Bike Lanes Quotes

Bike lane: the section of the road that accommodates wide loads and has speed bumps to protect drunk drivers.

While walking down the memory lane, we may discover in the remains of our early days, surprising little details that have been eclipsed under the mantle of forgetfulness or inattention. Those loose shreds in our remembrance can highlight the importance of the fundamentals that steer our daily lives. But they may also entice us to crack the particular value that we impart to trivial matters or quirky actions. Then, we are capable of discerning the uprightness and the truth behind the appearances. ("Dirty bike")

Anger doesn't really cover what I feel, though. You get angry because someone almost runs you over in the bike lane. Angry because someone cuts in line at Walmart. What's the word for when someone drinks so much, they are ruining your best friend's life? Or the word for a man so vengeful about his own past that he wants to destroy your future? What's the word for a woman who was sick for months, but refused to go to the doctor until it was too late? The word for a girl at school whose personal mission is to mess with your head? Anger 's not the right word. Rage. That's what this feeling is, eating me up.

I’ve never been on a bike,” I say. “I mean, I’ve been on a bike but not a motorcycle.” “And why is that?” he asks. “Bugs. They get in your mouth, right? That’s just gross.” Chris makes a face. “If you ride around with your mouth hanging open, I assume that could be a possibility.

We are friends, no?" "Yes, we are" "Then, as a friend, don't force me to worry about you using public transportation late at night in a city you're not familiar with. Biking on roads without bike lanes is bad enough

on a bike ride through the Surrey Lanes, pedalling in my cotton dress through the hot fields blushing with poppies, freewheeling down a sudden dip into a cool wooded sanctum.

Bright hues in the cityscape, found on street signs and in bike lanes, window boxes and graffiti, have become little gifts for me—small infusions of warmth and life.

There are no bike lanes around here.

Likewise—now don’t laugh—cars and trucks should view the bike lanes as if they are sacrosanct. A driver would never think of riding up on a sidewalk. Most drivers, anyway. Hell, there are strollers and little old ladies up there! It would be unthinkable, except in action movies. A driver would get a serious fine or maybe even get locked up. Everyone around would wonder who that asshole was. Well, bike lanes should be treated the same way. You wouldn’t park your car or pull over for a stop on the sidewalk, would you? Well then, don’t park in the bike lanes either—that forces cyclists into traffic where poor little meat puppets don’t stand a chance.

It’s like we just can’t reconcile the fact that someone could be alive and well at breakfast and dead by lunch. We can’t understand how someone who ate well, exercised, and was a generally good human being can get cancer and die at the age of thirty-four. We can’t understand how a perfectly healthy child can drop dead of what started as a simple cough. How someone biking to work, using a dedicated bike lane, wearing reflective clothing, their bike adorned with flashing lights, can be struck and killed in an instant. They had to have done something terribly wrong. There has to be a reason.

What would you like for your own life, Kate, if you could choose?” “Anything?” “Of course anything.” “That’s really easy, Aunty Ivy.” “Go on then.” “A straw hat...with a bright scarlet ribbon tied around the top and a bow at the back. A tea-dress like girls used to wear, with big red poppies all over the fabric. A pair of flat, white pumps, comfortable but really pretty. A bicycle with a basket on the front. In the basket is a loaf of fresh bread, cheese, fruit oh...and a bottle of sparkly wine, you know, like posh people drink. “I’m cycling down a lane. There are no lorries or cars or bicycles. No people – just me. The sun is shining through the trees, making patterns on the ground. At the end of the lane is a gate, sort of hidden between the bushes and trees. I stop at the gate, get off the bike and wheel it into the garden. “In the garden there are flowers of all kinds, especially roses. They’re my favourite. I walk down the little path to a cottage. It’s not big, just big enough. The front door needs painting and has a little stained glass window at the top. I take the food out of the basket and go through the door. “Inside, everything is clean, pretty and bright. There are vases of flowers on every surface and it smells sweet, like lemon cake. At the end of the room are French windows. They need painting too, but it doesn’t matter. I go through the French windows into a beautiful garden. Even more flowers there...and a veranda. On the veranda is an old rocking chair with patchwork cushions and next to it a little table that has an oriental tablecloth with gold tassels. I put the food on the table and pour the wine into a glass. I’d sit in the rocking chair and close my eyes and think to myself... this is my place.” From A DISH OF STONES

We will need comprehensive policies and programs that make low-carbon choices easy and convenient for everyone. Most of all, these policies need to be fair, so that the people already struggling to cover the basics are not being asked to make additional sacrifice to offset the excess consumption of the rich. That means cheap public transit and clean light rail accessible to all; affordable, energy-efficient housing along those transit lines; cities planned for high-density living; bike lanes in which riders aren’t asked to risk their lives to get to work; land management that discourages sprawl and encourages local, low-energy forms of agriculture; urban design that clusters essential services like schools and health care along transit routes and in pedestrian-friendly areas; programs that require manufacturers to be responsible for the electronic waste they produce, and to radically reduce built-in redundancies and obsolescences.

