Why League City needs a bicycle safe passing ordinance

Answer:  Because this type of ordinance provides new tools that empower the public to assert their rights in a way that would not otherwise be practically achievable, tools that are absent from the existing regulatory framework.

This gentleman, a public edu-activist whose creative methods appeal mightily to my own dash-camming heart, capitalized on Houston's new 3-foot passing ordinance by creating (drum roll, please) a 3 foot space on the traffic side of his bicycle.  This screengrab from his helmet cam shows a car entering his space, and the scary part is that he was in a dedicated bike lane when that happened.  It's not like he was sharing a shoulderless road with traffic such that they were squeezed into proximity.  Drivers in our area won't even give clearance to cyclists when they have their own lanes!  That's how bad things are here.

Video screengrab from this YouTube entry by the cyclist.   

The argument against adopting bike passing ordinances and laws (which also include provisions for giving adequate space to pedestrians, the handicapped, construction workers, and other non-motoring right-of-way users) is that we already have laws on the books which make it a crime to (duh) run over and kill or maim people and therefore, any additional laws would only add meaninglessly to our society's cumulative regulatory burden.  In Texas, Governor Perry vetoed the Safe Passing Act for this reason despite its overwhelming bipartisan support (it passed 25-5 in the Senate and 140-5 in the House).   

Sure, it's against the law, but that doesn't mean that people stop doing it:  Photo of a car after its driver rammed and killed a bicyclist.  Screengrab courtesy of this site.  

The superficial declaration "we need to enforce the regulations already on the books rather that create new ones" belies the nuances and complexity of some of our underlying social precedents.  Houston's safe passing law (PDF) furnished a quantitative performance standard that allowed Houstonian Dan Morgan to gain a great deal of positive publicity by documenting the extent to which the law (and common sense) were being routinely violated (e.g., this story and this story and this story).  His effort is particularly meaningful because it comes on the heels of numerous high-profile bicyclist deaths in Houston, deaths that have intensified public calls for a sea change in the way vulnerable road users are treated.  It's the kind of peaceful public protest that can effectively be built upon by others to eventually bring about positive change.

And of course it's not just in Houston that cyclists are being killed.  Just over a month ago, this story of a fatal hit-and-run riveted the attention of folks all across greater Houston in part because LCPD was so effective in using surveillance footage and social media to help track down the alleged guilty party.

Screengrab courtesy of KHOU.  

As near as I can determine, League City has no analogous safe passing law.

When I searched through Municode, which is the third-party repository for current ordinances, it mostly contains boilerplate reflecting the fact that bicycles must be operated in conformance with existing rules of the road.

Screengrabbed from Municode.  

That being the case, I too could stick a 3-foot flag on my beloved Gary Fisher hybrid mountain bike and ride around League City with it, but it wouldn't mean much because it would be a propos of no existing rule or precedent.  I, too, could bring video evidence of unsafe passing before City Council and/or the police department, but I'm not sure they'd be able to do anything about it even if they wanted to because we lack a concise enforcement framework.

I have a hunch that, some day, 3-foot traffic lane flags are going to be widely available commercially for bicycles and the expectation that they be honored by motorists will be standard.  Until that time, we can continue to push for additional culture-changing measures that help inch us in the direction of that better place.  Safe passing laws are one of the tools that provide us with additional concrete options in that regard.

I recently started rehabbing my scruffy old bike, which hasn't been on the road in years.  I stopped riding it because it was just too dangerous - I have a child, I have responsibilities in my life; I can't go getting myself killed by engaging in denial about the degree to which Texas lacks a protective road culture.

But it shouldn't be this hard.  I should be able to ride my bike to Walgreens this morning without risking my life.  

Battle Hymn of the Health Conscious

At the end of this post, you’ll find new lyrics for a militant classic which I reinterpreted the other day after discovering to my delight that my yoga development, thus far predicated on the isolated teachings of a sole local instructor, is almost up to the level of the well-known P90X training module. 

