Tales From The Sharrows

Ride In 3/16: Robin Sparkles

2012-03-16T15:25:00.000-04:00

You might have seen some hysterical (not in a funny way ) tweets about Bikeshare coming to the Mall and maybe even a picture by longtime friend of the blog (and first-time Friday Coffee Club member as of this morning), Jacques Arsenault, but if you haven't seen either of those things, you can see them now by clicking on the links. You can also read various blog posts about it, including this one, though I don't plan to write too much more about this exciting development. I'm glad that NPS and DDOT have managed to work this out and install these stations so quickly and I think that they will definitely be a boon to the area. For those of you not familiar with the National Mall, it is a barren wasteland, bespeckled with a couple of marble classical architectural forms and intercepted by a bunch of roads unsuited to much more than car traffic. There are also some paths, but they get crowded. My hope is that Bikesharing on the Mall will bring about some much needed discussion about some much needed changes to the way in which transportation issues of the Mall are managed. There are a lot of constituencies to involve and a lot of factors to consider, especially considering the centrality of the Mall to tour groups and their tour buses, a concern that I thought very little about before a freewheeling discussion on twitter a few weeks ago. However, in spite of the complications, I think the future of transportation issues in,on, and around the Mall will be one is which the movement of personal cars will be deprioritized and the movement by every other means will be ameliorated. Or at least I hope so. And not just because I hate cars, which I don't really. I think it's just that an optimally designed Mall, one designed for maximum enjoyment by the most amount of people, wouldn't give such heft the movement of cars through and around it. But I'm not some sort of expert. I'm a guy with a blog and frequently I have spaghetti stains on my shirt, so I can't really be trusted, either with big ideas or red sauces.

I left the house relatively early this morning and didn't bother checking the weather only to find out that it was kind of cold and somewhat foggy. I wasn't wearing a jacket. I warmed up relatively quickly. Everything is now fine.

Lots of zombie joggers in the bike lanes this morning. Not cool, dudes. And worse is that they were running contra-traffic. I have a few issues with this, the least compelling of which is that what they're doing is illegal. More compelling, to my mind at least, is the safety hazard that's created by either my riding into them (which I really don't want to do or even posture like I'm willing to do, because I'm not) or my having the leave the lane to avoid a collision and perhaps hasten a collision with a passing motorist. And then there's, of course, the whole "Marcia Marcia Marcia" aspect of it in that bicyclists can't even use bike lanes, of which there are relatively few and on only a small fraction of roads, because they're being #occupied by someone who could be jogging on the perfectly serviceable and completely empty sidewalk roughly one foot away. Perhaps there's something about running next to a white stripe that's especially soothing. It's only going to get worse and I'm going to need a better coping strategy than blogging about since I'd rather not bore all of you to death.

Speaking of boring, it must be boring to be a member of the state security apparatus and have to stand outside the Capitol all day and night. At least some of them have giant guns to keep them company. Also speaking of boring, this.

I don't recall too many other bicyclists on Penn. Maybe it was ride your invisible bike invisibly to invisible work day. I don't recall seeing that on my invisible calendar though. Something I do recall, but this happened yesterday, was almost crashing, but not really, into another bicyclist who was in the process of riding through a red light. This was at Penn and 3rd and I was riding towards the Capitol and she was heading north on 3rd and making a left onto Penn. I had a green light and she didn't. I sort of scowled and shrugged at the same time. I don't know if I judge other bicyclists harder than I do other road users, because I really try not to do this because it's really unfair. I wouldn't given the same scowl/shrug to a driver or a pedestrian, but somehow it feels much more personal when it's done to a fellow cyclist. Anyway, crisis avoided, because it really wasn't that much of a crisis, but some guy in the waiting to cross the street said something like "whoa, almost had a crash there." He looked like a young Barack Obama and had a radio announcer's voice. It was weird. I said something like "We were cool. Thanks, though," but that's kind of a non sequitur. I guess I just forgot about this until today, since I didn't mention it last night, when I was reminded by the whole affair by another "near miss" (that wasn't really) with a FedEx driver crossing the street. He told me that I didn't have to stop, which I did when he crossed in front of me to get back into his truck. I told him that I didn't want to "get him," which is apparently how I euphemize crashing into someone. I most assuredly had to stop, lest he got gotten.

Every time I ride past Freedom Plaza I think about Tom Petty. The tents are looking increasingly sad. I think the moment is over. It was a good run.

I think this might have been the most popular #fridaycoffeeclub yet. We're definitely in double digits, maybe up to 15 of us now. And then there were these guys. It was a pleasure to meet some new people and to see some familiar faces and I'm weekly glad that Mary and Ed put this together. I think they should franchise the idea and you too can meet people and drink coffee after having ridden your bike there.

After Swing's, it was back across the White House plaza and up 15th. It was after 9, but there were still plenty of bike commuters making their way in. I'd really like it the cyceltrack had bike counters like they do in Arlington on the trails.

About halfway up Mass, I decided that I would remove my helmet and carry it in my left hand. I did this because I thought that it might allow me to avoid sweating. It did not. So, that was my experiment about carrying my helmet. Results: inconclusive.

