Observations from my week

• Driving to work one morning, I encountered a cyclist riding in the very middle of the lane, just like a car. (I nearly wrote "ran into a cyclist" but realized that might give the wrong impression...) I know bikes are vehicles and it pisses me off when people bike on the sidewalk, but the very middle of the lane? Really? Seemed kind of ballsy to me.
      
• Totally different kind of encounter: three foxes, hanging out in the nice neighborhood where I walk/run, on the edge of a park. I'm bopping along (relatively speaking), I look down the block, and see what I first think is a dog, and then realize is a fox. I slow down, so as not to frighten it, and see something in the corner of my eye - which turned out to be TWO foxes, right across the not-especially-wide street from me. They were hanging out in mouth of the storm drain, and I've seen foxes in (roughly) that neighborhood doing the same thing before, so I think they must use the sewers/drains as shelter and highways. Which is kind of gross, if you think about it, but they were such beautiful creatures, at once elegant and wild, with their long, dainty legs and high-set, sloping tails. They simply watched me go by, alert but not frightened. I'm sure they find a lot to eat in the neighborhood, but I hate that they're so comfortable around people, because in the end, if there ends up a conflict between the foxes and the people, the people are always going to win.
      
• I got to freak out one of my fellow summer associates this week by telling hir when I graduated from college. Zie was convinced I was about hir age, when I'm 11 years older. Zie was very complimentary in hir flabbergastedness and kept saying zie couldn't believe it. I told hir that if zie ever needed to cheer me up zie could tell me that again.
      
• Work seems to be going well. 
      
• My grades are finally all in, and, after a brief access crisis (wherein the law school said that the grades were in, but the central university system cocked up and wouldn't let anyone access them for about 12 hours), I even mustered the courage to look at them. They were fine. One was annoyingly low, but the others were good, including the class that had terrified me the most because I'd had NO idea whether I was getting any of it or not. (It was one of those classes where a lot of the rest of the class had taken related classes previously and I hadn't, and I was studying with a crowd of those people, so it was really hard to tell if I was getting anything or not. On the other hand, it also had a bunch of 3Ls in it, who, right before the exam, were all complaining about how hard it was to concentrate on exams by that point, until one of them laughed and said, "The 2Ls must be really psyched to hear this right now!" So maybe it helped not to be a 3L!) Anyway, the most important thing was that my GPA didn't go down (in practice it didn't go up - .01 isn't really a difference worth noting - but at least it didn't go down). Still waiting to find out where this puts me in terms of class rank, though.
      
• (And yes, I hate that I care so much about grades. I know they don't matter. And yet, I still care.)

Comments

[Leslie M-B]

I'm jealous of your fox sighting! That's so cool.

Sometimes bicyclists ride in the middle of lanes when there isn't a bike lane. A friend of mine was killed last week when riding on a street where there wasn't a bike lane; he was riding along the edge of a traffic lane close to the parked cars, and a woman opened her car door right in front of him, which knocked him under a bus.

So yeah, while it can be an inconvenience to get stuck behind a cyclist, in my experience cyclists only do that when they feel they can't ride to the right side of a lane because cars couldn't safely pass them anyway or if they'd be in danger of being doored. As I understand it, it's legal for them to take the lane, as they are vehicles.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

You know, that makes perfect sense about cycling, and I was thinking along those lines after I posted this. And your last bit completely describes the street in question - too narrow for cars to pass a cyclist safely, and lots of cars on the side of the road presenting a hazard for the cyclist. The cyclist in question was pretty hard-core, too, in that he wasn't going much slower than normal traffic (if at all - I'm just an impatient driver). It mostly startled me because I haven't seen anyone do it before. (It's a relatively new commute for me.)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

And I'm very sorry to hear about your friend! (Sorry, I should have said that first.)

[Feminist Avatar]

In the UK, official cycling safety advice tells cyclists to ride in the middle of the lane- as it forces cars to treat you like a vehicle and overtake safely. If you are cycling at the edge, cars are more likely to take a risk when overtaking, which can end badly.

[Anastasia]

yeah, there is a city run website here with guidelines that says please ride in the center of the lane as if you were a vehicle. Cars are supposed to pass you as if you were a car, not edge around you. Safer for everyone. Or so they say.

Bike lanes are a better idea for all involved.

Foxes are neat.

I would totally care this much about grades if I were in a position to get grades. i never did get the hang of thinking grades don't really matter.

[Bardiac]

Leslie, I'm sorry about your friend.

But yep to cycling in the middle when necessary. Especially when there's tinting on so many car windows, so you can't tell if there's a person in there or not. It's better to take the lane than to weave in and out.

[Notorious Ph.D.]

I ditto Bardiac on cycling in the middle (I'm a bike commuter in a very big city) -- not just for car doors (I got doored once and ended up in the hospital), but also because where there's no shoulder, if you move off to the side, cars either don't see you, or try to squeeze by you going 40 mph, sometimes within two feet of your bike. I ride on the shoulder where there is one, but where there's not, the middle is the only safe place to be.

(of course, this presumes that you can move at something approximating the speed of traffic where you're riding; if not, courtesy demands that you pull over occasionally and wait for a gap)

[Notorious Ph.D.]

(sorry, should have read the other comments before posting. I guess the only new thing my comment adds is that I have been burned by trying to ride on the edge, and the injuries were not fun.)

[Bardiac]

ps. Congrats on finishing your second year of law school! Go you :)