Dallas City Council Has Been Replaced by Pod People

And the good news is, they’re my kind of pod people.  Never in my decade of living in Dallas can I recall the council doing one thing right.  And now, twice in one day I read stories on the Unfair Park about the council doing, or about to do something incredibly right for a change. 

Unpossible!

Must be Pod People.

First there was this:

• Dallas' Bike-Hemet Mandate is Basically Toast

Please recall my rant from 2008 about bike helmets.  A silly ordinance used to shake down taxpayers by issuing chick-shit tickets.

And then

• Virgin America Will Get Two Gates at Love After All

What a glorious day to be a Dallas resident where I can finally bike to Love Field without a helmet and fly on a cheap airline and not have to be subjected to schtickful flight attendants.

And in, hopefully, 11 days, Pecan Lodge will reopen in Deep Ellum. 

Now I just need to get that craft beer / pie house opened up across from work on Elm, and Dallas would be perfect.

Walkabout 2013 Day 10: Faenza

I may have found my new favorite place on Earth.  The food and wine here are amazing and amazingly cheap. Wines I could easily see paying $30-40 a bottle for are selling here for 8-10 €. 

Wineries Visited

• Spinetta – fabulous wines. (5 bottles bought)
• Ancarani – they were ok, nothing special.
• Leone Conti – also very good (3 bottles bought)

 

Walkabout 2013 Day 10 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Walkabout 2013 Day 4: Reims, Épernay and Cumières

I believe it is safe to say I have never had more Champagne than I had today.  With visits to three more Champagneries and two Champagne bars, it’s doubtful I’ll ever come close to drinking this much bubbly for the rest of my mortal days.

Champagneries* visited.

• Domaine Pommery (OK)
• Champagne Daniel Etienne (OK)
• Champagne Alain Suisse (Excellent)

Alas, today was the last day of Champagnerie visits.  If everyone promises no to alert US Customs, I’ll tell you that I’ll be bringing back seven bottles of Champagne and one bottle of Ritafia.  So I hope everyone is thirsty.

Walkabout 2013 Day 4 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

* I’m making it a thing.

Walkabout 2013 Day 3: Reims and Rilly-la-Montagne

What a perfectly beautiful day for a bike ride through Champagne, even with an unintended detour through Ludes*.  The French don’t believe in signs that tell you where you should go to reach your destination.

We started the day biking over to the open market to stock up on charcuterie and cheeses, then had tastings at the following Champagneries (is that a thing?) in Rilly-la-Montagne.

• Champagne André Delaunois (Good)
• Champagne Michel Fagot (Very Good)
• Champagne Stéphane Herbert (OK)

By the way, those beautiful fields of yellow are rape fields.  The seeds of these flowers produce rapeseed oil which the Canadian government has marked in the US as Canola oil.

We then finished up the day with a dinner of the meats and cheeses we purchased at the market earlier washed down with a magnum of Michel Fagot in celebration of one our party’s new job (not me, so please don’t ask).

Walkabout 2013 Day 3 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

* The original date-rape** drug

** Sorry about the rape theme of this posting.

Invisible Bike Helmet?

 

The Invisible Bicycle Helmet | Fredrik Gertten from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

Anything is now possible.

Great News for Dallas Cyclists

The bike path under the newly raised Northwest Highway is finally complete and we no longer have to make this annoying detour.

And I don’t know if you' noticed but this makes my 10th post of the week.  So yay me.

Area Blogger Moonlights as Rorschach Test after Recent Bicycle Mishap

The Coolest Video You’ve Seen Today

And probably even this year.

Thanks, Arlington, for Making Dallas Look Less Retarded

From The Summer of Steve

 

In a university city with a student population as large as Austin's in the 1970s, the idea of ridding Arlington of bicycles seems as outlandish as banning dancing.

Yet incumbents Kathryn Wilemon and Lana Wolff are up against two challengers, Kelly Canon and Julie Douglas, who say bicycle lanes don't belong in Arlington.