Ride Home 3/15: George Eliot

2012-03-15T20:10:00.002-04:00

It was one of those boo-frickin-hoo nights where I was in a crummy, glum mood and all "woe is me" about all things and this didn't help contribute to my overall excitement about bike commuting. Oh, poor baby, has to ride his bike home in beautiful sunny weather through an amazing city and pass world famous landmarks that millions of people pay money to travel to each year. But whatever. I don't like being in moods like this for my rides because it's really not a fun mood to be in ever and my bike commute is something that I'd rather not have spoilt through my own piteousness. Plus, it's always better to ride with a clear head, helmeted or otherwise.
Don't think much happened until some stuff did, but it was the kind of unremarkable stuff like drivers getting themselves in the wrong lane and then pissing off other drivers trying to get back into the right (lefter) lane. This happens every day at the entrance to the Rock Creek "Why is there a highway in this park?" Parkway. It's not like there's a big red arrow and a bunch of signs that suggest one shouldn't get in that lane. I mean, other than that one big red arrow and that bunch of signs. I only complain about it, insofar as it affects me, which is sometimes a little. I guess it mostly concerns me insofar (double insofar points!) as I'm the most vulnerable road user (I mean aside from Samuel L. Jackson fron Unbreakable) and once things start breaking down and starts getting unpredictable and deviates from the usual, things get appreciably worse for bicyclists. I just like it when everyone does what everyone always does because that means I can do what I normally do, instead of, like tonight, ditching to the sidewalk for a while and then jumping back onto the road a couple of blocks farther down.
I think that bus riders are the least looked after members of the entire urban transportation ecosphere. Poor bus riders. You should start a union or something. Or some kind of fraternal order. Maybe if you wear hats that look like moose antlers, you'll get some respect.
Enterprise rental truck ---> right hook potential. I didn't like it at the time and I don't much care for thinking about it now. Some bike rides seem to lend themselves to quiet contemplation and others seem to lend themselves to mostly audible cursing.
Rode behind the same woman on Q today as I did yesterday. She's my commute buddy, I guess. She has a tote bag that she throws alternately over her right and left shoulders. I'm not totally sure there's anything in this bag, as it flaps about quite a lot.
[The Harlem Globetrotters are featured on tonight's Dance Moms. What is this, Scooby Doo? (hope you speak Swedish!)]
11th street, from Mass to Penn, needs bike lanes. It's sort of inexcusable that it doesn't. But here's the problem: any bike lanes on 11th are just going to be blocked by turning cars, buses pulling in and out of stops, and cars leaving parking garages. So, unless there's a dramatic change to the way the rest of 11th street works, bike lanes aren't going to be a panacea. Also, does anyone else wish the Hotel Harrington's kitcheria still existed? I see the sign every day and think, " you know, I've always wanted to get food poisoning at a kitcheteria."
Somehow Penn seemed less onerous today than yesterday. Maybe I'm maturing (pronounced with a hard t). Though the Penn bike lanes were occupied today by a Chinese tv news crew. Breaking at 11: my slow ass biking home.
Occasionally, traffic gets backed up on Independence Avenue and it diverts to the local streets and drivers like to drive on these calm residential streets like they're on some kind of thruway. I don't appreciate this and when I feel especially cheeky, I decide to be that bicyclist who not only comes to a complete stop at each stop sign, but also dramatically puts a foot down and makes a big show of looking both ways, at least twice, before crossing. Because I'm something of a jerk. Something that isn't jerky in any way is Friday Coffee Club and since it's Friday tomorrow, this is a reminder that all are welcome. Swing's is at 17th and G and there are bikey types around from 7:30 to 9. You'll know the place because there'll be all those bikes out front. And people inside who look like they've biked there, whatever that means. Also, one of us will be wearing a pirate costume. I hope. Yarrr.

Ride In 3/15: Michael York, Peppermint Patty

2012-03-15T12:03:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, on a Wednesday in March, Capital Bikeshare broke its all-time ridership record with 6313 rides, beating the previously established record of 6044 from July 4th, one of the most touristy and out-and-about days on the DC calendar. I contributed approximately zero of those trips, but the Official Wife was one and I suspect that many of you contributed others. Bravo! I wouldn't hazard a guess at to whether we'll break the record again today (although I did hazard that guess yesterday and totally nailed it), but it might be close. Breaking records is great, but I'm starting to wonder about the upper bounds of the system. For the more mathematically inclined, I'd like to set you this challenge: is there a maximum reasonable number of trips that we can anticipate before the system can't handle any more with the current number of bikes? Would some combination of empty docks and full docks and the inability to rebalance them quickly enough make it impossible for Bikeshare, following the already established basic patterns of demand and usage, to cross a certain threshold? Get at it, boffins! I'd gladly post your results and that will ensure they'll reach an audience of nine, including my mom.
It was another morning ride in morning weather that I lack the ability to describe adequately in prose. Or in verse, really. It was the kind of weather than embraces you when you're stopped and misses you when you roll through it. I wasn't kidding about the lack of ability to describe it, as that previous sentence shows. What I can describe, in words, but better with a photograph, is that pothole on East Capitol.

I think that an entry-level road bike isn't a very good choice if you're looking to purchase a bike for bike commuting. That's just sound random idea that I have apropos of nothing, except for the number of people I see commuting on them. But then again, I encourage you to commute by bicycle and if that's the bike you want or the bike you have, using that is still vastly preferable to not commuting by bicycle, unless of course, you don't want to, which is also fine.
Police: I'm just going to assume that if you're making a u-turn across the Penn Ave bike lanes, it's because there's an emergency somewhere.
For a block, a man driving his Volvo was using the bike lane as a non-bike lane and this was somewhat terrifying to me and I looked back a couple of times so as to suggest that perhaps he should no longer do this. He then tried to make an illegal left at 14th, but was shooed away by the DDOT traffic helper (I don't know what else to call this position. He's not a crossing guard. He's a guy that stands there and directs drivers not to block the intersection. Traffic helper seems about as good of a term as any).
Again, the White House was closed off and rather than try to ride my bike on the sidewalk past what was something like 11 zillion school children in matching bright green shirts, I decided that I would just up 15th and cut back over at I (Eye). Along 15th, I (ego) was passed by a superbiker in all black kit who didn't really seem to know where he was going but was going to get there fast! Mount Vernon trail's thataway, man! But then I (ego) didn't cut back over at I (Eye) and rode up Vermont and through the traffic circle and found myself on 14th street. SPOILER ALERT: 14th street was wonderful! Rather than the stop and go of the 15th street cycletrack, and the hordes of cyclists riding directly at me, I had a bike lane all to myself and a fairly straightforward, and maybe even marginally faster, ride to R. Who knew? I mean, other than all of the people who already knew, but for some reason, didn't tell me. Thanks a lot, guys.
Four-times shoaled at 16th and R. And guess what? No one was "quick off the line," nor were they especially quick thereafter. Such is life.
If you were wearing a raincoat today, as one woman riding in front of me was, I think you got the weather wrong. People who wear superfluous coats are history's greatest monsters.
I spent a lot of the last ten minutes of my ride whistling "Love is a Battlefield." Nothing says "I'm taking the lane" like Benatar. I'm very badass.