Never underestimate the anger directed at bicyclists. They ride too fast, terrorizing pedestrians. They ride too slow, dangerously obstructing drivers. They don’t wear helmets or reflective bike gear, jeopardizing themselves. They look ridiculous riding around in those helmets and reflective bike gear, more like Mad Max marauders than human beings. They shouldn’t ride in streets, which are hostile, car-only zones. They shouldn’t have their own lanes because there aren’t enough of them to take away space from cars. Yet there are so many of them that they’re running down pedestrians and therefore shouldn’t ride on sidewalks.

But there wasn’t much peace to be had on Southern California freeways during the morning rush hour. The pace alternated between brief intervals of violent acceleration, and total gridlock. He was navigating the I-5 and 805 merge—known euphemistically as the ‘Golden Triangle’—when a motorcyclist riding a blue Kawasaki ZX6 cut in front of him, passing so close to Derrick’s front bumper that he felt his body tense for collision. Somehow, it didn’t come. Still crossing the freeway on a reckless diagonal, the bike barely missed getting run over by a semi-truck in the far right lane. The truck driver blew his horn long and angrily. Without looking up, the cyclist raised his left fist and made the time-honored ‘bird’ gesture. Then, he darted down the off ramp, and sped away on the East 56 freeway. Derrick shook his head in amazement. “What the hell is wrong with people?” Not more than thirty seconds later, he passed an Amber Alert sign that read, “SHARE THE ROAD. LOOK TWICE FOR MOTORCYCLES.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-​night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-​five, forty-​five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-​five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board. Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea. The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-​slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-​inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.” Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-​burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

Kelly’s Island was fabulous. It was still early in the season and there were very few people about. We spent the day riding up and down quiet little lanes and exploring every inch of the island. We visited several beaches, I swam in a disused quarry, we played crazy golf – this time, a more traditional (crap) British style, complete with a windmill that you had to putt through – and we ate many ice-creams. We returned our bikes late afternoon, much to the delight of the tyrannical lady in charge of rentals, and boarded the ferry back to the mainland, before driving to a rest area further along Lake Erie.

He’s… he’s the reason I didn’t get a bike when I was eleven, so I could have a Sammy now.

They say that love has never been immortal. That it is only the songs, books, and movies which instill this thought in our mind. But tell me then why does my heart yearn to just have a glimpse of you every moment of my life? Why do I see you in every sunrise? Why do I see you in every sunset? Why do I think of you when I walk down the lane of my apartment? Why do I imagine you sitting beside me while riding my bike? Why do I inhale your fragrance around me in my days and in my nights? Why do I keep missing you? Why do I feel restless untill I have spoken to you? Why do I keep thinking about you every night lying there in my bed? Why do I feel incomplete without you in my life? Why do all my memories smell of you?

If I had a nickel for every time a biker nearly mowed me down in the bike lane while I was crossing the street, I wouldn’t have to work

High-traffic areas are the most problematic. Australian researchers recently asked test subjects to jog back and forth alongside a four-lane highway and found elevated blood levels of volatile organic compounds, commonly found in gasoline, after just 20 minutes. But pollution levels drop exponentially as you move away from a roadway, according to a 2006 study in the journal Inhalation Toxicology. Even just 200 yards from the road, the level of combustion-related particulates is four times lower, and trees have a further protective effect—so riverside bike trails, for instance, have dramatically lower pollution levels than bike lanes along major arteries.

