Category Archives: stuff i think about

reaching across the aisle

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It happens every time Democrats win. Pundits and assorted media fuckwits start suggesting various ways Democrats can ‘reach across the aisle’ and work with Republicans. Every single fucking time they advise Democrats to be gracious in victory, to take a conciliatory tone, to find common cause with Republicans who’ve suffered a defeat.

Fuck that. Fuck that in every possible way.

On the other hand, there are a LOT of seriously angry, pissed off Democratic supporters who are eager to take revenge on MAGA for all the massively horrific shit they’ve pulled these last two years. They want to punish. to scourge, to make those motherfuckers pay. I totally get that and I feel much the same way. Achilles, who knew a thing or two about making motherfuckers pay, said revenge was “sweeter far than trickling honey.”

But fuck that too.

The thing is, Democrats CAN reach across the aisle. But they need to do it to hold the motherfuckers accountable. Not for revenge, but for justice. For setting the tone for the future of representative democracy. They can reach across the aisle, seize the motherfuckers by the scruff of their necks, and make sure they bear the consequences of their actions. I mean, that’s the job, right?

Will it be easy? Nope. It’ll be hard, and awkward, and ugly. A lot of folks on both sides of that aisle will misinterpret or misunderstand what’s being done and why it’s being done. Too bad. Democrats have to do it anyway. They failed to it once before; now they have to rectify their mistake.

There’s an old Norwegian folktale about a poor, lazy kid named Halvor who, after your basic shipwreck scenario, ends up at a castle where he rescues three princesses by lopping off the multiple heads of various trolls. He falls in love with the youngest, but misses his parents. So the princesses give him fine clothes and a ring that allows him to magically travel home. There he and his fine clothes impress the hell out of everybody, especially the young village women who’d scorned Halvor for being poor and lazy. Halvor insults them, then magically brings the three princesses to the village so the village girls will be jealous. That pisses off the princesses, who take back the ring, slip a fake ring on Halvor’s finger, and leave him sleeping on the turf by a pond.

Halvor in the kitchen, doing the grunt work of lopping off troll heads.

Halvor, waking up and realizing he’d fucked up massively, goes in search of the castle. This, of course, involves a long series of setbacks and misfortunes and hindrances. By the time Halvor finally makes his way back to the castle, he looks like a vagrant. Because this is a fairy tale, he also discovers the youngest princess is about to be married to…some unnamed guy. Halvor drops the fake ring into the customary marriage cup and arranges for a cup-bearer to serve it the princess. She finds the ring and…

‘Yes, he is the right one,’ cried the youngest Princess when she caught sight of him; so she flung the other out of the window and held her wedding with Halvor.

My point in nattering on like this is that right now Democrats are Halvor just after lopping off the troll heads. They’ve done heroic work getting elected. But this isn’t the time for them to show off, to parade themselves in their newly-elected finery, to assume that since they’ve slain the trolls they now get to live happily ever after.

They did that once before, the first time they defeated Trump. Then, like Halvor, Democrats had to go through a whole world of shit to get back to the castle and get the princess to toss the other guy out the fucking window.

They’re made their way back at the castle gates. They need to finish the job. It’s not about punishing the trolls; it’s about making the troll answerable for their trollish behavior. It’s about making sure no more trolls find their way back into the castle kitchen.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The illustration is by the wonderfully named Victorian painter Lancelot Speed, for the 1890 edition of Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book.

bikes are good

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So there’s this guy, Joe Mitchell, who is the Republican MAGA nominee for the Second District of Iowa. That’s all I know about him, really. And I only know that because last week Joe Mitchell said one of the stupidest things a candidate in Iowa can say. While praising Comrade President Donald Trump, Mitchel said (and I’m not making this up} this:

“Thank God you’re building the ballroom. Thank God you’re getting rid of those awful bike lanes. We don’t ride bicycles in Iowa.”

