ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It figures. The city finally schedules a meeting to discuss Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposals, and I'm scheduled to be in Indianapolis. So it goes. If you're on the side of the angels (Two Way Streets Now), be at Bank Street Brewhouse by 5:30 p.m. to walk as a group to the library and TESTIFY. Meanwhile, here's a column from January 19, 2012.

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All our sidewalks might be rebuilt, and even the occasional bike lane striped, but unless New Albany is prepared to classify systemic discrimination against the urban zone’s persecuted walkers and bicyclists as part and parcel of a fully funded enforcement mechanism, under the auspices of a human rights commission, things won’t get any better around here.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, though only slightly.

The older I get, the greater the imperative to redress the ridiculous societal imbalance between man and machine. We might as well commence the social engineering right here in the Open Air Museum, where minuscule comprehension levels guarantee a clean slate.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the array of venom spewed by motorists with respect to their fellow motorists, all of whom might be conveniently grouped into an omnibus category termed Innate Incompetence Compounded by Willful Distraction, or minus the obscenities: “Who taught you to drive, anyway?’

Probably no one, and also everyone.

But if you think it’s bad when both of you are in your armor-clad Hummers cursing, shaking fists and flashing middle fingers, then I recommend attempting a pleasurable stroll or casual bike ride. I’m confident you’ll soon echo my own sentiments, as freely borrowed from Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip and modified, hometown-style:

“I love cars. It’s drivers I hate.”

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While unlikely, it is conceivable that a handful of local drivers well into their eighties might recall the admonition to look both ways before entering any intersection. However, fifty years of New Albany’s one-way downtown street grid has ensured that drivers generally look only in the direction of oncoming traffic, and seldom the other way, where a pedestrian just might be interested in crossing the street.

There’s also the quaint institution of those crosswalk guides painted on the street, with the obvious intent of connecting one sidewalk to the next, so as to assist pedestrians in navigating in a straight line. In theory, drivers are compelled to heed the stop sign short of these areas, without blocking pedestrian crossways.

I tested this theory yesterday while out walking, and on five separate occasions when I reached the corner at the same time as a car arrived at the stop sign (i.e., where the auto is supposed to stop), each time, without exception, the driver (a) did not look to see if anyone was there, and then (b) straddled the crosswalk line, easing as far out into the street as possible, presumably to save precious seconds in route to the dollar menu at Rally’s, where he or she could enter the drive-thru lane without moving a muscle (if any exist), before devouring the contents of the sack while in the very act of driving to the next fast food joint for dessert, then tossing all the wrappings onto the street, thus ensuring that my judgment of my fellow Americans remains fully enabled.

Fat, dumb and fundamentalist is no way to go through life, and being an obnoxious, crappy driver makes it far, far worse.

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When I was a boy, Georgetown truly was the countryside. The amenities – store, café, barber shop, school – were there, roughly two miles away, and so naturally we always drove to get to them. By contrast, we generally walked down to the barn and back to feed the cows.

Not everyone in our extended rural neighborhood had an automobile. Roughly a half-mile away, in the direction of Lanesville, was a collection of shacks inhabited by a group of the less well off. They were kinfolk, and yet the word “family” doesn’t quite describe the arrangement. Among them were two or three brothers, their sister, a brother-in-law, and perhaps other women, coming and going at various times.

There were plenty of cars parked on their property, the main problem being that these jalopies tended not to work. It was closer to Georgetown than Lanesville, but in those days the former was bone dry Baptist and about as humorless, while the latter remained wonderfully Catholic, with a handful of taverns for liquid grocery shopping. When it came time, they’d head south on foot.

Wine duly obtained, they would start the homeward trudge, although famously, there were those times when they’d have to turn around and stumble back to Lanesville for more fuel, then try again, before ending the day asleep in one of the intervening cornfields.

If we had cars to drive, we drove everywhere, and yes, that’s the American way and all that, but it’s just that driving never was something I genuinely enjoyed doing. It was a job, not an adventure. As a typically ignorant and parochial American in the sticks, I could not begin to discern any conceivable alternative, at least until I was able to travel, and then finally, after a few years of living and roaming, I began to know myself better.