Jake flattened the knife against the wall, filling the crevice. It was all he could do to smother a grin. He didn’t know which he’d enjoyed more, spending a couple hours alone with the kids or finding new ways to provoke Meridith. And to think he was getting paid. Maybe once she went back outside, the kids would come down and pretend to play a game at the kitchen bar while they talked. He could hear Meridith talking to them now, asking them about the game they’d supposedly been playing, acting all interested in their activities. If she really cared about them, she wouldn’t be ripping the kids from Summer Place just so she could go back and live happily ever after with her fiancé. And he was pretty sure that’s what she was planning. Their voices grew louder, then Jake saw them all descending the steps. Noelle led the pack, carrying her Uno cards, followed by the boys, then Meridith. Noelle winked on her way past. Little imp. The kids perched at the bar, and he heard the cards being shuffled. Dipping his knife into the mud, Jake sneaked a peek. Meridith was opening the dishwasher. Great. Ben kept turning to look at him, and Jake discreetly shook his head. Even though Meridith faced the other way, no need to be careless. “Noelle, you haven’t said anything about your uncle lately. He hasn’t e-mailed yet?” He felt three pairs of eyes on his back. He hoped Meridith was shelving something. Jake smoothed the mud and turned to gather more, an excuse to appraise the scene. Meridith’s back was turned. He gave the kids a look. “Uh, no, he hasn’t e-mailed.” “Or called or nothing,” Max added. Noelle silently nudged him, and Max gave an exaggerated shrug. What? “Well, let me know when he does. I don’t want to keep pestering you.” “Sure thing,” Noelle said, dealing the cards. Her eyes flickered toward him. “I was thinking we might go for a bike ride this evening,” Meridith said. “Maybe go up to ’Sconset or into town. You all have bikes, right?” “I forgot to tell you,” Noelle said. “I’m going to Lexi’s tonight. I’m spending the night.” “Who’s Lexi?” “A friend from church. You met her mom last week.” A glass clinked as she placed it in the cupboard. “Noelle, I’m not sure how things were . . . before . . . but you have to ask permission for things like this. I don’t even know Lexi, much less her family.” “I know them.” “Have you spent the night before?” “No, but I’ve been to her house tons of times.” He heard a dishwasher rack rolling in, another rolling out, the dishes rattling. “Why don’t we have her family over for dinner one night this week? I could get to know them, and then we’ll see about overnight plans.” “This is ridiculous. They go to our church, and her mom and my mom were friends!” Noelle cast him a look. See? she said with her eyes. Did Meridith think Eva would jeopardize her daughter’s safety? The woman was neurotic. Jake clamped his teeth together before something slipped out. “Just because they go to church doesn’t necessarily make them safe, Noelle. It wouldn’t be responsible to let you spend the night with people I don’t know. You never know what goes on behind closed doors.” “My mom would let me.” The air seemed to vibrate with tension. Jake realized his knife was still, flattened against the wall, and he reached for more mud. Noelle was glaring at Meridith, who’d turned, wielding a spatula. Was she going to blow it? To her credit, the woman drew a deep breath, holding her temper. “Maybe Lexi could stay all night with you instead.” “Well, wouldn’t that pose a problem for her family, since they don’t know you?” Despite his irritation with Meridith, Jake’s lips twitched. Score one for Noelle. “I suppose that would be up to her family.” He heard Noelle’s cards hit the table, her chair screech across the floor as she stood. “Never mind.” She cast Meridith one final glare, then exited through the back door, closing it with a hearty slam.

Later that night Meridith was in her room working on Ben’s scrapbook when she heard a burst of laughter. Ben’s belly laughs drew her from her room, toward the steps. What she saw brought a bittersweet smile. Meridith lowered herself on an upper stair and peered through the oak spindles. Ben had Jake pinned to the rug and was tickling him. Jake moaned like he was in torture, which only made Ben laugh harder. She’d never seen the child so happy. He was small next to Jake’s mass, his wiry arms moving furiously, digging his fingers into Jake’s side. He twisted, straddling Jake. Jake groaned. “Help! Someone help!” Ben laughed. “You’re doomed! If I had my ropes, I’d tie you up and toss you off a cliff!” “No! Not that!” Meridith smiled around the tears that gathered in her eyes. She wondered if her father had tussled with Ben. He surely missed the interaction. And while she was grateful for Jake’s willingness to play with the boy . . . What would happen when the repairs were finished and Jake left? She saw how attached Ben had become to him. Her mind flashed back over the previous weeks to other occasions. Jake helping Noelle fix her bike chain, Jake and Max working on Max’s new boat model. Jake, Jake, Jake. He’d become a fixture around the house right under her nose. Worse, he’d become a friend. A friend the children would lose. The

