milking my son's disability; bike bitch

[sistawendy]

Boyboy preferred watching the third Potter movie for the nth time this week to the Solstice parade; le sigh. Rightly or wrongly, I took advantage of his Aspiness to sleep 13 hours out of the last 24. Viva Saturday.

I biked to work in the early afternoon yesterday -- I used the car to dodge the morning rain and do errands. I pass somebody on the sidewalk on 148th going down to Redmond Way, and she yells something at me. I stop at the light, and she catches up to me: a skinny, middle-aged woman with huge square-framed glasses. She tells me to obey the rules of the road and get off the sidewalk. As I told her, 148th has no bike lane and its speed limit is 40. Never mind the slope and the curves. No way, Josefina. Butt-clenchers breed out here in the suburbs, I tell you. That chick wouldn't last ten seconds on any college campus.

Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up bikes in Redmond's municipal code. Riding on the sidewalks is illegal unless a sidewalk has been designated as a combination sidewalk/bike lane. I can find no indication online that 148th has been so designated. I'm not terribly worried, though. As you might imagine, days go by when I see no pedestrians on the mile or so that I ride on the sidewalk each way. As the weather's improved, sidewalk bikers have multiplied.

Comments

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

Erik says, and I quote, "I've ridden there, but not on the sidewalk. I ride in traffic, where it's safe." Apparently it's MUCH more dangerous -- for YOU -- to ride on the sidewalk.

[sitapixie.livejournal.com]

I ride on the sidewalks too if there isn't any bike lanes.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

In Redmond? Hell yes! Drivers there are not used to bicycles, and the stretch of of 148th north of Redmond Way is steep, curvy, and full of driveways at the bottom of the slope.