Stop Doing That

Seqway riding guy, please stay off the multiuser path you are going too fast and taking up way too much space. Woman driving your car with no hands so that you could read the paper, stop doing that.

How Not to Walk on a Multiuser Path

Hey two guys walking one on either side of the yellow line with large shopping bags filling most of the rest of the path.  I dinged the bell and you didn't respond, you were lost, no doubt, in contented contemplation of the contents of your really large bags.  I had to say something to get your attention so lost in thought were you.  Next time, you might stop and think about the multi aspect of the multiuser path before you begin to amble contentedly while taking up 80% of the space.

Tit for Tat

Hey older guy on the bike path, I didn't cut you off and what were you sorry for?  Line jumping?  If you knew it was wrong, why do it? And, for the record, if you think the world is a giant game of tit for tat, which it isn't, if you don't tit no one else will tat; however, if someone tats because of your tit, you really can't complain, can you?

Multi Users

By the way, it was really nice day today and  as a sign that the rules I posted recently are having a positive effect, with one glaring exception every single person on the path regardless of mode of use was a peach.  Even the joggers. 

The one exception was Seqway riding guy who is a jackass not just because he bought one, I mean really, but because he rides it down the pathway way to fast. The rules are clear on motors and this case is also covered under and by Paragraph 12 section 8 subsection 22, which clearly states that no idiotic means of  transportation are allowed on the pathway.  Segways are idiotic q.e.d..

Multi Use Path Update

From today on the Capital city. If you squint you can see the mythic Land of Lincoln. This is the lower branch

This is the upper branch.

This is were I stood when I took the lower picture.

I was off the path for the other picture as well.  Why do I include this?  Neither picture took longer than 2 mins to take and, I'd guess, considerable less time than that.  I got off the path, even though there were no other users around and the only reason there might be is because lots of other people use the path and, it is just possible that if, say, four users came one way and six came the other, my standing on the path would have inconvenienced them all.  Consequently, I reasoned, the extra 10 seconds it took to exit, unclip and then clip and reenter was insufficient grounds to cause some potential irritation to some potential number of people.

When I had completed the task and started to ride onward, I ran into two people with two bikes each towing a baby buggy.  They were stopped on the path blocking the whole of my lane.  Coming the other direction were four cyclists, unrelated as far as I could tell, in longish line in the middle of their lane.  I had to stop.  The two in my lane weren't there for a quick stop.  They had taken one kid out of the buggy and were talking about something or another.  Just off to their right there was a shady spot.  Leaving aside the moral and ethical considerations, it was in their own self interest to move into the shady spot's cool.

At first I thought that this was an example of failing to think about the world around you in Kantian fashion and was an intentionally selfish act.  However, I have recently learned that

It seems pretty obvious that "thick questions" lead to more satisfying answers. Although I couldn't find the giant book of why people act like jackasses, I did, like the kid in the poster, let my mind wonder.[1]  It occurred to me that the problem was thinking or more precisely unthought.  The two people engaged in unthought.  No thinking being is going to stop his or her car in the middle of a road, for example, to get the kid out of the child seat.  The two weren't  consciously jackasses. They were jackasses because they had never thought about what a bike path is and is not designed for.  I am pretty certain that it was not designed so that you can pause in your travels and block other users from using the path.[2] It also seems to be the case that because no law intervenes, the police might give a cyclist a ticket for running a stop sign or a red light, while letting cars stop in the crosswalk, they are scarce on the ground off campus and it is unlikely that they are going to bother folks who stop for a quick chat. In short, you get to break the law and be a jackass and no one is going to legally punish you.

In the interest of limiting unthought, I offer some simple rules.  The easiest to follow, because it is valid in cases, is Kant's but that really is asking to much for people to think of other people as people instead of props in some Randian distopia, it would seem.

Over arching rule:

Most people don't know you and consequently most people don't particularly care if you live or die. So for god's sake stop acting like the opposite were case.

Five simple rules[3]:

1) Be marginally aware of what is going on around you.
2) If alone ride/run/walk/rollerblade/etc as far to the right as in practicable.  If there are more than one of you, never ride outside the yellow line; if there is no yellow line pretend that there is.
3) Never do anything requires that people follow or assumes that anyone follows rules 1 and 2.
4) Consequently be in control of your mode of transportation.
5) Get off the path if you have to stop.

