The Universe Likes Me! It Really Likes Me!

A couple of weeks ago I felt quite exceedingly depressed—the “My life is crappy and it always has been and it always will be” type of mood—and was thinking that if perimenopause and/or menopause are going to bring lower lows than I’ve always dealt with, I don’t think I can do it.

This week, however, I felt absolutely great, with all manner of things going my way, so perhaps higher highs are going to come with the lower lows, and I just have to remember, as always, that the lows are always followed by something good.

I had a piece published in the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Tube Times, for the second issue in a row, which was a good thing in theory, but turned out to have an unexpected aspect, which was that nearly every paragraph had been reworded, and a transition had been chopped out so that it looked like I said, “There was no reason I would do such-and-such, so I went ahead and did it.” Huh?

I had received a copy of my article a few weeks ago with one or two minor changes, and an assurance that I would be notified if anything else changed, so I was pretty surprised to see my name above a lot of stuff I never said.

I wasn’t going to say anything, but discovered a couple of days later that it was still kind of bugging me, so I sent a note to the woman who had edited the issue, and got the sweetest, most apologetic note back. She had had to step in when the previous Communications Director left the SFBC, and in working so hard to get the issue out, some things happened she wasn’t aware of.

She was so nice about it, I wished I hadn’t said anything, or at least had tried harder not to sound at all stern. On the other hand, she had said I would be notified if there was a change, and I wasn’t notified despite there being many changes, so I guess it was OK that I inquired into the matter.

I got some good news about the proposal I wrote for my company to implement secure bike parking, which is that it has trickled up to nearly the top person in the properties department, which delighted me. I have no idea if anything will ever actually happen, but I’ll keep pushing it when I can.

I have a coworker who puts in a tremendous amount of time volunteering here and there, and who asked me to nominate him for our company’s volunteer service award, because he thought it would be indelicate to nominate himself, though you can do that. I was flattered to be asked to write something on his behalf, and will be thrilled if he ends up winning an award.

A couple of cyclists were killed near here not long ago, which became yet another occasion for car-versus-bike debate, with the Chronicle publishing an article saying that cyclists are to blame for most car-bike collisions. However, since many motorists are unaware that cyclists even have the legal right to use the road, let alone that the safest place for a cyclist to ride in a lane that is insufficiently wide is in the center of it, I must take such statistics with a grain of salt.

Even many cyclists don’t know that while it may seem safest to edge along the right side of the road, it often isn’t. Doing that can put cyclists in the door zone and make it harder for them to be seen by motorists.

The cyclists were killed because a deputy sheriff dozed off and crossed the yellow line. As Leah Shahum, the Bike Coalition’s executive director, pointed out in an excellent follow-up editorial in the Chronicle, this was not a bicycle safety story, but a story about dangerous driving. If the cyclists had been in a car instead, there would have been even more loss of life, because the sleeping driver would likely have died, too.

Leah also appeared on KQED’s Forum show, and did a tremendous job. She is a wonderful writer and speaker, and, via her position at the Bicycle Coalition, a formidable force for positive change in San Francisco. Another guest on the show mentioned how often cyclists break the law by running red lights and Leah countered that cyclists, pedestrians and motorists all break the law, and that it’s always easiest to notice the person doing the wrong thing instead of the many doing the right thing.

And certainly red-light-running motorists are way, way more dangerous than red-light-running cyclists. I have had too many heart-stopping moments to count watching some jerk in a car speed through a red light downtown. I fear it is only a matter of time until I see a ghastly injury to a pedestrian who is under the mistaken impression that the walk signal means it’s safe to cross the street.