Yeah, no. Obviously, not thanking anybody, celestial deity or not, for that obscene ballroom or for getting rid of bike lanes. But this whole ‘We don’t ride bicycles in Iowa’ bit? Dude. Where did that come from?

Classic cyclist, just off a dedicated bike trail, riding along a pedestrian boulevard.

Just for the record, there are more than 3000 miles of bike trails & multi-use paths in Iowa. Polk County, Iowa (where I live right now) has more than 800 miles of paths and trails. My suburban community alone has more than 100 miles of bike paths and MUPs. I can do most of my errands by bike, without ever having to ride on a street. Hell, there are three bike pubs within a couple of miles of my house.

We ride bikes in Iowa, is my point. A lot of us ride bikes on a regular basis. Not just for exercise or fitness, but as basic transportation. A lot of long, fairly straight bike trails that are perfect for exercise are linked to shorter paths used for commuting. A bicycle is the most efficient, quickest way to get around the city. That said, although Des Moines has plenty of safe, separate bike paths, it could still do a hell of a lot better when it comes to cycling infrastructure. On the day Joe Mitchell made his stupid statement, I spent an hour or so noodling around the city. I saw a lot of bikes in parts of the city that are less than bike-friendly.

Guy in regular clothes cycling down a sidewalk between buildings.

But one of the things about bicycles is that they’re flexible transportation. If a separate, safe bike lane isn’t available, cyclists will ride on city streets or sidewalks. Or they’ll ride down alleys. Or through parking lots. Or they’ll use any space that offers even a slightly reduced risk of getting whacked by an inattentive driver. Semi-safe urban cycling demands a creative use of space. That sometimes means violating car-brained norms and riding through spaces not designed for bicycle use.

Guy toting stuff on a bike taking a shortcut through a small parking lot.

Because of all that, urban cyclists can be hard to photograph. They’re quick; they come and go before a photographer has a chance to lift the camera. On top of that, an urban field of view is pretty limited; buildings, people, parked vehicles, construction—all those things can obscure or conceal an approaching cyclist, so a photographer is often unprepared when a cyclist appears.

For a photographer, the result tends to be a lot of missed photographs or blurry, poorly composed images. I don’t know how many cyclists I saw on my short walk. I was only able to shoot four semi-decent photos of cyclists roaming through the city. They’re all dressed in different clothes, riding different styles of bike, moving at different paces through different parts of the city. But they all share that swivel-headed concentration necessary for urban cyclists to survive.

Bald guy on a bike dodging construction zone.

Bicycles and cycling, if treated thoughtfully, make life better. Bikes are cleaner, safer, smaller, and more versatile than motor vehicles. Cycling encourages riders to be aware of the world around them, to be an active part of the world around them. Cycling teaches us to be creative thinkers and problem solvers. Cycling makes us healthier, more engaged citizens.

Earlier, I said my point was that we ride bikes in Iowa. That’s a point I don’t really need to make; it’s that obvious. My actual point in writing this is as follows: Joe Mitchell can go fuck himself. So can the entire MAGAverse. Bikes are a universal good.

deadpan — not really dead at all

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About a month ago I happened to use the phrase ‘Deadpan aesthetic’ in conversation with a photographer friend. He was unfamiliar with the term—with the entire concept, really—and asked what it meant. I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it was essentially this:

It’s what Buster Keaton would shoot if he had a digital camera.

Which didn’t help him at all because, let’s face it, it’s a bullshit answer. I was trying to be clever, but ended up just being a smart-ass. However, I’ve been sporadically thinking about the concept ever since. So I did what people normally do when they’re sporadically thinking about anything. I turned to the internet, which kindly gave me this definition:.

[A] deadpan photograph is devoid of emotion. It simply exists as a subject and photograph, yet it seems to be empty. There is no joy or sorrow.