Ride Home 3/14: No, seriously, I'm writing a book about Arnold Palmer's retirement

2012-03-14T19:45:00.003-04:00

I don't have any tattoos. Obviously. Well, not obviously, if you've never seen me and my lack of tattoos, but still sort of obviously if you know of my debilitating fear of ink. I only use pencils and have never eaten squid. Anyway, as you also know, if I did have some 'body art,' which I don't, it'd be an image of poodle on a pennyfarthing and maybe a bag of corn chips. Curiously, this tattoo isn't one of the more common ones (philistines) that I see on my yearly Tattoo Review (which is totally different from the yearly T.A.T.U revue, popular in the transvestite bars of Moscow) that takes place on the first really warm day at my workplace, which happens to be a college campus. And here's what's new in tattoos this year: um, not very much. I saw some random squiggles and maybe an animal or some tribal stuff and some words, but never the words "Toy Poodle on Pennyfarthing," which would be included within the overall skene of my 'ink' because I think the image would need a caption, so as to provide some clarity, like a New Yorker cartoon. All of this, other than being a total waste of your time, is a long-winded wind-up to tell you that today was, once again, a warm one with temperatures achieving a certain number of celsius that equals about 80 in fahrenheit. There was sun. There was sweat.
About halfway down Mass, at the intersection with Macomb, another bicyclist pulled to the side of the road and stopped. As I passed, I said "is everything ok?" She didn't say anything. And then I looked back again and was like "everything ok?" from about 20 feet farther down the road and by that time she had her earbuds out and was like "yeah" and that's my story about good samaritanism. It's generally a good rule to ask bicyclists who are not engaged in the actual activity of bicycling if they're ok, because sometimes people get flat tires or have other mechanical issues. I do it, at least.
Can't remember the exact reasons I was mumbling under my breath at drivers today, but I assume they were valid. I suspect they were just the usual ones. Nothing to get too worked up over. Probably just the whole "I'm gonna block most of the lane, even though parked cars make it impossible for me to get by without leaving the lane, but I don't really want to leave the lane because after the parked cars I'll totally be able to continue in this lane and then get to my destination marginally faster than I would have had I had to spend like 2 seconds moving left and then moving back right." Either that or something else. Mutter mutter mutter mutter.
I'd like to declare that I am not an expert. At anything. Once I thought I was an expert at tic tac toe, but then I met this really smart chicken. Comeuppance! And I'm especially not an expert at bike commuting. And I'm especially loath to give advice about bike commuting (even though I kind of do it all the time) and I'm fairly certain that in no certain terms should anyone listen to any advice I have to give about bike commuting, because I'm not an expert and you should only ever listen to experts or gypsy fortune tellers. But I feel like its incumbent on me, the self-appointed scribe of #bikeDC that no one ever asked for, to perhaps offer some suggestions, that one may take or leave, with regard to the operation of a bicycle in urban commuting situations. Again, you might not want to listen to these and instead "go with your gut," just like that last guy did with that whole WMD in Iraq thing. Anyway, just some ideas:

Riding past someone on your bicycle or being passed by someone on a bicycle is in no way a referendum on anyone's masculinity and you might want to inform your testosterone accordingly. Once, in my town where I grew up, we actually had a referendum on some dude's masculinity and he lost and from that point forward he was called Jennifer. But bike commuting isn't that. You don't get bonus man points for passing someone too closely and you don't lose man points if someone happens to want to ride faster than you. In fact, there are no such thing as man points, or at least that's what Jennifer said.
A bike lane is too narrow a space in which to pass another bicyclist. You want to pass someone who's in the bike lane? Get out in the travel lane. If you can't do that, then you gotsta wait. You gotsta.
If you pass me when I'm stopped at a stop light but your such close to me that the best picture I can't help but scoff at how close we are, then it's maybe not advisable to do so. I find that, as a rule, the people who say "I'm quick off the line" tend not to be as quick as they think they are. Pass while moving. And only on the left.
Don't stop in crosswalks. I've heard a rumor that if you block a crosswalk with your bike, any crossing pedestrian gets any coins you happen to have on your person. Relatedly: don't bring your precious coin collection on your bike commute!
If you run a red light and you impact anyone else's travel in any way whatsoever, you did it wrong.
Street harassment is never cool. Nor is ogling by bike. Nor is yodeling by bike. Nor is ogling yodelers.
Bike commuting, while an opportunity for exercise, isn't really something that you should think of as exercise and you shouldn't, at least in the context of city riding, try to max out your ergs (is that a work out term? I thought I had a gym membership, but it was just a Chipotle punch card) or whatever. You oughn't drive like you're a race car driver and you oughtn't bike commute like you're in a velodrome. That's velodromatic.
Overuse of bullet points is a good indication that your writing otherwise lacks structure.

11th was crowded with bikes and cars and buses and one guy on a CaBi who kept pulling up alongside me at stop lights. And then maybe the guy with the kid carrier from yesterday shoaled me again today. I don't know.