Low-resolution video screengrab from this independent review site. 

I prefer a human interaction over whiz-bang mass-market DVDs, but my husband likes that fitness program and so I finally joined him in it.  I can’t do all of what’s in those 90 minutes of Yoga-X hell, but I’m most of the way there. 

For those of you who are like-minded, I invite you to customize your own chorus line to reflect personal gains within your specific fitness regime.  And good luck with those New Year's resolutions which, if you're like most Americans, will invoke improvements in diet, health, and fitness. 

***

 

BATTLE HYMN OF THE HEALTH CONSCIOUS

 

Mine eyes have seen the horror of the coming of old age

It is trampling out my youthfulness and causing me some rage

But I have loosed my effort in this war that I will wage

My workout's marching on.

 

I can almost do the yoga

I can almost do the yoga

I can almost do the yoga

My health will not be gone!

 

I think my version represents an improvement, actually, because the author of this original lyric apparently never got that memo about God not being able to be for and against the same thing at the same time. 
:-)

Screengrabbed from Wikipedia. 

 

 

 

Take a few minutes for medical literacy

Last night when I was walking home from the LC holiday parade, I was reminded of the words of Stanford ageing specialist Dr. Walter Bortz:  "Old people don't need to take a pill - they need to take a walk." 

If you count the parade itself, the muster point for which was at Kilgore's Hardware, then my dog and I walked about two and a quarter miles - which is only about half as much as is considered a healthy daily amount.   If I had also walked to Kilgore's at the beginning of the evening, then I would have been closer to the ideal. 

I've come across a couple of related health perspectives lately and I thought I'd share those as a follow-on.

First, this piece called "How doctors die", which describes the fundamental differences that medical literacy can make in managing the dying process.  NYT did a shorter story with the same title about a year after the original was published.  

Second, this provocative piece by Sanjay Gupta in which he describes the substantial moral hazard created by health insurance, in that it furnishes a powerful disincentive to healthy living.  That one resonated deeply with me because I know from personal experience just how true it really is.  People often ask me how I'm able to muster the motivation and the discipline to keep eating well and exercising almost every single day of my life.  My reply: "Piece of cake.  I grew up in a country where it is difficult ranging into impossible to access socialized medical services.  I learned to take care of myself because I knew without question that nobody would be there to catch me if I voluntarily opted to fall on my own lazy ass."  Imagine where America could be today if its people had been given an opportunity to embrace such a valuable lesson.  Instead, they languish and pay out the nose for HMO coverage, the costs of which are not sustainable anyway. 

Third, I had an interesting conversation with a new doctor I recently decided to try out.  I did something that few health clients (I detest the word "patient") ever do - I asked for the best available definitive perspective on breast cancer risk in women of my age group so that I could make an informed personal decision about whether I want to follow current detection protocols or basically take my chances based on the statistics. 

Let me explain the basis for that question in more detail.  In the past number of years, I've watched a surprising number of female friends and associates get sucked into the industrial medical machine whereby they go through a living existential and financial hell of surgery only to find out that some entirely ambiguous speck on a mammogram was nothing more than an ambiguous speck. 

And each time one of them tearfully confesses their story to me, their astonishment is replicated when I tell them that X number of other women recently told me the exact same story, and every bit as tearfully.  That many women are getting shuttled through this process?!  It's hard to believe. 

It raises the question as to whether the implied chances of cancer are real or not - or even if they are, whether there's a significant risk even in many of those cases where certain indications of cancer are found.  In his essay "The Picture Problem", Malcolm Gladwell wrote (emphasis mine), "In 1987, pathologists in Denmark performed a series of autopsies of women in their forties who had not been known to have breast cancer when they died of other causes. The pathologists looked at an average of two hundred and seventy-five samples of breast tissue in each case, and found some evidence of cancer—usually DCIS—in nearly forty percent of the women. Since breast cancer accounts for less than four per cent of female deaths, clearly the overwhelming majority of these women, had they lived longer, would never have died of breast cancer."