This is from the New York Film Academy. Far be it from me to claim the NYFA is full of shit, but folks, the NYFA is pretty much full of shit. There IS an approach to photography that’s devoid of emotion, but it ain’t Deadpan. It’s called New Topographics. Very few photographers follow a pure New Topo approach. I can only think of one. Well, okay, two—but they’re a team. Bernd and Hilla Becher. In the 1950s and 60s they photographed German industrial architecture. Which is about as exciting as you’d think it is.

Reserved Parking, Iowa Department for the Blind

There’s most definitely emotion in Deadpan photography. It’s just understated, soft-pedaled (see note) emotion. It may be dry humor, it may be wistful, maybe a tad melancholy, or nostalgic, or any quiet emotion, but it’s there. There’s something ineffably sad about a bare Christmas tree in an alley behind the Department for the Blind.

Let me give you a better, more accurate definition (with less bullshit than my earlier definition). Here we go:

Deadpan photography examines the living world as it is; simple, without pretense, without any attempt at artfulness, without staging, straightforward, but with an eye for understated absurdity.

Think Deadpan humor with a camera. You know what? My original definition was accidentally pretty accurate. Buster Keaton was the model for Deadpan humor. He put himself in absurd positions, but never cracked a smile. It’s an acknowledgement that the world is absurd, that absurdity is everywhere, but mostly unseen or ignored. There’s something quietly absurd about a nearly religious symbol in an alleyway near a metal container for used cooking oil.

Yea, though I walk through the alley of the shadow of cooking oil…

A Deadpan photograph makes you go “what?“. Not “WHAT??!!“. It doesn’t hit you over the head. It’s not farce. It probably won’t make you laugh, although it might make you shake your head a bit. Deadpan photography occupies an odd interstitial space between the very human tendency to seek meaning in life and the failure to find it. It doesn’t necessarily nudge you to ask questions, but it may make you blink and try to make sense of what you’re seeing. There’s a certain ‘What the hell?’ quality to Deadpan.

This way.

There are no rules to Deadpan photography, but there are some general similarities. The photos tend to be shot head on, straightforward, avoiding artsy angles. The lighting is generally flat and devoid of dramatic shadows. Colors are often soft, muted. Compositions are mostly somewhat formal and balanced. But those are just generalities. You can ignore all that and, if you happen across a wee church surrounded by dandelions in a decaying, semi-industrial section of a small town on a bright sunny day, you can still shoot a Deadpan photograph. I mean, what the hell is a tiny wooden one-room church with a steeple doing among those warehouses?

Wee church

That’s te thing about Deadpan photography; photographically, it’s really simple. It doesn’t matter where you are, or what time you’re there, or whether the sun is right, or what sort of camera (or lens) you have, or whether anything ‘interesting’ is taking place. You just have to BE there and pay attention. The entire world is filled with ‘What the hell?’ scenes just waiting for a Deadpan photographer to wander by. The world you live in is going to give you stuff to photograph. All you have to do is look and see stuff that normal people are ignoring, to recognize there’s something—not wrong exactly, but not quite right—about what you’re seeing.

Then point your camera at it and take the photo.

Red balloon.

If you shoot photos regularly, you’ve probably shot some Deadpan photos without realizing it. The trick is to do it with intention. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

NOTE: Yes, that’s right, soft-pedaled. Not soft-peddled and certainly not soft-petaled. The lefthand pedal on a piano is the soft pedal, which is used to create a quieter, softer, more delicate tone.

bikes make you 12

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Here’s the thing about bicycles: they turn you into a 12-year-old. It’s hard for some folks to admit, but there it is. Solid fact. You get on a bike, and every single cell in your body remembers what it was like to be twelve years old. It doesn’t matter what sort of bike you ride, or why you ride, or when you ride, or the manner in which you ride, you become twelve again. It’s just a fact.