Misadventure   As I turned my bike round a corner, a loud screeching sound was heard down the country lane. Kim tumbled down the rutty slope when he lost balance riding over a mound. His bicycle had fallen into a ditch when one of the tires bounced downhill, disappearing into a ravine.               Our numero uno instructor came to his rescue. Apart from some minor scratches and bruises, Kim was able to hobble about when he balanced on the Caucasian.               Jules bid us to ride ahead, to solicit assistance from the first aid division while he waited with Kim for the ambulance. We did as told. I couldn’t help but wonder if this mishap had been instigated on purpose, or whether it was Mother Nature’s way to shepherd the closeted gays together. I didn’t have long to wait before the truth was revealed.

My recommendation to the city was that they make this a two-lane street. With roundabouts at the key college entrances, traffic would flow just fine, albeit much slower than it does today. Such a design, with 10-foot lanes, would be easy for pedestrians to cross, especially with a nice, wide median and periodic jut-outs of the median and walk to shorten the distance people have to cross. You could put large walks along both sides and they would actually be used as the slow-moving cars would not threaten pedestrians. You could also skip the bike lanes as the bikes could actually ride right in the traffic stream.

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs described the ballet that takes place on crowded pavements as people make eye contact and find their way around one another. I felt a similar, if supercharged dynamic coming to life in Paris’s traffic lanes. With cars and bikes and buses mixed together, none of us could be sure what we would find on the road ahead of us. We all had to be awake to the rhythm of asymmetrical flow. In the contained fury of the narrow streets we were forced to choreograph our movements, but with so many other bicycles flooding the streets, cycling in Paris was actually becoming safer. As more people took to bicycles in Vélib”s first year, the number of bike accidents rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems to occur wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike, the safer the streets get for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road. There is safety in numbers.fn7, 15, 16

They chose Boulder for its proximity to the slopes and they lived in constant conflict with the locals, a judgemental breed of Earthshoed, Subaru driving, granola-totaling yuppies that pined for the sixties and spent their retirement fighting for bike lanes and recycling programs as if they were civil rights.

Geraint Lane had gone out for another bike ride at lunchtime. He’d wondered at the wisdom of Hunt wanting to be out and about during the daytime given his particular set of circumstances. But, having thought it through, it made sense

Denmark’s capital contains 237 miles of wide, dedicated bike lanes. To keep riders safe, most of them are elevated and buffered by curbs from car traffic. By 2019, more than 60 percent of the city’s commuters and students made their daily round trips by bike, up from 36 percent in 2012.

It was a bike. He had to be careful, so careful how he rode it, but it was a bike, and they were going to go zooming downhill and through this world with the neon throbbing on the black of the February night like a hallucinogenic trompe l’oeil.

Normals were faced with a bunch of insufferable snobs who thought the rules did not apply to them—though the rules sure as hell applied to the Normals—and who were not constrained by any limitations other than their own desires. And the Normals? When they were a consideration at all, the fact that something made life harder for Normals was a selling point. Let’s take away a lane Normals commute on to work and make it a bike lane that one guy an hour will use while the suckers sit idling on gridlocked streets.

New Yorkers liked Sadik-Khan’s bike lanes and the plazas; they liked the 800 more acres of parks—though Parks had cut its staff 40% between 2008 and 2012 even as the Central Park Conservancy boasted a $183 million endowment—and three-quarters of a million more trees. A certain texture was gone though, easy to see on the Upper East Side where almost a third of the apartments between 49th and 70th between Fifth and Park were vacant ten months a year, owned by shell companies and LLCs. The neighborhood was a kind of jewelry store now, apartments tended and traded for their speculative value. Yet the idea of New York City was bigger and broader than it had ever been. By 2010, 37% of New York’s residents were immigrants, two-thirds living in Brooklyn and Queens, and as much as globalization had helped gut the city’s manufacturing base, they’d been at least as much responsible for hatching its evolutions as anything done at One Police Plaza or City Hall. While Wall Street had been mining wealth for itself, immigrants from around the world had rebuilt the day-to-day economy; from 1994 to 2004, businesses in neighborhoods like Flushing and Sunset Park grew by as much as 55%. Half of the city’s accountants

The city pounced on him when Jake opened the front door of the building. Even at this early hour, people were on the move, a fraction of them in the city’s decrepit subway trains, the rest above ground, pushing forward with determination below long rows of trees recently planted along what used to be parking lanes. It hit him every time he opened the door—how the street had shrunk, how the sidewalks and bike lanes had expanded, and how these rearranged proportions had changed the atmosphere into something radically new, an entirely different city.

