AIBLPM Oct 29-09 and my Commute

A friend from NYCMTB forums recommended I get this free little app called MotionX. Its a very basic GPS tracking program that ONLY works when you're under the open sky - and shuts off immediately if you step indoors - but who does that anyway? So this morning I tracked my commute to work from one of my many apartments around the city. The journey, just like I already knew, was a tad bit over 3.5 miles, my average speed was about 12mph and I really have no idea at which point I hit a max speed of 39mph, perhaps I blacked out from the G forces.
But the point is other. Technology has come quite a long way when a free tiny little program and a digital cellular telephone can give you info like this. I'm impressed. Didn't one have to pay like 400$ for a service like this only years ago, and all sorts of wires and antennas were involved? Maybe not.

On a darker note, AIBLPM index this morning was at a 1.38 which is not as bad as it gets, but unfortunately doesn't strees the extremes of the situation. WHY do cars feel the need to pass through the bike lane? Why must limo cabs double park there? Why do parents dropping off kids at school MUST do it in the only stretch of concrete network of this town bikers can call their own? Why do hasidic school bus drivers feel the need to block ALL of Bedford Ave diagonally, including a bike lane - do they not know its illegal, can they not pull over to the side? Ah.

Few days back I snapped a pic of a fuckin pack of cops, like 6-7 cruisers, parked in the bikelane, chillin. And then a block later a van full of pigs, I mean po-po, sorry, doing the same exact thing in the same lane. Those pics are a whole another write up I'll save for another day.

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