Ghost Bikes

Ghost bikes are bikes painted all white and placed at the spot where a bicyclist was killed. I only recently learned that they are controversial.

Some say they send the wrong message. What message are they sending and what message are you receiving? I once spent hours in a workshop engaged in dyads with the simple aim of communication. I learned that communication as our facilitator defined it (one person getting another person’s experience) is rare and profound..like a religious or psychedelic experience, not like what we usually think. I learned that there are countless barriers to communication, even when we are consciously working to communicate. I learned that communication requires work from both the speaker and the receiver.

When you talk, is it for the purpose of communicating your experience to another, or is because you like to hear yourself talk? Or because you think you have something important to say and you want the other person to get its (your) importance? Are you even paying attention to what you’re saying?

When you listen, is it for the purpose of getting another’s experience, or to plan your response? Are you actually listening, or do you find that you have to stop what you’re doing when you realize that you just missed something? Do you think you’ve heard it before so you’re tuning out?

*****

I ride past a ghost bike every morning on the way to work. I know its story. It was late at night. The rider was drunk. He was dressed in dark clothing. He was not wearing a helmet. He ran a stop sign. He ended up dead. I know its story, but I don’t know his story. He was a person with a life, presumably with people he loved and who loved him.

I ride past a different ghost bike when I go to visit my daughter. We don’t know the circumstances of his death. We know where it occurred. The only living witness was the driver who killed him. She has a vested interest in the narrative. That bike is redecorated seasonally. If the decorations stopped being renewed, I’d worry about Brendan’s father. The rider would have turned 31 this month.

A third site has no ghost bike. It was the other kind of cyclist – a motorcyclist. His killer was just charged. She said he was riding erratically, as if confused or lost. He cut in front of her and she had no choice but to hit him. The evidence told a different story. The computer in her car said she was going 57 mph five seconds before the crash and 65 mph 1.5 seconds before the crash. The speed limit was 30 mph and she was accelerating when she hit him. A traffic camera showed her running a stop sign just before the crash. It did not show the crash. A witness said the motorcyclist was turning left into the driveway at his workplace when the driver tried to pass him on the left. Since it is the turn he makes every morning, he was not confused. The road is one lane in each direction with a double yellow line. Another witness saw the car go airborne and strike a utility pole, causing a transformer to explode and showering sparks on the scene.

What to make of all this? We have written here before of the penalties for killing a bicyclist with your car (rare and small). Bicyclists and motorcyclists tend not to be believed. There is a public perception of recklessness. The motorist almost always survives to tell their side of the story. The bicyclist or motorcyclist is less likely to be able to tell their side. Thus, the driver gets off.

In these three stories, once the bicyclist was clearly at fault, once we have no one’s word except the motorist, and the third time the motorist’s fiction is contradicted by the evidence. Still, it took 6 months for charges to be filed and we don’t know if she will be convicted or punished.

When I see a ghost bike when on my bike, I remember that I am ultimately responsible for my own life. If I can’t see a driver’s face, they can’t see me. If I see their face but I can’t see their eyes, I know they can see me but I don’t know if they do see me. It reminds me to be extra vigilant.

When I see a ghost bike in my car, it reminds me that bikes are less obviously visible than cars and they need to be in my awareness. It reminds me to make my intentions clear – if I am turning across a bicyclist’s path and they have the right of way, I want to be sure to let them know I see them and am waiting for them to go. It reminds me of their vulnerability relative to mine and that their life has value. It reminds me of the awesome responsibility that comes with driving a two ton vehicle.

The pro-ghost bike articles I have read claim that they honor all bicyclists and remind us all to be careful. The anti-ghost bike article I read claimed that they send the message that bicycling is inherently dangerous and we shouldn’t do it or we’ll wind up dead. Adudeabikes has written about ghost bikes multiple times.

What message does the ghost bike send? What message do you hear?

Testing…testing…

A recent discussion about two year olds yielded two divergent views – the “terrible twos” and the “terrific twos”. What’s up?

The age of two is all about exploration. The world is new, everything is worthy of exploration, and the ability to communicate one’s experience is limited. How that appears to an adult is at least as much about the adult as it is about the child.