Forty percent?!  The plot, like the breast tissue, thickens.  Something is clearly not adding up here. 

So anyway, I related these concerns to this new doctor.  I made the observation that I was no longer certain that what my previous health care providers had recommended was really in the best interest of my personal health.  I suspected instead that the protocols had more to do with minimizing liability throughout the entire medical supply chain than in minimizing the risks for me as an individual. 

In response to my question, the doctor directed me to the National Cancer Institute's Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool.

Pretty simple, isn't it??  I find it very telling that in the decade that I've been advised to follow standard cancer screening guidelines, not a single health care provider ever volunteered that this government-endorsed tool existed.  I had to ask for it. 

Screengrabbed from this page. 

That tool is definitely a start, but it's important to note how much personal information it does not capture and incorporate into its risk calculation.  There's no place for entering the amount of exercise a woman does per day, other lifestyle factors, diet, or her body fat percentage.  And in my case, all off those factors depart substantially from the unhealthy American average.  And they all influence the rate of cancer. 

Speaking of health, I've got a new cauliflower coming up this morning.  It's still a baby right now (and it's one of the green varieties, which I haven't tried to cultivate before).  I started planting my cruciferous crop earlier this year, hoping to extend the growing range.  So far I've harvested two broccolis, both of which were sweeter than average for reasons unknown to me.

Moral of that story:  Ask questions.  Assume nothing.  There is no substitute for good medical advice as it applies to your specific health situation, but there also is no substitute for your own brain in the process. 

I'll leave you with my favorite Dr. Bortz clip.  It's only three minutes long, and it's much more candid and unscripted than some of the other longevity-promoting material he has produced.  It is the clip in which he makes that memorable statement, "Old people don't need to take a pill - they need to take a walk."  Each one of us must make the best health management decisions we can in collaboration with our doctors, but I think that Dr. Bortz's message is worth contemplating within the greater context of our lives and our society.

Cycling conundrum continues

Almost a year ago, I published a post called "The untold story of Dickinson Road". 

Here's a screengrab so that you don't have to load the URL. 

It's very dangerous because it's impossibly narrow, as you can see above.  And yet at the same time, it represents one the of the really good "straight shots" we have in League City, and thus has an irresistible allure for cyclists. 

Thursday evening around 5:45 p.m., I came upon these cyclists on Dickinson Road.  Pelotoning on one of the narrowest roads in League City and during rush hour to boot. 

 I snapped that fuzzy foto with my phone because I wanted to post it and say, "Aw, jeez, guys - don't do this.  Not on Dickinson Road.  Not during rush hour.  There are already two highway crosses just on this one stretch.  How many more would you like to see added?!"

And then less than two hours after I took that pic, a cyclist was hit by a truck in west League City (paywalled URL).   The newspaper reported that he was taken to the hospital with a head injury, which doesn't sound good. 

We are in late September, when the weather gets cooler and cyclists amp up their activity.  There are numerous bike fests coming up, including Bike Around the Bay in about two weeks, an event which is soaring in popularity. 

And people need to practice for these things.  The trouble is, there are no good places to practice around here.  In "The untold story of Dickinson Road", I talked about an allegation from local cyclists that the only relatively safe cycling spot in the League City area had been the interstate highway service road (feeder) between Dickinson and LaMarque.  But that was a couple of years ago, and in the intervening time, the Tanger Outlets were built, which substantially increased traffic on that segment.  Now they're left with basically nothing. 

Maybe someday we'll improve our development to incorporate something akin to complete streets.  Until that time, watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians.  Especially when the weather turns cooler and more people are outside. 

In May of this year, Houston became the largest city in Texas to adopt a safe passing ordinance.  They did so by unanimous vote and as an  emergency measure, meaning it went into effect immediately. 

These types of laws are a nice start, but the obvious problem still remains:  most of our streets are simply not designed for multiple users.  They're designed for cars alone.