Given my father’s proclivities for nature and the outdoors, it was perhaps inevitable that I would develop an interest in urban life, and so I did. Traveling to Europe to experience the continent’s cities, revelations were quick in coming: One needn’t drive to the amenities when the amenities were nearby, when walking or bicycling would suffice, and where there were public transport options to provide a reliable and relatively inexpensive mobility solution.

During more than 30 trips to Europe over a period of a quarter century, I’ve rented a car exactly once. To be sure, my posterior has been placed in passenger cars a few times, and there have been taxis aplenty for shorter distances, and yet these account for a very small percentage of the total when it comes to how I’ve gotten around. After all this time, my preference remains walking, cycling, or whichever trains, trams or busses exist in a particular place.

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Back here in downtown New Albany, we’ve embarked upon a great and surely futile debate about parking spaces. I use the word “futile” because the unquestioned assumption currently being heard from virtually every participant in the discussion is that if typical American customers are forced to walk more than an urban block to reach a destination, they’ll leave in disgust and loathing, never to return.

Well, perhaps New Albany should post way-finding signs to help the clueless locate Veteran’s Parkway, to experience the orgasmic thrill of the cookie-cutter.

While there may be a grain of truth to it as pertains to those lost causes enamored of hopping in their gas guzzlers for a quick cruise to the foot of a driveway to claim their snail mail, it strikes me as yet another example of older folks utterly failing to understand a dawning age, and the beauty of this new way of thinking about mobility is that it’s both old and proven.

The city was built for walking, and even if we’ve spent decades deconstructing the grid, it’s never too late to start all over again. This country boy managed to learn better. You can, too.

"There is an evolutionary pressure pushing motorists towards hatred of cyclists."

At Facebook, on the topic of Jeff Speck's Downtown Street Network Proposal, a person who lives in Jeffersonville and works in Louisville wrote, "I love downtown New Albany! Please no bicycles."

Including Bike Lanes

Cycling is the largest planning revolution currently underway. . . in only some American cities. The news is full of American cities that have created significant cycling populations by investing in downtown bike networks. Among the reasons to institute such a network is pedestrian safety: bikes help to slow cars down, and new bike lanes are a great way to use up excess road width currently dedicated to oversized driving lanes. When properly designed, bike lanes make streets safer for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike -- page 39, Speck New Albany proposal.

So, why single out cyclists?

Moreover, why do drivers become so angry with cyclists? The BBC's Stafford says it is because cyclists "offend the moral order."

Do you agree?

The psychology of why cyclists enrage car drivers, by Tom Stafford (BBC)

Something about cyclists seems to provoke fury in other road users. If you doubt this, try a search for the word "cyclist" on Twitter. As I write this one of the latest tweets is this: "Had enough of cyclists today! Just wanna ram them with my car." This kind of sentiment would get people locked up if directed against an ethnic minority or religion, but it seems to be fair game, in many people's minds, when directed against cyclists. Why all the rage?

I've got a theory, of course. It's not because cyclists are annoying. It isn't even because we have a selective memory for that one stand-out annoying cyclist over the hundreds of boring, non-annoying ones (although that probably is a factor). No, my theory is that motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order.

Car dependency in nine historical lessons, absent an 11th commandment.

A factual rendering, although it omits the part where God commands Americans to go forth and drive a lot.

9 Reasons the U.S. Ended Up So Much More Car-Dependent Than Europe, Ralph Buehler (The Atlantic Cities)

Between the 1920s and 1960s, policies adapting cities to car travel in the United States served as a role model for much of Western Europe. But by the late 1960s, many European cities started refocusing their policies to curb car use by promoting walking, cycling, and public transportation. For the last two decades, in the face of car-dependence, suburban sprawl, and an increasingly unsustainable transportation system, U.S. planners have been looking to Western Europe.

The numbers show the need for change. In 2010, Americans drove for 85 percent of their daily trips, compared to car trip shares of 50 to 65 percent in Europe. Longer trip distances only partially explain the difference. Roughly 30 percent of daily trips are shorter than a mile on either side of the Atlantic. But of those under one-mile trips, Americans drove almost 70 percent of the time, while Europeans made 70 percent of their short trips by bicycle, foot, or public transportation.

The statistics don't reveal the sources of this disparity, but there are nine main reasons American metro areas have ended up so much more car-dependent than cities in Western Europe ...

Give Veterans Plaza a break: Two way streets now ... no study necessary.

