Bicyclists oft complain about drivers, and I understand the perspective: if there is an accident involving a car and a bike, you know that the damage will not be distributed evenly. Locally there has been some effort for the last few years to create more bike lanes and educate drivers, and we have a law about passing distance. This makes sense. Bike lanes make things safer for all of us, and some drivers (a minority in my experience) don't understand what to do with bikes on the road.

But. I am finding it very hard to remain sympathetic when the very same people who complain about dangers from cars are themselves dangers to pedestrians. Cyclists, you have to rein in your own -- the blatant disregard for traffic laws is bad enough when you just do it to drivers, but it's inexcusable when you're running down people who have no defense against you.

Friday night while walking home from services I was crossing Forbes at a marked crosswalk. This crosswalk is marked not only with painted lines, and not only with one of those signboards in the middle of the road, but also with flashing yellow lights on either side. It's the most visible crosswalk in the neighborhood. Nonetheless I always stop and look at oncoming drivers to try to confirm that they see me and are slowing down.

Friday night I looked both ways as usual and then started to cross. A bicycle whizzed in front of me at high speed (much faster than the last car to pass), its rider cursing at the "f---ing b----" in his way. I stopped and turned to stare, looking in vain for anything I could use to identify him. That's when two more whizzed by me, also cursing. One of them grazed me (I'm not sure with what, but no blood). All of them continued on, spewing vulgarities.

They had no headlights, by the way, and all were wearing dark clothes. Not that it was, legally, my job to see them -- just self-defense, which I attempted. I, on the other hand, was in a marked crosswalk wearing brightly-colored clothes.

This infuriates me. Not only did they blatantly ignore traffic laws, not only did they nearly mow me down, not only did they not even stop, but they acted like I was the problem. I think drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all need to learn to share the roads, but some need to learn way more badly than others. These cyclists clearly thought they shouldn't have to care about anybody else.

Just the previous day I'd been nearly run down by two (more-slowly-moving, but still) cyclists on the sidewalk. That happens to me a couple times a month on average, not counting children -- I just mean adult cyclists here. Sidewalks are for pedestrians; we shouldn't have to be constantly on the lookout for speeding traffic hazards of the wheeled variety.

I am going to write a letter to my City Council representative (can't hurt, could possibly help), but I'd like to go beyond complaining. What concrete suggestions can I make, as our city expends effort (and money) altering public roads to work better with cyclists? What has actually worked in other cities to get everybody on board with sharing the road, and what has been done to hold cyclists accountable for following the rules of the road (and sidewalk)?

They are unregistered, so there are no license plates to spot; they are unlicensed, so their privilege to use the roads can't be taken away; they are almost never seen in the act by police officers, because that would require quite a bit of luck; they can easily leave the scene of any problem, so if the police are not already there they will get away with whatever they were doing. Does anybody require licenses or registration? What else can be done?

I'm not trying to persecute cyclists. I recognize that not all cyclists are like those ones on Friday. But I am trying to find a way to get them all to play by the rules -- and maybe even to recognize that when they do to pedestrians what they accuse drivers of doing to them, they do not help their cause.

Any ideas? Short of wearing armor when walking, and maybe carrying a range weapon, I mean? (If only I'd had a paintball gun and good aim... if I could have tagged 'em I could have called the police. But that's just not going to work.)

What concrete suggestions can I take to my local government?

One morning back in June a police officer stopped me, said I hadn't stopped "long enough" at a stop sign (he didn't say I ran it), and gave me a ticket. He also told me that he was being ultra-picky because there had been complaints in the neighborhood, he didn't think highly of his current assignment, and if I were to plead "not guilty" he wouldn't show up in traffic court unless specifically ordered to. O...kay. Not how I particularly wanted to spend a couple hours, but my unblemished record and exaggerated fees were at stake, so I did that. (Traffic tickets are kind of like phone bills, apparently -- $20 or so base cost plus $100 or more in fees...)

My hearing was this morning and, as expected, was successful. Most hearings took about a minute: the clerk tells the judge what the charge is, the judge says "talk to me" after swearing you in, you tell your story, and he either says "ok" or "no" and sends you on your way. I didn't say anything about what the officer had told me, of course; I merely said (honestly) that I had stopped, that the officer had an obstructed view (he was on a narrow side street behind another car, with buildings going almost to the street), and that I've never had a moving violation in (mumble) years of driving. That was sufficient.