Graphic screengrabbed from this Houston Tomorrow post. 

League City could write analogous ordinances until it was blue in the face, but it wouldn't change the fact that Dickinson Road is not much wider than my outstretched arms.  Or that the IH-45 feeder is curbed with no shoulders that cyclists could hug while in traffic.  If someone in a motor vehicle tried to give a peloton a 3-foot berth on the Dickinson Road stretch shown above, I think they'd end up in the ditch. 

Image from Google Maps ground view.   

Screengrabbed from here.

Public outreach graphic from the state of Connecticut, which also has a 3-foot regulation. 

Ten people killed just within spittin' distance of Centerpointe and just between the years 2001 and 2009.  Ten vulnerable road users (cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians). 

Screengrabbed from this site. 

Friend of a friend killed while in a peloton in 2003, not far from Centerpointe. 

 

Best swimsuit for older female fitness buffs

My opinion:  I've tried a wide variety and I prefer the Speedo Conservative, but there's a big, big caveat.  (There's always a catch, isn't there??  Life can never be simple or straightforward, even on the simplest issue). 

The catch is that, in my opinion, you should not order from any on-line source, because you might not receive the same cut that is most commonly pictured. 

Screengrabbed from Google. 

You might not get the correct cut if you order online, because Speedo reportedly changed the cut while maintaining the same product name.

"...have updated this model.  It is not an improvement! Why mess with something that's on your website in both "bestsellers" and "top rated" categories? I'm very disappointed to have to start looking for a new suit."

I didn't write that review, but I might as well have, because I feel exactly the same way.

Screengrabbed from Speedo.com. 

I will expound by telling you exactly why it's not an improvement.  Many Speedo Conservatives are worn by older women and larger women who are using the suit for exercise (laps, water aerobics, etc.).  I think Speedo may have lowered the front as an attempt to appeal to vanity.  Those of us who are older and/or larger need that expansive low-legged coverage for the extra poundage down below, but the relentless passage of time often rewards us with extra poundage up above, too.  And in many circumstances, appropriate display of one's well-matured mams can indeed serve as a little pick-me-up for the aging female ego.

63-year-old Helen Mirren is a wonderful example of the kind of physique to which I refer, and women like her are my exercise inspirations and physical fitness role models.  But Helen won't be doing any serious exercise in that little pink number.  Her girls have filled out nicely with age, but they've also sunk lower as expected, and would need a lot of firm control in a situation involving maximum physical exertion. 

Screengrabbed from this site. 

 So yeah, displaying a hard-earned rack is all well and fine, but any serious female swimmer knows that the lap pool is not one of the places in which we might aspire to do it:

What happens if the boobs are loose and the top is low is analogous to what happens to a pelican's throat when it dives for fish.  The fabric stretched across the cleavage will quickly fill with water and begin to function as a water brake of sorts, which is the absolute last kind of drag that you want while swimming laps. Visualize a large breast on either side of this pelican's lower jaw, and you get the general idea. 

Pelican screengrabbed from NatGeo, which (coincidentally) has historically never been shy about showing exposed breasts in their appropriate cultural contexts. 

Given that we are Space City, I can also refer to the Shuttle's braking parachute as an analog to what happens when water piles up in the torso fabric gap between the breasts. 

For swimmers who don't suffer from this cleavage conundrum, this may seem like a minor point, but it literally means the difference between can the swimsuit be used for laps, yes or no?  I made the same mistake that the popular reviewer above did - I had owned a Speedo Conservative so I simply ordered a replacement off the internet expecting the identical product.  But when it arrived, it was one of the newer ones that was cut too low, and I could not use it. 

The workaround is to buy your Speedo Conservative in person at a brick-and-mortar, because some of these suits are still being sold with the original higher necklines (don't ask me why it seems to be hit or miss).  For that, I go to Academy Sports and Outdoors because I find that they carry the product consistently, and their prices are usually good.  Right now there is a sale on at our local League City Academy, and I managed to get one of the lighter blue suits for about twenty five bucks, which is the deal of the century!!  Average list price is easily twice that much. 

