Pledge to try commute alternatives for a chance to win prizes!

I sat down in my local coffee shop with a copy of Good Times, one of the weeklies published in Santa Cruz, California. The cover story, Kick The Habit, gives commute alternatives for those who live in Santa Cruz.

Elizabeth Limbach writes about the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission’s Commute Solutions program, which was formed 30 years ago to encourage residents to use modes of transportation besides the single occupant vehicle. She points to carpool resources (mostly 511 ride matching) and carpool success stories.

Limbach writes about her surprise in finding that her three mile trip from work to home can be faster on bike than with her car, mentioning the work of Ecology Action and People Power. She quotes Eco Action’s Piet Canin, who says the bike commute share in Santa Cruz is now at 9.3%, according to the US Census American Community Survey. This is more than double the 4% bike commute share seen in Santa Cruz in Y2K.

Finally, she writes about the Santa Cruz Metro bus system, including the Highway 17 bus that I ride “over the hill” to San Jose most days of the week.

One option she forgot to mention is telework or “working from home.” A lot of my job involves lab work and face to face meetings and collaborating with colleagues, but with planning I can often arrange to work from home once or twice per week. Lately, I’ve seen a pickup truck parked at the summit of Highway 17 advertising The Satellite, a telework center in Felton with locations opening “soon” in Aptos, Santa Cruz, and Scotts Valley.

Good Times: Kick The Habit. The Feb 4 issue also includes Commute Solutions, a “resource for sustainable transportation options” in Santa Cruz County. If you make The Commuter Pledge, Good Times will enter you in a drawing for prizes including dinner for two, bus passes, and bike locker “ParkCards.”

Via Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz…

TONIGHT – Big Basin General Plan Open House in Los Gatos. Fisher Middle School Library, 19195 Fisher Avenue, Los Gatos, CA. 6:30 PM to 9 PM. More info at Big Basin General Plan website. Big Basin is the oldest state park in the system yet it doesn’t have a
general plan.

Currently, there is no legal way to bike from the coast to park headquarters via off road trails. One of the draft plan options proposes “a continuous trail from the ridge tops to the coast (outside of the wilderness) for bicycle access to natural areas and scenic points of interest.”

Another Big Basin General Plan Open House takes place Saturday, February 6, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Felton, CA at the Felton Community Hall, 6191 Highway 9.

According to MBoSC president Mark Davidson, “We should emphasize that mountain bikers desire connections to regional trails, parks and roads. We would like to have a way to get to the park headquarters from the coast and a LEGAL off road route from the
(Santa Clara) Valley to the coast via Big Basin.”

“Big Basin is too remote from large population areas to get the same sort of trail density as in Santa Cruz. Legal riding in Big Basin would tend to skew towards the epic XC, cyclocross, explorer, and adventure tourists rather than the gravity crowd.”

Those who follow me on Facebook know that I was diagnosed with “optic neuritis” yesterday. This is an inflammation of the optic nerve, and I tell you it hurts like a banshee at times.

Pain killers don’t do a thing for it. Closing my eyes is useless. The only thing I’ve found so far to alleviate the pain is cycling. When I’m riding my bike, the stabbing pain behind my left eye completely goes away, and the relief lasts for a couple of hours after I stop riding. It’s pretty awesome; yet another reason to ride my bike!

The gorier details: I starting having the worst headaches of my life about a week ago. Yesterday morning, I noticed vision in my left eye was degraded (!). Alarmed, I called my optometrist so he could tell me not to worry, but he responded with alarm as well and instructed me to come in immediately. After I biked to my eye doctor, he looked at my retinas, did the RedCap Test, and visual field testing. Diagnosis: inflammation of the optic nerve and edema of the optic disk, making my blind spot about double its normal size.

My optometrist referred me to an ophthalmologist (an M.D. specialized in the eyes), so I biked to his office where he did Exactly The Same Tests and pronounced Exactly The Same Diagnosis.

Several people have already asked (and I did as well): This is not related to the car crash the other week. Eye trauma doesn’t cause optic nerve inflammation. The ophthalmologist I saw says he thinks it related to my sinusitus, but to rule out stuff like multiple sclerosis I’m getting an MRI scan this afternoon.

Aside: My optometrist and the ophthalmologist are both cycling enthusiasts. The ophthalmologist, Dr. Jonathan Cress in Santa Cruz, crashed his bike a few years ago and damaged his neck. His physician told him he couldn’t bike anymore, but Cress told me, “Give up biking?! That’s #****n nuts! I can’t do that.” He rides a recumbent these days.

Another aside: Multiple sclerosis is the disease that Sheldon Brown succumbed to in the final years of his life. Yesterday was the anniversary of Sheldon Brown’s death.

“My man Sam always rides his bike.”

(On Hulu. Sorry Illinois and other locations outside the USA).

I need to remember that not everybody who regularly follows this blog also follows me on Facebook, Flickr or Twitter. If you haven’t already heard, I was hit by a car a couple of Fridays ago. It hurt and put a nice gash in my upper lip. Here I am still smiling before the pain sets in.

Since somebody’s going to ask: The bike is mostly fine, and in fact I rode the same bike the following morning with the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz for their Saturday ride at Wilder Ranch the very next morning. The black stitches in my swollen face adds cred to my mad shredder mountain biker look, I’m sure, though I had to quit the ride early because, honestly, getting hit by a car really takes it out of a guy, especially at my age.

I was well lit with multiple bright lights (steady and blinking), but I was invisible to Bridgett in her little black Nissan. She turned into me in a class left cross collision. She called me four or five times Friday night telling me how awful she felt, but confessed to me, “I didn’t see you at all!” I saw her just fine, especially as she swerved toward me and all I saw were her headlights, and then stars and whistling birds.

This is my second left cross. The first happened when I was a teen, and the driver didn’t see me. I went up and over the hood, slammed the windshield, then rolled off and landed on my feet. The bike was crushed under the car.

My second collision with a car occurred when the driver blew through a stop sign in Wichita Falls, Texas and sideswiped me — the driver didn’t see me and didn’t even realize she hit me until I got up, chased her down and caught her at her destination down the street. The responding police officer declined to even take a report and he let me know I was wasting his time. Grrr…

The common factor in those collisions, if you haven’t noticed it yet, is “I didn’t see you!” Actually, in each of those cases the driver was maneuvering too quickly for conditions and not paying while turning, but you get the point. Cycling lawyer Rick Bernardi discusses this common excuse when cyclists are hit.

How about you? Have you been hit by a car? And did the driver say, “I didn’t see you”?

(Don’t forget: California Highway Patrol bike incidents here.)