The actions weren't unrealistic in the mind of that bear. He was just a bit wacked out.
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The actions weren't unrealistic in the mind of that bear. He was just a bit wacked out.
This thread has dropped too far.
Pulling your boots up by your selfstraps?
Horrible racket in the back yard this morning. Turned out to be two hawks on the ground screeching at each other. I never did see a rabbit or something for them to be fighting over.
When they saw me one flew off, the other up onto a tree limb and watched me until I started toward it.
Never did identify the species. Maybe bigger than a large crow but smaller than a typical chicken. We don't get them in town like this very often.
It's a bit late in the year for them to be just courting. Had it been earlier, that's what I would have suspected. Might still be a youth learning to hunt.
Last night quite late we had another noisy rarity. Some motorcycle crowd seemed to think it was a grand idea to drive through here en masse about 1 AM.
The joke was on them. From one direction it is a straight shot into this community but for historical reasons development patterns left other routes more convoluted. Add to that summer road construction barriers with detours... It was funny for about 45 minutes listening to the pack of rumbling bumblers run to and for trying to find a path out of here.
So loud they woke a lot of people up. So absurd they gave many a good laugh as they ran from one corner to another trying to reach escape velocity.
Vroomity-vroomity trundling along. Then movement stops as they settle like broody hens, chuckle-chuckle zing-zing chuckle. Vroomity-vroomity as they posture for each other, more zoomity-zoomity as they start moving again. Rinse, repeat.
Everyone remembers the infamous South Park episode.
I had a neighbor with one of those who always left at some crazy time. At the moment, I forget whether it was late at night or very early morning when they left, but it was always loud.
That's all I was thinking as I was reading your post! When my wife and I are sitting out back on our deck and hear one go by, we always look at each other and comment "fxxxxt", lol! (British term for cigarette is not allowed I guess...)Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
I was passed by what amounted to a low-end moped on the greenbelt in Boise, today. That got me thinking about the rules for walking/biking paths. For a long time, there was a pretty clean distinction between motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles, but the distinction has become terribly blurred, out here.
First there were the occasional electric bikes and occasional electric scooters (both private and rentals). Now, electric bikes probably outnumber pedal bikes. Sometimes, you even see somebody pedaling along on an electric bike, while moving FAR faster than they'd be able to move that bike with their feeble pedaling alone.
So, if electric bikes are fine, then why not a bike with a gas motor...and then a motorcycle...and then....
I suppose the rule should be that electric bikes and scooters are motorized and shouldn't be allowed. Out here, that ship has probably sailed. The electric bikes allow for a lot of elderly people to get out in ways they likely couldn't before. On the other hand, I have yet to see an electric bike operating at a speed that isn't faster than it really ought to be operated. Plenty of pedal bikes are operated faster than they should be, but all electric bikes are, at least on a walking path.
Are your problems overthinking?
We've seen "path use" problems here for a long time.
In the 1970s Federal funds were used to create "bike paths" to encourage bicycling. These were concrete and similar to sidewalks except wider to permit 2-way travel, had smoother joints, and still have money spent to maintain them (adjacent mowing, high quality repairs, snow plowing, etc.).
From the start people insisted on walking on them, and that quickly led to signage and fines because pedestrian use basically rendered them useless for cycling. Motor travel use was also a problem but far rarer in the early decades.
With time, pedestrian use pretty much ruined them as cycling paths. Though legally they are still roads and money is still spent keeping them up to par... in all other ways they were abandoned to pedestrian use.
Now where these parallel what was a 4-lane road, the road got restriped as a 3-lane road plus bike path. These get chaotic near intersections as the right turn lane crosses over the bike path.
It's all a huge mess: ongoing expense, source of accidents, impediment to traffic flow, and that's before considering the chaos of several classes of powered bikes and scooters in the mix today.
Probably best not... but I'll admit it's almost acceptable when applied to douchebag bikers. (Or boy racers, come to think of it)Quote:
(British term for cigarette is not allowed I guess...)
We have them all over the place and they work well. I think the difference, though, is that our towns and cities typically only have single lane roads with multilane roads typically only occurring between towns and cities. We have a few dual carriageways in cities but they're rare. And we simply don't have an expectation of being able to drive above 30 mph in a built up area (in side roads it's 20).Quote:
"bike paths"
Putting a bike lane alongside a 4 lane highway where cars are pulling 70 mph just sounds stupid.
We don't have so many bike paths. When one exists, you often just need to look a bit closer to understand why. We have greenbelt pathways, some of which are quite nice. They are built because the land couldn't otherwise be developed. Some are single lane, others are double. The one in Boise is all double lane with a line in the middle, which people generally respect. The path is open to biking and walking, with a large number of both. I believe there are more pedestrians than bikers, but that might be because bikers pass through an area much faster, and therefore are in the field of view for a much shorter time for any observer. It does seem to work fine.
That may end up changing, though. Both the numbers and types of users are growing.
I like the bike lanes. It just so dangerous when you come up on a bike that has to use part of your lane because there isn't a bike lane. I'd hate to hit someone.
They probably wouldn't be thrilled, either.
It bothers me though to have a bike lane painted in the road when there is a separate, well-maintained, wide concrete path (with no encroaching trees or bushes allowed) running parallel which still gets funding for support specifically as a bicycle path. Throw some electric scooters on there, bobbing and weaving among the promenading pedestrians using it now... it's a mess.
But I repeat myself.
You have two separate parallel bike paths? If your talking about the sidewalk then that different. You can get a ticket for riding a bike on the sidewalk here. Though it does seem a safer option on narrow residential streets.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Yeah, that's a really interesting situation you mentioned there. It sounds like it evolved that way, but it hasn't evolved that way out here, or in any other place I'm familiar with (which is very few, and possibly VERY unrepresentative). I'm curious as to what forces allowed it to evolve that way and how we avoided it. From your description, our greenbelt is not materially different, and yet I'm not aware of any walking/biking/scooter conflict existing on our greenbelt.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
What we have are concrete bike paths that look like incredibly nice broad sidewalks to the clueless. These now run through neighborhoods that built up around them over decades.
Because it become impossible to police this (imagine that every Joe Weeble started walking down paved streets one day) bike rotes were moved back into the road by restriping 4-lane roads into 3-car+1-bike lanes (center car lane for left turns only).
So now we have these "fancy sidewalks" running along artery routes, all maintained using funding that was set aside to encourage bicycle use. Bikes are back in the roads even though the entire point was to offer protected bicycle routes. Throw in the newer motorized contraptions at every scale running all over the place and the unruly mess got bigger.
The bicycling lobby comes off looking like the bad guy. Huge slabs of budget spent on them to no functional effect while they demand part of the road as well.
Another wrinkle is that if by fiat those were declared to be sidewalks the cost of snow clearing and repairs all falls on the adjacent property owners. They've paid nothing directly for them ever unlike all other sidewalks. They also lose their primacy and become subject to crowding by trees, shrubs, utility pole guywires, crossing driveways, etc.