I think of the self-proclaimed agrarian farmer and scholar Victor Davis Hanson who in his book Fields Without Dreams, wrote sneeringly but also with grief: 'They [city people] no longer care where or how they get their food, as long as it is firm, fresh, and cheap. They have no interest in preventing the urbanization of their farmland as long as parks, Little League fields and an occasional bike lane are left amid the concrete, stucco, and asphalt. They have no need of someone who they are not, who reminds them of their past and not their future. Their romanticism for the farmer is just that, an artificial and quite transient appreciation of his rough-cut visage against the horizon the stuff of a wine commercial, cigarette ad, or impromptu rock concert.' People in the cities don't see farmers clearly. The farmers are overlooked, and instead of being seen as recognizably real, the farmer is romanticized.

And the bikes, why did people think bikes were a good thing? Why were cyclists so smug? Why did cyclists ride on pavements when there were perfectly good cycle lanes? And who thought it was a good idea to rent bicycles to Italian adolescent language students? If

Lennon was – whether by luck, accident or perceptive foresight – at the forefront of the psychedelic era’s passion for rose-tinted introspection, which channelled the likes of children’s literature, Victorian fairgrounds and circuses, and an innocent sense of wonder. McCartney, too, moved with the times when writing his children’s singalong Yellow Submarine. Among the hippie era’s other moments of nostalgia were Pink Floyd’s Bike and The Gnome from their debut album Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, recorded at EMI Studios as the Beatles worked on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, laid down in 1966 but released in the same month as Sgt Pepper, and which drew from Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories just as Lennon did; and many more, from Tiny Tim’s Tiptoe Through The Tulips to Traffic’s psychedelic fantasy Hole In My Shoe. The Beatles continued writing songs evoking childhood to the end of their days. Sgt Pepper – itself a loose concept album harking back to earlier, more innocent times – referenced Lewis Carroll (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds), youthful anticipation of old age (When I’m Sixty-Four), a stroll down memory lane (Good Morning Good Morning), and the sensory barrage of a circus big top extravaganza (Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!). It was followed by Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, two films firmly pitched at the widest possible audience. A splendid time was, indeed, guaranteed for all.

For decades, big-city mayors and planning officials have been calling for more bike lanes, pedestrian access, and fewer cars. And for decades, traffic, air pollution, and accidents congested our streets and skies. Then, in weeks, cyclists took over the road, outdoor dining tables sprouted, and skies cleared.

matter how desperate, dysfunctional or unfair the circumstances, and no matter how rational the initiative, new plans that threaten the urban design status quo face deep and emotional opposition. In New York City, efforts to redistribute street space – including the creation of 255 miles of painted or separated bike lanes – have met with near-hysterical response from some quarters.

During an intense, six-year period under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City proved to itself, the nation, and the world that almost everything that was assumed about how urban streets operate was wrong. Real-world experience showed that reducing the number of lanes on carefully selected streets or closing them entirely not only provided pedestrian space and breathed new life into neighborhoods, but also actually improved traffic. Simply painting part of a street to make it into a plaza, bike, or bus lane not only made the street safer, it also improved traffic and increased bike and pedestrian foot traffic and helped local businesses to prosper.

You can fight it, you can lie about it, you can say the sky is falling, but you can't keep a good bike lane down.

The safety data are even more definitive on streets with bike lanes, where serious crashes are 40 percent less deadly for pedestrians. In separate studies of streets with protected bike paths, injury rates plunged as much as 43 percent for cyclists, pedestrians, and people in cars.

As cities around the world launch bike-share systems and bike lane networks, safety objections are often used against bike lanes and cyclists in the form of mandatory helmet laws and proposals to register bikes and insure riders. These are all solutions in search of problems and attempts to legislate against perceived annoyances, not according to actual safety data.

