Cars, Trains, Planes, Folding Bikes & the Dumbo

Whether it's commuting to work, a shopping trip, or just running errands, it's all too easy to get into a fossil-fueled rut that can only be escaped by conscious and physical effort. Intermodal transportation to the rescue! I'm not referring to intermodal freight transportation, though the idea is similar for human beings. I'm refereing to combining a folding bike like a Bike Friday Tikit, Brompton, Dahon or other make with one or more modes of motorized transportation. This is where a folding bike really shines, even if it's not your regular, go-to bike. Last week I needed to ferry an airplane from Palo Alto to Oakland and the combination of BART with my folding bike provided an elegant, physically active solution. What's more, it afforded me the experience of crossing the Dumbarton Bridge by bike.

I needed to carpool to Concord for a morning meeting before heading to Palo Alto, so I loaded my Tikit into my car. After the meeting, I dropped my passenger off near Tunnel Road and headed to Alameda. My plan was to park just across the estuary in Alameda, ride to the Fruitvale BART station, board a train to Union City, then cycle the rest of the way to Palo Alto. I could have parked in the BART parking lot, but that would have cost me $1.50. Besides, I would eventually end up at the Oakland Airport and would have to ride farther to get back to my car. I was lucky to arrive on the Fruitvale BART platform just as a Fremont train was arriving. The trip to Union City took about 30 minutes.

Arriving at Union City, I was pleasantly surprised by a clean, European-style train station. So I snapped this photo before heading out to cross the Dumbo. A while back a friend sent me a link to a study that compared the condition of BART stations with the income of the local residents. My personal experience would suggest there is indeed a correlation between the average income of local residents and the general spiffiness or shabbiness of their local BART station (see graphic below). Ah, America! Land of (in)Equality!

This trip also provided a test of the new GoogleMaps app on the iPhone which now (finally!) provides bike directions. I don't have a handlebar mount, so I put my iPhone in my shirt pocket so I could (mostly) hear the GoogleMaps voice prompts. An exciting part of the route involves crossing the I-880 overpass on Decoto Road, a particularly dicey endeavor given the poor lane striping, complete lack of signage warning drivers or the presence of bikes, and the need to cross multiple freeway entrance/exit ramps. Next comes an relatively unique, dedicated bike/pedestrian-only underpass beneath the southbound I-880 exit ramp to Decoto Road. It empties onto a two-lane path that is at once secluded and creepy (several cul de sac paths to homeless encampments), yet picturesque (tree-lined and next to an active farm). The buckled asphalt resembles a washboard and requires one to slow to walking speed in several areas.

Next you double-back onto Lake Boulevard to an overpass across Decoto to Jarvis Avenue.

Once on Jarvis, the bike lane is well-marked, well-paved, and quite civilized as you make your way through a mixed residential-commercial neighborhood. Approaching Gateway Boulevard, the area becomes more business park and light industrial in flavor. The left turn onto Gateway has no signs to lead cyclists to the Dumbarton Bridge and the traffic signal will not detect the presence of bicycles. I waited and waited before finally just running the red light and making a left turn. Same thing for the left turn onto Thornton Avenue. Thornton has wide bike lanes, reasonable pavement quality and more wide-open landscape.

Turning onto Marshlands leads you into the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge and pavement that is best described as rustic. I experimented with riding in the car lane and the bike lane/shoulder. The pavement appears equally bad in both areas, but it's actually a bit smoother on the shoulder. Soon you're paralleling the causeway that leads to the Dumbarton Bridge, along the edge of marsh that used to form the salt evaporation ponds of the Leslie Salt Company, founded in 1901 and acquired by Cargil in 1978. These are gradually being restored to their wetland salt marsh and the odor of the mud is ... pungent.

Marshlands Road, looking westward toward the Dumbarton Bridge

The pavement on the section of Marshlands Road leading up to the Dumbarton Bridge deserve a d-minus rating. It's not so bad as to instantly ruin your bike's tires, but rough and tiring to ride on. The chain-link fence that separates Marshlands from the bridge traffic is pretty tired, too. Some sections have wooden slats that block the wind and dust, but most sections do not.