Once again, reckless drivers have damaged Veterans Plaza, which lies on Market Street between 10th and 11th.

EVEN IF there are compelling reasons why Elm and Spring must remain drag strips (we think there are not), then can any traffic engineer living (or dead) explain why Market must endure the chronic misuse?

Below are past reports of Market Street destruction. Slowed two-way traffic would prevent this destruction, wouldn't it? What might a traffic study prove that numerous pairs of eyes don't already know?

Why, oh why, must this city be so ridiculously backward?

February 20, 2012: That wasn't a pipe bomb, actually.

June 17, 2012: Veterans Plaza is back in shape.

The repair work at Veterans Plaza was completed before Memorial Day, but I kept forgetting to take a photo of the progress. It's a seamless restoration, but here is what it looked like on February 20.

ON THE AVENUES: Hmm, that was a close one.

ON THE AVENUES: Hmm, that was a close one.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It was a fairly deserted Saturday afternoon in downtown New Albany. At around 12:30 p.m., I was afoot near the northeast corner of Spring and E. 5th Streets, walking westbound. Doing so strikes me as perfectly ordinary, but in “Drive Thru City”, nothing’s ever as simple as seems.

I’ve recently concurred with suggestions that in L’America, walking by choice rather than fiscal constraint is a revolutionary act. Here in New Albany, there are further innate complications, such as determining where those relative few who do walk the city streets actually place their feet.

One might sensibly imagine that sidewalks, which are conceived, constructed and maintained to accommodate walkers, would be the proper venue for walking. But in New Albany, the minority of bipeds not otherwise engaged in driving cars and motorcycles has an alarming tendency to wander onto the asphalt, often pausing in mid-avenue for lunch, cigarettes, high tea or random sex acts.

Of course, the garbage generated by these activities is deposited onto the street, although that’s another topic, for another day.

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The old Coyle Chevrolet property basked in its peculiar open-air limbo to my immediate right as I drew closer to the crosswalk at 5th and Spring. I thought to myself: If the city father and mothers weren’t so busy fluffing and re-fluffing the penniless Mainland Properties cadre, something actually might become of the critically positioned Coyle acreage, which now is being used only as temporary housing for the fire museum (which probably can’t afford to buy it), storage for family yard-sale heirlooms, and as mute testimony to our eternally misplaced redevelopment priorities.

It is highly doubtful that any of these idle considerations were in the mind of the driver, southbound on 5th Street, whose sporty convertible approached the intersection just in front of me. Owing to the generalized distracted cluelessness of local drivers, I’m conditioned on a daily basis to personal vigilance and assumed the car would block my path at the crosswalk. Amazingly, it came to a stop behind the line. The driver was spot-on. He looked east, made eye contact with me, and then studied the one-way traffic on Spring coming toward him from the left.

However, he failed to look west (to his right), at least until he began to ease out onto Spring Street, when I saw his head suddenly jerk to the right as he spotted the blithering idiot on his bicycle, merrily traveling eastbound in the westbound bike lane, against one-way vehicular traffic, despite the plain – if locally unobserved – fact that bicyclists are bound to observe the same traffic rules as motorists.

In truth, I’ve personally seen this particular vagrant bicyclist (he’s not out there for the exercise, boys and girls) traveling the wrong way on Spring Street so many times that I’ve lost count of them. I’m guessing the policeman who lately has been standing idly across Spring from my house monitoring traffic (is he intending to jog after the chronic speeders?) has spotted the wrong-way cyclist, too, but of course nothing ever happens, because after all, this is New Albany (“Enforce Not City”).

Fortunately for driver and bicyclist on Saturday afternoon at the intersection of 5th and Spring, nothing bad came of it. There was a good ten-foot gap between them, and both had time to stop and reassess the situation. The driver completed his right-hand turn onto Spring, and the bicyclist, a fiftyish man who lives in an apartment up the street from me, continued cycling the wrong way, just as he’d been doing prior to nearly causing an accident that would have injured him far worse than the convertible.

As for me, I just couldn’t take it. I called out at him: You know, dude, you’re going the wrong damned way, and it isn’t safe for anyone.

He merely laughed maniacally, rather like those folks who’ve long since ceased taking their meds, and kept right on going in the same direction.

