Don’t blame French for mismarked road signs in Peoria County

The road goes nowhere
The traveler everywhere
Step by step by step
—Warren Dreibelbis

I know it’s fashionable to complain about infrastructure, but there’s evidence that someone is trying to improve things, if not entirely succeeding.

Take the new sign I just saw on the way home: Road Closed.

To judge by the grammar, with the adjective following the noun, this fancy French-inspired sign may be the first of many in the area.

I look forward to a big Road Santa Fe marker replacing the old one, along with signs for Streets 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, Avenues Hushaw and Bradley, and, of course, Lane Yankee.

Beyond the evocative inverted word order, the new design also innovates in physical positioning. No longer miniaturized and relegated to the side of the road at the top of a pole, the sign is literally right in front of you.

It’s quite obvious
The path of limitations
Can be promoted
—WB

What road is this? How can you miss it?

(Oh, and thanks for noticing the word literally was used correctly three sentences back.)

Not saying there aren’t some obvious issues with the new scheme; I’m sure you’re way ahead of me on this.

The sign isn’t bolted to the road, suggesting that it wasn’t tested in high winds before installation. 

Theft could also become an issue. If a thief can simply walk away with a sign, that sign is likely to be walked away with.

Consider what happens when a sign is firmly attached to the landscape: If a thief has to use a tool to dislodge a sign, it might be enough of a nuisance that the thief will decide to do something else instead, like renew a library card, pay taxes, or stay home and yell at the TV.

(These are only examples of what a thief might do. I don’t know what thieves do when they’re off the clock or why they punch a clock in the first place, given their hours on the job are not billable in the traditional sense.)

She hid words like nuts
That she would steal back later
To serve her sentence
—WB

But the biggest problem with the new signage is someone didn’t pay attention to the details, kind of like when Illinois Central College got a new road sign that pointed the way to something called I.C.C. College, making it twice the college it was the day before.

In the case of Road Closed, this isn’t Road Closed at all—it’s Road Centerville. So now that someone finally paid attention to the words, we’ll need to pay for a replacement sign.

You’re welcome. And my apologies.

(And it’s not like we can just move this sign to the right road. As far as I can tell there isn’t a road named Closed in the county. There might be a road named Closed somewhere else in the state that needs a new sign, but then you’ve got shipping costs to contend with.)

Oh, and Hallock Township might also think about plowing the road while they’re installing the new sign. Someone might get stuck out there.

Or there out stuck get might, which sounds a bit more German than French.

Ihr, die ihr hier eintretet,
lasst alle Hoffnung fahren.
—Dante

Three entry points into the garden of earthly delights

It’s a crowded world out there: the sky above, the ground below, somewhere to go—and to return to—and on this day, the company of one’s shadow: that certain though shifting form born of the sun, the ground, and one’s intervening shape.

It’s impossible to be alone in such a world.

Who would want to be?

—

Each year, the trees conspire to remind me that I am bald.

They’re not mean—they’re trees; that’s what trees do. In the spring they will regain their youthful appearance, and I will appear not to care.

I will, however, remain bald.

Let the leaves fall where they may.

—

You’re never looking for a place to stop but a place to pause: a place to lean, to look at flowers, to greet a fellow traveler.

And so you arrive at a bridge, not a metaphor; lacking shade and a book and a beer, certainly less than a perfect place, but a place that will do for now, which like all places at which we pause quickly turns from place to history, from here to then, another memory of blinking against the sun as it was still rising.

You counted on the sun to rise today and it did not disappoint.

May it do so again.

Recent 16incheswestofpeoria Instagram posts.

Peoria’s first roundabout: in Springdale Cemetery

Welcome to a simple grassway around an elevated circle (made of concrete? Stone?) surrounding an obelisk within Springdale Cemetery.

It’s a different sort of traffic circle. No cars, for one. No road signs either—and you can stop wherever you want. Not as long as residents of the immediate area, to be sure, but long enough to regroup, maybe pose for a photograph.

