The weather outside is, to me, just about perfect for cycling: cool enough that I’m not a sweaty mess, but still sunny during most of the day. As an added bonus, the leaves are starting to change, and they aren’t yet a slippery mess along the side of the road. It’s almost perfect.

What isn’t perfect, though, is the traffic.

My family has had cats since before I was born, and now I’m the proud co-owner of two wonderful felines myself. I’ve long noticed that when the weather hits that transition from warm to cool – and to a lesser extent, the opposite – the cats go crazy. They start tearing around the house, try to get into anything they possibly can, and generally freak out on a much more frequent basis than normal.

It would seem that drivers in the Boston area are not immune to the changes either. The past few mornings, I’ve seen drivers pull some really dumb moves, often coming close to hitting both other cyclists and me personally. It’s as though they’ve stopped looking where they’re headed altogether, or at least are ignoring the cyclist bearing down on them. Both at intersections and just going along the road, there seems to be a tendency of late to steer their vehicles directly towards bicycles.

At the very least, until this passes, be careful out there, Boston cyclists. No matter who’s at fault, when bike meets car, the car almost always wins.

Yes, on my first commute since taking my fall, I managed to get a citation from the Cambridge Police. Mind you, it was only a warning, but I now have a copy of official paperwork in my bag accusing me of breaking the law.

The funny thing is that I almost always obey the law, after all I’m a pretty big proponent of Vehicular Cycling. Today was the exception, and I got caught.

I came down Mass. Ave. towards Boston, eventually arriving at the big M.I.T. crosswalk. Pedestrians obviously get deference, no matter where they are, and I lived up to that, performing a pretty good trackstand at the edge of the crosswalk. I didn’t live up to the letter of the law, though, and once I ensured that everyone was done crossing, I proceeded slowly through the crosswalk on a red . . . directly towards a Cambridge Police officer who promptly waved me over.

He was a really nice guy; we talked for a couple of minutes before he got to business, and wished one another a good day when we parted. It was acutally a pretty pleasant experience. Had I not stopped and waited – something that the officer explictly noted – I probably would not have received a mere warning.

I guess what I’m trying to say is twofold: first, be wary of the Cambridge Police, as they seem to be on the lookout for cyclists breaking the rules (a good thing, if perhaps inconvenient); and second, if you do have the occasion to interact with them, be nice, as they’re perfectly willing to do the same.

As previously stated, when my girlfriend and I moved to Somerville, we purchased a pair of bicycles: she a blue Trek 7.3 FX, and I a Bianchi Pista in chrome. After putting on a front brake and upgrading the tires and pedals, I started commuting from the Davis Square area to the Financial District daily. All was well for about three weeks, and I was very happy. Then, on that fateful Thursday evening, I decided to go out and practice trackstands in the private parking lot behind the Davis Square CVS.

According to the Cambridge Police CAD sheet, I was found near the corner of Mass. Ave. and Day Street (a CAD, or Computer-Aided Dispatch, sheet is a computer printout of automatically logged radio data including date, time, and sender of each call). I wouldn’t know. I remember looking behind me and thinking that Mass. Ave. was particularly devoid of traffic that evening; the next thing I remember was that I was in an ER. If I hadn’t been wearing ankle reflectors, I wouldn’t have even known why I was there, but that clued me in pretty quickly. My dorkiness has its limits.

I received a hairline fracture to my right elbow, a concussion and a broken sinus from where my face hit the road, one stitch to the outside of my eyebrow, and some pretty impressive bruising up and down my right side. The excellent staff at Cambridge Hospital kept me there for almost 24 hours, mainly because no one knew quite why I went down, and they wanted to make sure that I didn’t have epilepsy or some other condition that would cause me to just fall. The results showed nothing of that sort, though I did get to see my larger-than-average heart beating on an echocardiogram, which was pretty cool. In the end, my best guess is that I either hit something that caused my front wheel to stop or I was taking a turn and low-sided. I’ll probably never know.

They put me in a sling, gave me some antibiotics and Flonase for my sinus, and sent me home. Two weeks later, I was out of the sling, though still sore. By the end of last week, I was feeling right as rain, and I was itching to get back on the bike.

Speaking of which, my bicycle fared pretty well. I was told in the ER that the Cambridge Police had taken custody of it, and a quick call confirmed that. The property room at the station has odd hours, but I was finally able to get down there and claim my bike and u-lock. My lights were still attached, and someone had even been considerate enough to turn them off. The only damage was chewed up cork tape and a bent saddle. It’s about $15 dollars for the former and I had been wanting to upgrade the latter, so I really don’t mind.

Handlebar tape and saddle notwithstanding, the beautiful weather on Sunday was the final straw; I couldn’t stand to be cooped up for yet another weekend. So I went for a ride – admittedly, against doctor’s orders to rest for another couple of weeks. Not wanting to injure myself further, I took it easy, rode on the less busy streets, and didn’t try to tackle any large hills.

