But my friends call me Spray.
Many of my friends are in critical condition after an incident involving my father and some bees. The pest control guy was not helpful. I spent many hours on the phone with him explaining the situation already, so please do not suggest I call him for advice.
I’m whining about someone swinging a bat at people on the sidewalk while the whole neighborhood is on fire. The fire is a worse problem, and we should take care of it before it burns down everything. But someone should really take that bat away from that guy or at least replace it with a wiffle ball bat before someone gets hurt.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the proposed legislation is taking the wrong approach and I think e-bikes are overall a good thing. I’m just saying that I see the reason why California wants to add some additional regulation to a motorized transport.
I have no problem with people riding regular bikes on sidewalks. Roads are scary as a cyclist surrounded by vehicles several times heavier than yours. People are riding e-bikes on the sidewalks everywhere I go. It makes walking scary on infrastructure made for walking. If you get hit by someone on a bike going 20 mph (~32 km/hr), someone is getting seriously hurt. This guy was actively endangering pedestrians.
Also, no matter how you look at it, e-bikes (individualized transport) are a worse thing for the environment than public transportation (communal transport), and certainly worse than walking (what I was doing in the walkway).
I’m not the commenter you’re replying to, I’m just a stranger who likes to play devil’s advocate.
Last summer I visited San Francisco, and there were a bunch of e-bikes around. One almost plowed into me in the walkway at Golden Gate Park. It looked like it was going faster than all cars on the road next to us at the time. The guy was not wearing a helmet, didn’t honk any kind of a horn or ring a bell, and barely called out a warning. It was a near miss, right after he swerved around the people in front of me.
I was looking up at the trees in the park (as you do in parks), when I hear a slight scream from one of the pedestrians in front of me, followed by a frantic “LOOK OUT” from the guy on the bike. I quickly stepped off the walkway onto the gras, so no accident happened, but it was still scary.
I can see the reasoning behind this law. There’s no reason that the motor on that bike should go that fast without requiring inspections and some kind of license. Certainly no reason to be driving it that fast in a walkway, but I think that’s already illegal.
That’s how I quickly felt with the Star Wars franchise. The Mandolorian was cool, and I really enjoyed watching the first couple seasons. Then, when Obi Wan came out, I could really only give it a couple episodes. Then we became inundated. The IP needs to be shelved for a few years to let it breathe, but Disney won’t do that.
Now, I fear the same thing is happening with Star Trek. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon, though.
Man, this is probably the third or fourth time I’ve read excerpts from his rambling steam-of-consciousness they call a handbook. Mr. Beast or whoever wrote that has fucken terrible writing skills.
The whole thing reads like a Facebook post from that one idiot you went to high school with who had no self-awareness. The kind of idiot who makes life difficult for themselves because they don’t know when to shut up or disengage.
That might be super specific to some of the people I know, but you get the picture.
Considering they’re in a neighborhood with a HOA, they might have to rake the leaves or get slapped with a fine. Many HOAs are strict about lawns.
Not saying they’re justified in trying to get their neighbors evicted. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.
To be fair to them (even though I don’t think they are engaging with me in good faith), I did take a plane to get there. Hard to bike across California, even on one of those e-bikes lol.