Happy swimmin', without unnecessary sailin'. 


Dara Torres, who won one of her twelve Olympic medals at the age of 41.  Even with a professional athlete's rock-bottom body fat percentage and correspondingly smaller breasts, she still needs a swimsuit that hugs her neck, lest her cleavage catch the aqueous breeze and slow her down.

Here's an article titled "Dara Torres inspires older women to get fit".  Dang, if she were to come out with her own line of swimwear for older women, she could make an absolute killing.  Hint, hint (here, let me link to her official website just in case there comes a trackback). 

Photo from Wikipedia. 

Yoga options in the Clear Lake area

In this initial blog post titled "Better preparation for a bitter pill", I talked about my unnerved sequential response to the TIME magazine feature titled "Bitter Pill:  Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us". 

In that post, I covered my reaction to the article by listing these responses.  And then I gave a colorful step-by-step procedure for #6 on this list.

I'd like to address #4 now by describing what I know about yoga options in the Bay Area / Clear Lake area of Texas.   

First, a word on positioning (pun intended).  We continue to see case after case of people objecting to the practice of yoga because they interpret a religious goal associated with it, a goal that is perceived as incompatible with Christianity.  In fact, there was another major lawsuit launched just within the past few weeks over a public school district's teaching of yoga.  It is true that yoga originated as a component of Hindu philosophy.  But to my view, that doesn't mean that one has to subscribe to a specific doctrine in order to benefit from the physical practice of yoga.  Without a doubt, many contemporary programs have, by this time, stripped away any religious associations in favor of a focus that is purely health-based.

The City of Friendswood recently announced a series of yoga classes which start today, in fact.  Knowing what we know about Friendswood's religious demographics, its unique municipal history, and its reputation for conservatism, do you reckon that the city government would be openly promoting this kind of activity if there were "alternative" religious motivations associated with it?  My guess is, um, no. 

Screengrab courtesy of the City of Friendswood. 

So at this point you may be wondering... if yoga is perceived as controversial and hindered by cultural baggage, why even choose it?  Why not go for something more mainstream?

The answer for me is as follows: the analogous exercise programs I've tried are either too Americanized or have followings which are smaller than the critical mass needed to form a local group with good rapport.  On the issue of critical mass, for example, have you ever heard of Callanetics? It's a wonderful program but its reach has always been limited, and it arguably peaked in popularity a few decades ago.  By "too Americanized" what I mean is that they focus on competition (implicit or explicit) and punishing oneself under a drill-sergeant-style administrative regime.  If I want that kind of atmosphere, I'll get it in the corporate realm, thank you - I don't need that go, go, go, push, push, push, fight, fight, fight attitude to sour my exercise regime as well.  I was looking for something more introspective, non-competitive, and stress-reducing. 

So for those reasons, yoga was my choice.  When I first went searching for a local class about 20 months ago, it was my intention to avoid any sectarian flavor that some of the programs still retain, and which they usually tell you about up front.  But if they don't explain that up front, go ahead and ask, "Is this a nonsectarian program, or are you incorporating explicit elements of Hinduism or another eastern religious or mystic tradition?"  If the response does not mesh with your spiritual belief structure, find another program. 

Those little dots start to look like "energy centers" and all that new-age jazz.  How about instead focusing on mindful, self-aware contemplative exercise without all that unnecessary narrative? 

Microsoft clip-art. 

I was also searching for a program that was matched to my skill level, which at that time was nonexistent - I had good cardiovascular fitness from jogging and swimming, but I had no small-muscle development, very little strength, mediocre balance, and no flexibility (!).  Furthermore, being middle-aged, I suspected that I had poor prospects for developing flexibility. 

Ain't Never Going To Happen.

Microsoft clip art.

The local options came down to two basic types:

• A dedicated yoga studio.
• A yoga program incorporated into a big-box fitness club.

