Tour de Ann Arbor

When I set out to bike to all five branches of the Ann Arbor District Library in one day, I didn’t realize the Tour de France was going on at the same time, but turns out it was, so that was fitting. On the very first stage of the race, a spectator managed to step too close to the course with a sign and cause basically the entire peloton to crash, which was more or less the big news of the Tour de France. Fortunately, on my journey I was not hit by anything besides a vine that scratched my arm because I biked into it.

During the summer, I normally visit all the library branches in search of summer game points, but usually just one or two at a time. After five years in Ann Arbor, I’ve biked almost everywhere in the city, so for fun I mapped out a route that would take me through all the branches in one trip and realized it was actually feasible. The way the library branches are spread out, the most efficient route roughly circles the city and is about fifteen miles long if you start downtown. Even adding the mileage to get downtown, the whole trip is about as long as some of my rides along and around the Border to Border  (B2B) trail, so I thought, why not?

Setting out, I knew it wasn’t going to be the most pleasant ride, which proved to be true. I picked a time on the weekend when there was less traffic, but the drivers seemed worse than average. Given that during the pandemic lockdowns in Michigan traffic decreased but accidents per mile travelled increased, I wouldn’t be surprised if the drivers were actually worse than usual. Because I had a lot of ground to cover, I took the shortest routes, which included a lot of not-so-great roads for biking.

Library branches, in the order visited: Top right - Downtown, center - Westgate, bottom right - Pittsfield, bottom left - Malletts Creek, top left - Traverwood

The B2B and its connections through Parker Mill County Park and to the Matthaei Botanical Garden Trail are great. There are enough pedestrians on campus and downtown to keep traffic slow and drivers aware enough to make them fairly bikeable. Residential neighborhoods are also fine, and most of the main spoke roads radiating from the center of Ann Arbor have decent bike lanes, but outside of that the biking’s not super fun. Part of the problem is that Ann Arbor has an incomplete interior ring road. It was supposed to move cars around the city quickly, but because it’s so piecemeal it has more intersections, entries and exits (to shopping centers, housing developments, churches, schools, parks, golf courses, etc.), and traffic lights than a ring road should have. This defeats the purpose of a ring road because if you have development along it, it itself becomes a destination and it’s no longer a fast way to circumscribe the city. In fact, the not-ring road makes traffic in the city very messy, leading to the conclusion that I came to after this bike ride.

My primary problem with Ann Arbor is that it can’t decide whether it wants to cater to cars (ring roads, high speed limits, four+ lanes of traffic) or encourage pedestrians and bikers (sidewalks that don’t suck, bike lanes, not almost getting run over by a car every time you cross a street). Take, for example, the not-ring road. It has posted speed limits of 35-40 mph, which is too fast for bikes to keep up with and not fun for pedestrians to walk next to. However, the not-ring road has (not great) sidewalks because of its proximity and direct access to public services like schools and grocery stores that people without cars might conceivably need to get to. So the not-ring road sucks for pedestrians/bikers that need to access things along it because it’s noisy and terrible to walk/ride along, and it sucks for drivers because it’s riddled with traffic lights, crosswalks, and turn lanes. Overall it sucks for everyone because it’s not particularly safe for anyone.

I was on Reddit awhile ago and in some post about biking (probably related to the Tour de France crash) someone posted an interesting link to a video that addresses this topic. In the video, they define a road as a “high-speed connection between two places” and a street as a “complex environment where life in the city happens.” The problem, they argue, is “stroads,” which try to combine streets and roads but don’t properly do the job of either. Sounds a bit like the not-ring road that I had to bike on to visit all my library branches. Anyway, in the end, I got my summer game points, some exercise, and only a scratched arm, so I guess it was worth it.

