Great Movie Cycling Scenes: The Wicker Man

Nicolas Cage steals a bike at gunpoint in The Wicker Man.

A classic of truly awful cinema, the Wicker Man was written and directed by noted misogynist Neil LaBute. It is a train wreck of a film, with a script that makes absolutely no sense, but well worth watching for its unintentionally funny scenes - especially if you have a fridge full of beer. The movie launched the internet meme 'Not the Bees'.

I saw it when it first came out because I'd always been a fan of the original 1973 version (not the greatest film - interesting idea but poorly paced) and I wanted to see if the update could do better. It couldn't. Sadly, the people who made this stinker have gone on to make more bad movies, though none quite so bad as this. LaBute still has his fingers in the Hollywood pie, though we should perhaps be thankful that, since The Wicker Man, he hasn't been allowed to direct or script a full-length movie.

After the bike theft, Nicolas Cage's character gets into a pretty sticky situation involving lashings of honey, a bear suit, woad-painted women, broken legs, bees and human sacrifice involving barbequed bike thief. If only real life cyclists got to enjoy similar vengeance on their persecutors.

False Courtesy and Rules of Priority

Today, another rant. Sorry.

This morning, while my daughter and I were turning left from the main road at a T-junction, an oncoming car at the same junction was turning right. We stopped, but the oncoming driver, rather than taking her turn, motioned for us to go.

We, of course, refused to go. I waved at the car with the standard 'get out of the way' gesture and apparently I used some choice words concerning the 'right of way', because the crossing guard (it was near the school entrance) heard me and laughed in agreement.

The rules of priority are not just a decision that any road user can simply change on a whim. I cannot turn left while an oncoming vehicle is turning right - I am required to wait. If I don't, and I am hit, it is my fault because I failed to respect the rules governing priority or 'right of way'.

The Maryland Driver's Manual states:

Right-of-Way

Right-of-way rules provide drivers with guidance
for situations when other drivers or pedestrians are
present. These rules determine which driver should
yield the right-of-way and the sequence for entering
and driving through an intersection or other driving
scenarios...

You should yield the right-of-way to:

• the driver who is at or arrives before you at
the intersection;

• drivers in the opposing traffic lane, when you
are making a left turn;

• the driver on your right, if both of you arrive at
the intersection at the same time;...

These three situations - the first three listed under the rule - are the most common situations in which drivers urge me to go despite the fact that they have priority.

When motorists urge me to go when they have priority, it shows that they have no idea of the rules of the road. Not only that, but this false courtesy endangers other road users because it arbitrarily replaces tried and tested rules with chaos. I really wish people would stop doing this. Is learning the rules of priority and putting them into practice really so difficult?

Wool Conquers Winter

At the start of the new year I find myself the only cyclist on my daily commute and surely one of the only cyclists in Silver Spring. The 'Bike to Work Day' crowd are nowhere to be seen (I doubt we'll see any of them for another three months yet) and the roads are left to the lazy lard-asses in their cars and those of us who have figured out that cycling in winter is by no means uncomfortable if you know how to dress for it.

Last year, with no winter wool to speak of, I couldn't do without my winter jacket, and still I never felt warm (still, I wasn't going to let a bit of cold force me off the bike). This year I finally managed to scrape together enough cash to splurge on a couple of layers of wool, and it's really made a huge difference for me. I haven't even needed my winter jacket yet.

Yesterday was pretty much the coldest it's been in the last 3 months -  it was in the high 20s fahrenheit when I woke up. I got out my wool long underwear for the second time this season and topped that off with wool socks, jeans, T-shirt and a nice thick wool sweater. Still no need of a jacket - with two layers of wool and some nice thick woolen gloves a jacket makes it just a little too hot.

I also bought my daughter a set of woolen underwear, a good pair of ski gloves and a 3-in-1 ski jacket. This year our commute is quite a bit longer (she's on her bike for at least an hour every day), so she really needs something to deter the chill. If it gets colder, I think she'll need a thick sweater, but so far she says she's comfortable.

I reckon the teachers at my daughter's school have yet to discover the merits of wool, as they are bundled up in their polyester jackets and still looking cold, while I'm cycling by looking like I'm enjoying a different season. Of course it's not just their choice of fabrics - they're not getting the exercise either, so that plays a big role.

I wish I'd figured out the benefits of wool sooner.

The War on Britain's Roads

This BBC documentary aired a couple of days ago in Britain. I watched the whole thing this morning. I guess I'll keep my thoughts generally on hold so that others can comment on it if they want to.

http://road.cc/content/news/71714-truth-first-casualty-bbcs-war-britains-roads
"Less than a month ago, AA President Edmund King had called for an end to the ‘two tribes’ mentality that polarises the cycle safety debate between cyclists and motorists. If anyone from the programme’s makers, Leopard Films, read his comments, it didn’t show."

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/338468
""War on Britain's Roads" is a serious contender for the most sensational and irresponsible piece of journalism of the year... The documentary is a worthy heir of the work of Leni Riefenstahl."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cyclists-hit-out-at-depiction-of-the-war-on-britains-roads-in-bbc-documentary-8382245.html
"The documentary... is at best provocative in a way that might lead to more useful debate... At its worst, however, the film is sensationalist and dangerous. The footage it presents as everyday depicts Britain’s roads as an unremitting war zone."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244242/Id-happily-run-Cyclist-took-controversial-BBC-documentary-inundated-hate-messages-death-threats.html 
"A viewer called Kate Bailey, said: 'This cyclist with glasses on BBC panorama actually deserves to be knocked off his bike and die!!!! Arrogant little t***'

So what do you think?

Are motorists all f***ing idiots, or what?