It was glorious.

It would be hard to explain to a non-cyclist the delights of riding a bike. There’s something about gliding smoothly over the road, feeling the wind in your face, leaning with the bike as you go through turns, and taking in all the sights and sounds you miss with most forms of transport that just makes you feel wonderful. I think the problem is that the feeling is more than the sum of its parts. One can describe most of the sensations of riding, but there’s another, one that transcends the others, that eludes proper description. I’ll just call it joy.

As I tooled around Somerville and Cambridge, I felt only that joy. Well, that and a light aching in my right arm. So maybe I’m not 100%, but I’m getting better. The road to recovery looks to be short, and the road beneath my tires has no end in sight.

Cyclists may:
Use all public roads and highways, unless there’s a posted sign “specifically prohibiting bicycles.”
Pass motor vehicles on the right (not other cyclists).
Use the bike lane.

Cyclists must:
Obey all applicable traffic laws and regulations (e.g. stopping at reds).
Give hand signals for turning and stopping.
Ride single-file except when passing.
Ride on a regular seat.
Give audible signals (but no sirens or whistles) when necessary for safety.
Have one hand on the handlebars at all times.
Have brakes capable of stopping from 15 MPH in 30 feet on dry, level pavement.
Run a minimum of a white headlight, a red taillight or reflector, and pedal or ankle reflectors from 1/2 hour past sunset to 1/2 hour before sunrise.
Report accidents resulting in personal injury and/or more than $100 in property damage to the police.
Yield to and audibly signal pedestrians when on the sidewalk (but see below).

Cyclists must not:
Ride on the sidewalk for any reason other than when it’s necessary for safety.
Ride on the sidewalk (even for safety’s sake) in a business district or other designated areas.
Park so that they obstruct traffic or pedestrians.
Tow or be towed (unless you’re towing a proper trailer).
Carry things, unless they’re doing so in a device designed for doing exactly that.
Ride with handlebars that put their hands above their shoulders.
Lengthen their forks.

Kids:
Kids under four or who weigh less than 40 pounds go in a baby seat.
Cyclists under 16 must wear helmets (unless they’re in a protective trailer behind the bicycle).
Parents may not knowingly allow their kids to violate any of the rules.

Racing:
Races on public ways are OK if they’re affiliated with an organization and cleared with the police.
Race organizers can modify the rules of the road for races by agreement with the police.

Penalties:
There’s a $20 fine for violation of the above bicycle-specific laws.
Police can impound bicycles of cyclists under 18 who are in violation of the above bicycle-specific laws.

Other (dedicated to Boston drivers):
Bike lanes are for bicycles only.
Right turns on red are legal, unless otherwise marked.
Left turns on red, when you’re turning both from and to a one-way street, are legal, unless otherwise marked.

If you can think of any other things I’ve missed, leave a comment. Also, if you’d like citations, I’ll put ‘em in. Remember, this is not legal advice; it’s just a summary of what the statutes seem to say. I haven’t done any research into how they’ve been interpreted.

Just a little bit about my cycling life and then I have to go back to work.  I started cycling for real in middle school on a lovely blue and white Sekai.  That bike got me to school until my senior year of high school when I got the use of my dad’s pickup.  When I went off to college, I purchased a Cannondale road bike – one of the higher end ones at the time, with a fantastic color-changing paint - and rode the hell out of it.  Two centuries a weekend (one to see Mom, and another to get back to campus) was pretty normal when the weather was at all good.

Then law school in Boston hit.

I knew what I was getting into in terms of winters, crazy drivers, and long hours studying, so I didn’t bring my bike with me, and it’s still in my Mom’s garage.  I’ll probably bring it back with me next summer, but for the time being, it’s far away.  At least it’s out of the weather.

I graduated from law school, got a job, and moved in with my girlfriend (also a lawyer) in a swanky downtown apartment.  I spend a lot of hours at work and Boston’s drivers still scare me, so I went without a bike.  It didn’t help that my home and my office were within four blocks of one another; commuting by bike would have been silly at best.

Then we moved to Somerville.  Better surroundings for cycling on the weekends.  A distinct distaste for the T from three years commuting from Dorchester to B.U..  A need to get a little more trim.  All of these sentence fragments pointed to one thing: I needed to get back in the saddle.

I suppose that’s what this is going to be about: getting back into cycling after a too-long hiatus.  Well, it will probably be about a whole lot more than that.  I don’t even expect that I’ll keep the title for that long (though there is that lovely Boston – Aerosmith connection to be had), but for a working title, it’s fine.  Here’s hoping that I keep with it (the blogging, that is).

Edit: Already changed the name of the blog.  It used to be “Back in the Saddle Again”