Detour Signs: Mostly Thoughtless, Sometimes Painful

[The High Bridge, lit and lurking on the horizon.]

Heading home the other day, I was riding my bicycle across the High Bridge, which rises at a steep angle for half-mile over one hundred feet over the Mississippi. I live on the top of the river bluffs on Saint Paul’s West Side, and so my home stretch climb is inevitable.

When I moved to the neighborhood, three years ago, the bridge relentlessly stalked my horizons. The thought of crossing filled me with classic bike dread, and sometimes I’d go out of my way to avoid it, heading to the less dramatic downtown river crossings. But then much of the time, I would turn down Cliff Road to the base of the bridge, aiming my tires up the incline and climbing to my inevitable fate.   

Over the years, I’ve gotten better at scaling the bridge, developing a few tricks to lessen the psychic burden of the steep half-mile. Sometimes, I count my breathing, each breath a number on the way upwards. I typically get to 70 or 80 deep breaths before I reach the summit, and somehow that makes it more manageable. On other ascents, I put my head down and stare at the cement slowly moving underneath my front wheel, a classic hill-climbing trick I learned on the bluffs of the Wisconsin driftless. Gazing at the distant hilltop only makes it seem farther away, and it's far better to focus solely on the pavement in front of you and to lose yourself in labor. 

This is what I was doing the other night. My hat brim pointed downwards at the concrete of the High Bridge's bike lane, ascending like a doorstop to the top of the bluff. With an occasional glance left or right to take in the downtown skyline or the wide Mississsippi valley to the West I relentlessly pedaled, getting into a mute rhythm. It was going well, the slow steady pace, and as I gazed down, I knew that soon enough enough I’d reach the top and almost home.

Then…

BANG!

Simultaneously, the top of my head and my front tire collided with a piece of metal.

"Fuck!" I yelled out into the empty air, high over the river, suddenly halted. 

I raised my eyes. I had ridden directly into a large orange sign sitting in the bike lane. 

DETOUR AHEAD, read the sign.

I stood stunned. For half a minute, my nose inches from the reflective black-on-orange message, my brain basically stopped. The sign was a diamond roughly 3’ square. I stared at it. It was made from thin metal that made a distinct low sound when you slammed it with the top of your head.

“Who put this here?” was my only thought.

[Similar situation on Fairview Avenue. I saw this one though.]

It’s not often that you ride a bike straight into a large object. My head down, staring at the ground, I hadn't been looking up, hadn't even seen the sign, despite the fact that it took up up the entirety of the 6’ bike lane. My only saving grace is that, climbing up the bridge, I had been going slowly, maybe 5 miles per hour.

"Fuck!" I said out loud again, a bit less loudly, bicycle Tourette's. I straddled my bike for a few more seconds before awkwardly moving around the sign, defeated by a dumb object.

Up ahead, there were some cones off to the right. The right-turn lane to Cherokee Avenue was closed. 

“Whoop-dee-doo,” I thought as I slowly rode by, taking a moment to silently curse whichever Public Works employee had deposited the sign in the bike lane earlier that day.

I suppose it wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. What kind of person doesn’t look up at where they’re going? Who would fail to see a bright orange 4’ sign directly ahead on a straight-as-an-arrow roadway?

The answer is, of course, me. Construction detours are invariably designed for cars and their drivers. I can count on one hand the number of times more than a moment's thought was given to bicyclists when these signs and detours are installed in Saint Paul. (Maybe that's beginning to change, but not quickly...) The almost willful ignorance of active transportation goes doubly for people on foot. Construction detours rarely offer any accommodation, simply “closing” the sidewalk willy-nilly and forcing people to fend for themselves.

This is exactly what happened in Edina last week, when a black man named Larnie Thomas was walking up Xerxes Avenue and came across a detour that closed the sidewalk. Like the vast majority of people trying to get around the Twin Cities’ barely-walkable suburbs, he took the most direct option and trudged along listening to music. That's when he caught the eye of a police officer driving past.

The rest of the encounter with the cop is your typical racist policing, surely made worse by the fact that Edina is one of the most historically segregated cities in the metro. But the whole thing could have been prevented if the Edina Public Works policies had called for legitimate pedestrian detours that didn’t force people to walk in the street in the first place.

The story reminds me of Trayvon Martin, where the lack of sidewalks in so many parts of Florida forces anyone not driving a car to “trespass” along all kinds of boulevard desire paths. Too much of the time, our built environment treats anyone outside of a car like an alien, a willful ignorance that epitomizes structural racism. Police profiling combined with unequal access to mobility and a landscape that privileges drivers is bad enough; detours that throw people off the streets and force them to fend for themselves is fuel on the fire.

[Another thoughtless "closed" sign on a Saint Paul bridge.]

I’m not sure what could have prevented me from riding my bike directly into a large orange DETOUR sign. Maybe smaller cones placed in the lane ahead of the sign might have helped. I’m sure it's next-to-impossible for a Public Works’ employee, even one used to riding a bicycle, to predict that someone would put their head down and climb up the bridge without looking up.