An obvious bike commute comparison for the Dumbarton Bridge is the Posey Tube. The good news is that at eight feet, the Dumbarton Bridge path is far more usable than the sidewalk on the Posey Tube. The noise level on the Dumbarton Bridge is not as loud as in the Posey Tube, but it's not what one might call peaceful. The bad news is that the design of the Dumbarton path makes the accumulation of trash and debris a problem, as this blogger so eloquently describes.

This section was actually pretty clean. Other parts were debris strewn.

The cement K-rail that separates eastbound motor vehicle traffic from the two-land path on the south side of the bridge is barely adequate. It does not stop sand, grit, and debris from sandblasting poor bastards like me who are headed westbound toward the peninsula. Had I known, I would have brought a scarf to cover my face and neck. Passing trucks are particularly good when it comes to this unwanted dermabrasion. And if a truck were to blow a tire or run over debris on the roadway, it could easily catapult shrapnel into the pathway and likely would be fatal for a cyclist or pedestrian. If you ignore these issues and turn your back on the noise and the blowing sand from the vehicle traffic, the views can be quite lovely.

Exiting the bridge on the western side, the pavement is far better than what is found on Marshlands. Perhaps the difference is that you're now in San Mateo county, adjacent to well-heeled Palo Alto and Menlo Park? At any rate, on this side of the bridge, cyclists get a bike path that is altogether separate from the vehicle traffic. Almost ...

Nice pavement, but no barrier at all from motor vehicle traffic?

My goal was to get to the Palo Alto Airport and the Bay Trail runs right by it. Unfortunately, the trail comes about 500 yards short of joining the bridge bike path. This necessitates crossing University Avenue at a particularly busy traffic light to join the bike lane into East Palo Alto. At least there are crossing switches you can press to eventually get a walk signal. Winding my way through the residential streets I could hear GoogleMaps periodically barking instructions, but I just followed my nose and found the Bay Trail on my own. Parts of the Bay Trail are gravel, parts are paved, but even the gravel sections seem smoother than Marshlands Road on the eastern side of the bridge!

So close, and yet so far ...

The Bay Trail passes adjacent to the marshy areas and eventually leads to the golf course on the western side of the Palo Alto Airport. Soon I was loading my folding bike into the aircraft I needed to ferry and just a few minutes later, the engine run-up complete, I departed straight up the Bay for Oakland. The South Tower controllers coordinated a straight-in landing on runway 33 which provided a short taxi to the hangar where this aircraft will temporarily be stored. Then I was ready to unfold the Tikit, head into Alameda to where I had parked my car, fold up the Tikit one last time, and drive home for the evening. Car, train, bike, plane, bike, car: All in all, a challenging, yet pleasing day of intermodal transportation.

Boulder: Cyclist's Paradise

A recent four-day vacation to Colorado provided an excellent comparison of how different communities choose to integrate bicycles. Many cities in Colorado provide excellent cycling and walking infrastructure, Boulder in particular. What makes one city's attempt a success and another city's efforts fall short have to do with three basic issues: Car-Bike intersections, bike lanes, and signage.

Several creeks flow through the city, the most prominent being Boulder Creek. The city has created a series of parks and multi-use trails that parallel the creek, making it a hub of activity. Overpasses crossing the creek were constructed so that the trail passes, unimpeded, underneath motor vehicle traffic. These underpasses are generally well-lighted and for a Berkeley-Oakland cyclist, they are amazingly graffiti free. Where the trail meets an overpass, there are "exit ramps" that lead you off the trail to join any of intersecting city streets.

According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, about a third of cycling fatalities occur at intersections. Boulder and several other Colorado cities have crosswalks that are often raised slightly, forming a sort of speed bump that requires motor vehicle drivers to slow. Combine the raised pavement with signs that instruct drivers to yield to pedestrians and cyclists from either direction and you have a clear, easy-to-understand, and safer intersection.