It’s obvious where to ride or walk. You follow a path through cut grass.

For some reason, every time I see the circle, I think of the Large Hadron Collider, probably because I have little understanding of it.

I know the Collider is big and underground and in Europe, three attributes that would seem to make it quite different from Peoria’s Small Path Combiner.

But the Collider is used to test theories, and in that, the Combiner could serve a similar function. Consider the following theories, for example.

Theory #1: This is a good place to ride.

Seems like it. It’s scenic, relatively smooth and easy to navigate. Repeated testing is both necessary and likely.

Theory #2: This is one of the best intersections for human-powered travel in the city.

Of this, there’s little doubt. The nearby Rock Island Greenway, as important and valuable as it is, is replete with examples of amazingly bad intersections: usually crossing a street at a pedestrian walkway, which forces people on bicycles to look, not to the right and left for other vehicles, but forward and backward. Unfortunately, few human heads pivot quite as freely as an owl’s.

If Peoria designed all intersections like those of the Greenway, car traffic would come to a standstill. And while that’s an intriguing idea, some might find it unworkable in practice.

Theory #3: We are having fun.

Again, more testing is needed, but yes, absolutely. Every Thursday morning coffee ride should be measured, at least partially, in yardage.

And we’re getting somewhere, too.

Questions for the reader awheel

When you look at a bicycle, what catches your attention? The orange frame, the shiny cold-forged cranks, or the red panniers just slightly smaller than Rhode Island?

When you ride a bicycle, are you more interested in the twisty gray road, the blue morning landscape, or the cloud that looks like Tevye playing the tuba on the roof of a small-town bank in Indiana?

Do you imagine pedaling? Do you peddle imagination? Is there a difference beyond word choice?

How wide are your eyes?

Waving between eyeglass prescriptions

Details. I miss more of them the older I get.

It’s not a matter of inattention—not for the most part—it’s the eyes or the glasses, or most likely, both. It seems progressive vision means progressively worse.

Clap if you can read this.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not making excuses; it’s more to explain why I always try to wave when I see people pedaling by, even though I rarely know who they are.

It’s because I don’t know who they are.

Years ago I waved to cheer the passage of friends. I knew Don by the angle of his arms as he reached for the bars, Jean because she sat well forward on the saddle, and Doug because I didn’t know anyone smaller and few who were faster.

Today I wave to everyone under human power to make sure I continue to wave at my friends.

As a result, I have moved from intermittent waving to relatively constant gesticulation.

I have become a virtual drinking bird of welcome.

Let’s say it’s you on a bike.

If I knew who you were for sure, I’d know I like you and wave. But since I don’t know who you are, I have to assume I like you.

And act like it.

In other words, I am pleasant to all riders, even though, statistically, it means I’m nice to some stinkers, too.

(My apologies if you self-identify as a stinker. It must be confusing when someone is nice to you for no reason.)

Anyway, back to today’s ride.

I stop just over halfway through a 20-mile ride at the intersection of Singing Woods and Cedar Hills Drive to take a picture of my bike.

You know, for the Instagram.

I see someone approaching from the east, maybe commuting from Caterpillar Mossville.

I turn to wish the rider good morning and take pictures of the passing scene.

The person waves and continues toward the big climb leading to Route 40.

What do I see by eye from 30 feet away? A white helmet and the motion of an arm.

Someone waving back at me.

Given the helmet’s height above the ground, I know I’m not looking at someone on a recumbent or a tall bike. But that’s about it: somebody waving at me from a predictable point in space.

What did the camera capture of the same scene?

Gray socks. A taller rider than me, but similarly equipped with tights, jacket, jersey and a small rear-view mirror attached either to helmet or glasses. A bike with fenders and a large seat bag. Brake cables arcing above the handlebars. Downtube shifters. Three chainrings. A generator hub. A full-length pump under the green top tube.

As it turns out, even with the aid of 21st-century recording technology, I don’t know the rider. But I recognize the equipment choices, which suggests I might also like the person who made those choices.

Even though, officially, I already did.