The stunning indignation when coming face-to-face with a mute metal object is an unforgettable feeling I hope never to repeat. Maybe someday someone will figure out a way to install signs without putting them smack in the middle of bike lanes. Maybe I’ll look up next time...

Three Tricks for Overcoming the Dread of Everyday Biking

I want to confess something. Even though I've been biking all year long for years, it still happens a lot. I don't like to talk about it, but there it is...

I still get bike dread.

Bike dread is that sinking feeling when you realize you have to ride your bike but large parts of you don't want to. Not all of you, but large parts of you.

Bike dread can strike at any time, but it usually comes during times of bad weather or rush hour. Bike dread strikes when looking out the window at a tree bending in the blowing wind, silhouetted against a darkening sky. Or it can strike at unceasing sounds of motors on the other side of the door, the honking of a horn, the thin rumble of a revving motorcycle.

When it strikes, bike dread can paralyze. It can leave a bicyclist sitting on their couch staring at the wall, often for hours. Bike dread seems to drain the body of fortitude, leaving its victim unable to get on their bicycle and tackle the city. Bike dread can strike a bicyclist prone, succumbed by thoughts of steep hills or the terror of a car-choked corner. Bike dread renders people with bicycles immobile and stunned by inertia, the dread of the bicycle trip.

For me it happened last Friday. I had a coffee meeting with a friend at a coffee shop across the river. But seeing the snow flurries flit past the window, and the wind whipping my Saint Paul flag around like ocean spray, I kept delaying my plans to leave the house. Maybe I'll take the bus? I thought. If I owned a car, it would have been irresistible.

Instead, I stared at the wall, pet the cat, glazed over social media feeds, and turned the pages of an endless book on my desk. Bike dread had taken hold, and it seemed like nothing other than the passage of time would rescue me from its relentless grip.

But that's not the end of the story. Eventually I cured myself from my stupor and found the will to continue. And it wasn't so bad.

Here a few key tricks to overcoming bike dread. It's possible, and you can do it.

Trick #1: Think about health

As yourself one simple question: "Would I be better off if I got some exercise today?"

Unless you wake up and work out, the answer is almost always "yes." Our American lives are sedentary affairs, where even the act of opening up a car door with your hand has become automated. Bicycling is one chance to get relatively low-impact exercise. Even better, and unlike the gym, it's meaningful work that gets you where you need to be.

(Note: I stole this trick from Mister Money Mustache, and it works wonderfully.)

Trick #2: Don't be in a hurry

[Biking with a sweetheart helps you pace yourself.]

Nothing is worse than being filled with bike dread and being late at the same time. Normally contemplative bicycling can transform into a harried battle with the elements, topography, and equally flustered drivers.

I like biking at a pace where you can enjoy where you are, notice the city around you, stop for a second at a shop, for a coffee, or for a chat if you encounter a friend along the way. It makes the bicycling into less of a trip and more of a pastime. But it doesn't work unless you leave extra time for yourself to ride at your own pace.

Of course, some people love riding fast, and that's cool too.

(Note: This tip comes from Lindsey Wallace's excellent bicycling advice. And the rule is also essential for humane urban driving.)

Tip #3: Appreciate the out-of-doors

There are very few weather conditions that are completely unappreciable. As a Minnesotan, I can say this with confidence. Maybe a below-zero wind chill or a cold horizontal rain. Probably a tornado.

But the vast majority of the time, you can appreciate the weather. If you take a moment to look around at the plants, buildings, and surrounding sky, you realize that this moment on the Earth is a precious thing. You realize that, unlike all the people stuck in their cars or homes, you are out there and can hear the sound of the chickadees singing slightly different songs, or the smell of springtime mud or coffee beans roasting or both. You are one of the few people in the city out there noticing the trees just clinging to their leaves or the buds about to pop. Each moment the sky offers something slightly different, and you're there to see it, to feel the wind and its changing seasons.

On the Friday when the bike dread was getting me down, the weather was particularly intense. It kept snowing in Saint Paul, light fast bits of white snow appeared and vanished a few minutes later, only to be replaced by bright springtime sunshine. Back and forth like that for hours in the middle of the day.

The wind was coming out of the Northwest, and for a while it was discouraging, but as I biked down and up the Saint Paul hills, I realized that this was probably the last gasp of the wintertime. I could give myself permission to savor it.  Not for many months would something this coldly dramatic take place. And all around me, as I biked down the empty city streets, I began noticing the first flowers.

Here's a final word: it's almost never as bad as you imagine.

Bike dread can almost swallow up you and beat you into a state of submission, where anyone can simply say "are you sure you don't want a ride?" and you immediately cave.

But actually riding your bike is almost never as bad as you think it will be. Almost every time, when I find myself getting onto the seat and heading out down the street, I'm happier with myself. Bike dread is a state of mind, and the physical experience of biking in the Twin Cities is usually far more enriching.

So if you're riding your bike every day in April, or on any day where bike dread strikes, try one of these little tricks.

Like millions of Americans, you're not alone. Your bike has the cure for bike dread.

[Some of the winter/spring flowers I noticed after I overcame my bike dread and went on the Friday ride.]