All of the tourists are here. All of them. I didn't commute through downtown last spring and I think I might want to investigate other ways to get home. It's not that tourists are bad. I love tourists. I even love the movie The Tourist, even though I've never seen it. But bike commuting anywhere where there's a lot of people walking in the shared space dedicated to bikes and pedestrians isn't really enjoyable. It's not them. It's me. Maybe E Street is better than Penn. I'll try that.

I think I saw a sometimes blog commenter today. dcdouglas, was that you? Grey Bern helmet? Jamis? I was taking a picture of the big pothole (now with cones!) along East Capitol and you were riding behind a guy on a CaBi and you looked frustrated. I caught up with you along the park, but I didn't say anything because I forgot whether your name was Doug or Scott. I really didn't want to get it wrong, so I didn't say anything. On a related note, if this wasn't dcdouglas and it was a guy named Scott, what's up, Scott? Anyway, I'd just like to use this terrible story as an opportunity to thank all of you who read and comment upon this blog. I could do it without it, but it'd be ever so lonely. You're all the best.

Ride In 3/14: My book about Arnold Palmer's retirement would be called "The Road to the Final Fore"

2012-03-14T12:27:00.004-04:00

I would very much like to have the job of writing headlines for the New York Post. If anyone out there has the ability to facilitate this, I'll buy you a smoothie or something to show my gratitude.
Some unrelated, but very sad news, that you've probably heard already: long-time 'friend of the blog' (it's a one-way friendship, really), famous Tyrolean-American actor Peter Facinelli, "star" of the Twilight films and portrayer of Jennifer Love Hewitt's dick ex-boyfriend in Can't Hardly Wait, is getting divorced from his wife, Jennie Garth. We, and by we, I mean me, but also probably them and their publicists, would like you to respect the couple's privacy during this trying time. Thank you.
With the heavy stuff out of the way, I guess I can continue on with the bike commuting stuff, much as I continue to carry on with bike commuting, which I do while carrying stuff on my bike. It was a wonderful morning for commuting by bicycle and more than the usual suspects were out and about, though the usual suspects were also out, which is also something that might have happened at a Blockbuster in 1996. No CaBis at Lincoln Park at roughly 8:15 and a stream of five or six bike commuters making their way in front me along East Capitol. I also passed Dave, who was angrily tweeting (maybe?) about the giant sinkhole in the middle of the street, something I've ridden past for the past couple of days but have neglected to mention because I'm not very good at this.
Oh, treat sidewalks and mixed use paths like 'no wake' zones when there are pedestrians about. Pretending that you're following the laws of the sea always makes things more fun. Every once in a while, I turn my sharrows button upside to signal distress. But only on May days. (I'll be here all week, folks.)
There's much to be said for indolence in bike commuting and I feel like I'm the right person to say it, since I'm about the laziest bike commuter there is. I only pedal when I know that I won't have to come to a stop and even then I'll only pedal as fast as it'll take to get me through the next light. Otherwise, I'll just let forward momentum carry me forward or maybe I'll just put my foot down because balancing seems so hard and more than a little showy.
The meshies are back. Meshies are those guys who might be named Mike who bike commute while wearing mesh shorts. Just so we're clear, there's nothing wrong with wearing mesh shorts while bike commuting. Most meshies use backpacks instead of panniers, even though their hybrid might have a rear rack, and about every other meshie wears earbuds. A good portion of meshies pride themselves on their speed and bike handling, but sometimes this pride is misplaced. I would say that's relatively true of most bicyclists. No one rides as well or as cleverly as we think we do. Anyway, the return of the meshies (the rejected title for Space Jam 2), is the true hallmark of the arrival of springtime. So, huzzah for that.
White House entrance was closed, so the state security forces made bicyclists ride on the sidewalk, which I believe is illegal. I believe that's called entrapment (laser scene). 15th was full of bicyclists, as were its cross streets. I wonder to what extent the cycle track on L will reroute bike traffic from that interior lane on K. I would expect a lot, but I'm always amazed by the number of people who ride on blocks that are only one block away from better bike infrastructure. My whole commute route is dictated, rightly or wrongly, by my desire to use bike lanes, but I might be in the minority on this one.
I used my thinking time on Massachusetss to come up with a probably illegal, but perfectly good (maybe) idea, for a carpooling app that involves the buying and selling of rides. This was mostly brought on by my observing the number of lone drivers stuck in traffic. Here's how it work. Let's say you don't want to drive to work. You put your start and finish destination (and rough arrival time) into the app and the price you'd be willing to pay for someone to drive you. Other people who are driving can see all the potential fares out there and essentially peer-to-peer contract with a passenger. The money doesn't exchange hands between the driver and passenger, but instead goes to the third-party app and can be banked (so a driver could use it when he wants to be a passenger) or cashed out, with a small percentage taken off the top. Essentially, everyone can operate a taxi. This is probably illegal, but I think it'd have the potential to increase carpooling. Drivers and passengers could negotiate all sorts of things, like whether the passenger would be willing to get dropped off 15 minutes earlier or a couple blocks away for a lower price. It's slugging, but with money. And since all the data will be open to all other users, you could actually create a pretty dynamic market and establish some real pricing guidelines. You'd have to come up with a way to "lock in" rides, so people don't cancel (either drivers or passengers), but there's probably a way to do this. Anyway, if anyone wants to make this happen and has technical aptitude, please let me know. Also, don't tell Avego because it sort of seems like they've already done it. On a related note, if you like getting into cars with strangers, download the Avego app.

Ride Home 3/13: Defibrillators, mount up!

