Tab Combs

@drtcombs

Transport-Equity-Resilience Planning academic Venerable Road User & Villagist She/hers. Occasional outbursts about dogs, kids, Davidson hoops, severe weather, & gardening. My opinions are mine. Blocking bots and bot-adjacents

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Tab Combs@drtcombs· 20d

TIL from our local FB that it's kids' fault they keep getting run over by distracted drivers Look at me not replying!

Photo of a black e-bike, parked in a grassy field. The photo is taken from directly in front of the bike, facing the bike head-on. There is a front rack on the bike with 2 helmets resting on it.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· 22d

The Naked Ladies are here!!! #garden #bloomscrolling

Photo of a 'naked lady,' a funny lily that creates an eruption of long, thin green leaves in the spring, then disappears for several weeks, then shoots up a large cluster of blooms on a single tall, thin stalk.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· 27d

Y'all last night she brought her 4 babies and an elderly possum along to sniff the camera.

Black & white screen grab from a wildlife camera, showing a time stamp of 1:02 am, and 6 nocturnal creatures. 3 are clearly identifiable as raccoons. The other 3 are identifiable only because of their eyes shining back at the camera. The six-some includes one adult raccoon, 4 rambunctious baby raccoons, and an elderly possum.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· 28d

If not friend, why friend-faced?

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jul 10

actual footage of us wreaking havoc

photo, taken from behind, of a 7 year old kid standing up on her bike pedals to ride uphill on a narrow a sidewalk next to a 7-lane stroad.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jul 10

We were all having fun until someone decided to take his ball and go

Photo of a small, curly, ginger dog sitting in a stuffed polka-dotted toddler-sized chair, gazing out a window, tennis ball resting possessively on his front legs.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jul 8

I honestly had no clue how much I needed this advice until now Flashback to 2016, watching the kiddo shredding the local trails on her balance bike

Photo of a small kid, around 3 years old, decked out in purple helmet and aqua knee/elbow pads, on a red balance bike, contemplating some mountain biking terrain

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jul 8

Whew that was a close one

Photo of a kid riding a bicycle to school in the pre-dawn, with multiple blinkies and rainbow colored spoke lights

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jul 7

Great idea! Here's a photo of one of my host parents in El Salvador, 21 years ago, tootling around their house on a kid's bike.

Grainy and dark photo of an elderly man (but really a big kid) on an undersized bicycle

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 26

I have found my people

Photo of a white sign with black lettering on a wooden post. The sign reads: Dead Slow! Pedestrians.
The backdrop is lush mountain landscape

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 16

Friend or foe? #NorthCarolina #NativeGarden #Insects

A photo of a herd of teeny tiny black beetles on the leaf of a rose mallow plant

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 16

Hi @chapelhillgov.bsky.social I ask this with love: Why are you leaf blowing? In June? In a drought? With a gas powered leaf blower? Before 8am? It's really loud. And smelly. And not necessary. And also REALLY loud. Did I mention it's loud?

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 15

have we talked about the dry slot

screenshot of a precipitation radar map, with rain falling to the east and the west, but not in a narrow, near-vertical (north-south) line stretching from Florence, SC to Charlottesville, NC, and encompassing the triangle area of NC.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 15

Example of the seepage: the pot at the top of the photo has a big wet ring around it. Its stopper doesn't seal perfectly in the pot. No such ring around the pot at the bottom. Incidentally, this pot's stopper is the one we used for our proof-of-concept testing... #Drought #Gardening

Photo looking down at a sparsely planted vegetable bed. There are 2 pepper plants in the shot. Both of them have a terracotta olla pot poking up out of the soil next to them, connected to each other and to an out-of-frame reservoir by a thin black tube. One of the pots is surrounded by a large circle of wet soil -- this one has a leaky stopper. The other pot has no such wet circle -- this one has a perfectly non-leaky stopper.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 14

It works!!! #Gardening #Drought

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 13

Proof of concept! (pay no mind to the sad cucumber plant in the background. It's fine)

Photo of an olive oil bottle, full of water, on an upturned terracotta pot. Connected to the top of the bottle is a clear tube, siphoning water down to a terracotta bottle buried mostly in the ground next to a very small pepper plant.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 12

Someone, probably: "But how will you water your garden when @chapelhillgov.bsky.social finally enacts long overdue water restrictions?" Me:

A photo of a black rain barrel, draining into a watering can. There are two gray tubes leading into the top of the rain barrel

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 11

Relatedly, we started using olla pots this year. It's been so dry I've had to fill them almost daily, but they do actually work. We're down 15" of rain already this year and it'll hit 100 degrees tomorrow. And our tiny #garden plot is producing the biggest veggies I've ever seen.