The first option tends to run about $100 per month depending on the facility, which is a lot of money to me.  I ended up deciding that would consider that magnitude of investment only after I had gained a level of proficiency that outstripped what was offered at my existing health club, which is LA Fitness on League City Parkway.  The entire membership there, including yoga classes, is only about $30 per month. 

But guess what??  The classes at LA Fitness have proven to be so good that I may never get to the point of needing a greater challenge. 


This was the schedule published online as of March 2013.  Screengrab courtesy of LA Fitness, yellow yoga highlights mine.

The teacher whose personal style appeals to me the most is Christine - she is absolutely wonderful, both in skill and in mannerism.  She also teaches at the League City 24-Hour Fitness (7 p.m. Wednesdays as of March 2013) and I believe at a few other local clubs as well. 

I'm not the only one who has been surprised by the quality of the in-club instruction.  I have a friend who used to take classes at Yoga Haven in Galveston before Ike forced them to resettle in north county.  She said, "It just amazes me the quality of instruction you can get at these chain clubs - and for no extra money."

If instead you're looking for a local dedicated yoga studio, I have virtually no experience with those, but here are the local ones I've stumbled across:

(1) The Yoga Institute, which has a studio in Nassau Bay and another one on Richmond in Houston.  I have a friend who has attended their Houston studio for a few years now and he absolutely loves it.  Dedicated studios such as this one tend to offer more classes, more class variety, and some people prefer the more sequestered atmospheres of these places (I'll have to admit that, in the LA Fitness, sometimes the adjacent raquetball players drive us bonkers with their noise during our classes). 

(2) Yoga Lola in League City.  They advertise astrology and "energy work" on their homepage, so this doesn't sound like it would be a good choice for me. 

(3) The Yoga Studio, also in League City.  The web pages don't appear to have been updated recently, so I'm not sure if they are still active. 

(4) Yoga Rasa on Mercury Drive in Clear Lake.

(5) Sundance Yoga on Friendswood Drive in Friendswood (and they also have a studio in Pearland).

I found those last two above because I was looking to buy a Manduka yoga mat and I wanted to buy locally.  I don't mind paying a little more if it supports a small business, and both of those studios were cited in the Manduka dealer's list.  I phoned both, but neither had the mat that I needed in stock, and so my excuse to drop in on a local studio went out the window, and I had to order it from Amazon instead.


I was looking for a Manduka Black Pro to replace the existing mat in my four-function room.  I was initially attracted to yoga in part because the overhead is so low.  You don't need a bunch of expensive equipment and paraphernalia - just a mat.

Amazon always delivers, although the mounting accusations that it's destroying local retailers echo the Walmart-related cries of yesteryear. 

Incidentally, if you're just beginning to do yoga, this particular mat may not be your best choice.  It's got that advertised lifetime guarantee because it's very durable, but durability means it's very dense and hard compared to some other choices.  Depending on your situation, you may need a mat with more cushioning than this model offers. 

So, 20 months after commencing yoga classes, what's my verdict on what they offer?

I'm hooked.  The cliches have proven to have merit - yoga has definitely helped to reduce my stress level and has helped me to focus more on what I can realistically expect of myself, versus what I'm supposed to believe that others are entitled to expect of me.  I'm much stronger, much more self-aware, better-coordinated and my understanding of spatial physicality has improved significantly.  The slow but steady self-development process reminds me of watching a baby learn to walk: month after month, I won't be able to achieve certain poses that require more strength than I've traditionally possessed, and then all of a sudden, there it is: I've surprised myself by achieving it.  It's fascinating that way. 

I'll close with a screengrabbed quote from Andrew Weil, from this CNN editorial published yesterday.  As is often the case in the mainstream media, numerous op-eds have emerged to echo and expound upon TIME magazine's initial feature.  This was one of them.


Myself, I'd prefer to focus on the keeping-healthy part with blog posts such as this one.   

Screengrab courtesy of CNN. 