Someone I am close to is employed as a tester. It is their job to find failure in a system. They try all the stuff the developer didn’t try (but the consumer might) to find the failure points in the product. Developers generally don’t like testers. The tester’s job is to say “This doesn’t work. Go back and fix it.” Developers says “that’s not what you’re (the user) supposed to do”, or “it wasn’t designed for that.” Testers are not very popular since their job is to make your work fail until it doesn’t (and in the software world, the person who writes the program is paid twice what the person testing it is paid). James Bach, a software testing consultant, compares testing to childhood between the 20th and 24th minutes in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5821YeWico. (It’s more than an hour and a half, and I’ll admit I haven’t watched it all yet.)

The job of a tester is a lot like the job of a two year old. At two, we don’t have access to a lot of data. We toss something into the toilet, flush, and see what happens. Do we know that the same thing happens every time? No. Do we know that the same thing happens with different objects? No. We test. We explore. (If you don’t want your child to toss things in the toilet, get a toilet lid lock.) As a parent, we have a few jobs. The first is to keep our child safe, so we don’t allow opportunities for testing of things that are inherently dangerous. We know the potential outcome of sticking a fork into an electrical socket, so it is our job to limit those opportunities. Our next job is to help our child learn about the world. For that job, it is important for them to have ways to explore their environment. We need to get into the two year old mind and remember (or imagine, or experience) a time when everything is new. We might notice there is a large area between inherently dangerous and totally safe. So our job is to facilitate exploration while mitigating risk.

The “terrible twos” result when we are unable to get into the two year old mindset and when we take everything personally – “my child is just doing that to annoy me”, “why can’t s/he learn? ” – or when the child can’t express their frustration or lack of understanding in words that we can understand.

The “terrific twos” result when we are able to see the world through two year old eyes, when we are able to tap into a sense of wonder, when we are able to facilitate and join in that exploration, when we encourage our children to express themselves. (And it helps when that child is verbally precocious.)

It helps to be open and not make assumptions. When I was learning another language, my ability to understand what others were saying exceeded my ability to express myself. I heard their words, translated them in my head into English, and then had my reactions to what was said. To respond, I had to translate those reactions into the second language and speak them. That process is too slow for normal conversation, especially in a group. The result could be that someone assumes: 1) I have no clue what is going on, as I’m not speaking; 2) I understand everything because I am attending and sometimes nodding; 3) I am stuck up or stupid because I am not joining the conversation. It was only when I learned to think in another language that my expression began to align with my experience. That is when I began to speak a second language – when I could get what was inside to the outside in a way that was comprehensible to others. Might that be like the experience of the two year old?

When I work with patients with altered consciousness (in a state we usually call “unconscious”), I talk to them. Years ago I worked daily with a patient who was intubated, sedated, and chemically paralyzed for many days. One day I came to work and they were awake and alert, though not yet able to speak. As I talked, I asked, “have you ever seen me before?” The answer was a head shake. When I asked, “have you heard my voice?”, the answer was a nod. When I asked, “do you know who I am?”, the answer was an enthusiastic nod. This “unconscious” person had been attending to my voice for days.

So it may be with two year olds (and younger). Clearly they attend to our voices. How much meaning do they derive from that? Unless they can speak, we don’t know. Many parents are now teaching young children to sign before they have the oral motor skills to speak, so they can make their needs known. Usually they focus on basic needs like eating. Communicating emotional needs is often beyond the skill level of the parent who does not know ASL or another sophisticated sign language.

But what can we do? We can foster the language development of our children from a very young age by speaking and reading to them. We can use actual language and not just baby talk. We can honor their attempts to communicate by whatever means are at their disposal. We can be open to the possibility that they can understand us before we have strong evidence that they do, while at the same time not hold them to our belief that they know exactly what we mean and are being willfully defiant. In short, we can model for them the communication skills that we want them to develop.

Christmas Trees

Every year I go cut a Christmas tree. Since they are grown on a tree farm, they are a crop, albeit one with a longer growing period than your average vegetable. Last year, pickings were slim. This year, I read that they were slimmer yet. One article said it was due to reduced planting during the 2007-2009 recession.

