I went back to the City Room blog and clicked on the name of the author of the post, and got a long list of bicycle-related entries. It looks like J. David Goodman is the bike correspondent for the Times, or at least the City Room blog. So maybe he was here for Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike, or maybe he was passing through, or maybe he made a special visit to check out the bike scene (I think we do have something to teach the world). I don't really know.
Anyway, the "Teutonic" comment was kind of off-the-wall (evidently, he didn't spend a lot of time here), but I think it's true that bicyclists in Madison, for all our failings, are better-behaved and more careful than they are in most big cities. When I was in Chicago a few weeks ago (in a car, unfortunately), I noticed bikes everywhere -- which was great. But I also noticed that almost nobody had a helmet, bikes were routinely blowing red lights, without looking, in the Loop, and large groups of bikes were riding against traffic, on the left side of the road, on moderately busy streets. When it got dark, I saw lots of bikes on the street (there was a big festival near Logan Square), and *none* of them (except for the bike cops) were using lights. I also noticed several Ghost Bikes in the neighborhood. So bikes in Chicago seemed to live up to the stereotype motorists have of bikers in Madison. But we don't. For all our failings, we're paragons of good behavior in Madison. A lot of the credit goes to people like Art and Robbie, and also to the general character of life in Madison. And I think we can pat ourselves (lightly) on the back. Robbie Webber wrote: > It always amuses me when Madison gets mentioned in the NY Times, or really > any paper outside the Midwest. > Now how did they manage to pick us as the paragon of using hand signals > and > good path (although it appears they actually are referring to bike lanes) > behavior? > Robbie Webber > Bike Walk Madison Steering Committee > www.bikewalkmadison.org > Join our group on Facebook! > > > On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Mitchell Nussbaum <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> The City Room blog on the nytimes.com website had this to say about us: >> >> "In general, there is a certain lawlessness to the citys paths that >> would >> be shocking to riders from, say, Madison, Wis., who tend to display a >> Teutonic fidelity to hand signals." >> > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org > _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