A line up of 3 oversized zucchini, 2 oversized yellow squash, and 3 normal sized cucumbers. Coffee mug for scale.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 11

At least we don't have to worry about slugs in the garden this year 🫠 droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/S...

Screenshot of the US Drought Monitor's current map of North Carolina, showing nearly all of the state in at least severe drought, and my part of it in exceptional drought (the worst category).

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 9

PS. Sometimes when we go back and forth between streets and sidewalks, we get places faster than drivers. Drivers complain about it not because they think we're being unsafe or unlawful, but because we're not stuck in the same traffic they're stuck in.

Screen grab from bike handlebar cam, showing a sidewalk with no traffic in it, next to a street blocked by a crashed car, a tow truck, and a police car.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 9

11. "How TF am I supposed to get across this intersection in one piece? So, yeah. Not only are we permitted to pick, we're forced to do so by a road network that routinely lets us down.

Aerial view of an intersection of two city streets, each with 5 lanes. One of the approaches has dedicated right turn lane. A cyclist wanting to go straight from this approach has to choose between changing into the center straight lane, or staying close to the curb and hoping to not get right-hooked by a right-turning motorist, or hopping onto the sidewalk and crossing using the pedestrian beg button and crosswalk.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 9

7. trash cans, parked cars, dog shit, 'sidewalk closed' signs left behind for months by utility contractors, construction equipment, piles of leaves, EV charging cords, pedestrians (who have every right to be there), etc.

Photo of a small child riding her bike on a sidewalk, approaching a crosswalk over a sidestreet. The crosswalk is blocked by a gray pontiac randomly parked in it, ultimately forcing the child to go around it and into the outer most lane of a 7-lane stroad.

Photo of a sidewalk on a residential street. The sidewalk is blocked by a small fleet of trash cans, rendering it impassable.

A whole ass living room suite dumped in a sidewalk

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 9

6. ...they often represent the least lethal path for someone on a bike, esp. if the adjacent road is full of high speed car traffic. But not always. Some stretches of sidewalk are chock full of driveways. Sometimes they're falling apart, or covered in mud, or blocked by all manner of things:

Photo of a sidewalk next to a high speed roadway. The sidewalk is overgrown so badly that only 2' of width are available to users. The adjacent roadway is full of potholes and the scene of frequent motor vehicle speeds in excess of 60mph

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 9

3. This flexibility is critical, because our roads, by and large, are awful for bikes. A teeny tiny fraction of road miles in NC have any sort of recognizable bike facility. On-street bike facilities that do exist rarely provide the level of protection the conditions warrant.

Holy door zone bike lane, Batman.
Google maps image of E. Bessemer Ave. There is one general purpose lane in each direction. Adjacent to that is a painted bike lane, and adjacent to that a parking lane. There is no buffer between the bike lane and parked cars. Any cyclist wisely choosing not to ride in the door zone must choose between riding in the general purpose lane (likely pissing off a driver who doesn't understand why they're not in the "perfectly good* bike lane" or riding on the sidewalk (likely pissing off a pedestrian who doesn't understand why they're not in the "perfectly good* bike lane."

A sharrow, the paint so faint it's almost as if it's ashamed to exist at all, tucked in next to the curb on a 5-lane arterial built like a dragstrip

Tab Combs@drtcombs· Jun 4

I hung a cucumber beetle sticky trap, caught and stuck a cucumber beetle to it, and then filmed it as it it freed itself. Y'all got any other ideas? These jerks did a number on our #garden last year. #gardening

Tab Combs@drtcombs· May 30

I confess I was delighted to be delayed by these ducks on my way biking home with (probably now cold) dinner

Tab Combs@drtcombs· May 30

Happy Zucchini Season to all who celebrate #Gardening

Photo of a shiny dark green zucchini on a white counter

Tab Combs@drtcombs· May 28

the chicken nugget broke

Photo of a small, curly, ginger dog curled up awkwardly on a blue sofa. His legs and belly are in the air and is head of cocked around 180 degrees from normal

Tab Combs@drtcombs· May 13

Tiny #bird has tiny babies in the tiny house

Zoomed in photo of a tiny bird house mounted on the top of a fence post. Sitting on the fence in front of the house is a tiny brown bird. There is a background of green trees and blue sky.

Tab Combs@drtcombs· May 8

8/ The myth that congestion is dangerous and must be 'mitigated' costs thousands of lives a year in the US. Yet it's so pervasive that almost no one questions it when an engineer says "widening this road is important to for congestion and safety" as if they are the same problem (they're not).