At any rate, I decided to go earlier than usual this year. It was a steady 32 degrees (0 degrees C) with freezing rain. Freezing rain is when the precipitation comes down as rain and freezes on contact, as opposed to sleet which comes down in a frozen state. We had sleet in the morning and postponed our trip until it was supposed to be over. Instead of ending, it changed to freezing rain.

The trees in this place are tagged when ready for harvest. All of the tagged trees were small. All of the good-looking trees were untagged and many were fenced off. Next year looks like it will be great. In a nod to the aluminum trees of my youth (which my family eschewed), my favorite was this beautiful copper-colored tree. Alas, it was not tagged for harvest.

Some might call this tree “dead”, instead of “beautiful”.

The freezing rain made for some interesting phenomena.

The hang tags on the trees were coated in ice, which slipped off readily.

Needles coated in ice

Riding

Time on the bike this week has been limited to commuting. The winter bike had (again) a sticky brake piston. It took some work to free it up, but now the rear brake no longer drags. Riding is enough exercise without adding artificial resistance (like on an exercise bike). I rode it on the snowy day, but otherwise the good weather bike is still getting the miles. The winter bike got its annual Thanksgiving check up and, in a few weeks, will get its annual change to studded tires.

the Bruce Gordon

Spot Brand bike

good weather commuting — bad weather commuting

Since I haven’t mentioned them in a while, the Bruce Gordon is a light touring bike with half-step plus granny gearing (3×6), Shimano Deore XT, with cantilever brakes and Bruce Gordon racks. I have been riding it for 31 years. It has gotten a new headset, bottom bracket, and wheels (rebuilt with the original hubs) over the years (and the usual chains, brake pads, and cables). [Bruce Gordon was a custom frame builder in Petaluma, California who died in 2019. After a degree from the Art Institute of Chicago, he went on to study frame building with Albert Eisentraut before starting out on his own. He brought an artist’s creativity to an engineer’s field. If you ride a 29er or a gravel bike, you have him to thank for shaking up the industry; though he is not responsible for the proliferation of micro-markets – his Rock ‘n’ Road (the bike that came after mine) was meant to be ridden in all conditions.]

The Spot Brand has a 3-speed internally-geared Sram hub, Gates Carbon belt drive, Avid hydraulic disc brakes. I have had it for less than 6 years. It has needed only the usual brake pads (more often than on rim brakes), cable (shifter only, since there are no brake cables), and drive belts (less often than chains).

Tomorrow the Spot comes back out. Today I went to Costco and, as I pulled in, saw someone’s package fly across the parking lot. On the way out I saw someone’s giant TV blow over. The temperature and wind speed met at 25 (degrees Fahrenheit and mph… -4 C and 40 km/h). Gusts were 40 mph (65 km/h) . It was hard to keep the car on the road going home. I’m glad the bike was at home. By morning the forecast is for 5 degrees (-15 C). The wax-based chain lube on the BG doesn’t work very well at that temperature. Winter may have arrived.

Lost in Translation

I used to tell people my specialty was English-to-English translation. We have so much trouble understanding each other even when two native speakers of the same language talk. Expectations and what we want to hear often get in the way. Wanting to be heard (instead of wanting to hear) and planning your response before the other person speaks get in the way. I would hear two people talking past each other and quickly rephrase for each of them and they would come to an understanding.

This is not to say that I don’t have the same problem with some people. It is though we speak two different languages which contain the same words.

In my work I spend a lot of time translating medical into English. Doctors tend to forget that normal people have no clue what most medical terms mean. People don’t want to seem dumb so they smile and nod. When the doctor leaves, I’ll ask what they understood of that. Frequently the answer is “nothing”, so I translate.

This was prompted by someone else’s post about actual language and cultural differences, which prompted this memory [cue harp music for a flashback].