Since August, I have a daily 7 mile commute, and every fricken day a number of morons do a number of things so unbelievably stupid it makes me wonder how they got their driving licenses.

Yesterday I got three. The first one was in the morning, I'm crossing a 6-lane highway and stuck in the intersection (in the turn lane) waiting for a gap in traffic to my right and some lady lays on the horn because... I haven't got a clue - maybe because she thinks I shouldn't be in the turn lane? The second one, a motorist turning left into the main road at a Stop sign at a T junction had no idea that he was supposed to wait until the through road was clear, so he pulls out like some simpleminded buffoon just as my daughter and I are turning left from the through road. Then in the afternoon, some retard has his indicator on suggesting he's turning left, then he decides to go straight - keeps his indicator on through the intersection.

Today, we were passing a parked car whose driver decided to pull out into traffic without indicating or bothering to look to see if it was safe to do so. We were outside of the door zone, and the motorist responded to my horn after I'd tried a couple of yelled 'Excuse me's, so it worked out okay (except that my muscles tensed up so much that I seem to have strained a thigh muscle and am limping around like Lord Byron), but...

While it's not difficult to avoid the problems these morons cause, and while I seem to have developed a sixth sense about some of these things (I knew that idiot yesterday was going to go straight), we shouldn't have to develop a sixth sense to guard against people who shouldn't be behind the wheel of a two ton vehicle. It worries me that my daughter is going to be exposed to these halfwits all her life.

I'm beginning to think driving licenses must come free in every packet of Cornflakes. I mean these bozos cannot possibly have taken a professionally-administered driving test. If they have, then I think the folks deciding to pass these fools need to be fired.

Researchers Say Cycling Risks Overstated

Govt stats over-state the risks of cycling says new research

(it's pedestrians & young male drivers who have to worry)

Yay!

Finally an article that doesn't equate cycling with certain death. It reports on research done by a team from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. The research even recognizes what I've argued on occasion - that motorists' tendency to use freeways skews the data in their favor.

Good news: cars are no longer cool!

Is that cool, or lame?

Here's a clue: consider where it looks like it ought to be driving...

then consider where it's really going to be driving...

Yeah.

Last week, on our commute to her school, my daughter said "Ian, cars aren't cool". Now while she may simply have been saying what she thought I'd want to hear, I've heard quite a few kids say similar things recently, and studies show that more and more teenagers are opting out of learning to drive, partially due to the financial climate, but also out of dissatisfaction.

There was a time when cars were cool - back in the 1920s, when the open road was... well, open. When cars were rare, when most of them had an open cockpit, when you started them with a crank and when you needed to wear goggles and a heavy driving coat. But now? My daughter's right - they aren't cool. They are lame.

As far as excitement and adventure goes, driving a car leaves something to be desired: it's air conditioned, you sit in a comfy chair, you can drive in your shirt even in a blizzard. There's a radio, cupholders, GPS, etc. In terms of explorers, it's hardly 'Scott of the Antarctic' - heck, it's not even Michael Palin (for those unschooled in British pop culture references, that's he of Monty Python and BBC travel documentary fame). Okay, driving a car today might (at its best) equate to a Rick Steves travel show: pretty, comfortable, safe. But not exactly thrilling. The motorist's motto is something akin to "Hope the seat warmer is working" or "Glad I've got my coffee". Not exactly stirring stuff.

Even today's car ads have a sort of desperation about them - they're all about danger, thrills and driving fast somewhere exotic, but when the ad gets to the interior, it always just looks kinda weak. And the outside... well, they all look the same - and they're almost always offered in shades of grey. And you know that when you actually drive it, it's not going to be an experience of driving like a bat out of hell at Monte Carlo - it's going to be pottering along at 5mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic while cyclists and bikers pass you by. The fact is, the modern car experience is slow, frustrating and BORING!

Meanwhile, those of us on bicycles and motorbikes have a different and much more rugged experience: you're out in the elements, you're on a saddle (how adventurous is that!), no radio, no cupholder (other than a cage with a bottle of near freezing water), no GPS, you must balance and wrestle the bike through rain, wind, snow. Your motto, like that of the Post Office is "Victory or Death" (well, not really, but sometimes it feels that way). If you cycle more than half a mile you get more adventure than a motorist gets in a week.

So what happened to make cars go all wimpy and boring? And when did it happen? I don't think there was a key moment when the car lost its cachet. I think it happened gradually, but it started in the 1960s. At first, it was just environmentalists that dared to say it. Here's a modern example of those early criticisms:

"America is filled with uncool fools who... still think its oh so cool to glamorize and subsidize man-made machines depleting the world of fossil fuel while spewing carbon monoxide emissions in all directions and building a deadly greenhouse designed to perfection for the ultimate destruction of all humankind."

But then, more and more people started to voice 'that which could not be said' - car ownership is not just 'uncool' - it's stupid and passé:

"Owning a car is thought to be very stupid by Generation Y and they are moving from car ownership to renting... Today it’s not cool to own a car"

"The car, to them, is a passé form of prestige, of assuming, through the BMW or Mercedes label, a dignity beyond what the owner knows she’s worth."

Now auto makers have taken the final step - the ultimate in 'uncool' - trying to be cool:

"...nothing worries automakers more than the mounting evidence that cars are no longer cool... Surveys suggest that “millennials” regard the car as a tired, twentieth-century mechanical device that’s out of place in a twenty-first-century electronic world, where it creates nothing more than congestion and pollution."

So the auto makers are choosing to go with hi tech gadgetry to make cars appear cool to the new generation of potential motorists. But I think they're going down the wrong path. The 21st Century will, I think, be a time when simplification will be key. People will begin to want their transportation to be cheaper, simpler, more connected to the environment and less hassle. But hey, what do I know? As always, time will tell.