It’s hard to have compassion on people if you don’t see them clearly.

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. — Mark 8:22-25 NIV

This scripture is often used in sermons reminding us to see people more clearly, not as “trees” (a metaphor for inanimate objects), but as human beings. It came to mind for me as I read Bicicleta Bandito’s post on her encounter with an old man in Santa Cruz.

The old man was standing in the middle of a driveway to keep motorists from entering “his” parking lot. The motorists saw an obstruction which they honked at and threatened. The cyclist saw a confused, befuddled old man who needed help.

What and who do you see as you ride your bike?

My Sunday School lesson is on “Doing Good” this morning. As part of my object lesson, I will flip out my cell phone and send the text message “HAITI” to 90999 for an instant $10 donation to the Red Cross. As of this writing (Friday evening), nearly $10 million has been donated through texting to the Red Cross, but the need is still great. Do good and give to relief efforts.

Western Spirit Cycling Tours has organized a consumer outdoor bike demo that they’ve dubbed “Outerbike.” According to Bike Radar, several bicycle brands have already signed up for the Moab demo days over the weekend of September 30 to October 4. Because this comes right on the heels of Interbike, the vendors just send their trailers of demo bikes straight to Utah from Las Vegas.

Western Spirit is charging $150 for four days of hitting the dirt on as many bikes as you can get your hands on from Specialized, Trek, Breezer, Maverick, Ibis, Kona, Santa Cruz, Cannondale and other names.

You can also spend $30 for a weekend pass to the Sea Otter Festival coming up April 15-18 in Monterey, California and do pretty much the same thing, although the trails out at Laguna Seca raceway aren’t nearly what’s available in Moab.

More at Outerbike.com. More at Bike Rumor.

There’s something called the “Handmade Bicycle Fair” going on this weekend at the the Tokyo Science Museum.

Interesting (to me) is that they actually pronounce something like “Handmade Bicycle Fair,” approximating the English pronunciation with the katakana characters [ ハンドメイドバイシクルフェア ]. This comes out in the Japanese something like “hando medo baisikuru fe,” or, if you prefer more American phonetic spelling: “handoh maidoh buy seek koo roo feh.” Get it?

It appears they have a couple of dozen exhibitors. One of the speakers was the SANO MAGIC mahogany bike guy I mentioned the other day.

I’ve seen a handful of Tokyo Bike Fair photos on Flickr; if I have time over the weekend I’ll look for the goodies and post.

Mountain bike film features women athletes
California premier in Santa Cruz

The official trailer for Awesome Land: Women of Dirt recently came out.

Women of Dirt showcases women in mountain biking, featuring Tammy Donahugh, Stephanie Nychka, Cierra Smith, Emily Johnston, Lisa Myklak, Jill Kintner, Leana Gerrard, Dawn Cashen, Katrina Strand, Kathy Pruitt, and Darcy Turenne.

The sport of mountain biking has long been a male dominated sport and until recently all forms of media covering this sport have focused on the men with an occasional mention to women. There has been a large influx of women participating in all forms of mountain biking and the level of talent has been exponentially increasing. Women of Dirt is a groundbreaking film by the filmmakers at Bones Over Metal that spotlights some of the most talented women on two wheels and the lifestyles they lead to allow them to ride. Awesome Land: Women Of Dirt celebrates the mountain bike while celebrating the women who love them.

The California premier of this film will be presented by the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz on Sunday, February 28 2010 at the Rio Theater on Soquel. The filmmaker and at least two of the women in the film will be on hand at the Santa Cruz showing. More details forthcoming next week.

Santa Cruz is reasonably bike friendly. Take, for example, this bike path alongside East Cliff Drive.

It’s a bidirectional bike path adjacent to the one way (east bound) East Cliff Drive between 41st Avenue and 32nd Avenue. There’s currently construction underway to rebuild portions of the roadway and bikeway that have been lost to bluff erosion. The road and bike path remain open during construction, but construction equipment is often parked in the middle of the path like this while crews take their lunch breaks.

At first I was a little bit annoyed — a front loader would never be parked in the middle of a street adjacent to a road project, after all — but the reason construction equipment would never be parked over a traffic lane is because cars can’t easily maneuver around obstructions, where cyclists can handle it with little problem. I had to leave the bike path and go into oncoming traffic, but really it’s not that big of a deal.

What do you think? Would you get annoyed at an intrusion like this?

Kinda related: It’s legal to park in bike lanes in California, just in case you didn’t know. My little town has a local ordinance that prohibits street parking in most bike lanes, and several other California cities do the same thing, so it might be moot.

Update: Here’s a photo Murph took of an obstructed bike path in Urbana, Illinois West Lafayette, Indiana. It’s a little more difficult to get around this one.

Pedaling.TV, the New York culinary cycling series, continues this week with “Roadies and Wafels.” Cyclocross racer Meredith Miller gets a high tech bike fit then takes the lane in New York City with Joan Hanscom on their quest for the perfect Belgian Waffle served from a truck.