Yesterday I took a drive into the city to drop off the Merckx 7-Eleven frame for a bit of work. I thought I'd take the opportunity to revisit the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, which lies in the Eastwick area in southeast Philadelphia. I am not only a "gearhead" with bicycles, but also a bit of the combution engine-type, as I am a regular watcher of the Hagerty automotive channel online and also occasionally catch their sportscar features on You Tube. My wrenching abilities are strictly bicycle-related at this point, but I'm learning. I'm not really too much into watching autoracing, though the 24 Hours of Le Mans definitely intrigues me.
The Simeone collection of vintage racecars is fantastic, and it is wonderfully presented in themed displays, such as a replica of a Tuscany village, celebrating the famous "Mille Miglia", a 1000-mile race from Brescia to Rome and back. The Le Mans pit area display particularly appeals to me, as it features some of my all-time favorite cars, such as the 1963 Ferrari 250P, which actually won that year's 24-hour event. This car was driven to victory by Italian stars Lorenzo Bandini and Ludovico Scarfiotti, finishing an amazing 16 laps ahead of the others!
The Ford GT40 was the featured car model in the 2019 movie, Ford v. Ferrari. Althought the American automobile famously finished 1-2-3 at the 1966 Le Mans race, this particular vehicle unfortunately developed clutch problems after five hours and was retired from the competition:
Having brought along the Saeco-Cannondale in the back of my Honda Fit, I had planned to use Fairmount Park as a starting point for a ride. After wandering through the museum for a couple of hours, I changed into my cycling gear and set off back towards the city. Starting in the East Falls area, my route would eventually work into Northeast Philadelphia, using mostly streets with marked bike lanes or "sharrows" (shared-lane markings) for at least a ruse of saftely.
I say this because I noted that there were a particularly high number of numbskulls driving this day. In the past I've seen plenty of area motorists pushing the envelope of what is legal when driving through red lights, but on this occasion I was following someone who clearly thought obeying traffic lights was optional. I saw him slowly lurch forward into an intersection, as if anticipating it was going to change, but just continuning through, even when it didn't! I actually caught up to him after a couple of blocks, when a few cars in front of him blocked the opportunity to repeat his actions.
The street had parked cars on the right, so it was too narrow for the driver to go around the cars in front of him, which were turning left, so it took a couple more blocks for him to catch back up with me. The light we were approaching had just turned red, so I knew it was definitely not a matter of anticipating the light change when he slowly crawled right through the intersection and continued on his way. For safety, I've always waited an extra beat or two, in case someone runs a light, but this dude was just absurd!
I pedaled down the excellent bike lane along the Delaware waterfront, then cut across Society Hill on Spruce Street. Despite the wide, well-marked green bike lane making it obvious to drivers that the pavement is being shared, I had someone attempt to make a lefthand turn in front of me. Luckily he had his window down, and my yells of "YO, BUDDY!" had him slamming on his brakes before he could completely cut me off. Unfortunately this wasn't going to be my last head-shaking moment during this trip.
I eventually reached the (temporary) safety of the Schuylkill Banks section of the SRT, where I found myself retracing one of my favorite routes, on the new bridge connection to Grays Ferry Crescent park and eventually over through West Philadelphia to Bala Cynwyd. The one snag in this route is an awkward dogleg from 48th Street, east on Girard Avenue to reach Belmont Avenue.
Mind you, all of these streets have marked bike lanes, but the intersection at Belmont is made complicated by trolley tracks and boarding platforms. The track (laid in pavement) beside the platforms is marked for traffic as a left turn only lane for cars, though I've been here before and seen people confused or just ignoring the signs overhead marking the lanes and turn this section of Girard into a four lane street. I've made a little diagram of the situation (click on it to enlarge, if needed), showing the platforms, marked with a white square and the letter P. I am represented by the red star, showing I am in front of four cars (differently-colored diamonds) at the left turn lane, waiting for the cars to clear (green arrows showing the traffic flow east to west on Girard) so that I can turn north onto Belmont.
What happens next is mind-boggling! The driver in orange car in the oncoming turn lane gets impatient waiting for the blue car to turn, goes around him, straight at me, then swerves back into the westbound traffic. Moments later, perhaps inspired by his impatient orange counterpart, the maroon car swerves into the oncoming track around the three cars in front of him and simply cuts off the cars the rest of us are (safely) waiting to clear.
After much braking and honking, a black female woman driving a cab (logically, the yellow diamond) pulls slowly alongside me and rolls down her window to speak. I imagine she saw my head pivoting to watch all of this nonsense develop and then my head shaking in disbelief, but she obviously had a bit of concern for my safety, as well. "These people are f#@&*ing crazy! I got you hon," she said, then slowly nosed out to stop the traffic so we could both turn left and get the hell outta there!
The completely road-separated bike lanes of Parkside and (eventually) the Cynwyd Heritage Trail couldn't have been more welcome!