The Continuing Mission

Twenty years after the Enterprise first boldly went to explore strange new worlds, Star Trek returned to the small screen with an upgraded ship, new crew, and never-before-seen adventures. The initial seasons were a little rough, but the show eventually settled into its groove. Mostly.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) takes place about a hundred years after the original series (TOS) aboard the flagship of Starfleet, the USS Enterprise. As a representative of the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise is primarily supposed to be a vessel of scientific research and discovery, but no one would watch 45 minutes of plant cataloging or star mapping, let alone 7 seasons, so they also respond to a lot of distress calls and meet various unfriendly alien species. Recurring TNG antagonists include the Romulans, Cardassians, Borg, and the highly materialistic and incompetent Ferengi.

TNG aired for seven seasons (178 episodes) from 1987 to 1994. It was the second live-action Star Trek series produced but comes chronologically after Enterprise, Discovery, The Original Series, The Animated Series, and the original 6 movies. The show features an ensemble cast starring

- Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the ostensibly-French leader of the Enterprise who drinks a lot of tea, Earl Grey, hot

- Jonathan Frakes as Commander William T. Riker, the Enterprise’s first officer who spends his time getting pulled into slime, eating worms, and mounting chairs

- LeVar Burton as Lt. Commander Geordie La Forge, chief engineer and technobabble expert

- Michael Dorn as Lieutenant Worf, the Klingon security officer who takes leisurely jogs through the Enterprise with his top notch security teams that absolutely never let anyone or anything get by them

- Gates McFadden as chief medical officer Dr. Beverly Crusher who’s kind of just . . . there

- Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi, a half Betazoid empath who can sense others’ thoughts, except when she can’t, and likes chocolate

- Brent Spiner as Lt. Commander Data, the ship’s android second officer, who is an android

Also featuring Denise Crosby as Lt. Tasha Yar (season 1), Worf’s predecessor as head of security; Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher (seasons 1-4), Dr. Crusher’s (initially) very annoying teenaged son; and Diana Muldaur as Dr. Katherine Pulaski (season 2), temporary replacement for Dr. Crusher due to real life cast/crew disputes; with guest appearances by Whoopi Goldberg as bartender Guinan.

Besides TNG, I’ve only seen some of TOS and one or two of the J.J. Abrams movies, but this is easily my favorite cast. They work well together on screen and get mostly equal plotlines, with some emphasis on Picard/Riker/Data. I appreciate that the cast is somewhat diverse, especially considering other popular shows from this time period like Friends, Seinfeld, Full House, and Frasier are predominantly, if not entirely, white (determined by two minutes of googling; don’t quote me on this). After Denise Crosby’s departure, they could have benefited from another woman regularly on the bridge, as well as giving Troi a brain before the middle of season 6, though how women are treated on the ship is at least a hundred times better than in early TOS. All the Starfleet officers have the same uniform; no more mini-skirted female yeomen bearing trays with their captain’s dinner to his quarters. And although Wesley is undeniably irritating in season 1, in following seasons I like what he brought to the show, and he and Dr. Crusher had some good scenes together.

TNG was written mostly episodically, though they do sometimes reference past episodes and there are a few overarching themes and story arcs. By the time they made it to season 7, it does feel a bit like they might have been scraping the bottom of the barrel a little, but I also like that the number of episodes gave them time to do low-stakes things like go on holodeck adventures, play poker, and have poetry recitals. It’s not all evasive maneuvers, phasers, and photon torpedoes, which, seeing as the Enterprise is supposed to be a ship of science with hundreds of civilian families on board, is probably how it should be. The episodes are a good mix of everyday life in space, diplomacy, saving people, and hostile encounters, though the number of times the Enterprise is forcefully boarded or someone’s kidnapped off the ship is slightly alarming.

Overall, the show’s quest for scientific discovery, messages of equality and acceptance, and exploration of what it means to be human help TNG hold up against time. The fact that the crew doesn’t always come away unilaterally victorious, and sometimes they’re even wrong, adds depth to the show as well. The visuals aren’t crystal clear with flawlessly integrated CGI, but the acting’s solid, the score is well-suited to the show (and the main theme is instantly recognizable), and the plots are thoughtful, so I stand by putting it on my list of favorite TV shows, and it’s well worth watching.