Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
This time, however, what I know (and the driver apparently doesn’t) is that Zack’s Way has been closed for two days while a film crew does something to create The White House Plumbers along that stretch of road, with barricades and City of Poughkeepsie police cars across the entrance to prevent bystanders from wandering in.
At least I’ll have witnesses …
NYS DOT installed a pair of Variable Message Signs showing ZACK'S WAY | CLOSED | Thursday & Friday on either side of the intersection:
Rt 376 at Zacks Way – Closure VMS – 2021-06-04
Fortunately, the driver figured it out before our paths crossed:
Rt 376 at Zacks Way – Right Hook Miss – 2021-06-04
But, hey, those signs are easy to overlook, too …
I have typed “Zach’s Way”, rather than the correct “Zack’s Way”, on several posts.
One of the good things about building your own stuff is that you have all the parts when something breaks:
Helmet Mirror – damaged parts
The decorative M2 screw and insert pulled out of the ball. The rim of the nail set punch (intruding from the top) just barely caught the edge of the stub inside the ball, so a few taps could extract it. A Dremel cutoff wheel peeled the crumpled end off the stalk.
Reassembly proceeded without incident:
Helmet Mirror – installed
The bizarrely blurred mirror over on the left comes from the Pixel phone camera app deciding this was a Portrait, applying a background blur, and running into trouble with those hard edges in the foreground. The camera app has a distinct Portrait mode that, perhaps, I inadvertently engaged while fumbling around.
A rainy day finally produced an opportunity to install the rear fender bracket on my bike:
Tour Easy Rear Fender Bracket – improved
It’s actually another iteration, tweaked to hold the fender snugly against the bracket, because it’s tucked in a location where I can’t measure anything.
The brake noodle isn’t connected yet, but it has plenty of room in front of the fender block.
A snapping turtle headed toward the beaver pond on the Dutchess County Rail Trail:
Snapping Turtle – DCRT – 2021-05-26
At this time of year and phase of the moon, she is most likely in search of a good spot for a nest and her clutch of eggs. Being an aquatic creature, she and her progeny surely benefit from Team Beaver’s engineering.
The new cable on the left seemed like it might match the canonical colors:
Bafang BBS02 display cable pinout
It comes heartbreakingly close:
Bafang Display Cable – extension colors
Brown and Orange connect as the naive user might expect, which does reduce the likelihood of incinerating the motor controller / USB adapter / laptop by connecting the 48 V battery directly to the logic-level electronics.
However, White wasn’t on the original menu, Green is now TXD, and Black has become, comfortingly, GND.
Verily, it is written: Hell hath no fury like that of an unjustified assumption.
This socket connector has a watertight shell making it extremely difficult to mate and unmate with the pin connector on the bike. Watertightness being unnecessary, a little razor-knife action seems in order:
Bafang Display Extension Cable – shroud trimming
Visually, they’re both green-ish, but sometimes the Pixel camera accentuates any differences.
I’ll do my part, inadequate though my pruners may be:
Rt 376 Knotweed – Knotweed trimming – 2021-05-23
I got most of the growth in front of the guide rail extending across the shoulder, but must wait for another weekend morning to hack back the main stems.
Unfortunately, Knotweed control requires nearly continuous clearcutting and defoliation to prevent new growth.
We have just started rolling from Overocker Road and the traffic signal on Burnett Blvd at Rt 55 (on the far left) has just turned green for the single car on the sensor loop:
Burnett Blvd Rt 55 – 2021-05-23 – 0 s
Much to our surprise, 17 s later the signal is still green:
Burnett Blvd Rt 55 – 2021-05-23 – 17 s
As usual, the unmarked sensor loop doesn’t detect bicycles and the control doesn’t take our clearing time into account, so the signal turns yellow 5 s later (after 22 s from turning green) while we’re still in the intersection:
After another 6 s, though, we’re through the intersection and lined up on the right side of Rt 55, just as the Rt 55 signal turns green:
Burnett Blvd Rt 55 – 2021-05-23 – 28 s
Note that the Burnett Blvd signal remained green for 22 s, much longer than in bygone years, and the green-to-green time is now 28 s. We got through the intersection without any difficulty, although the green-to-red clearance time remains scanty.
Mary recently discovered a reason why NYS DOT may have suddenly changed the signal timing at the Burnett intersection after all those years:
During the incident, a black Nissan Titan, driven by a 51-year-old male resident of Lagrangeville, collided with a bicycle, ridden by a 58-year-old male resident of Poughkeepsie, in the area of the crosswalk on the southeast portion of the intersection, said the Town of Poughkeepsie Police.
The bicyclist sustained serious injuries and was transported to MidHudson Regional Hospital.
The crosswalk mentioned in the article appears in the last picture.
The cyclist died of his injuries shortly after that article went live.
Mary knew him. He was one of the gardeners near her plot in the Vassar Community Garden who lived in the apartments a few hundred yards from that intersection, didn’t own a car, and, for years, rode through that intersection to the grocery store at the far end of Burnett Blvd (across another of DOT’s intersections). Everyone knew him as a nice, considerate guy.
Death is the only thing that will convince NYS DOT’s engineers to change the signal timing at an intersection.
As far as I can tell, all of the other intersections along our usual routes still have the same inadequate clearance times. Evidently, the bicyclist death toll isn’t high enough to get their attention and evidence here doesn’t matter there, because motor vehicle traffic cannot be delayed, even for a few seconds, merely to protect the most vulnerable “users” of their facilities.
We’ve been bicycling all our adult lives and haven’t been killed yet, despite NYS DOT’s complete lack of attention. Our experiences justify my cynicism and bitterness.
I eventually figured out why no NYS DOT staffer will accompany me on bike trips along their “safe for all users” roads. If they did, they’d be unable to deny knowing how hazardous their engineering designs & maintenance practices are in real life, should the question come up in a court of law.
If you think that’s not the case, then let’s go riding together …
Road design, build quality, and attention to details matter, even though drivers and, yes, cyclists share some of the blame.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 