The untold story of Dickinson Road

Both Houston Chronicle and Galveston County Daily News ran stories late yesterday about the arrest of a man accused in the heretofore-unsolved case of pedestrian Maurice Jones, who was struck and killed on Dickinson Road in a hit-and-run incident back in 2009. 

Here is the approximate location where Mr. Jones was killed.  Centerpointe is on the left side of this map.  It's not far from us. 

Some of the original news stories have sunk deeply into the sea of internet search engines after more than three years now, but this one from 2011 recaps the incident, and describes the family's pain at the lack of closure to the case. 

Mr. Jones was walking home from his job when he was killed. 

It was particularly offensive to all of us that a pedestrian could simply be killed outright in League City and nobody ever brought to accountability for it. 

It was even more offensive to me because I am intimately familiar with Dickinson Road, and herein lies the larger back-story upon which the newspapers never seem to focus. 

Dickinson Road is yet another of those narrow unimproved rights-of-way, only this one has a twist: it's not a simple residential block grid street like you see throughout Old Town.  It's actually an early version of an arterial road that pre-dates much of League City's recent rapid growth (hence its name - it connected League City and Dickinson).   

And it's very, very dangerous.

Here's another case of a picture telling a thousand words, only this one derives from Google Street View rather than from a newspaper's front page, as was the case with the GCDN picture of Christina Lopez's memorial last week. 

This is actually a two-way street, but many local drivers, when facing no opposing traffic, will actually default to driving right down the middle of it, as this driver was inadvertently caught doing here by the Googlemobile.  This midline practice gives drivers some extra cushion of safety if pedestrians are present and if other cars pull out from driveways and cross-streets.

You can plainly see just how narrow this thing is.  This guy is hauling a speedboat, which is not overly large.  But arguably, this road is only wide enough for one lane plus shoulders. 

Can I say this again?  IMNSHO, it's dangerous.  There are actually not one, but two, roadside memorials on just this one segment of Dickinson Road.

This, I believe, is the memorial for Mr. Jones.  I can't locate my own pics of it at this moment, so this again is from Google Street View.

A short distance away on the opposite side of the road, there's this other one.  I've not yet been able to research who this person was, or how they came to die on this open stretch of narrow road.

So at this point you may be wondering... how the heck do I know so much about Dickinson Road?!

Easy:  I sometimes ride my bike back and forth along its entire length.  Repeatedly. 

A typical response to this is, "Are you out of your freakin' mind?!  That narrow little road is obviously too dangerous for biking!"

But here is the main fact that I encourage you to contemplate: There is no safer place.  A safer place does not exist in our area. 

And this is not just my personal opinion - it is vehemently shared by others.  Several years ago, well before I began blogging, I attended a couple of public meetings that League City hosted to obtain feedback on its master plan for pedestrian mobility.  I don't know where that effort stands as of today, but here is a link to a presentation from two and a half years ago.  The bicycling advocates were very vocal in those meetings.  One man stood up and noted wryly that the safest and most effective place to train for events such as MS150 and Bike Around the Bay was actually the IH-45 feeder road between Dickinson and LaMarque. 

Do you see that big green patch there in the middle of this aerial photo?  There is relatively little development in that area, and less development means less traffic on the feeders.  So that's why serious cycling enthusiasts use this section for training. 

Oh, but wait - near the middle of this big square of mostly-green, do you see a light tan-colored area just to the left of the freeway?  An area that looks like the soil might be disturbed?

Guess what that is??  Ah, it's the Tanger Outlet Mall under construction and we are just a few weeks from its grand opening.  And of course they have every right to acquire private property and build in this location - but what does this mean for the fate of cyclists who are (or were) using that previously-lightly-traveled section of freeway feeder for their training purposes??  What's going to happen to the traffic volume in this area? 

Screengrabs from Googlemaps.

During those League City public meetings, the cyclists noted that it was indeed a pathetic situation, that the best they could do for training venue was to ride a segment of interstate highway.  What does that say about where our society places health and fitness in its priority hierarchy?