You cycle for fitness? That means riding hard and fast…which is what you did when you were twelve. Not all the time, of course, but every 12-year-old on a bike has ridden like the demons of Hell were chasing behind them. It’s fun to ride fast and hard. Sure, sure, sure, you may be genuinely serious about fitness. You may be wearing lycra and Shimano RC9 cycling shoes because adults believe in optimization. You may be measuring stuff (pulse, cadence, average speed, elevation gain, etc.) because adults feel the need to measure stuff and compare results. But down the bone and gristle, you’re riding like you’re twelve–because it’s fun. There’s a weird joy in cycling really really fast.

Who likes riding really really fast? 12-year-olds, that’s who.

You cycle for transportation? You’re twelve. Your bike is how you got around when you were twelve. You rode your bike to visit your friends, you rode to school, you rode to the park, you rode to the local market to buy candy or a soda or shoplift cigarettes. Now you’re riding to the office or to a coffee shop to meet friends or to the market for fresh vegetables (and if you smoke, please shoplift your cigarettes; don’t give those fuckers your money). Yes, yes, cycling is an efficient, healthy, cost-effective, environmentally friendly means of transportation, and that’s all very adult…but there’s a part of you that knows you’re riding your bike because it’s fun. You’re twelve.

You KNOW your parents would forbid you from riding your bike here.

You ride gravel? You do cyclocross or single tracks? You mountain bike or ride BMX? You’re twelve. You’re riding across the neighbor’s lawn, you’re riding your bike through a construction zone, you’re riding through the neighborhood park, you’re deliberately riding through a puddle, you’re taking your bike where your parents explicitly told you NOT to ride. You’re doing it partly because it’s fun and challenging and partly because your parents told you NOT to ride there. Ask yourself, at what age do kids start being rebellious? Twelve. This is NOT a coincidence.

This is 12-year-old behavior. This is childish. This is fun.

You need more evidence that cycling makes you twelve? Ask your non-cycling friends (you probably have some) how they feel about cycling in general. Odds are they think it’s…childish. It’s not how adults get around. Adults drive. Adults don’t have time for frivolous stuff like riding bikes. Why can’t you just grow up and act your age? (HINT: because you’re twelve years old.)

Still more evidence? Okay, simple test. Get on your bike. Get it in motion. Now take your feet of the pedals, stick them out straight, and gently swerve left and right and left and right, rhythmically back and forth as you coast. How does that feel? It feels great, doesn’t it. You’re twelve.

You’ve done this. If you haven’t done it, you’ve wanted to do it. Go ahead, do it; it’s fun.

You can put on lycra, you can strap a briefcase to your rack. put a bag of groceries in your pannier, you can buy a cargo bike and take your kids to school…doesn’t matter. You know what else doesn’t matter? Your age. If you ride your bike, you become twelve years old again. It just happens. Accept it.

No, don’t just accept it. Celebrate it. You see all those people in cars and pickups and SUVs? They’re locked into adulthood. You? You get to be twelve years old your entire life.

cnut, hammett, and trump

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I recently mentioned to a friend that, despite the ongoing horror of Minneapolis, I feel more optimistic about the future than I did a year ago. And he agreed. He said something like, “It’s that whole King Cnut thing, right? Trump may think he’s the king, but even the king can’t hold back the tide.”

I stopped myself from correcting him. For some reason, people think the Cnut versus the Tide story is about Cnut’s arrogance. It’s not. I’ve forgotten the issue at hand, but Cnut’s posse was suggesting that as king, he had godlike powers. Cnut was saying, “Nope, I’m just a guy with a good job.” When he set his throne on the beach and ordered the tide NOT to get his feet wet, he was demonstrating the fact that he couldn’t hold back the tide.

Cnut getting his shoes wet.