when she turned to Orlando to speak to him, I saw she had what Pa Salt would have termed a Roman nose, which sat prominently in her striking face. She was certainly not classically beautiful and, from the look of her jeans and old sweater, did not care to make herself more so. Yet, there was something very attractive about her and I realized I wanted her to like me—an unusual feeling. “Are you coping back there?” she asked me. “Not far now.” “Yes, thank you.” I leaned my head against the windowpane as the thick hedges, their height exaggerated by the low car, flew by me, the country lanes becoming narrower. It felt so good to be out of London, with only the odd red-brick chimney stack peeping out from behind the wall of green. We turned right, through a pair of old gates that led to a drive so potholed that Marguerite’s and Orlando’s heads bumped against the roof. “I really must ask Mouse to bring the tractor and fill in these holes with gravel before the winter comes,” she commented to Orlando. “Here we are, Star,” she added as she pulled the car to a halt in front of a large, graceful house, its walls formed from mellow red brick, with ivy and wisteria fringing the uneven windows in greenery. Tall, thin chimney stacks, which emphasized the Tudor architecture, reached up into the crisp September sky. As I squeezed myself out of the back of the Fiat, I imagined the house’s interior to be rambling as opposed to impressive—it was certainly no stately home; rather, it looked as if it had gently aged and sunk slowly into the countryside surrounding it. It spoke of a bygone era, one that I loved reading about in books, and I experienced a twinge of longing. I followed Marguerite and Orlando toward the magnificent oak front door, and saw a young boy wobbling toward us on a shiny red bike. He let out a strange muffled shout, tried to wave, and promptly fell off the bike. “Rory!” Marguerite ran to him, but he had already picked himself up. He spoke again, and I wondered if he was foreign, as I couldn’t make out what he was saying. She dusted him down, then the boy picked up the bike and the two of them walked back to us. “Look who’s here,” Marguerite said, turning directly to the boy to speak to him. “It’s Orlando and his friend Star. Try saying ‘Star.’ ” She particularly enunciated the “st” in my name. “Ss-t-aahh,” the boy said as he approached me, a smile on his face, before holding up his hand and opening his fingers out like a shining star. I saw that Rory was the owner of a pair of inquisitive green eyes, framed by dark lashes. His wavy copper-colored hair glowed in the sun, and his rosy cheeks dimpled with happiness. I recognized that he was the kind of child that one would never want to say no to. “He prefers to go by the name ‘Superman,’ don’t you, Rory?” Orlando chuckled, holding up his hand in a fist like Superman taking off into the air. Rory nodded, then shook my hand with all the dignity of a superhero, and turned to Orlando for a hug. After giving him a tight squeeze and a tickle, Orlando set him down, then squatted in front of him and used his hands to sign, also speaking the words clearly. “Happy birthday! I have your present in Marguerite’s car. Would you like to come and get it with me?” “Yes please,” Rory spoke and signed, and I knew then that he was deaf. I rifled through my rusty mental catalog of what I had learned

A Traveler’s Delight: The Agra Etawah Toll Road Project is a Game-Changer As someone who enjoys exploring new roads and landscapes, I recently had the pleasure of traveling through the Agra Etawah Toll Road Project, and I must say—it’s one of the finest highways I’ve been on. This road is a perfect blend of modern engineering, scenic beauty, and traveler-friendly amenities, making long drives a pleasure rather than a hassle. A Refreshing Driving Experience From the moment I hit the highway, I could feel the difference. The road is well-paved, with clear lane markings and proper lighting, ensuring a stress-free drive. Whether you're in a car, bike, or bus, the smooth surface makes the ride enjoyable. No unnecessary honking, no sudden traffic jams—just a seamless travel experience. #modernroad A Road Built for Convenience This highway is not just about great road quality; it’s designed for comfort. The well-placed fuel stations, food courts, and rest areas provide everything a traveler needs. I took a quick break at one of the stops, and it was refreshing to find clean restrooms and quality food options—something that's still rare on many Indian highways. Enhancing Connectivity and Economic Growth Beyond its impact on travelers, this toll road plays a crucial role in improving connectivity between major cities. The reduced travel time helps businesses, transport services, and daily commuters immensely. With a growing focus on modern infrastructure, highways like these are setting a new standard for road travel in India. The Agra Etawah Toll Road Project is not just a highway—it’s a vision of India’s future road network. Whether you're passing through for a long drive or using it for daily commutes, this road guarantees a smooth, safe, and enjoyable journey. If you haven't traveled on this route yet, it's time to experience what a modern Indian highway feels like! #modernroadmakers #indiabesthighway

In the words of Enrique Peñalosa, who instituted bike and pedestrian streets and rapid transit in Bogotá when he was mayor, if a bike lane isn’t safe for an eight-year-old child, it isn’t really a bike lane.