Recently, a bike-access expert visited Northfield to talk with citizens about making the town more friendly to bicyclists. I'm all for the big infrastructural stuff like dedicated trails and lanes and about 300% more bike racks downtown, in keeping with the recommendations mentioned in the Northfield.org post. But in riding my bike back and forth to work every day (24 straight work days so far!), I've concluded that making Northfield more bike-friendly will also entail some education of riders and especially of drivers. Almost daily, my commute to and from the Carleton campus brings me into all-too-close proximity with a driver with a loose grasp of the rules of the road. Not that I'm ever much endangered. To the contrary - it's the drivers who risk their own safety in trying to be overly solicitous of me and my bike. When I ride through the S-curve on Woodley just west of Prairie, for instance, virtually every passing vehicle swings all the way out into the other lane, despite the facts that there is often oncoming traffic and that you cannot see all the way through the curves. Less frequently but no less worryingly, drivers are often flat-out confused by my presence at stop signs. Here, other cyclists - the ones who blaze through stop signs - are probably contributing to the problem, but when I come to a complete stop and wait my turn, I often get waved through by someone who stops even when they don't have to. At the Prairie-Woodley intersection yesterday, a westbound driver slammed on her brakes when she noticed me, waiting motionless, at the southbound stop sign. She was very nearly rear-ended by the driver behind her. I refused to go when she tried to wave me through, since she not only had the right of way but was disrupting traffic by stopping for nothing.
Blowing & Drifting
Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.