But aside from buggering up the analogy, my friend is (I think) correct. Trump may think he’s got godlike authority. He’s certainly acting like it. In Minneapolis, in Greenland, in courtrooms across the US, in social media. Just yesterday on his Truth Social site, he (or one of this fluffers) wrote:

In Minnesota, the Troublemakers, Agitators, and Insurrectionists are, in many cases, highly paid professionals. The Governor and Mayor don’t know what to do, they have totally lost control, and our [sic] currently being rendered, USELESS! If, and when, I’m forced to act, it will be solved, QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY! President DJT

This is Trump distilled. Three lines–all lies–that encompass Trump’s view of the world. First, he presumes nobody ever takes a risk for any reason other than personal gain. If people demonstrate against him, somebody must be paying them. Second, he’s compelled to belittle and insult those who oppose or disagree with him. And third, he needs to assert his own superiority–to brag about his own abilities. It’s all there in three lines.

Does he actually believe all that? Maybe. I don’t know. Dashiell Hammett, in a 1923 short story, wrote, ‘If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.’ Hammett was pretty astute. I assume there are moments when Trump is truly convinced he’s a superior being.

It doesn’t really matter if Trump believes his own bullshit. The tide doesn’t. And like my friend, I’m inclined to believe the tide is slowly turning against Trump. He’ll shout and threaten and bluster and bribe, but he’ll never control Greenland and he’ll never subdue Minneapolis.

The tide is an insistent sumbitch.

things i’d like to see in 2026

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2025 sucked, don’t even try to tell me otherwise. 2026 has the potential to be better, though it could implode at any moment. Nothing is certain. However, in a feeble attempt to be optimistic, I’ve make a list of things I’d like to see in 2026. I don’t expect to see any of them, but hey, there’s no harm in hoping.

Anyway, in no particular order, I’d like to see:

  • local municipal police officers arresting ICE agents for violating the law. These assholes are running wild in the street and ain’t nobody holding them to account. Arrest them, cuff them, give them a fair trial.
  • sensible legislation limiting e-motos. I’m talking about these stubby bastards. They’re sold as ebikes, but they’re not intended to be ridden like bikes. I don’t have anything against them as a mode of transportation, but the sad reality is a LOT of these e-motos are ridden by assholes. Assholes ruin everything.
  • speaking of bikes, I’d like to see more people dressed in normal clothes on bikes. This isn’t a dunk on folks who wear lycra and ride road bikes. I’d just like to normalize cycling as transportation, not just as a form of exercise.
  • women in US films & television shows that look like actual women wearing actual women’s clothing with sensible shoes instead of models in high heels. Give me more Sarah Lancashires, more Olivia Colmans, more Susan Wokomas, more Lesley Manvilles. Give me women who can act, not just look good. (Okay, we have Merritt Wever in the US, who is fucking amazing; give me more Merritt Wevers too.)
  • Donald J. Trump in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit…in a coffin.
  • quiet spaces. Deliberately quiet spaces, both indoors and outdoors, both public and commercial. Not silent spaces; just quiet. Spaces where you can have a conversation. Coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, and other businesses that commit to quietness should be given tax breaks.
  • Brett Kavanaugh busted for DWI.
  • a mini-series based on Ellen Kushner’s novel Swordspoint. Or any of her novels, really.
  • billionaires taxed out of existence. There’s no reason for billionaires to exist. Nobody has any real use for that much money. Every dollar somebody ‘earns’ over a billion dollars should be taxed at 100%. I mean, c’mon, if you spent US$100 thousand every single day, it would take you more than 27 years to spend a billion dollars. That’s just nuts.
  • more dedicated infrastructure for bicycles and other forms of mobility. I’m talking about bike lanes and secure bicycle parking. We should really make it safe and easy for not just cyclists to get around, but also folks in wheelchairs (and we should subsidize motorized wheelchairs to a much greater extent). We should drastically decrease car dependency (and the operative term there is ‘dependency’).
  • much much much more funding for the Arts. All sorts of arts, and especially weird esoteric arts, even if we don’t like them. Hell, we should encourage people–ordinary people–to take up any form of expression. I’d go so far as to support accordion players and mimes. It would make people happier, and lawdy, we need happier people.
  • also, Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Cen…well, from everything.
  • capes for mail carriers. These people are fucking heroes; they deserve capes.