 Feel free to add your own in the comments; but I think this may pretty much have saved Western Civilization.

[1] Heyoh
[2]You may be saying "Oh good gracious me oh my, shut up already."  But consider this, this was the only time the two, so far as I know, impeded anyone so from their perspective it was no big thing.  For me it was the fourth or fifth time today and the twelfth of the last seven days.  Or something like that.  Straws and camels backs, in other words.
[3] Obviously it is never go to happen but take out the damn earbuds and take off the damn headphones.  I mean really, its bad enough that 10% of everyone doing anything on the path is clearly incapable of thought but why should those of you blasting Helen Reddy or rockin' on to the driving beat of Olivia Newton John's latest hit want to make yourself even less alert.  Goodness knows what the combination of the rocktastic rockatude and exercise created dopamine might do.

Nice Guy Eddies and Kantian Idiots Part I

In one or another of Tarantino's films, he named a character Nice Guy Eddie, Eddie wasn't particularly nice but I think he was supposed to be. People who do the right thing are Nice Guy Eddies. After all, Eddie was concerned not so much with who did what to whom but who it was that was pointing a gun at his dad, which -- if you think family matters-- is pretty nice. Kant argued somewhere or another that it is wrong and immoral to treat others as means to an end instead of ends in and of themselves. He meant, more or less, that you ought not ever do/will something happening someone else that you wouldn't do/will as happening to yourself in the same circumstances; this means, I think, that you ought respect other bodies as being as important to themselves as you are to yourself and, consequently, recognizing that no desire or end you might have is any more important that a desire or end that the other bodies might have. This position is, ultimately, the basis of western liberalism's constant insistence that, as Jesus put it, we respect the least amongst us.

Well every day, as cyclists and as bodies moving through the world, we find others fucking with us in ways the fuckers wouldn't want to be fucked with and, if we're honest, we fuck with those other fuckers in ways we wouldn't want to be fucked with, which -- taken all in all -- makes the whole bunch of us a bunch of fucked fuckers. I propose that as we move forward we seek to be idealized Nice Guy Eddies, which means avoiding his penchant for robbing and murdering, and avoid being Kantian Idiots, where the meaning of the last noun is Grecian.

Today I run through the various and sundry interactions with others and divide the world between Nice Guy Eddies and Kantian Idiots.

Adult dad guy on the bike path thanks for telling your kid to get back inside the yellow line, seriously. 

Jogging woman with dog, thanks for pulling him/her and keeping him/her inside the line with a complicated behind the back leash system.

Putz training your dog on the path, wtf. The damn thing was all over the place.

Three guy pace line belling guys, thanks for bellling; you belled I belled back, we laughed, we cried, it became part of us.  Bells are much better than on your left, which often sounds suspiciously like on guard.

Three guy pace line belling guys, for shame on the passing the comfort bike woman on a blind curve and almost crashing into fully team-kitted hard racing bike woman and for riding in both lanes and belling the pedestrians who didn't need belling because you guys were useing 100% of the path when you should have been using 50%.

Jogging woman who started on the far right and then listed to the far left, returned to the far right and began the whole process all over again while ignoring my belling and, when that failed to elicit a response, my on your lefting .

Jogging guy with headphones kudos for running the right way, i.e., toward on coming traffic; for shame for not paying any attention to what was in front of you; although, when your eyes bulged out in panic when you moved from the grass onto the path directly in front of me was worthy of Cantiflas when he was forced to work in English.
.
Doctor/Nurse/Person who likes to wear scrubs, for shame for stopping in the middle of the path and staring and turning round and about consequently making it nearly impossible to pass you on either side and for the professional level of frowning my belling received..

Adult dad SUV guy with the two kids in the back, wtf with the stopping on the crosswalk when you were at a right turn light on the busiest part of the multiuse multiuser path. Did you think that by making it impossible for peds, runners, bikers, etc. to get safely across would cause the light would change quicker?

SUV guy who stopped to let me cross when I was stopped when the SUV behind you shifted lanes and sped up.  If I am stopped you get to go.  When you control all the other cars on the road, either through some kind of ESP or whathave you and when you and yours stop every single time, stop.  Until then let me decide when to cross the street, I've been doing it for decades. This kind of behavior is known as false Nice Guy Eddieism.

Finally, me for not stopping when my getting across was bit on the dicey side.