Boulder's robust cycling community is undoubtedly due, in part, to the amount of available bike lanes and paths: 159 miles of on-street bike lanes and multi-use paths that includes 58 miles of paved multi-use pathways and 78 bicycle underpasses. Go to most any downtown Boulder street during midday and you're likely to see more parked bikes than parked cars.

Surveys of Americans have revealed that more would ride a bicycle if there were safer facilities provided for cycling. In cities where cycling infrastructure is improved, cycling increases dramatically. Statistics indicate that Boulder has about the same amount of cycle commuting as the Berkeley-Oakland Area, even though the Coloradans have done a lot more to make cycling safer and more accessible. I especially like this cyclist's vending machine provided by one of the local bike shops, chock full of things you might need from energy bars to bike tools to inner tubes.

For cycling and walking, Boulder provides great infrastructure. In short (pardon the pun): Boulder Rocks!

Time in a Barrel

Reading Bill McKibben's book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, I was struck by his illustration of how much human power is equivalent to the energy contained in a single barrel of oil. 42 gallons of oil equals about 25,000 hours (or more than a decade) of one human being's labor and that, along with natural gas and coal, has provided humankind with a sort of time machine: By combining the energy stored in fossil fuel with human ingenuity, we started the industrial revolution and in the process we changed our earth forever. We created machines and infrastructure that allow us to travel vast distances in a matter of hours. Communication systems allow us to exchange data and ideas, such as this blog. Data can travel around the world in a matter of seconds. By letting us accomplish so much in such a short period of time, fossil fuel has altered our consciousness.

We don't perceive or value time and energy the way our ancestors did because with fossil fuel, we can fold time and space. Walk outside your home or office, stand by a stop sign, wait for a car to appear, and you'll see something that happens hundreds of thousands of times each day. The driver will bring their car to a stop (hopefully) and then accelerate away from the stop. Depending on how aggressive, frustrated, or relaxed the driver is feeling, they may accelerate slowly (using less fuel) or rapidly (using a more fuel). What the driver probably doesn't appreciate is the benefit provided by their car's engine and the fuel it is burning: They are moving a ton or so of metal, rubber, plastic, themselves, their passengers, and their cargo by simply extending the toes of their right foot. Put the same cargo onto a bicycle, turn the driver into the engine, and you will dramatically realign their awareness of energy, time, and space.

The compression of time and space provided by fossil fuel, along with the increase in available activities and goods, has changed the way we value those goods and activities. We spend a lot more time sitting, observing, and thinking. We tend to drive more and walk less. With less physical activity, we are more obese and more likely to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiac disease. We expend less physical energy, but we complain that there aren't enough hours in a day to accomplish all we'd like to accomplish. Without an appreciation of the labor that goes into cultivating food, we aren't troubled by wasting food. Forced to walk or bicycle the 32 miles the average American commutes to work each day, most of us would choose to live closer to work, or find work closer to where we live, or allot considerably more than the 52 minutes the average American spends commuting. Forced to walk to the grocery, we make more thoughtful choices and have a greater appreciation of our resources. Which gets us back to the crux of our predicament.

With dwindling fossil fuel reserves and climate change already underway, McKibben has been exploring the myriad of issues we will soon face: What sort of work we will do, how we'll meet our transportation needs, what sorts of food will be available, and where will we find clean water. It's a huge topic, so big that most of us can't get our minds around it. We have catapulted ourselves into the future, but soon we'll begin to decelerate and we'll need to adjust our priorities and values. A good place to start is to cultivate an appreciation of how much human labor is contained in a barrel of oil, a gallon of gasoline, even a 60 watt light bulb. Forget carbon offsets and all the other distractions. Getting your mind around renewable energy, human-powered activities and locally-based economies are the first steps toward preparing for the future.