So did I, so do the police, and so does City Hall. In reality, had this wrong way cyclist heeded my advice, it is likely he would have moved his two-wheeler to the sidewalk, which is yet another place an adult bicyclist should not be. Maybe that’s why the walkers end up lounging in the bike lane.

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We all routinely dismiss near misses and minor occurrences like the one recounted here, and because we do, nothing is done, and consequently, minor problems gradually escalate into bigger ones. Inevitably, there will be a collision, and when there is, all recent prevailing evidence in the metropolitan Louisville area indicates that the driver of the car won’t be prosecuted. The culture of automotive non-accountability will thus be perpetuated, to the further detriment of those who try to share the road.

And when this inevitable tragedy finally happens, I’ll rush to the laptop to channel my outrage into words, but something will nag me, namely my dozens of memories of similar occurrences, and the realization that however much I prefer denouncing incompetent, distracted and unfit motorists, who richly deserve censure, it’s also true that bicyclists and walkers are part of the problem … and the solution.

Ideally, we all should be able to share our use of city streets and sidewalks with some semblance of equality, but in order to do so, there must be a shared sense of responsibility – and as my own experience has shown, one person acting alone, trying to engage the chronically addled and errant, stands little chance of deterring non-constructive behaviors.

Right now, there isn’t any prevailing notion of responsibility when it comes to how walkers, riders and drivers interact, and no obvious plan to improve the prospects for it. New Albany streets are designed and maintained almost exclusively to appease the automobile, and so adult cyclists who either don’t now any better or are plain scared of traffic pedal against the grain, or get on the sidewalk. But the sidewalk is for walkers. When is the last time anyone in a position of authority (i.e., wearing a uniform) made any of this clear to anyone?

Meanwhile, I still dream of the day when we, as a city, decide that humans are more important than their cars. Unfortunately, we may have to run out of petroleum before the discussion can begin.

ON THE AVENUES: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

ON THE AVENUES: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

All our sidewalks might be rebuilt, and even the occasional bike lane striped, but unless New Albany is prepared to classify systemic discrimination against the urban zone’s persecuted walkers and bicyclists as part and parcel of a fully funded enforcement mechanism, under the auspices of a human rights commission, things won’t get any better around here.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, though only slightly.

The older I get, the greater the imperative to redress the ridiculous societal imbalance between man and machine. We might as well commence the social engineering right here in the Open Air Museum, where minuscule comprehension levels guarantee a clean slate.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the array of venom spewed by motorists with respect to their fellow motorists, all of whom might be conveniently grouped into an omnibus category termed Innate Incompetence Compounded by Willful Distraction, or minus the obscenities: “Who taught you to drive, anyway?’

Probably no one, and also everyone.

But if you think it’s bad when both of you are in your armor-clad Hummers cursing, shaking fists and flashing middle fingers, then I recommend attempting a pleasurable stroll or casual bike ride. I’m confident you’ll soon echo my own sentiments, as freely borrowed from Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip and modified, hometown-style:

“I love cars. It’s drivers I hate.”

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While unlikely, it is conceivable that a handful of local drivers well into their eighties might recall the admonition to look both ways before entering any intersection. However, fifty years of New Albany’s one-way downtown street grid has ensured that drivers generally look only in the direction of oncoming traffic, and seldom the other way, where a pedestrian just might be interested in crossing the street.

There’s also the quaint institution of those crosswalk guides painted on the street, with the obvious intent of connecting one sidewalk to the next, so as to assist pedestrians in navigating in a straight line. In theory, drivers are compelled to heed the stop sign short of these areas, without blocking pedestrian crossways.

I tested this theory yesterday while out walking, and on five separate occasions when I reached the corner at the same time as a car arrived at the stop sign (i.e., where the auto is supposed to stop), each time, without exception, the driver (a) did not look to see if anyone was there, and then (b) straddled the crosswalk line, easing as far out into the street as possible, presumably to save precious seconds in route to the dollar menu at Rally’s, where he or she could enter the drive-thru lane without moving a muscle (if any exist), before devouring the contents of the sack while in the very act of driving to the next fast food joint for dessert, then tossing all the wrappings onto the street, thus ensuring that my judgment of my fellow Americans remains fully enabled.\

Fat, dumb and fundamentalist is no way to go through life, and being an obnoxious, crappy driver makes it far, far worse.