Okay, that’s enough. None of these things will happen (although I think there’s a decent chance Comrade Trump will go toes up in the next 12 months), but they’re still it’s nice to think about. Oh, wait. I forgot one.

I’d like to see the patriarchy smashed into tiny shards, those shards ground into the finest dust, that dust buried deep in the earth, and the earth above it salted so that nothing will grow there for a thousand years. Or so.

There. Done.

Editorial Note: By the way, the illustration is a wood engraving by Frederick Sandys from the early 1860s. It’s called ‘The Old Chartist.’ Chartism was a British working class movement that called for 1) the vote for every man aged twenty-one years and above (women, of course, were totally fucked), 2) secret ballots, 3) no property qualification to be a Member of Parliament, 4) payment for Members (so working men could temporarily leave their regular employment to work in the public interest), 5) annual elections. These were radical wishes unlikely to occur, much like my wishlist above.

it’s just a few fingers

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Every few weeks Bsky has this…I can’t call it a discussion or an argument, because it’s neither of those things. Even calling a discourse doesn’t quite fit, because that term refers to a serious conversation–and while the subject is very very serious, it’s not a conversation. In a conversation, both sides (all sides) are attempting to communicate. This is about folks repeating their positions on the subject.

The subject is voting. The positions, essentially, are as follows:

  1. Vote for the Democrat even if they suck on a particular issue, because they’re still infinitely better than the Republican.
  2. I will not vote for somebody who opposes an issue that is central to my life.

The argument made folks in the first category is pretty simple: “I know your situation is precarious. I know you’re just barely holding on. I feel your pain. But you belong to a small subset of the voting population. In order to effect change, we have to first win the election. After we’ve done that, we can see about improving your situation.”

The argument made by folks in the second category is even more simple: “This is my life. I won’t vote for somebody who will make my life more difficult than it already is.”

Sorry, I hope you understand that I have to do this to win the election.

The counter-argument by the first category is: “To get elected, we may have to cause you some minor inconvenience. You may end up with a bruised finger. At worst, you’ll lose a finger. Maybe two. But the Republicans will happily chop off both your hands. Which is worse?”

The counter-counter-argument is: “I shouldn’t have to settle for which is worse. I want better. I deserve better. I won’t vote for a candidate who thinks I should settle for which is worse. I’ll only vote for a candidate who offers me better.”

The counter-counter-counter-argument is: “Refusing to vote for the Democrat guarantees you a future of being handless. If you vote for the Democrat, you’ll at least have the chance that eventually, at some vague point in the future, you’ll get some prosthetic fingers. If you’re patient, there’ll probably be a time when you’ll never have to worry about losing any of your appendages.”

The counter-etc. argument is: “Even if I vote for the Democrat, I’ll lose some fingers and maybe fall to my death. You’ll be sitting inside, safe and whole. You want my vote, give me a candidate who’ll protect my right to keep my hands. Give me a candidate who’ll take my hand and help me through the window. Give me a candidate who’ll welcome me into the room. Until then, nope.”

The thing is, both of those folks are right. They’re just not talking about the same thing. The folks in category 1 are concerned about winning elections, and it’s true that you can’t effect change unless you win elections. But the folks in category 2 are concerned about their survival and the survival of their people. Winning an election only matters to folks who get to survive.

I’m a cisgender hetero white guy. I recognize that I’ll probably be mostly safe, regardless of who wins. I’ll vote for the Democrat. But I’ll work for and support candidates who respect everybody’s civil rights. And I won’t fault or blame anybody who refuses to vote for a candidate who’s willing to chop off a few marginalized fingers, even if it means a Republican gets elected.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We must burn the patriarchy to the ground. We need to burn it, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil, and set them on fire again. Then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart used to be. Then set fire to the stake. Burn it and keep burning it for generations. Then nuke it from orbit (you know why). Then open a semi-dry Riesling and serve it with a nice Emmental cheese and some crackers. I mean, we’re not savages, are we.