Dickinson Road is the alternate street venue for those of us who are not quite so hard-core about our physical fitness training.  Despite it's narrow length, lack of shoulders, and lack of sidewalks, it actually has two very important features to recommend it as a bicycle training option:

1. It's accessible, located less than a mile from Centerpointe.
2. It has a long unbroken length with good visibility (it parallels the rail line).  You may get run over by a motor vehicle if you use it, but at least in many cases, you'll be able to see that motor vehicle coming at you.

If you go up and back twice from Centerpointe, you've covered about ten miles on your bike.  Not bad for a quick convenient spin. 

So THAT is why I use Dickinson Road.  What is the alternative for citizens like me, exactly?  There are only so many times I can sit on a stationary bike and not die of boredom.  One would like to be able to mix it up just a bit - to go outside and get some exercise once in a while - is that too much to hope for??  I'm almost a half-century old here.  Faced with the insufficient public infrastructure that we have, should I instead sit on my couch with my hands folded in my lap and do nothing except watch TV and let obesity overtake me?  So that, in a few years when I'm old enough to go on Medicare, you fine taxpaying readers can foot the bill for my diabetes and cancer and all the rest of the degenerative complications that derive from obesity? 

How do you like the sound of that scenario?  Because that's exactly what's happening across the country.  We've got two thirds of Americans overweight by this point and darned near one third of them obese, especially here in the south:

Screengrabbed from this Washington Post article.

This USA Today article puts the numbers somewhat higher.

Collectively we don't want to invest in infrastructure that includes sidewalks or hike and bike trails because it costs soooo much money.  Well, what do you suppose THAT mess shown above costs us in comparison?  According to this article, the answer is $190 billion (with a B) annually - that's just the incremental cost attributed to obesity, not medical costs as a whole.  Do the math on this one.  That's about $633 annually per capita for every man, woman, and child in America - which equates to an effective $54 million annual cumulative impact on the good people of League City.  They may not experience those costs directly, but indirectly in terms of higher medical insurance costs, and in terms of public debt and taxes for uninsured Americans, those costs will appear, and they cannot be wished away. 

That number calculates out like that because this how many people we have right now.

A one-time cost of a few million bucks for sidewalks and trails no longer sounds very radical when compared to a $54 million annual effective share of obesity-related costs, does it??

I look at that and I think, "Holy crap - are those numbers even remotely close to representing the way things are??  It doesn't seem possible!"  As unbelievable as it sounds, those are the numbers that are published and that's the simple analysis that falls out of them.

And of course, sidewalks and hike/bike trails are not the sole answer to the obesity crisis - but if people can't even go for a simple walk or a bike ride without fear of getting killed for lack of infrastructure, how much headway could we ever expect to make??  If you want to teach a student, you have to at least have a chalkboard or a place to draw a picture in the dirt.  If you want to encourage people to exercise, there has to at least be some basic framework in which to do it with a reasonable minimum threshold of safety. 

Twice within the same week, my heart goes out to the family of a local pedestrian whose death involved the contributing factor of insufficient infrastructure.  No sidewalks or even road shoulders in either case.  As I said in my post about Christina, this is not a joke or a hypothetical scenario. Galveston County residents are needlessly put at risk of their lives for lack of basic infrastructure such as sidewalks in residential areas. They die because, without sidewalks, they have to share the road with motor vehicles and, in a conflict for space, the motor vehicles always win. 

Mr. Jones should not have have had to lose his life walking home on Dickinson Road.

Cyclists should not have to risk their lives while traveling on Dickinson Road.  It could just as easily have been one of us instead of Mr. Jones.  It could have been me. 

I don't know where the League City hike-and-bike improvement plans stand at the present time.  I'll try to research that further as time allows. 

And oh - by the way, Bike Around the Bay will be held next weekend.  Pity that so many people don't have access to safe training options for it.