I was in Nicaragua and our regular interpreter was unavailable. One of our group leaders offered to translate. Someone asked a local farmer how life had changed since the revolution. She said it was harder to get food now. The interpreter said something completely different, vaguely and rhetorically in support of the revolution. Two of us called her on it. She tried to say that the woman didn’t really understand the question. We argued that she clearly did understand the question but the answer was not the one you wanted to hear. After a bit more discussion, with the interpreter and the farmer (who made it clear she understood the question) in Spanish, then the group in English, we agreed to continue, with the translator knowing that she couldn’t get away with that degree of “interpreting” another’s thoughts and statements.

This also led to thoughts about language, fluency, and on-line translators. On-line translators are handy if you know both languages and are uncertain of the nuances of a particular word choice. They do not work if you think you can get the gist of a large work from an algorithm. If in doubt, listen to this:

“Let it Go” run through Google Translate through multiple languages and back to English. If you want the original English lyrics, they’re here.

I used to get asked if I were fluent in Spanish. Usually I just said no. Sometimes I answered that I wasn’t sure I was fluent in English. Other times I thought about what fluency meant.

After five weeks of language school I took a week off to travel and try to incorporate what I’d learned. Standing on a train, I started chatting with a local school teacher. After we’d talked for a while, he went to get a bottle of pop and asked if I wanted one. While he was gone I checked my watch and realized we’d been talking for two hours; a wide-ranging discussion that made me realize that: 1) I was thinking in Spanish and conversing naturally; 2) I had just fulfilled the goal I’d set five years earlier in Ecuador when the owner of the hotel where I was staying tried to initiate a similar conversation and I was unable to carry out my half.

I thought I had told this story before but, searching through the archives, I can’t find it. It was about January 1977. I was going through a home and roommate-related crisis. I called a friend in Berkeley, who knew the issues and people involved. He suggested the best solution was to join him and a friend (who had just arrived from Australia) on a trip to Colombia and Ecuador. On that trip, I could sort things out, and things here could sort themselves out.The idea had merit. A week later, I met them in Miami and we flew to Barranquilla, Colombia. We stepped off the plane and into customs. Since S & C had met while traveling extensively in Guatemala, I presumed they spoke Spanish pretty well. The customs agent asked C how long she would be in the country. She smiled. He repeated the question. She smiled more sweetly. He turned to S with the same question. He smiled, more broadly and sweetly than C. I realized: 1) they had gotten through Guatemala on friendliness and smiles; 2) they knew not a lick of Spanish; 3) I was now responsible to communicate for three. I told the customs agent that we all wanted 90 day visas, he stamped our passports, and we were on our way.

My Spanish got us through shopping, getting meals, finding our way, renting hotel rooms- all the basics of being a traveler. One rainy day (in Baños, Ecuador), while S & C were in another town, I was sitting in bed reading. The hotel owner stuck his head in the door, said hello, came in, sat down, and struck up a conversation. Within minutes (seconds?) I had my English-Spanish dictionary out. [It was years later that I bought a Spanish dictionary, recognizing that knowing a language meant learning to define words, not translate them.] Within a few more minutes I realized I was over my head. I did not know how to talk to anyone. I could conduct business, but I couldn’t talk. I apologized, he left, I cried. I felt shallow. I vowed that I would learn to speak Spanish and have that conversation some day.

After a week of vacation I went back to school for three more weeks. Was I fluent at that point? How about five years later when I went back for a refresher course and, as my final exam after three weeks, I gave a 45 minute slide presentation (on my work in Nicaragua) to the school in Spanish? Or when I returned to the school for a visit after 3 months working in Nicaragua and someone told me that the secretary said I was back in town and now spoke with a Nicaraguan accent? (I’ll admit I was flattered. For a Mexican to say I sounded Nicaraguan and not North American was one of the best compliments I had ever received.)

I realized that we have word-finding difficulties in any language. If the language is familiar enough, we find a way to talk around the missing word if it doesn’t come to us. There are words that we may not know, but we can discuss the concept in a way that gets the meaning across without the missing word. Ultimately, I discovered that fluency is a continuum, not a point. I’m pretty fluent in English after speaking it for more than 65 years. I’m less fluent in Spanish and considerably less fluent than I was when I was cutting down trees in the forest and miscommunication could mean death from falling tree.