How to do a quick turn

Here is a photo sequence from the League of American Bicyclists Bike Education conference I attended in Austin, TX this year.

This is me being coached on improving my emergency turn by League Cycling Instructor (LCI) Preston Tyree.
You would use this turn if someone turned in front of you or ran a red light and you suddenly needed to turn right or left, usually right. I'm told that you can do this up to 17 mph and I was doing it at about 11 or 12 mph. There were a couple of warm ups before I got it, this was the successful run.

Start at a comfortable speed for learning this very awkward and counter intuitive maneuver.








Turn your handlebars quickly in the opposite direction that you want to turn. This leans your bike in the direction you want to go instantly.
















Turn your handlebars quickly back toward the direction you want to turn. Now your bike is in a sharp lean in the direction you want to turn.

















Breathe and Commit.

Follow through the turn putting weight on the inside (of the turn) handlebar and the outside leg. For me it was important to keep my inside elbow low and center of weight low in the turn.



















Breathe continued...

















Look at where you want to go.























Finish the turn. This turn was much sharper than I expected and I would probably have to do another turn to keep from going too far to the right and off the road or into a parked car.














Get encouragement from League (of American Bicyclists) Cycling Instructor (LCI) Preston Tyree.

And for all those worried souls out there- yes, next time I'll try it in shoes instead of flip flops.

Thanks to LCI Chris Daigle from the Eagle Wheel Cycling School and Photography for the photos!

Jason

The Bittersweet Life

Life at it’s best is bittersweet.
I’m not jaded, just hear me out here. As we grow up and become adults we gradually get more control over our choices and our life. With these choices come consequences, good ones, bad ones and all the mixed ones. It’s pretty easy to choose between a horrible option and a good one. I’m a child of immigrants and my parents and or great grandparents chose as best they could and gave me more options than they had. Many times, they lived with fewer opportunities than do now. So, because they worked and still work very hard I have more options. Also, if I’m being smart about my life I might be able to use the privilege they built for me to create even more options for myself. At that point, I’m choosing between two or more great options and that’s painful because I have choose one thing over another. You will always have to face disappointment and loss as you let something come into being and send others into unrealization. John Trudel speaks about our value of responsibility (you can listen to it from “my favorites audio links on the right side of this page). He says that we should value responsibility more than freedom. If we are being responsible for making something happen then there are steps involved and choices to be made and follow though with and accountability to the goal. It’s not easy, and it’s not often clear.

Also, it’s not something that those previous generations want to hear about. “Must be nice to have choices” is what my Dad would often say to me with a tone of resentment.

So goodbye. Maybe another time or maybe just never…

So, for all of you out there....
If you’re wrestling with a major choice I’m here to say, you’re not alone and it’s a sign that things are getting better!

Exit Interview USSF- Jason

Here's a full interview of my experience at the Social Forum.
I wrote a summary of the Playback Theatre part that you can read on the July 10th archive page.





The real work in unifying our movements has to do with our one to one relationships with each other. I was so busy with our 2 shows and 2 workshops at the Social Forum (all led by different group members) that I was usually either preparing to rehearse, recovering from rehearsal, or interacting with our Playback group. That meant that I didn't get to that many of the other presentations. It was frustrating at first, but at the forum we did significant work in figuring out how to move through conflict and trust each other so that we could improvise and function together, ultimately benefiting us and the stories of people beyond ourselves.

Exit Interview USSF- Joyce

Joyce was a member of the Playback Delegation at the Social Forum. I'll include her summary of the experience here later.

NOLA Contingent at March

There were about 20,000 people at the US Social Forum sharing their work, their passion for change, asking the question, what do we want and figuring out steps for how to get there. It started off with a big march. Here is some footage from the New Orleans Contingent. We joined the march en masse all together and the image of our group joining the larger mass of people was a powerful moment for me. Here is some video before and during the march.

Rewind to 6/27- On the phone to Bush

"People want fantasy, what they need is reality." Lauryn Hill

Here's a little of both on the bus as we arrived in Atlanta on 6/27/07.

Selma Revisted - with video

Visiting Selma, Alabama was a brief, but memorable experience for me. This was the place that 42 years ago Alabama police brutally beat masses of people including the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. on their way to the polls to vote. Local "Jim Crow" laws prohibited Blacks from voting although it was their constitutional right. Known as "Bloody Sunday", that day was a glimpse or moment from a larger struggle where acts of liberation were met with overwhelming state violence. And still people continued forward. The Black and White racist system of limiting access to resources on this continent was implemented as economic policy starting in the 1680's and then instituted into public policy soon afterwards. After the freeing of slaves during the Civil War "Jim Crow" social control laws were passed. During all this time the forced labor of African Americans and other groups built wealth for a white power structure that police were charged to protect. Bloody Sunday is remembered as a "turning point" in the Civil Rights Movement, turning in a positive direction that is. Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the various efforts to apply those laws there have been change. There as also been the rise of the "Prison Industrial Complex" and the simultaneous encouragement and criminalization of drug crimes actions in low income communities of color by the US government. These are the newest incarnation of racial social control polices.

"Bloody Sunday" was a moment in time that has been repeated as people have tried to free themselves from unjust systems of dehumanization. In this instance it was to take back the right to vote. Violence and injustice are things that most of us have experienced and fear in one way or another. Taking action and facing that fear with others has usually skull crushing consequences, but possibly a large reward. Like Ghandi's raids on the Salt Mines of India, confronting fear showed that people's spirit and determination were greater than the weapons or violence used on them. What would it be like not to live in fear? I think that in taking on those figures of authority and facing that fear, they are in better position to answer that question.
With less fear, we are better able to imagine the world that we want and to build toward that vision. Without the fear of others, we'd be able to do much more together.

When Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton came to Selma to celebrate the Jubilee and remember "Bloody Sunday" it celebrated a worthy battle in 1965. It pushed against the white power structure and predictably that structure pushed back.

See the Houston Indy Media article on this.

Here is a video I took there at the school in Selma.





Stepping back somewhat and thinking beyond the US I know that more people have died in the Philippines under their current U.S. supported government than in all the 20 years of Ferdinand Marcos and his brutal enactment of Martial Law. Over 1000 people so far. And still there are people acting to change intolerable conditions, facing and living with fear of being disappeared every day. This is nothing new to many places in the world, especially ones that have governments friendlier to U.S. interests than to the prosperity and welfare of it's citizens. Isn't it time to think about the cost that fear takes on all of us? Clearly, acting in our own interests for a more human and thoughtful world will make it easier for others to do the same worldwide.

Rewind to 6/26 Omar pre-dawn moment

I'm gradually unpacking bits and pieces of my trip to the US Social Forum. Here's a moment of my roomate Omar in Selma on 6/26/07 on the way to Atlanta. It's 30 minutes before sunrise and the yellow light of that old hotel room is a too early dawn of it's own.