Douglas, 60, called bicyclists an "accident waiting to happen" and wrote in a voters guide that Arlington can't mix bicycles with drunken drivers.

 

Fort Worth Star-Telegram : Bikes emerge as enemy in Arlington

The Santa Fe Trail

I finally expanded outside my usual bike route and explored the still unfinished Santa Fe Trail. It's the straight part of my path that parallels Columbia.

Unfortunately, for now, it only goes from Glasgow, near Woodrow Wilson HS, to Carol. There's a bridge that crosses Peak and Haskell, but it was closed today. Once open, the trail will go all the way to Deep Ellum. I'm excited about riding down there, grabbing a Twisted Root Burger and heading home.

On a statistical note, during this trip, I rode my 500th mile of 2009. I'm hoping that if the weather cooperates and I push myself a little I can get to 1000 miles before my trip to Europe on the 20th.

Sorry there's nothing funny here. Just wanted to share.

Ouch!!

There must be something about unemployment or the prospect of unemployment that causes me to try to accidentally kill myself. I did it once before, and yesterday I tried to do it again.

It was a very windy day yesterday. Ordinarily that would be enough to keep me from biking. But, because I didn't bike the day before as I had planned, and it was supposed to rain all day today, I felt I had to fight through the wind and bike.
At the top of the White Rock Creek trail, where the trail winds around Anderson Bonner Park, the parks department are re-doing the path. So they have moved the path to the street and separated the path traffic from auto traffic with those same pylons they're using to separate the HOV lane on 75. Where auto traffic needs to turn into Anderson-Bonner parking there is a gap in the pylons and a pylon put in the center of the path to prevent cars from traveling into the bike path.

And that's where it all went bad.

As I mentioned, it was very windy. With a strong tail wind, I was going much faster than normal. Then, with a sudden gust of wind, I was thrown into that very center pylon that was supposed to protect me.

The next second slowed down remarkably. My first thought was that I could steer out of it. I hit rocks and other objects in the road all the time and am always able to work my way out of danger. But then I realize I'm going too fast and my correction is making it worse. I brace myself for impact and try to position myself so I land on my ample soft ass.

I hit the ground and immediately pop up only to collapse in the nearby grassy area. I had the wind knocked out of me and was starting to panic. A couple of soccer players came to help and began picking up my belongings that were now scattered about the path. Once my breathing normalized I thanked them.

Here's where I may have made a mistake. Since I'm a super macho guy, I decided to ride home rather than call for help from The Jester or someone else close that could accommodate a bike in their automobile.

So facing a strong southerly wind and pain up and down my left side, I headed home. It took nearly two hours. I'm not that bright.

But I am alive. And feeling slightly better. But I have some nice strawberries up and down my left side. Buy me a beer and I'll show them to you.

Or not.

Give A Cyclist a Break

TMac submits this link for us cycling enthusiasts to band together. I never really noticed how terribly bike unfriendly Dallas is until I go to places like Seattle, Portland and now Minneapolis.

Yikes!!!

As an avid cyclist, this is about a scary picture as I can imagine. Read the whole story here.

You Can't Go Home Again

Sometimes it takes me a while to come up with an angle for a post. This is certainly the situation for this post. Last Wednesday, after having lunch with Matt at Piranha (there's no point in reviewing it, everyone knows it's the best sushi in the world), I wondered up to my old home town of Flower Mound. The intent was to check out the bike route I used to take when I lived up there. With all my free time, I don't have to limit myself to just White Rock Lake. In fact, that was one of the reasons I lived there -- easy access to farm roads for much biking. But, after 3 1/2 years worth of progress, expansion, sprawl or what have you, my old bike route is virtually unbikeable. The giant Super Target is just one of the ultra traffic attractors that would make any ride dangerous.
The other thing that struck me -- and strikes me whenever I venture out to the Mid Cities -- is how fucking far that place is. Good Christ what was I thinking. Kris10, if you're still reading this, thank you for putting up with that ass beating drive.