TTCBCOAB #50, Cycling Goals, and Privacy

Here are some things that can be carried on a bicycle, from a recent Costco run. It's much easier to negotiate the parking lot on a bike rather than a car. I park right by the entrance and lock up my bike, which makes for a pleasant and quick escape. Plus, I can ride through the gaps in the parking lot speed bumps. Sweet!

Various odds and ends That Can Be Carried On A Bicycle...

Milestones

My stated goal for this year is to log 4500 commuting miles on my various bikes. Halfway through this year my running total stands at 2700 miles, which is well over the 2250 miles I expected. Assuming no hideously bad weather this fall, I may very well exceed that goal. I use MapMyRide to track my mileage and have found it a very useful service. It's easier to stay motivated when you have a measurement of how you are doing.

Stats, courtesy of MapMyRide

Got Privacy?

The recent revelations about the NSA data collection and surveillance (which many of us already suspected was occurring) got me to thinking about privacy and how we unconsciously change our behavior when we think someone is watching us. Chatting with many friends and acquaintances, I discovered they are thinking about expectations of privacy, too. So what's a law-abiding citizen to do? Here's my top ten list:

1. Ensure you have a good password on your all your devices.
2. Enable FileVault, BitLocker, or an equivalent product to encrypt your hard disk.
3. Use an anti-virus prorgam to regularly scan your computer.
4. Install Tor and use it for anonymous browsing.
5. Install Gnu Privacy Guard on your computer (I use GPGmail).
6. Encrypt your email and encourage your friends to do the same.
7. Install a version of GPG on your mobile device (I use ipgmail for iOS).
8. If you access email with a browser, consider using mailvelope .
9. Make a donation to the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
10. Tell your senators and congressional representative that privacy is important to you.

Remember that as citizens, we enjoy only those rights we are willing to defend.

Metadata and the Unwanted Gaze

The President claimed yesterday, in the continuing debate about NSA surveillance, that Americans' privacy has not been violated by the collection of so-called meta-data. But it appears there are a large number of citizens who don't agree with the President's assessment. We should have seen our growing surveillance society as it was developing, but most of us didn't. The crux of debate on NSA data trawling hinges on two related issues. The first has been our inability, to date, to translate the rights and privacy we desire in the actual world to our presence in the virtual world of email, web surfing, and social media. The second is the very real injury that comes from being watched. One has to agree with the President that it's important to debate the issue of governmental surveillance, now that we know it is occurring, because how we decide today on the issues of virtual rights and the unwanted gaze will set the stage for expectations of privacy and rights for generations to come.

Letters & Postcards

A couple of decades ago, Phillip Zimmerman developed an open source public key encryption suite called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) that could be used to scramble stored data and email content, thereby preventing it from being read without the permission of the owner or the intended recipient of the data. The need for encryption was illustrated by comparing letters and postcards: When you send a letter via US Post, you expect the contents inside the envelope to remain private while the letter is in transit to the recipient. In contrast, when you send a postcard you have relinquished any such expectation: You are willingly acknowledging that anyone and everyone is free to read what you have written. Each of us knows this and adjusts accordingly: There are many things that we might put in a letter that we would never consider revealing in a postcard. What most American's don't seem to realize is that an unencrypted email message is the digital equivalent of a postcard. They can be intercepted and read by any number of entities while the data makes it's way from the sender to the recipient. If you think that no one can read your email once you press SEND, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

PGP, and it's variants, rely on a public key for each person that is widely distributed (usually on one or more of several key servers) and a private key that the individual keeps securely stored. Data sent to an individual is encrypted using their public key and can only be decrypted using that person's private key. You can use PGP to encrypt locally-stored data and you can digitally sign a message so that the recipient can verify the message was 1) sent by the holder of your private key and 2) that the contents have not been altered by a third party. Encryption should be the default for email, but sadly it is not. Few people realize the implications and even fewer actually care that this is the state of digital privacy.