2012-03-13T19:55:00.001-04:00

Shirt, shorts, sunglasses, sunscreen, sayonara spring and say "szia!" (hungarian for hello, but this parenthetical is totally ruining the sibilance I worked so hard to establish) to summer. Spring was fun while it lasted. Thanks for the memories. I would totally write that in spring's yearbook, had spring a yearbook, but I'm pretty sure spring never got around to ordering one on account of it only being here for a day. At least it wasn't too humid, this, today's fake summer. It was pollenic, which reminded me of spring, which was also pollenic. (The Pollenic Wars was fought between Rome and Flora in roughly the third century BC, the second of which saw Hannibal cross the Alps with an army of bees. Scipio Africanus, and his lieutenant, Nasonex, eventually defeated him.)
I was permitted to leave work on the early end of the evening rush and so I did. It was barely rush-y, even and I was mostly fine with that, except that it doesn't take too many drivers to drive wonkily to drive me crazy. There's something magical about a windshield, apparently, that makes it impossible for a driver to see that his travel lane is about to turn into a parking lane. Oh well.
There are two kinds of Cat 6 commuter racers. One is wearing bike gear and wants to establish his supremacy over all others and especially those not bikerly attired. The other is wearing regular clothes and wants to prove that he, even in his lack of bicycle clothing, is in fact the supreme bicyclist. Typology ftw.
I rolled through a bunch of red lights in Dupont Circle. I hope WUSA wasn't there. I did this because it was more convenient for me to do as much. You may judge me accordingly. I would've turned on Q but I sort of didn't make it over in time. To the best of my knowledge, my scofflaw ways didn't cause anything to explode, but with all the things catching on fire these days, it's kind of hard to tell. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure my lawbreaking didn't affect anyone else, but nonetheless, if anything bad every happened anywhere, blame bicyclists. Especially in comment form.
Massachusetts on the other side was mostly fine. I didn't realize that DC had legalized mid-block u-turns for drivers, but I guess there's no other reason that it'd happen otherwise. Anyway, mid-block u-turns, as we all know, are called Idaho U-turns and I'm glad that progressive DC has finally caught up.
I rode 15th and it was fine. At one stop light, I took out my phone to check the Everton-Liverpool score (I don't want to talk about it) and I was promptly shoaled and passed on the right by a guy on a bike that had a rear rack kid carrier. Good hustle, dude. On a totally unrelated note, once I saw a guy with a foiled burrito bungeed to his rear rack. Precious cargo.
I don't know what happened, but the tourists are here. Like, as of today. Someone forgot to pull up the drawbridges. Also, someone forgot to build the drawbridges. Also, welcome to the District of Columbia! Please spend freely at local businesses and restaurants and please remember to tack on "DC voting rights" to your diatribe at your next rage-filled Tea Party-laden congressional town hall.
Segways in the bike lane. Legal. Segway rental company named "Segs in the City." Legal, but really, really terrible. The guy in the back of the group who swerves around? What a Miranda, right? (???)
The British came, maybe to give us voting rights or all of their extra flags?

I'd settle for representation in Parliament. MPs accept money orders, right?
Jaywalkers = hilarious. Sarcastic jaywalkers that are all like "Okaaaaay" when you ring your bell so as to alert them that they're about to walk into you are even more hilarious. I think I said something like "Look at the light," but what I really wanted to say to our out-of-town high school group visitor was something along the lines of- well, it's not very nice. It's better to let these things go. Jeremiads against injustice don't make for great blogging, or at least not here.
I made it home to watch some soccer, saw the second Liverpool goal and went back out to the store. But, the Ride Home post is really only for the ride home and if I told you about my bike trip to the store, I'd really be violating both the spirit and letter of this self-imposed rule. So, no mention of the polar bear, smoke monster, and the incoherent time travel sequences that were mostly a macguffin. "Not Penny's bike!" Next time, then.

