I was riding my bicycle yesterday on my way to work when I came across the above sharrows. They’re on W 23rd Ave between Quitman St and Stuart St. I am significantly disappointed in the placement of these.

What’s wrong you ask? Sharrows are intended to provide guidance to cyclists regarding best lane positioning. The placement of these sharrows would seem to encourage riding into parked cars. Notice the car on the left which is parked on top of a sharrow.

Denver has a 3-1-1 website which you can post these types of issues. I reported it and took this photo to demonstrate the issue. 3-1-1 is very good about providing responses. Here’s the response I received:

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately our crews placed the sharrows on W. 23rd Ave. between Stuart and Quitman in the wrong location.  The road narrows considerably and they must not have seen there was parking in these 2 narrow blocks.  I’ve copied the pavement markings supervisor so he can advise whether or not the problem can be corrected.

Look, I get it. People make mistakes. I’m just upset the mistake was made with thermoplastic on fresh asphalt. Now someone’s going to have to come out, grind up the pavement to remove the markings and place them further out into the road out of the parking lane. This isn’t the first road I’ve seen the mistakes made on. There’s a portion of Logan St with sharrows where it is quite obvious the same mistake was made.

Hopefully I can post a followup post in a couple weeks with better placement.

Still fuzzy on what sharrows are? Read my previous post with some words on sharrows.

Reblogged from Isaac's Outfits:

Part of me wants to think that his "coming home" outfit is going to be a big deal.  This is the first outfit he will wear, this is how he will be presented to the outside world for the first time.  In reality though he will probably not care and I'll be happy knowing that 30 minutes after we get home we'll be right back into bed cuddling. 

Read more… 123 more words

Oh, hello there.

My wife and I, for example, own one car between the two of us. Even with a son on the way, we just don’t see the need for another car. Our car isn’t even used for commuting to and from work. We have planned our lives around the idea that one car is enough for a family. Not that we don’t recognize the utility of cars. We use ours for various errands and to visit friends and family. Most days though, it just sits in our driveway.

The fact is, many major cities make it easy to get around without a car. Our lovely mile high city of Denver has excellent bicycle infrastructure, a large public transportation system, and the first large scale bike share system in the USA. I hope in the future, many families and individuals will find it easy to go car-lite or even car-free.

When you rent, sometimes you have to make do with growing veggies in containers.

Its a boy!

It is a Sturmey Archer S2C, two-speed kick shift hub with coaster brake. I picked red because it would look hot.

I’m waiting for a rim to arrive so I can lace it up. This is going on my ’70 Hercules. Rim is a silver Sun CR-18 in the standard 26″ x 1 3/8″ (BSD 590mm) size.

Of course, I don’t normally wear a tie. I have to consider that on any given day, the likely hood of me crawling underneath a desk to pull cables is pretty high, I don’t want my nice clothes to get all dusty.