For his part in developing and distributing PGP, Zimmerman was subject to a federal investigation (at considerable personal expense) for unauthorized exportation of weapons (military grade encryption). In the end, Zimmerman prevailed and even started a company that marketed the PGP products. Eventually PGP was acquired by Symantec and has since been sold, but you can find PGP products for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. It's a bit cumbersome, but you can send encrypted emails that are essentially the equivalent of a sealed letter, it just requires some effort and your recipient must do some work to create a public key.

Metadata and What It Means

Traditional Jewish law recognizes that injury occurs when anyone comes under the unwanted gaze of another. This sort of gazing does not have to have the salacious intent of a peeping tom. Anyone who watches their neighbor's activities without permission is harming the other person. This injury is what seems to have been lost on the White House when it asserts that no one's phone, email or text messages are being read so there's no harm being done. The very fact that the government is recording details about who is talking to whom is causing injury, regardless of whether or not one of the parties is a "foreigner."

What makes the NSA's wide-scale snooping so troublesome is that, by collecting and storing large amounts of meta-data, they are creating an index into all communications occurring between individuals. While some of these individuals may have criminal or, if you prefer, "terrorist" intentions, the data that is being swept up is general in nature. The general search and seizure of this meta-data is occurring before any crime has been alleged or committed. Having a meta-data index into communications simply makes locating and reading of unencrypted data that much easier. Governmental assurances that only "suspect" communications are being targeted is beside the point.

Data has been gathered without the knowledge or permission of everyone involved and this turns the presumption of innocence on it's head. We are developing a legal framework where everyone is potentially guilty until proved innocent. Just as you would not write your innermost thoughts and feeling on a postcard, each of us changes our behavior when we know we are being watched. We have all been injured because when we are under surveillance, we cannot act and think freely.

Taking Action

There are productive choices each of us can make in regard to the NSA's snooping. First, make your displeasure known to your elected representatives who have been complicit in approving these activities. Citizens only enjoy the rights that they are willing to defend.

Second, take steps to secure your communications and data. GPG (GNU Privacy Guard), a free implementation of the OpenPGP standard, is available for Windows, Unix, MacOS, iOS and Android. Download GPG, generate a private and public key, publish your public key, keep you private key secure, and encourage your friends to adopt the policy of sending only encrypted emails. If you send text messages and are an iOS user, use iMessage whenever possible since, according to this article, those messages are encrypted and cannot be intercepted by law enforcement.

All of these actions may not stop NSA snooping. Governmental snoopers may ultimately be able to access encrypted data through password cracking or by installing key logging software, but at least we can make them work for it.

TTCBCOAB #44 & Finding the Way Up

My wife fell and broke her wrist yesterday, so grocery shopping was done by car today. I did an earlier trip by bike, carrying a lighter than usual load: 8 pound bag of dog food, 2 pounds of dog biscuits, and a Schilke B-flat trumpet.

Looking UP

Two weeks ago, while waiting for my iPhone to be restored at the local Apple Store, I had plenty of time to browse the aisles (It's entrapment I tell you, entrapment!). That's when I noticed the Jawbone Up. It's one of a new class of electronic activity trackers that are tapping into growing awareness about how movement (or lack thereof) affects human health. Some studies indicate that being inactive at a desk (or at the controls of an aircraft) for hours on end can have a health outcome similar to smoking cigarettes. What I've noticed about human beings (myself included) is that it is easier to change our behavior if we enhance our awareness of our behavior. I've seen this with hybrid vehicles: Give a driver real-time feedback on how much gas they're burning and they are more likely to reorder their driving goals and adjust their driving technique.

The Jawbone seemed like a pedometer on steroids, so I bought one for my wife who had broken her mechanical pedometer and had given up tracking how many steps she was walking per day. After watching her use it for a week and announce proudly one day that she had walked 16,000 steps, 1000 more steps than the average Amish man, I was impressed! She had rededicated herself to being active and, more importantly, was enthusiastic about it. There were other features that helped me decide I wanted to try a Jawbone, too.