Ride In 3/13: I had thought of a funny title, but then forgot it

2012-03-13T12:58:00.002-04:00

If yesterday was nice, today was even nicer and tomorrow should be nicer still. It's easy to forget how nice springtime weather can be, but it doesn't take too long to remember. For the first time in a long time, when I got to work, I felt really, really good. Not just content that I completed another bicycle commute without falling down, but actually just sort of euphoric. It's a little weird, because I'm not, by nature, a really euphoric kind of person. But that's what bike commuting does for me or at least what it can do for me, so that's why I keep doing it. Hedonic. It's easy enough to dwell on the little annoyances (see every other post and the next couple of paragraphs in this one), but in so doing, I tend to downplay the overall absolutely wonderfulness of getting somewhere by my own power at my own pace on my own timeframe and observing the world around me, such as it is, in an unintermediated way. Convincing people that this is a good idea and a worthwhile addition to their lives shouldn't be as hard as it sometimes seems to be. I mean, there are no advocacy groups for something like "eating chocolate cake." That's an activity that somehow sells itself and seems to be self-evidently enjoyable. So why not biking?
Though it seems like on a day, one hardly would have felt the need to advocate as plenty of bike commuters found their way to the streets and then, maybe, to work. Maybe some kept going and skipped work, though I think that might disqualify them from being labeled commuters. The bike lanes weren't necessarily clogged, but there were plenty of people riding on the Hill at the same time I was and even more bunched up at the start of the Pennsylvania cycletrack. Actually, I wouldn't say bunched up, but rather spread out in a line, like at the start of a 100 m dash. Guys! You don't have to do this. It's ok. It's not a race. I waited a few feet back and I took what I hope to have been a surreptitious picture, but it doesn't really capture the ridiculousness of the scene. I guess bike commuting draws together a funny group of iconoclast loners who refuse to wait behind anyone when they can instead line up in their own lanes. I can't say that I really get it. As the light turned green, another cyclist approached from behind and jumped the gun, so to speak, and then everyone was off! There was a fast group who wanted to catch the gun jumper and then there was a CaBi group that might have wanted to catch the fast group and then there was another bunch of people who just seemed to be content to ride their bikes and hoped not to get run over by anyone attempting to be fast. The cycletrack is wide enough to accommodate cyclists who wish to pass others, so there tends to be very limited opportunities for collisions, but one never knows. Everyone commutes at their own pace, I guess, and the important thing is to learn what your pace is and not to care about what other people are doing, unless, of course, you must prove to them that you're the greatest, most fastest, most reckless bike commuter in all of the land. I can't really describe the demographics of the aforementioned bike racers, since they really come in all stripes. The only overriding characteristic seems to be that they're taking themselves too seriously. It's fine to want to go faster or as fast as the guy next to you, but when that becomes the only thing you're thinking about, you're probably doing it wrong.
Some words on etiquette. Some other words on etiquette: treat other cyclists like you'd treat your grandma. Would you buzz your grandma by passing her too closely? Would you scream at her if you collided or nearly collided? Would you pull you in front of her if your grandma was patiently waiting for a light to change? Would you buy your grandma flowers for her birthday? Because you probably should, especially if she has a kind of flower that she really likes. Anyway, cut out all the cutthroat angry bullshit. You're not some renegade or road warrior or badass or anything else. You're just another person commuting on a bike and no better than anyone else. Unless you write a twice daily blog about it. Then you're like the most important ever. (Just kidding!) You're also not better than a pedestrian or driver. You're a little bit better than a pogo commuter. They're so smug.
I wanted to take a different way to work today, but ended up going 15th and then R, even though I sort of wanted to head up through Columbia Heights and then over on Calvert and up that way, but for some reason, my bike wanted to turn, so I let it. I also let my bike take me up Mass, riding for a little behind a guy that I've seen before who was on his LHT, but I'd never seen him during the morning ride. He was the only bicyclist I saw going up, but I passed a few who were coming down. One, and she had sunglasses on, dinged her bell like 5 times when she approach me. I don't know if this was meant to be jovial or if she though I was in the way. I wasn't in the way. So maybe she was moved by the spirit of springtime to ding. 'Springtime means ringtime' is one of those phrases that no one ever uses because it's not a real expression. I guess I need to recalibrate to be more accepting of friendliness. Winter's over.

Ride Home 3/12: It takes two to tango, but you can macarena by yourself, albeit sadly

2012-03-12T20:33:00.000-04:00

As nice as it was this morning, it was even nicer this afternoon. Springtime bike commutes home are the best, partly because they lend themselves to "taking the long way" home and extraneous use of quotation marks around phrases that don't need them. I decided that I would take the long way home to check out the new bike infrastructure in Eckington and see how the contaflow lane is coming along. Last time I went by there, it wasn't quite done. Now it's quite done and quite exemplary. Look:

For at least one block (and perhaps at most one block), there's a contraflow bike lane between the curb and parked cars. Bravo, DDOT and bravo whomever in the ANCs made this possible. This is a great and worthwhile connection, especially for westbound cyclists. The eastbound cyclists get sharrows, or, if they rode at the same time I did today, a UPS truck. So, that's something at least.
Before I got to Eckington, I got to Bloomingdale (I suspect) and before there I went through a bunch of other neighborhoods I don't know the names of. Maybe one of them was Adams Morgan and another one was Columbia Heights and then I don't know what between roughly Euclid and 11th and along Q between 11th and roughly North Capitol are called. Not only do I not know the names of the neighborhoods (and misidentifying a neighborhood is the greatest transgression one could make and you'll be met with immediate approbation/a job at the Washington Post map department), but I don't really know my way through this part of town. I screwed up riding down Euclid and rode right past 11th and eventually ended up on Georgia Avenue and would have kept going east, had not the street turned into a hospital driveway. I took Georgia down past Florida and it turned into 7th and then there was a bike lane, though one wouldn't know if from a bus lane, at least if one identifies a bus lane by the presence of a bus, regardless of the markings painted therein. Wait, that's not what happened. Before I got to Georgia, I turned right onto Sherman, regretting my decision not to turn on 11th, and then merged onto Florida before turning left onto V and then that's where I encountered the hospital. I'm glad I corrected the record there. I wouldn't want to give anything less than a completely accurate reflection of my trip, especially about the part where those alien robots shot their laser death rays at me.
Here are some things that happened before I got to the part that I had just written about, the part where I'm at 7th and Q for those who skipped a few paragraphs ahead. On Euclid, off Columbia, I passed a garbage truck from the company Good Friends Waste. There's nothing more that I want than for my good friends to be handling my waste, so awesome name guys! I also saw a woman with a novelty bike license plate that said BAD BOY. Hipster irony, I suppose. I also saw a super biker and a fixie rider nearly collide when the fixie guy salmoned down 15th at Euclid. Had they crashed into each other, enough energy would have been released to power a generator hub for 50 years. Eat your heart out, Enrico Fermi.
Back to the present, which was the past, but the nearer past. I'm riding down Q and that's fine and then I approach the North Capitol NEXUS OF DOOM (brought you by, I don't know, some chinese carry out place) and there's a bike lane and then it just stops and I know that the Met Branch Trail is around there somewhere, but there's absolutely no signage about how to get there. In fact, I know exactly where the MBT is and how to get there, but I was still simmering in my own sauces about the lack of a sign for some people that might not know how to make this connection. So, DDOT, what's the right way to go? What's the preferred route to get from eastbound Q to the MBT? Can someone please tell me or even better it, print some white letters and arrows on some green painted metal and hang it up thereabouts?
MBT to M and M to 4th and then 4th past H (if I were writing a play about H Street, I would title it A Desire Named Streetcar. I googled and Randall O'Toole already beat me to it. Sorry.) and then down to D and over. From 4th to 14th is roughly 10 blocks says math, but it always seems longer. From there it was pretty much home and easy, but I have to say that Constitution Avenue, which is 3 blocks from my house in a northerly direction, seems like it's so far away. East Capitol is such a limes, in both a real and and metaphorical way.

