Donna and I took our bicycles for a spin yesterday: not the typical Sunday jaunt through our eastside neighborhood, but a paper chase on wheels, riding a hilly and tricky trail with the Pedalfiles Bicycle Hash House Harriers.
You can read about the ride here, if you wish, or merely marvel at the misfit band of bicycle hashers … bashers, we call ’em … in the photo.
The ride was fun: a good workout, plenty of great scenery, camaraderie with bashers we don’t get to see often enough, good times later at a local hangout. Here it is a day later and I’m still up on riding, so I clicked on a link to Bicycle Tucson, a local website, where the first thing I saw was this:
Déjà vu, anyone? Yes, it’s a repeat of the Brad Gorman Memorial Bike Trailhead in our neighborhood, shot down late in the planning stages by asshole neighbors and chickenshit politicians. The article is skimpy on details, but I’m willing to bet the people planning to build this bicycle ranch had submitted all the proper paperwork to the county and had their plans approved before the neighbors and politicians ruined everything. I’m also willing to bet they paid hefty fees they’ll never get back.
I wrote three blog posts about the Brad Gorman Bike Trailhead fiasco; as far as I know there have been no new developments since my last post on the subject. Here are links to those three posts, oldest to newest:
- Ah, Tucson! Ah, Pima County! What a Breath of Stale Air!
- Tucson’s Bike Church Sanctuary
- Pima County’s Love/Hate Relationship with Bicyclists
I’ve mellowed a bit since writing those posts, as the title of this post indicates. There really is a lot of love for bicyclists and bicycling in Tucson, and I raise a glass to the city and county for all they’ve done.
When I moved here in 1997, there were a few unconnected bicycle paths along some of the dry riverbeds running through town, none more than a few miles in length. There were striped bicycle lanes near the University of Arizona and in newer suburban neighborhoods, but most major streets were unsafe for bicyclists. Today there are hundreds of miles of bike lanes in the city and county; a 60-some-mile bike path loop around Tucson that will soon be twice that long, complete with functioning tool and tire pump stations every few miles; protected bike streets in parts of town; bicycle racks on buses and streetcars; and at least two major mountain bike trail areas. I think there’s even a Citibike-style bike share program in the works. And it gets better all the time.
But there’s still some hate, as indicated by the Bicycle Tucson article. We have our share of NIMBY neighbors, craven politicians, hostile drivers, and even vandals who throw tacks from moving cars onto bicycle lanes. I don’t suppose the “roads are for cars” mentality will ever go away, but we’ve come a long way. There aren’t many streets in Tucson I’d be uncomfortable riding on, and I love the loop: a good portion of yesterday’s trail was on the part of the loop running alongside the Santa Cruz riverbed.
Although Donna and I are still riding, our little riding group, the Old Spanish Trail Trash, has been moribund since last winter. I think it’s time we leaned on our friends and got it going again.