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When I was a boy, Georgetown truly was the countryside. The amenities – store, café, barber shop, school – were there, roughly two miles away, and so naturally we always drove to get to them. By contrast, we generally walked down to the barn and back to feed the cows.

Not everyone in our extended rural neighborhood had an automobile. Roughly a half-mile away, in the direction of Lanesville, was a collection of shacks inhabited by a group of the less well off. They were kinfolk, and yet the word “family” doesn’t quite describe the arrangement. Among them were two or three brothers, their sister, a brother-in-law, and perhaps other women, coming and going at various times.

There were plenty of cars parked on their property, the main problem being that these jalopies tended not to work. It was closer to Georgetown than Lanesville, but in those days the former was bone dry Baptist and about as humorless, while the latter remained wonderfully Catholic, with a handful of taverns for liquid grocery shopping. When it came time, they’d head south on foot.

Wine duly obtained, they would start the homeward trudge, although famously, there were those times when they’d have to turn around and stumble back to Lanesville for more fuel, then try again, before ending the day asleep in one of the intervening cornfields.

If we had cars to drive, we drove everywhere, and yes, that’s the American way and all that, but it’s just that driving never was something I genuinely enjoyed doing. It was a job, not an adventure. As a typically ignorant and parochial American in the sticks, I could not begin to discern any conceivable alternative, at least until I was able to travel, and then finally, after a few years of living and roaming, I began to know myself better.

Given my father’s proclivities for nature and the outdoors, it was perhaps inevitable that I would develop an interest in urban life, and so I did. Traveling to Europe to experience the continent’s cities, revelations were quick in coming: One needn’t drive to the amenities when the amenities were nearby, when walking or bicycling would suffice, and where there were public transport options to provide a reliable and relatively inexpensive mobility solution.

During more than 30 trips to Europe over a period of a quarter century, I’ve rented a car exactly once. To be sure, my posterior has been placed in passenger cars quite a few times, and there have been taxis aplenty for shorter distances, and yet these account for a very small percentage of the total when it comes to how I’ve gotten around. After all this time, my preference remains walking, cycling, or whichever trains, trams or busses exist in a particular place.

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Back here in downtown New Albany, we’ve embarked upon a great and surely futile debate about parking spaces. I use the word “futile” because the unquestioned assumption currently being heard from virtually every participant in the discussion is that if typical American customers are forced to walk more than an urban block to reach a destination, they’ll leave in disgust and loathing, never to return.

Well, perhaps New Albany should post way-finding signs to help the clueless locate Veteran’s Parkway, to experience the orgasmic thrill of the cookie-cutter.

While there may be a grain of truth to it as pertains to those lost causes enamored of hopping in their gas guzzlers for a quick cruise to the foot of a driveway to claim their snail mail, it strikes me as yet another example of older folks utterly failing to understand a dawning age, and the beauty of this new way of thinking about mobility is that it’s both old and proven.

The city was built for walking, and even if we’ve spent decades deconstructing the grid, it’s never too late to start all over again. This country boy managed to learn better. You can, too.

Cities for people first, then their cars.

The Urban Indy blog takes a look at pedestrians and cyclists at risk in our cities, and it's a timely consideration. Only recently, Broken Sidewalk reported on a spate of traffic accidents, with five peds/cyclists dead and one injured on metro Louisville streets in ten days. It would help if every now and then, motorists were held accountable. That's probably why you almost never hear bicyclists (or pedestrians) bitching about traffic calming.

For all the progress that has been made in recent years in raising consciousness about alternative solutions for mobility, we are reminded of how far there is to go, as was the case earlier this year when Kentucky State Fair officials concluded that bicycles might make their scrum even less organized than it already is. However, good news on a tiny scale still leaks out of Louisville, as when we learn that new bike parking has been installed on Frankfort Avenue. If only the riding can be made as safe as the parking.

New Albany's specific sorrows continue to be symbolized by a piecemeal approach, although Matt Nash kept it positive when considering the relationship of bicycle to bike lanes and Luddite to political promises in Nawbony. My unsolicited advice to the Gahan Administration is this: Get as pro-active as possible to make the historic inner city a place where pedestrians and cyclists are safe. Two ways streets and traffic calming are two places to start reclaiming the notion of a city being about its people, not about its cars.