Ride In 3/12: Innumeracy doesn't count

2012-03-12T13:42:00.000-04:00

Spring break sounds like something they'd be worried about at Diamond Wire, but it affects me too. It's affecting me all week. Consider me affected. The primary effect of spring break on my work life is that it generally reduces the number of times during the week I hear from students, but it doesn't really impact my bicycle commute in one way or another, so I suppose it's outside the bounds of this blog. When a topic falls out of bounds, I blow my blogging whistle and stop the blog clock. First downs, unlike with college blogging, do not stop the clock. I've yet to figure out what constitutes a first down in the context of bike commuter blogging. This might mean that my offense is ineffectual. All this football mumbo-jumbo (which I believe is a cajun dish, but I'm not sure) is really out of season (and perhaps out of bounds, thus stopping the clock, something that the Federal Government did only to move it an extra hour ahead) and I should be instead trafficking in baseball metaphors since spring is nigh upon us. "Spring is nigh upon us" is what one of the workers at Diamond Wire said right before a box of springs fell from a high shelf, briefly crushing the workers below. Luckily, the springs rebounded (which is really more a basketball allusion than anything else) and the workers were able to escape out of (the) bounds of the springs. And that's the story of the true meaning of Spring Break.
If anyone is still reading, I'd like to apologize and now write about my bicycle commute, after which I might apologize again, for good measure. It was still a bit brisk this morning and I ended up wearing tights and gloves, in addition to other clothes, to protect my delicate flower self from the last grasps of winter coolness. I probably could've gone out with shorts and no gloves, but that's just not really my thing. For example, I don't like to leave my fingerprints on stuff.
I think I rode within sight of other bike commuters for the entirety of my trip. I once posited that the way you could tell a town is a bike town is if you cannot go a minute without seeing another bicyclist. I might need to revise that downward. It's heartening to see so many people out and I'll do my best not to complain about it. If you're new to bike commuting, or just want to freshen up on some bike commuter etiquette, I found this to offer some quite good advice. Read past the lube part to the good manners part. You don't have to smile and wave at other bicyclists if you don't want. Waving might be a little weird, actually. Nodding is ok. Making eye contact is fine, as is sort of just looking at them. Leering is pretty unacceptable in bike commuting, but in what instance is leering a good idea? "Hmm, this is an awkward social interaction. Let me leer my way out of it," isn't really something that's ever crossed anyone's mind. I hope. Avoiding eye contact is another thing you can do, but don't be weird about it or it seems hostile and like you're pointedly angry at someone. Like, for example, I'll deliberately make a point of avoiding eye contact with someone salmoning the wrong way down a bike lane. Their transgression means that they don't deserve to look at my beautiful eyes, so I will withhold them the pleasure! (Note: my eyes are just boring brown eyes. Nothing special. If you have especially beautiful eyes, then perhaps this tactic will be more effective.) Anyway, there's lots of ways to interact with fellow bike commuters, but I suggest, primarily, that you adopt the stance of "don't be a jerk to fellow bike commuters (or anyone really)" and that tends to work out.
From my home to the bottom of Capitol Hill, I rode behind a woman in a blue windbreaker. She seemed nice. Don't remember where she went. Maybe down 3rd street? Thereafter, it was a pretty lonely voyage, at least going my way. To pass the time, I decided that I would try to count the number of female cyclists as a percentage of the total I saw. I do this every once in a while because I don't believe the statistics. Counting is also ones of my hobbies. The first three bike commuters I saw this morning were women and the trend stayed at about 50 percent, but I lost track at 16 of 33, mostly because cyclists started passing me in clumps and I was no longer able to keep a running tally. So yeah, sounds pretty scientific.
When pedestrians and bicyclists slow down car traffic, the suggestion is to remove them from the roadway. When too many cars slow down car traffic, the suggestion is to expand capacity. So, in one instance, it's a demand-side solution and the other is a supply-side solution. Curious. I try not to think too much about things like this, but it's worth remembering sometimes that one person in a car and one person on a bike is the same number of persons, but the amount of space given and dollars spent on one is much greater than the space given and dollars spent on the other.And ironically, it's the person traveling with an extra couple of tons of stuff (like engine and doors and whatever's in the trunk and whatnot) that gets the lion's share of the resources. Frugality is not rewarded. It's like the bank bailout. Too big to fail. Weighty stuff.
Made it across town and up the hill without much incident. It was a little bit boring, but there's far worse things in the world than being bored when outside on a really nice day. Like being attacked by a pack of wolverines. And other, far less worse, stuff, too. Being bored while riding to work is a real luxury and something that doesn't happen if you're treating your morning ride like a workout. I don't recommend treating your morning ride like a workout anyway, since city streets don't really lend themselves to going fast for sustained periods of time. Or maybe it's just that I don't lend myself to going fast for sustained periods of time. Either way.