What was interesting were the cases that weren't so straightforward. These were generally the ones that people brought lawyers for. These included:

• A charge of driving on a suspended license. There was a quiet, heated exchange, and after the judge ruled the defendant guilty I heard his lawyer say "I need to talk to you right now". Sounds like somebody wasn't completely straight with his counsel...
• A charge of an illegal turn (admitted) with an add-on of reckless endangerment. The lawyer argued that the latter requires intent and this wasn't intentional; the defendant hadn't seen the sign -- and also, this would carry six points. The judge asked the police officer if he was ok with that, there was a huddle, and the officer agreed.
• Aside: that police officer stayed there for three cases in a row all at that same intersection. I couldn't tell if they were on the same day, but I assume so. (Locals: a no-left-turn sign at the five-way intersection on Blvd of the Allies.)
• One defendant said it was his car but he wasn't the driver. The officer said something like "I always process these the same day; either he has a twin out there or it was him". The judge asked him how confident he was on a scale of 1-10; he said 8. Guilty. (I have no idea what "process" means here.) Since no mention was made of a driver's license having been shown, I suspect this was a case where the driver didn't stop and the ticket was issued based on the plates.
• One defendant was initially stopped for an expired inspection sticker, which led to the discovery that he was driving on a suspended license. The defendant said he had borrowed the car from a friend and who thinks to check the stickers? (I can sympathize for that part, though not the suspended-license part.) The police officer took a hard line with him, saying that it's his responsibility as a driver to check these things. There was then a discussion I couldn't hear, and I think he was found guilty on all counts. (Aside: how can they even read those stickers on moving cars? They're not big. Are they relying on cameras with zoom or something?)
• A feeble, elderly man who, on being asked how he pled, launched into a long, fairly-incoherent babble about how he's a good driver and not like those reckless kids and blah blah blah, and he's 93 years old and knows how to drive -- and never actually answered the question or said what happened during his traffic stop. The judge just said "ok" and sent him away. Were I that guy, I might have considered paying the ticket by mail even if I wasn't guilty, because the alternative might risk too much scrutiny -- though, demonstrably, his approach can work.

I read in the Jewish Chronicle last week that this weekend Rabbi Ethan Tucker from Mechon Hadar will be at Beth Shalom leading assorted programs. I know Mechon Hadar from Yeshivat Hadar, which has an enticing one-week summer program that I haven't made it to yet. (Maybe next year.) By all accounts these people "get" lay empowerment and community/chavurot and engagement, and I'd like to both experience more of that and learn more about how to make that happen. (In my case, within the context of my congregation.)

So anyway, I'm happy to learn that Rabbi Tucker will be visiting. I'll definitely go Friday night, and they're having assorted programs on Saturday afternoon, some of which I plan to go to. There's a brochure on Beth Shalom's site and everything is open to the public. Aside from that and the Chronicle article, I've seen zero publicity.

Our neighborhood had a block party today. (Not all of Squirrel Hill, just a six-block-long stretch on our street plus nearby blocks of side streets.) I'm glad somebody organized this (and a mailing list); we've lived here for over ten years and I still don't know very many of the neighbors, but knocking on doors just to say "hi I'm Monica; who are you?" feels weird.

We were all wearing name tags (name + address), and as a result I met a cousin I didn't know existed. I thought my parents and their descendants were the only members of our family in Pittsburgh, but I was wrong. The person I met, Linda, is the granddaughter of the brother of my great-grandfather. (She doesn't seem to be as old as my parents, but until recently the generations in our family had lots of kids with some spread, so that's not surprising.)

I learned that her mother had visited Bugnara, the small town in Italy that her grandfather and mine are both from, many years ago. She met some relatives then but everybody Linda or her mother would have known there is dead now. A little closer to home, it turns out that after my grandfather died, my grandmother bought Linda's mother's house -- she told me the address and yes, it is the house we went to visit my grandmother in when I was growing up. So if I'm understanding this correctly, we regularly visited the house Linda grew up in.

Linda does not actually live in our neighborhood (though she does live in Pittsburgh); she was there with somebody who does. I'm going to email her the link to the genealogy page that tc_tick maintains.

Small world.

Several weeks ago somebody hit my car in a parking lot and was decent enough to leave a note. (Scuffed paint, hit by a car of a contrasting color, but no dents.) We were going to resolve it privately until the sticker shock set in (it was her first accident), so I set off to get an estimate to send her. My regular car guy does innards, not body work, but I've been driving past Mark's Auto Repair and Service in Greenfield (Beechwood near the bridge to Squirrel Hill) every weekday for something more than a year, so I figured I'd see what they had to say. They were friendly, IT-challenged (they were having fax troubles possibly at the hand of Verizon, and they don't seem to have a web site), smoking like chimneys (ugh), and kind of casual -- when I stopped by a couple days later for the written estimate to follow up on the verbal one (because the fax was still out) Mark typed one up on the spot with the actual work summed up in one line-item. (Plus there were a couple standard add-ons, including tax.) But they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, the place is always busy, this was pretty safe work to try them out with, and they assured me that they never smoke in people's cars. So a few weeks ago, once I had the check from the insurance company, I went back to Mark's instead of accepting the insurance adjuster's offered repair service.

They do body work on weekends, so Mark suggested I drop the car off on a Friday and get it on Monday ("possibly Sunday afternoon"). That sounded optimistic to me, but I could drive Dani's car to work Friday and Monday -- and, if needed, longer -- so I did that. They were very good about giving me rides between my house and their shop to facilitate this. When I dropped the car off I asked how much extra it would cost to also fix another ding (not that driver's fault), and Ken (the body guy) said "I was already planning to do that; no charge". Bonus! Then on that Monday morning when Ken came to pick me up he said he'd noticed some scratches on the front bumper (nowhere near the other damage), so he took care of that too.

