it to the back of my bag and had it just sort of hanging there loosely. And from for the rest of the day, the cars were pretty kind to me. I didn’t get coal rolled at all. I didn’t get people passing too close to me.
I don’t know what it was, but I feel like I unlocked some sort of secret where people see this loaf of bread hanging off of the back of your bike. And it’s some grand humanizing thing, like maybe they see you are also a human who also enjoys to eat bread so like, ‘I’m going to be kind to you.’ It reminded me a lot of in Lord of the Rings when Samwise Gamgee has this backpack with cast iron pans hanging off of it, which seems ridiculous when you realize the journey that they’re on, right? But that backpack looks a lot cuter with the pots and pans hanging off of it. So maybe, maybe, the more we can do to humanize ourselves, the better, right? We’re still humans when we’re wearing lycra and biking down the road. People should always be kind to each other, but boy does it help when you can kind of advertise your humanity in some way!
via Mike Perham on Mastodon (Mike Perham of Sidekiq fame)
I’ve refrained from posting about car culture on here, despite having many opinions about its ills. There was On the Way to Valentine’s Day, this quote, this long quote and link out to an article, but most of my link-posting and ranting goes on over on a certain decentralized social network, or in my private notes…so far. But here is one sentence from a considerably longer draft in my notes:
So: strapping a loaf of bread to your back or your bike–lifehack or sad sign of the times?