The device is unobtrusive. A lightweight bracelet you wear, preferably on the wrist of your non-dominant hand, it contains accelerometers and other electronics that, together with iOS- or Android-based software, can track your daily activities, your sleep, even the food you eat. I chose to wear mine on my right wrist, even though I'm right-handed.

To find out how active you've been or how well you slept, you plug the Jawbone Up into your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and launch the free Up application, available for iOS and Android. The device plugs into the audio jack and a separate USB charger is provided. The fully-charged battery lasts about 10 days. There is a single push button that you use (in Morse code fashion) to access the basic modes: Awake, Sleep, activity timer, and Power Nap.

Once you've synced with your iOS or Android device, the app will give you an overview of your activity and some details about your sleep the night before. It will also tell you the current state of you battery charge.

I've found the information on how much sleep I've been getting to be very interesting. In short, I was not sleeping as much as I thought so I've adjusted my schedule to sleep more. I've blogged before on the subject of adequate sleep. There's plenty of research that shows most people need more sleep than they are getting. And when people don't get enough sleep, one of the side-effects is that they actually don't realize that they are impaired. I do quite a bit of physical activity with bike commuting, so quality sleep is especially important. After adjusting my sleep schedule I've found that I seem to be recovering more completely from the previous day's ride.

The app lets provides a historical view of your activity that is both intuitive and inspiring. Recently, the Up app was updated to share data with other fitness apps, including the one I use to track my cycling - MapMyFitness.

There are a few other useful features. One is an activity alarm that reminds you to move when you've been sitting for too long. You can adjust the inactive interval with the Up app. When you've been inactive, the bracelet will vibrate to remind you to stand up, walk around, or at least stretch or wiggle in your seat (what I do when teaching in a small aircraft).

You can activate the Power Nap feature by pressing the bracelet button twice, once quickly followed by a slightly longer second push (in Morse code lingo, this would be dot-dash). Again, the Up app lets you set the maximum length of the Power Nap feature and the bracelet will vibrate to wake you at what it thinks is the optimum point in the nap.

This brings up the last, and I think one of the more useful features: The Smart Sleep Alarms for morning wake-up. You set the time you want to wake up for different days and the bracelet will vibrate to wake you at what it thinks is the optimum point in your sleep cycle within a 20 minute window of your desired wake-up. I get up earlier than my wife does and the vibrating bracelet wakes me while allowing her to continue to snooze. Pretty awesome ...

These new activity monitors promise to change the way we live, work and play. Given that most of us work long hours, inside rather than outside, and we're often sitting for extended periods, having more information on how we are treating our bodies in our competitive society and workplace can allow us to influence our individual health in a positive way.

Between the Cracks

"How can you ride a bike on Central Expressway?" a coworker asked several years ago. "It's so dangerous!" The stretch of pavement that connects Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara was a route I used most every day, but this was a hard question to answer. How you define danger, what makes you feel vulnerable, what makes you feel safe? The best answer would cut through the emotional layers and illuminate the cycling experience for a non-cyclist. "What drivers don't realize is that the traffic on the expressway isn't a continuous stream, it comes in waves. There are actually long periods of quiet and calm." It was clear the reality experienced by a driver in a car was not what was experienced by a cyclist.

Fast forward 20 years to Saturday morning, 6:30am, I'm cycling across Berkeley on my way to the Oakland Airport. This is my favorite time because the streets are quiet, the air is cool, and the winds are calm. I often see deer standing in the neighborhood lawns regarding me with a placid sort of curiosity, or is it bored indifference? This time of morning, it's easy to believe that you've returned to a time when people worked a 40 hour week, slept 8 hours a night, and ate breakfast before leaving for work. Things will get more hectic in 20 minutes, when I make my way through Oakland and closer to the freeway, the road that never sleeps. But for now the stillness magnifies every sound and lets me hear the crows' alarm as I approach as well as boisterous garbage trucks worming their way through the streets. Turning onto San Pablo Avenue, life begins to accelerate.

