It rained. Not more than a drizzle, but enough that I was wet and my bike was wet and the roads were somewhat wet. It was also hot and I debated over wearing my jacket or just going without, but eventually decided that the jacket would be the more prudent decision on account of its highly visible yellowishness. Its long sleeves provided unwelcome arm coverage. If only my vanity didn't preclude me from wearing a reflective vest.
Normally on a Tuesday, I like to take a more roundabout way in the morning, but the rain dampened my enthusiasm as it did my outerwear.
It was sort of an auto-pilot ride, which is fine, because it allowed my mind to wander, which inevitably just lead to me thinking about other bikes I could get, various modifications to said bicycles and bike accessories that I would happily add to these new, fantastic bicycles. Cash register noises accompanied the visions and as the running price tally kept going up, my enthusiasm for these improvements waned. Bicycling and the art of being broke is different from bicycling as a means of going broke. But one can dream.
There are some crossing guards that stand in the rain and some that abandon their posts to stand under trees. You know who you are.
Take this survey about bike facilities and help a graduate student. As someone who helps grad students professionally, I can assure you that this is a useful, non-frivolous kind of helping as opposed to the useless, trivial helping that I get paid to do. Just kidding (about the latter)!
BikeDC allowed the Official Wife some time to observe my bell ringing habits and she suggested that I try to ding closer to the people that I'm passing. She felt like maybe I was giving too much time between ding and passing, overestimating the size of my ding envelope and causing pedestrians and fellow cyclists needless anxiety as they wait for me to pass. I've been working on that for the past few days, but it's hard to adjust your timing. I don't really have a methodology with which to approach this project, nor a means of judging the impact in a way that isn't anecdotal, much less double blind, but I'll keep trying and see if I get "better" results.
Front panniers: Advantages over back panniers? Too much? Questions with no verbs?
A concern I have about any bike facility installed on New Mexico Avenue would be how to deal with the stretch of road in front of the liquor store, where every morning, multiple trucks are parked to unload their wares. Here's a picture (with scofflaw illegally parked car):
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There's (I think) not enough road width to shift the lane leftward to get around the loading zone, but it also seems pointless to run a bike lane on a stretch that's invariably going to be blocked. I guess you could sharrowfy around the road from Macomb past the loading and restart the lane around Embassy Park, since you're pretty much asking any bicyclist going uphill to take the lane anyway (because trying to stay close to the unloading vans does not make for a safe situation. It gives drivers the distinct impression that there is room enough to pass you safely on the left when there really isn't. Also a "Bicycles May Use Full Lane" sign would be great. I don't think that this is enough to scuttle the whole idea of bike lanes on New Mexico, but it is a concern that I have given some thought to and I think it's a considerable enough problem that it should be addressed in a meaningful way.
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