Bike Lanes in Lancaster: Some Thoughts

I'm planning on racing with this
thing in April, look out for that.

Last month I decided to buy a pretty nice road bike off Facebook Marketplace. It's a Trek Domane 2, and it came with front and rear lights, a seat post bag, along with a few other extras, and for an entry level road bike it is a hell of a get. Although I already had a bike-- an REI branded mountain bike outfitted with a rack and panniers that I love dearly-- I wanted something a little lighter and faster, so now I have the bike I can take to the grocery store and one I can take to charity rides and use as an excuse to wear Lycra shorts and wraparound sunglasses. 

I still go running more than I go cycling, though, and part of that is because of where I live. The first time I took my REI mountain bike for a spin I hit a pothole in the bike lane and scraped my leg pretty badly (I finished that damn ride, even though the tumble took off some of my tattoo). Often, when driving to work, I see people using the bike lane as their own personal expressway, which doesn't offer much confidence when it's my fleshy body and 20 pounds of aluminum versus a half-ton of Nissan Maxima with a driver on their cell phone going 65 miles per hour. Running isn't much better since I've nearly been splatted by drivers who forget pedestrians get the right of way, but at least I'm not going as fast as I would be on a bike and I'm able to stop a lot faster. 

I was thinking about all this because of a post on Facebook I saw from the mayor talking about the benefits of bike lanes, with a link to a Fast Company article that-- hilariously-- can't be found. 

"I am normal and can be trusted with
running a city of 174,000 people."

He talked about how, while traffic might be a little slower, bike lanes are important from a safety standpoint, then offered no elaboration as to how they make roads safer. Granted, I'm just some guy who uses bike lanes and sidewalks throughout the city, but I think he's half right in this case. 

The BLVD, the downtown area of Lancaster, California, is his pride and joy, and is an attempt in urban design that almost works. It offers walkable shops and restaurants, a farmers market every Thursday during the warmer months, mixed use buildings with upper floor apartments and lower floor store fronts, and-- most importantly for the purposes of this post-- mixed use streets for bikes and cars. The infrastructure for being less car-centered is cool in theory, but it's only a quarter mile strip of street in the city, and car parking takes up a lot of space in that quarter mile.  

Essentially, my point is this: R. Rex Parris is almost right. Bike lanes, and by extension pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, is good for public safety, but primarily because it reduces the likelihood of being in a car accident. Fewer cars means fewer accidents, and fewer accidents means fewer injuries and deaths as a result of driving. However, the east side of the city-- the poorer side, where I live-- is in desperate need of infrastructure repair. Sure, I can ride my bike to Aldi pretty easily if I need some milk and whatever insane limited-run shit they have (I really hope they re-release the Aldi branded shoes), but the bike lanes shoulder up to car traffic going a mile a minute, and the state of the pavement makes for a rough ride whether you're on a bike or in a car. Riding a bike to The BLVD is doable from the east side, but is often a hair-raising experience. 

Having goods and services accessible without the need of a car would do a lot for the well-being of the community, which means more mixed-use neighborhoods, pedestrian-friendly infrastructure like protected bike lanes and sidewalks with actual shade during the triple-digit heat of the summer, fixing rutted and potholed streets beyond the gentrified strip in the center, and incentivizing biking, walking, and public transit in general. It's a lot to ask of a city built up by suburban sprawl but, if the mayor wants to talk about bike lanes and safety, he should consider making the streets actually safe to use. 

I know the city has a lot of issues to address, but hopefully infrastructure improves so bike lanes can actually make things safer. 

A Brief Dive Into The Monster Mash

It's that time of year again for horror movies, pumpkin carving, and novelty songs about skeletons-- spooky, scary, and otherwise-- among other spooky subject matter, like the 1960s classic "The Monster Mash." Recently there has been some contention with the song, with some people claiming it's a song about the Monster Mash, and that we don't really know what it sounds like, in much the same vein as The Greatest Song In The World in Tenacious D's "Tribute."

While interesting, I had a thought in the shower that sent me down a really, really pointless rabbit hole that prompted me to dust off my blog and hammer out a theory nobody cares about nor asked for.

The Monster Mash was initially a dance: the monster from his slab began to rise and did the Mash. The ghouls came from their humble abodes to get a jolt from an electrode and did the Mash. It's easy enough to believe that it's just a dance and not a song they're talking about in The Monster Mash.

The song, however, later says they played the Mash, which throws a wrench into the assumption that it's only a dance. Dracula shakes his fists and says, "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?" which, in reply, is stated that it's now the Mash, it's now The Monster Mash, et cetera. Final nail in the coffin (pun intended) for knowing what the song is.

Except it's not. 

The 1962 album The Original Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers does, in fact, have a track called "The Transylvania Twist." It can be inferred that, if they said The Transylvania Twist is now The Monster Mash, that the song played in "The Monster Mash" sounds like "The Transylvania Twist" which solves the mystery of what they played in "The Monster Mash" sounds like.

This, however, leaves the mystery of what the dance might look like. I don't have a definitive answer to what the dance of The Monster Mash might look like, but considering ghouls got a jolt from an electrode, the monster-- who I'm guessing is like Frankenstein's monster-- also got a jolt, and that The Transylvania Twist could be a variation of the original dance, I'd imagine the dance being a jerking type movement like a zombie getting electrocuted while doing The Twist.

That, of course, is all conjecture, but it's something to think about if you want a topic to talk about at the next Halloween party to ensure you're not invited next time. 

Creep it real and have a happy Halloween. 

In Memoriam: My Shorts

It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to retire my favorite pair of running shorts. 

I bought a pair of Patagonia Strider 5 inch shorts (I think) in 2017 (I think) at my local outdoor gear shop (Elevation Sierra Adventure Essentials, that I'm sure of), not realizing that the shorts I'd run in previously were two inches longer. I was self-conscious about wearing them when I ran because my legs were ghostly white. It was bad enough running in longer shorts, but showing more thigh was not something I was used to. However, having only a couple other pairs of shorts meant I had no other choice but to wear them eventually if I wanted to go for a run before laundry day. Besides, I ran in the desert outside of town so no prying eyes would be blinded by my pasty gams. 

I grew to love those shorts. They taught me how to not give a shit about how my legs looked and to embrace the lightness and freedom of movement short shorts provide. I tried to get another pair of Strider shorts but, of course, the new versions of them weren't as good as the original. The rest of my shorts-- all 5 inch inseams now, of course-- have been fine, but not quite as good as those green Patagonia ones. 

I ran my first marathon in them. I tackled mountain trails, desert scrambles, city streets, and suburban sidewalks in them. They were in my rotation just about every week, even as other pairs of shorts blew out and fell apart. 

Last week, after my Wednesday morning run, I was hurting. It wasn't soreness from the run, and I didn't pull anything; it was from chafing. The hundreds of miles of thigh rubbing, sweaty unmentionables, and farts finally took their toll on my thin polyester butt-cover. The holes in the inner thigh no longer keep my legs from rubbing, the inner liner no longer supports like it used to, the elastic in the side pockets is going bad, and for the sake of my skin, the contents of my pockets, and my modesty, it's time for them to retire. It has happened with other shorts before, and assuredly it will happen again with others, but I can't help but feel a little bummed that my favorite pair of running shorts has finally run its course. 

I plan to mail them to Patagonia to have them recycled, so maybe the blood, sweat, and tears I've put in these shorts will live on in other well-loved gear in the future. 

Maybe some of the farts, too. 

One can only hope.