"How can you cycle on San Pablo Avenue? It's so dangerous!" I've been asked this question recently and the answer is the same as it was 20 years ago. I slide up on the ride side of an AC Transit bus waiting at a red light. Looking inside, the patrons seem dazed, some almost asleep, eyes closed. I'm just the opposite: My heart is pumping steadily, I'm in touch with the world around me, and I'm wide awake. I'd better be because the bus driver is all business. She has seen it all and is inching forward in little jerky motions, intent on blasting straight ahead and leaving me in a cloud of diesel exhaust as soon as the light turns green. I hate to disappoint, but this is where I turn right.

Humming down Adeline Street, muscles warm, not yet fatigued, in the zone, passing auto body shops, a tofu distributor, and my favorite green coffee distributor (Sweet Maria's), the giant Port of Oakland cranes come into view. A left on 8th Street is a shortcut that trades a long, poorly timed stoplight for a couple of stop signs. Controlling the traffic debate is key for urban cycling. This is not an affluent neighborhood. Section 8 housing predominates, but it has never felt particularly dangerous. Until today.

I turn right on Filbert and an FBI van surrounded by a swarm of SWAT-style police comes into view. A couple of officers (are they CHP or FBI or OPD? Does it matter?) loping down the sidewalk in military fashion briefly lock eyes with me. I give them my best, innocent, "Hey, I'm just on my way to work" sort of expression. Apparently I'm not a threat. They continue on their "mission," I continue on mine, silently lamenting the never ending wars in which we engage: The war on drugs, the war on terror. What happened to the wars on poverty, illiteracy, and hunger? Did we lose those wars, tacitly admit defeat, and move on? Does a militarized police force make us safer or do we just feel safer? A few more blocks, I pass under the freeway, and I'm quietly spinning through the Jack London Square neighborhood. A line of semi trucks are queued up, heading to the docks. The events a few blocks earlier are out of sight and out of mind, as are the questions they raise, at least for now. I've mentally clicked on dislike, changed channels, moved on.

Third Street is a designated bike route that cuts through the heart of the Produce District, but only a non-cyclist could have decided it was good for bikes. Dozens of delivery trucks protruding into the street, forklifts zigzaging, workers in a hurry to load fresh fruits and vegetables, the street punctuated by numerous intersections and stop signs. This is a bike route in name only. I head to Embarcadero, even though train tracks run through the middle of the street and the pavement is rough. It is less trafficked, fewer stop signs, fewer intersections, more direct. It is safer, or at least it feels safer.

Embarcadero trickles out of Jack London Square and threads the thin gap between Alameda's inner harbor and interstate 880. I'm passing the freeway traffic which is crawling because of an accident of some sort. The drivers are encased in steel cages, airbags, anti-lock brakes, so they must be safe, right? To me, their faces look like the ones I saw on the bus: Dazed, disconnected, maybe disaffected. In contrast, the cyclists I encounter are alert, engaged, alive. Some look straight ahead, but others nod, wave, some ring their bike bells, some are even smiling. Just a few more miles and I'll be at the airport, refreshed and ready to start flying.

Endless wars, countless conflicts, and our obsession with security provide a never-ending supply of patriots and heroes. We've forgotten the patriots who have never wielded a gun, but who have the courage to get out of bed and face a neighborhood where gun violence is commonplace.  We've lost sight of the heroes who serve and protect an aging parent or a care for a spouse with a debilitating illness. And when did we lose the courage to look into the mirror each morning, see an aging face, wrinkles not hidden or corrupted by plastic surgery? It is time to forgive, accept who we are, what we have become, and what we have made of ourselves. It's not too late to find the courage to live life, risk trusting our neighbors, face pain and loss, and know that life will go on whether or not we feel safe. Perhaps we can discover a way through the gaps left by others to find love, acceptance, and awakening through simple daily acts. Perhaps we can reach enlightenment just by riding a bicycle.