I feel like Goldilocks

[noracharles]

I'm at ximeria's apartment while she isn't here. A guy was coming to inspect the building during her working hours, so I was here to let him in. Now I'm sitting here enjoying her excellent coffee, and using her sleek and quick laptop :-D

In other news, something creepy happened. The main arteries of the city I live in form a kind of starfish shape. I live at the end of one leg, and goddessindia lives at the end of the leg next to it. So to go home from her place I can go to the city center, which is a long distance and I would have to deal with traffic, or I can take a shortcut using some minor streets.

A few weeks ago I was riding my bike home, taking the shortcut which goes through an area where no one lives. It's an old factory district, and now there are strip malls, a cemetary and garden lots for people who live in apartment buildings somewhere else.

There are a few streetlights, but they're aimed at the middle of the road. The sidewalks are very dark. So I was going home, and I see very faintly the silhouette of a man riding a bike in an odd, slow way. He has no lights on, and he's wearing black pants and a black hoodie pulled up so it obscures his face. This was a warm summer night.

I thought he was acting freaky, and maybe he was going that slow because he was drunk, but I thought there was also a real chance he was up to no good. So I give him a wide berth as I pass him, and speed up. So he also speeds up, right when I pass him. He's following me pretty closely, but I put my bike in the highest gear and stand up to tramp the pedals. When I reach the end of the street that cuts through the cemetary where the strip malls are, there's more light, and he stops following me.

Then I see in the news that a man wearing clothes of that description has been lurking in the hedges by the cemetary and the garden lot, and has jumped out and chased two women bicyclists and tried to run them down. They both managed to get away, but they reported to the police that he was very obviously trying to knock them over.

Scary O_o

I wonder if it's the same guy who would hang trip wires across the bicycle path and drag the women bicyclists off into the underbrush a few years ago.

Comments

[calvinahobbes]

Jeez that is so freaky! Really, gyah! My friend had a similar experience this summer, riding home from a party through a park area and passing a shady guy only to wake up the next morning to hear that a mentally unstable prisoner had broken out of the psychiatric ward (it's in my zip code, yay) and had attempted rape twice in that very park area that night.

I live in a residential area 4km from the center of town, where hippie city planners have run amok with visions of 'car free zones' and two-way bike paths. What this means is that we have many bike-path 'short cuts' completely removed from the main roads, some of them even running through tunnels under the roads, and all crappily lit (if lit at all!). Every time I'm out at night I feel the urge to rant and rave about stupid MALE visionaries who have obviously never been afraid of being attacked in a sound-proved poorly lit tunnel in an area where no one would find you for hours. Fuck them, and their 'safer traffic' ideas.

[noracharles]

I read about him! I didn't know he had assaulted people. Good thing your friend was not attacked, but how scary for her to learn that she had been in danger.

You are so very, very right about those bicycle paths and city planners. I'm concerned about my safety every time the path breaks away from the main road or goes into a tunnel. They've had to close several pedestrian tunnels and barricade them, because only criminals and substance abusers would ever go in there, and women and children often bicycle on heavily trafficked roads with almost no space for bikes just to avoid having to go into isolated areas. When will they learn?

Thanks for your email, by the way, glad the dvd arrived :-)
I send real mail so rarely it was fun to use all my stickers, haha :-) Yes, I am 5.

I'll get back to you later about the project of DOOM, because it's too awful to talk about before it's over and done with ;-)

[calvinahobbes]

Well, you've probably read about all of them. There have been so insanely many break-outs this summer (some people several times!) that I'm starting to feel a little dubious about where I live :oP

Here they are actually planning NEW tunnels in an 'effort to encourage people to ride their bikes to work'. Apparently tunnels make you get there faster. IDK.

Heehee, I know how you felt! I was so pleased just to see my name printed by hand! It's the little things!

I understand about the project of DOOM. I won't mention it again, but I will send you some good vibes ;o)

[noracharles]

I did not realize that. That must be scary for all of you who live around there. I don't read the newspaper anymore now that I don't get one at work, I make do with dr.dk. I figure if I have to pay a media license I better get good use of it, right? Unfortunately it's barely more than headline news.

I actually agree with the infra structure planners that commuter routes for bicyclists are awesome and wonderful. Odense is din cykelby, as they keep telling us, and we do have some commuter routes with no intersections, or only green wave intersections (you know, where if you keep a constant speed of 22 km/h you only hit green lights on all the intersections).

The problem is when they think isolated routes or tunnels are a substitute for bicycle paths in more well-lit, populated and trafficked areas, because they're really not.

Thanks :-)

[emeraldsword]

oh, that's so scary! I tend to walk, but I'm a shocking runner so I would be in total panic mode if I knew there was some creep on a bike because I could never outrun him. uggh

[noracharles]

I know! D-:

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Yeah, I once lived somewhere that had the voting place on the other side of a major highway and the pedestrian route was through a tunnel. I was only there during midterms so I didn't vote.

Campus has some of the bike lanes parallel with the street banked with a median strip or building blockade (3 feet tall, can be relocated with heavy machinery once the construction is over). Otherwise, they could just paint the sidewalks out of the main pedestrian traffic (campus and downtown mostly) as Bicycles Yield to Walkers where the street traffic is Too Heavy.

Right now bike lanes start and stop in patches.

[noracharles]

Ugh, pedestrian tunnels are the worst. I'm agoraphobic, but I would rather cross a tall, rickety looking foot bridge with a scary anti-jumper/anti-throwing stuff on cars fence than go into a pedestrian tunnel.

Bicycles Yield to Walkers where the street traffic is Too Heavy

Haha, that would not work for me. Some places where you can bike are better than none, but you have to go so slow in mixed pedestrian/cyclist lanes. If you commute by bike, it's really only practical and comfortable to go between 20 to 35 km/h.

Start and stop in patches bike lanes are scary. When they're just lanes painted on the roads they're hard to see, and the heavy traffic doesn't merge well with us, they tend to assume we'll yield.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Ah, but in the Land of Milk and Honey, the sidewalks in question have infrequent foot traffic, so it's basically "Just don't hit the pedestrians and be polite, you're on wheels and they aren't expecting that.

I think we've just about replaced all the suicide gratea.

[carolyn_claire]

!!!! YOU STAY IN THE HOUSE, YOUNG LADY! So scary! I'm so glad you're okay.

[noracharles]

Thank you :-)

It was pretty scary. I'll go the longer way home next time I have to go out late.

[kaz]

God, that's scary!

I had the experience of a pedestrian trying to grab my bike when I was going at speed a few months back. Had to dodge into the middle of the road to avoid him, not fun (ended up screaming "what the fuck?" in his general direction). However, a) it was a very busy road and b) he was obviously drunk, so it didn't really scare me in the shady guy sense. (ETA: I think he was yelling something about "give me a lift!" so, yeah, drunk.) Brrrr. *offers hugs*

...somewhere in my head I always figured that you're relatively safe when cycling because stopping you generally entails getting injured as well. Frightening to think that someone obviously doesn't care.

[noracharles]

That does not sound fun at all :-(
I'm glad you managed to evade his grab.

I think you're right, cycling is relatively safe. People who go to extremes to attack strangers are rare, it's mostly a question of opportunity or them perceiving themselves to have been provoked, I think.

[blnchflr]

Gah, I'm so glad you're ok. I hope he gets caught soon :o/ !!!

[noracharles]

Thank you :-)
I hope so too!