{"id":373,"date":"2013-08-05T10:47:33","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T17:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/?p=373"},"modified":"2013-08-05T10:47:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T17:47:33","slug":"beautiful-bicycling-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/beautiful-bicycling-diversity.html","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Bicycling Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend was especially lovely in Seattle.\u00a0 After a rainy Friday, the clouds parted and, for some of us, the Dead Baby Bike Club’s annual downhill race was a great experience.\u00a0 I understand that this event is not for everyone<\/a>.\u00a0 In fact, only one of the three lawyers here (I, Bob– the one without kids) attended.\u00a0 But we should all appreciate the diversity of those who love bikes.<\/p>\n

There are commuters who would never race.\u00a0 There are racers who would never ride to a store.\u00a0\u00a0 There are recumbent riders who can’t understand those who hunch over their bikes.\u00a0 There are upright riders who think similarly to the recumbent riders, but then would never ride a recumbent.\u00a0 There are BMX riders and tricycle people.\u00a0 There are those who ride with everything all fluorescent and flashing and riders who wear all black and remove their reflectors.<\/p>\n

This much is true: whenever we ride, we are not driving a car.\u00a0 We are exercising.\u00a0 We are seeing things and (hopefully) we are seen.\u00a0 For the most part, it really is all good.\u00a0 So let’s all get along…<\/p>\n

I’ve never been injured in a Dead Baby event, but attorney John McHale has been injured multiple times in organized bike races.\u00a0 Is the Downhill dangerous?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 It’s also dangerous just waiting at a red light on my ride to work.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it’s hard to view tall bike jousting as anything but dangerous… and fun.\u00a0 I’ll remain a spectator, thank you very much… Here is a short video: jousting<\/a><\/p>\n

On Sunday my wife and I rode our 1952 Schwinn tandem from West Seattle to Ballard for brunch and then around Magnolia and back to West Seattle.\u00a0 That’s pretty much the Tour de France on that bike.\u00a0 It was fun, but again, not without risk.\u00a0 I noticed one of Seattle’s famous wheel-swallowing sewer grates inside a marked bike lane in Magnolia.<\/p>\n

I was too busy avoiding it to take a photo, but here is one that my office played a part in getting replaced:<\/p>\n

\"grate\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Ballard, we visited the Farmer’s Market and chatted with a nice Cascade Bicycle Ambassador.\u00a0 He and I traded spoke cards:<\/p>\n

\"spoke<\/a><\/p>\n

Cascade’s spoke cards address what to do in case of a collision, whereas Washington Bike Law’s spoke cards provide a summary of bike laws.\u00a0 About 90% of our work is representing bicyclist who have been in crashes, so one might expect our cards to be more like Cascade’s.\u00a0 Instead, ours provide citations to the actual laws that many people (including police) do not understand.\u00a0 Both cards are free for the asking and, this being Washington, both are waterproof.<\/p>\n

Like the diversity in people who love bikes, both are good!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend was especially lovely in Seattle.\u00a0 After a rainy Friday, the clouds parted and, for some of us, the Dead Baby Bike Club’s annual downhill race was a great experience.\u00a0 I understand that this event is not for everyone.\u00a0 In fact, only one of the three lawyers here (I, Bob– the one without kids) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bicycle-advocates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/start.jpg?fit=1632%2C1224&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}