It turned out that the timing was optimistic; there hadn't been enough time for the paint to fully dry so he could buff it. He apologized and asked if I could bring it back on Friday for that, which was fine. He did a very nice job with all of this work; I don't think anybody who didn't already know would be able to say where the damage was. And he washed and vacuumed the car -- washing didn't surprise me, but cleaning the interior did.

In talking with both Mark and Ken I learned that it was just the two of them until the week they were doing my work, when they hired a third guy. They are looking for property nearby so they can have separate places for the body shop and the repair shop. (I didn't ask, but I infer from the scheduling that they interfere with each other somehow.)

If you're looking for a place that will specify all the work in glorious detail in advance, this might not be your place. (In contrast to their one-mostly-empty-page estimate, the insurance adjuster gave me a five-page bid. I gave it to Mark to make sure that was the work he was planning to do and he said yes.) But if you're looking for a place that will treat you well and do more than was promised, give Mark's a look. I'll be going back there in the future.

I'm going to guess that the letter from the gas company taped to a neighbor's door, informing him that his gas will be cut off tomorrow for non-payment of bills, means the odds that I'll be able to get him to trim his hedges so they don't block the sidewalk are low. Bummer.

I have never met this neighbor despite living here for 11 years and walking past his house several times a week. His hedge maintenance is consistent with his snow-removal habits, but I was still hoping to have a friendly and effective conversation. It's possible, after all, that he just hasn't noticed, if he never walks in the back of his house himself. But he never seems to be home to talk to. (Things change from time to time, like holiday decorations, and the lawn gets mowed, so it's not an abandoned property.)

Back in June we had a big storm, and a large stretch of sidewalk along my route to my synagogue became covered in a thick layer of dirt. After a couple weeks passed without the now-packed-down dirt being cleared, I left my first polite note. (No one was ever visibly home when I was walking past.) Time passed, and summer rains turned that packed dirt into occasional mud deep enough that you really couldn't walk through, especially if wearing nice shoes, and even if it weren't that deep, it would still be slippery. I left another note -- referencing the first one, but still polite.

Time passed with no action. It was dry for a while. Then fall came and with it more rain. A few weeks ago when I tried to walk around the mud, by walking on the strip of grass by the sidewalk, I found that that was too swampy too, and I had to walk in the street. The combination of night and rain makes it hard for me to see stuff like this; I found out the grass was unsafe by slipping and nearly falling. If I had trouble I can only imagine what the elderly are going through. So I wrote to my city councilman, Doug Shields, through the council web site.

Friday night the sidewalk was clear. Gloriously clear! It rained this weekend and I didn't have to care. I have now sent Mr. Shields a nice thank-you note. (I'll probably never find out whether city council caused the owner to fix it or just sent workers over. As a taxpayer I care, but not enough in this case to stir the pot.)

There is a national lecture series, live telecast from NY (with Q&A opportunities from the remote locations), for which my congregation will be the local provider. The first lecture is tomorrow night: "A Moral Courage Conversation", with Christiane Amanpour (CNN) and Irshad Manji. Text study (Jewish sources, accessible and open to all) at 7:15, lecture at 8:00, Temple Sinai. (Speakers later this year include Rabbi Telushkin, Seinfeld, and Al Gore -- quite a mix.)

From the flyer:

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent. Her coverage of the Gulf War, genocide and natural disasters around the globe have made her one of the most recognizable international correspondents on American television. She has earned numerous awards including an inaugural Television Academy Honor, Emmys, Peabody Awards, George Polk Awards, an Edward R. Murrow award and other major honorary degrees. Irshad Manji is the Muslim reformer whom The New York Times calls "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare."

There is an admission fee. I'd like to see the series do well, so if you are local, know me, and want to come, let me know by 5:30PM tomorrow and if you're among the first 4 or 5 people to ask, I'll give you a ticket. (This will be implemented as "your name will be on a list at the door"; we don't have to connect with each other in advance.) Or just show up, buy a ticket, and support my congregation; that works too. :-)

The power is currently out at my house, and I've discovered that Duquesne Light appears to have no online source of real-time information on outages. C'mon, I expect to see a map of affected areas and outage times! Or at least an RSS feed with status updates. The last thing I want to do is call the "report an outage" number and gum up the works just looking for information. Besides, I'd probably have to navigate a terrible automated system to end up on hold.

(What? I'm at work and may as well stay here if we're not going to have light, heat-distribution, or internet anyway...)

Lately the Jewish Chronicle has had ads from Giant Eagle pitching their kosher deli (in the store at Center and Negley in Shadyside). Last week they advertised a special on rotisserie chickens. Drool. It's been years since I've had that, because Kosher Mart doesn't do them in their prepared-foods section. So tonight after work I headed over to check them out. The chicken was very tasty and tender, and I picked up some side dishes for later use. I'll definitely be back.

Small-world moment: the friendly and helpful person who took care of me is happyingreen's husband. :-)