Price to propose banning bicycle use by all 250-lb council critics ... or maybe not.

To survive in New Albany without dawn-to-dusk doses of tranquilizing chemicals is to accept a fundamental and capricious inequality of gray matter when it comes to governance.

While I was away in Boston, the third council district’s Steve Price – the man who votes “no” the way the rest of us make daily trips to the toilet – rolled over in bed and felt the urge to say “yes” to the notion of saying “no” to the use of cell phones by drivers of automobiles, citing a pressing interest in public safety that somehow never previously has emerged during wide-ranging discussions on other issues, ranging from living conditions in rental properties to working conditions for servers in smoke-filled rooms.

Having duly announced to voters in next year’s election that he possesses some measure of doo-dah rhythm approximating a legislative pulse, and passionately cares for their welfare even if there is little evidence during seven years of congenital underperformance to support such an absurd proposition, Price now has reverted to Drivel Libertarian form with August’s first council meeting just around the corner:

“I don’t know if this is the time to do that (cell phones) with the budget.”

He couldn’t have executed this latest white boy pump fake without a little help from his friends. In the grand tradition accorded the current occupant of the D. Blevins Chair for Persistent Council Indecisiveness, the fourth district’s Pat McLaughlin helped put the brakes on Price’s pretend-stagecraft, noting (wait for it) … Pat hasn’t made up his mind:

“I just haven’t seen the numbers on it yet, and I pretty much go by the statistics.”

If you’re keeping score at home, pull those again Twister games from the cedar closet and try to transcribe Price’s opposition to both code enforcement and the registration of rental properties, his support (albeit lukewarm) for banning cell phone use while driving, his votes against outlawing indoor smoking, and those favoring prohibiting novelty cigarette lighters.

Speaking personally, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen Price texting while behind the wheel, but driving while playing the theme from "Deliverance" on a harmonica?

That’s another matter entirely.

Bicycling news on a cold January day as Erika solicits Europa.

I'm getting ready to limber up, bundle up, and saddle up for a brief bicycle ride in the direction of NABC's original location, where I have two faxes to transmit.

Faxing is so very old school, isn't it? Not exactly rotary dial like Cappuccino's cell phone, but perilously close.

First, I need to ride down to the post office on the bike lane created especially for me, and communicate with my dear friends at the IRS. Then it's back through the urban street grid, past Uptown's future gated community, and out to the north side. Following are two links pertaining to people like me who don't drive their cars to the foot of the 50-ft driveway to collect snail spam.

Kentucky Bill Considers Banning Transporting Minors On Bikes, at Broken Sidewalk.

A Kentucky House Bill was submitted January 13 that could make it illegal to transport children on bike on Kentucky state maintained roads. Representative David Osborne, representing a small portion of Jefferson County and part of Oldham County filed the bill but when confronted says he plans not to pursue the proposal.

The Broken Sidewalk piece reminds me of something that fellow cyclist DH sent to me last weekend. It represents the results of her license plate survey, and prompts the usual round of acrimony from distracted drivers. In turn, her nudge reminds me that I should eavesdrop on the Clark County forum more often.

You might want to check out an interesting thread going on about bicycling/driver attitudes on a local forum in Clark County: Bad Drivers, Should I stay away from God?

Praise the Lord and pass on the left.

Classic letter to the editor in today's LEO.

Hoosier Driver?

I have an observation I would like to share with your readers — or maybe a challenge. The next time some bonehead cuts you off in traffic, take a second and eye their license plate. If it is from Indiana, note if it is an “In God We Trust” plate. In the past two years, I have found a nearly 1:1 correlation between bad Indiana drivers and those license plates. Now, I realize correlations do not denote causation. However, when I see a Hoosier on the road sporting this telltale insignia, I tend to anticipate them doing something really stupid. Maybe they should let their co-pilot drive.

Michael R. Coburn, Speed, Ind.

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At the (perhaps) reviving New Albany Bicycle Coalition blog, Debbie's been approaching this story from a different, two-wheeled angle. She explains it here: Should Bicyclists Trust God? An Experiment. Browse her more recent posts to see how the experiment is ... er, progressing.

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We'd best leave ROCK's latest grandstanding out of it: ROCK sues Kentucky, legislators over license plate denial.

Small wonder that the group's chosen dictator is a lawyer, eh?