Budweiser is my
enemy.
It’s not because they make insipid
beer. Although there is that.
And it’s not because they prevent a
far better Czech beer, also named Budweiser, from being marketed in the United
States. Although there is that.
No, Budweiser is my enemy because
they produce a sizeable percentage of the glass that ends up in my tires and
the tires of many other cyclists.
Few people understand the gnawing,
daily menace that broken glass poses for urban cyclists. A single bottle of the sort that Budweiser
generously spreads throughout our city can shatter into enough pieces to
puncture hundreds of bicycle tires. And
broken bottles are everywhere.
Flat tires have been a constant
during my twenty-plus years of commuting by bicycle. Sometimes I have flats for three or four days
in a row, and sometimes I go for months without a puncture, but the threat of
flats never disappears.
Over the years, I have tried all the
products marketed to bicyclists for avoiding flats. For years, I put a thick orange rubber strap,
called “Mr. Tuffy,” between my tire and my inner tube. The idea was that Mr. Tuffy would stop glass
or any other sharp object that might go through the tire from reaching the more
fragile inner-tube. Unfortunately, Mr.
Tuffy was not tough enough, and I continued to have many flat tires even with
his help.
I also went through a Goo
phase. Goo is a viscous,
fluorescent-green product that you squeeze into your inner tube before you
inflate it. When a sharp object pierces
the inner tube, Goo is supposed to rush to the site, congeal around the
puncture, and stop the air from escaping, and thereby prevent a flat tire. I found that Goo turned the inside of my tires
fluorescent green, but did little to stop flat tires. I eventually tossed Goo onto the scrapheap
of failed cycling remedies, together with Mr. Tuffy.
Steel-belted radials have made flat
tires a rarity among motorists, but there is no equivalent for cyclists. Given their narrowness, and given the need to
keep weight down, it is simply not practical to line bicycle tires with steel
mesh. Consequently, cyclists will never
be as impervious to glass as motorists.
The best solution I have found is to
mount Ultra Gatorskins on my bike. These
German made tires are expensive, at $50 each, but they are lined with Kevlar, which
is supposedly also used for bullet-proof vests and canoes. Even with this added protection, however, I
figure that I lose two tires prematurely each year to glass, as well as 10
inner-tubes and numerous patch kits.
Thus, I put my Glass Tax at about $150
per year.
My other strategy for dealing with
glass is to pick it up as soon as I see it.
I have noticed that a bottle left on the street or bicycle path
inevitably breaks, and, over time, fractures into more and more small pieces
that can puncture more and more tires.
And glass, once broken, never goes away on its own.
So I always carry in my bicycle
pannier a dustpan and brush, and I sweep up glass whenever I see it. Once or twice a year, I also sweep the
sidewalk along the 30th Street Bridge, which I ride almost every day
on my way to work.
My campaign to eliminate glass from
my path has brought me into close contact with much of the high-test vodka, cheap
gin and rotgut wine on the market today.
But more than half of the intact bottles and broken glass I pick up is
Budweiser brown. Hence my enmity.
Motorists frequently complain about
the bad behavior of cyclists. They ride
the wrong way down a one-way street, they fly through red stop lights, and they
recklessly endanger themselves and others.
Certainly, such behavior happens
altogether too often, and cyclists need to clean up their act. But I wish that motorists were equally aware
of their own transgressions, and the ways in which they thoughtlessly use their
power against cyclists.
Some of the actions motorists take
against cyclists are explicit and unmistakable.
When a motorist yells at me, “get off the road,” or honks when I am
riding in a perfectly legal and reasonable way, the message is clear.
Other messages are less direct but
equally pointed. If automobiles were as
vulnerable to glass as bicycles, broken bottles would not be tolerated, and
motorists would not be allowed to heave spent Budweisers out their windows with
impunity.
Broken glass is just one other way
in which cyclists are told that they are not welcome on our streets.