Other Editorial Note: The illustration is by Sidney Paget, for the short story The Engineer’s Thumb in the 1892 edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

needless death on the high trestle trail

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I ride the High Trestle Trail a few times a year. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The HTT trailhead is about a mile from where I live. The trail itself is 25 miles long, but it’s linked with the approximately 100 miles of dedicated intra-city bike paths, so even if I just ride around town, I’m often on some section of that trail.

Like a lot of Rails-to-Trails bicycle paths, the HTT tends to be long and straight. Once it leaves the city limits, there’s a long stretch that runs through flat, open farmland. We’re talking corn and soybean fields, which means there’s nothing to protect you from the sun and the wind. And the wind can be brutal. The section of the HTT is great for folks who (unlike me) ride road bikes for fitness or exercise; they can put their heads down and fly.

That’s the section of the HTT where I usually saw Corey Petersen. I didn’t know her; I’ve never spoken to her, but I’ve seen her several times. We’ve shared waves and head-nods the way cyclists do. I didn’t know she was a Marine Corps veteran, but it doesn’t surprise me. Anybody who rides a hand-cycle on a trail known for wind is a bad-ass.

Corey Petersen, cyclist, USMC veteran.

You’ll notice I’m speaking in the past tense. Corey Petersen was killed a week ago while cycling on the HTT (please watch the news video). She was hit by a truck while crossing a busy country road. I’ve always hated that particular intersection. It’s a sharp turn, so you have to slow down. Worse, the trail is designed to make you ride parallel to the busy road, so you have to look back over your shoulder for oncoming traffic behind you. Even worse, there’s a low hill on the road, which limits a driver’s visibility just before the trail crossing. And to make it still worse, the speed limit on that road is 55mph, and many vehicles are traveling above the speed limit.

The intersection where Corey Petersen was killed.

It’s a badly-designed, dangerous crossing. It was almost certainly designed by somebody who didn’t understand how bicycles operate. It’s a car-brained design. It’s dangerous enough for folks on regular bikes; for anybody riding a recumbent bike or hand-cycle, which are lower to the ground and much less visible, it’s significantly more dangerous. Although I’ve personally never had a close call there, I’ve been on group rides and witnessed close calls with members of my group.

We don’t know all the facts that led to Corey Petersen’s death. The driver of the truck may have been traveling at the legal speed limit; he may have been paying attention to the road, he may have done everything right…but a vehicle traveling at 55mph covers about 80 feet in a second. At most, a driver cresting the small hill in the road would have 4-5 seconds to respond to a cyclist crossing the road. At most, 4-5 seconds. Make that a recumbent bike, which would be more difficult to see…make that a hand-cycle, which has less immediate torque…and you have a tragedy. Even if the driver is doing everything right. And let’s be honest, how many drivers are doing everything right?

This is a hand-cycle. Cyclist ‘pedal’ with their hands. It’s very low to the ground.

The High Trestle Trail draws a lot of cyclists. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation estimates that, on average, around 3000 people ride some section of the trail every week. A popular (and economically important) bicycle trail is an asset to the State and to the towns along the trail. There is absolutely NO reason for such a dangerous crossing to exist on that trail. Granted, the HTT was opened in 2011, but that means they’ve had 14 years to fix a known problem.

There is a petition to make that intersection safer. Please consider signing it.

Back in 1896, the journalist Nellie Bly interviewed Susan B. Anthony. The subject of cycling came up during the interview. This is Anthony’s take on cycling:

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood.

Cycling clearly meant something to Corey Petersen. I can’t speak for her, but I know that being on a bike gives me a sense of freedom and joy. I’m confident Corey felt something similar. I wish ‘she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle‘ was true.

Sadly, it’s not.