Ride Home 3/9: Temps Perdu

2012-03-11T13:33:00.002-04:00

Let us return once more to the hollow formalism and untrustworthy anecdota that is this blog. My remembrances of Friday's ride have been skewed by the passage of more than two nights of sleep, one day, and the government conspiracy to rob our clocks of a rightfully earned hour, so I cannot, as usual, attest for their veracity. Perhaps, though, the time elapsed has sharpened my memories and will allow me to cast of the insubstantial details and focus a more critical eye on those happenings that didn't wash away, so to speak. Or maybe I'll just do do the same thing I always do, which is write a bunch of things on notecards, smear peanut butter on them, throw them on the ground and write about the subjects written on the cards that Ellie the Poodle doesn't immediately abscond with. All writers have a "process."
Prior to leaving work, I saw my former boss's boss (she's still the boss of my former boss, who is still the boss of the people I used to work with, but no longer the boss of the people I currently worth with because I changed positions a number of months ago. I did see my current boss's boss early in the day and I even saw my boss's boss's boss around lunch time, but they're not the ones I tell this story about and only warrant an extended parenthetical). She said "I almost hit you on your bike the other day. You weren't wearing a helmet." First, thinking myself wry (but probably sounded like a ponce), I said "Thanks for not doing that." And then I apologized for not wearing a helmet and said that I normally do wear one, almost every day. I don't know if my response was in deference to our previously established hierarchical relationship or whether it actually reveals something about what I subconsciously think about helmet use. One probably shouldn't apologize for someone else almost hitting them, but there you go. Though, I don't remember anyone almost hitting me, so I don't know what that means either.
I remember not seeing very many bicyclists on Friday afternoon and remember thinking that that seemed odd. Maybe it's because I was on the road a little earlier than usual. I don't see too many people from my morning commute on my evening commute, especially near the beginning of my commute, but on Friday, I don't think I saw anyone from anyone's commute, except maybe a bunch of drivers, none of whom seemed in any way perturbed by exceeding the 30 mile per hour speed limit on Massachusetts. Time for a speed camera? Or would that just be entrapment? (Every time I see the word entrapment, I feel obligated to say "laser scene." Some of you will know what I'm talking about and others of you will roll your eyes.)
I saw a Car2Go on 11th. It was, like the car in the photo, a SmartCar. The differentiation point between Car2Go and Zipcar is that the former doesn't require you to reserve the car ahead of time (though I guess you can). You just get in and go, which makes it great for the mercurial and/or bank robbers. You still have to park it in an approved Car2Go parking space, so your getaway options might be limited. I think it'd be even better if the cars came with bike racks on the back, but you know, that's crazy. I don't know to what extent this will affect bicycling or bike commuting in DC, but my guess is that this will have no real impact.
I also took a test ride down the new New York Avenue bike lanes, but it would've taken me out of my way and I needed to go to the grocery store and taking the diversion would have led me in the completely opposite direction. Some day I'll find a reason to ride from roughly Mount Vernon Triangle to roughly the White House or reverse, but I haven't so far. I could totally see these lanes working for some one maybe commuting from the Memorial Bridge or the TR or from Foggy Bottom, but here's the issue:

Just the layout of this whole part is a big mess and I don't like it. Maybe it has something to do with the highways and stroads cutting off the bridges from the rest of the city. Oh well.
Any bicyclist who yells "incoming" before passing you is pretty badass. Or addled. Maybe a little both in this case.
If you bike on Penn, you really need to learn the order of the green lights. It's straight both ways on 7th, left turn from nothbound 7th to Penn, then left turn from eastbound Penn to 7th, then straight for both directions of Penn. You can remember this with the acronym 7SBDLNF7LEP7SPBD. Some people do it wrong and get in the way of a bus that's about to turn left from Penn. They "jumped"the green light only to find out the green wasn't for them. Don't ever assume anything. Either you know or you don't know, but you should never assume anything.
Here are some boy scouts.

I sort of think that if I bike past the Capitol and White House every day, I've got a pretty good chance to be in every middle school year this year as "that bike guy in the background of our class picture."
Taming of the Shrew at the Folger. To the best of my knowledge, PETA isn't protesting, but I don't know if real shrews are being used in the production.
Had one of those trips to the stores where I stumbled around for a while and didn't know what to get and had to call the Official Wife for guidance. You know, one of those trips. I ended up getting a bunch of stuff, including some tulips, before realizing that I failed as both a bike commuter and DC resident by not having any bags with me. I actually had to fork over a nickel for my plastic bag, which I think means that I've paid for the right to throw it directly into the Anacostia when I'm done with it. That's how the bag tax works, right? Anyway, I slung my plastic bag over my handlebars and held my tulips in my right hand and became a parody of myself as I biked home. I might also have become a parody of a Dutchman. Anyway, I made it home with no big bother and then the weekend happened and then I wrote this.

It's bad luck to blog on a Friday night. Maybe.

2012-03-09T19:32:00.000-05:00

And it's especially bad luck to blog on a Friday the 13th. Which, admittedly, tonight isn't. But nonetheless, I'm going to write up tonight's ride tomorrow and I don't plan to write up tomorrow's ride any time since that's not really my schtick, even when I do bike commute on a weekend, which is really quite rare. Maybe once or twice a year rare. Anyway, check back tomorrow or Sunday or Monday. Or not. Your call.

Hugs and kisses,
TFTS

P.S. Remember when I wrote I would start ending all posts this way but then didn't and you were really relieved because that's not the kind of relationship you're looking for with your local bike commute blog? Sorry.

Ride In 3/9: Burt Baccarat

2012-03-09T15:11:00.000-05:00

There's an important lesson to be learned about yielding the right of way to your fellow bicyclists when the situation calls for it and the lesson goes something like this: failing to yield the right of way to a fellow bicyclist when he's riding straight and you're turning right while also blowing through a stop sign is kind of a jerk thing to do and you never know when the bicyclist you've mistreated is a member of the very powerful #bikeDC bloggeratti, who might be desperate enough in his search for anything to write about that he might reference something that wasn't actually that big of a deal and about which he can remember no specific details. [Note: I'm not convinced that the #bikeDC bloggeratti is especially powerful, nor that it's even a real thing.] Accordingly, I've decided to endorse the 11th commandment of bike commuting: Thou shalt not be a jerk to a fellow bike commuter. I'd like to thank Moses and Ronaldo Reagan for the assist on this one. (For what it's worth, I don't have strong opinions on coveting, false idols or speaking ill of Republicans, fellow or otherwise.)
Windier and colder than I wanted it to be. I even wore gloves. Wind was especially whipping along Pennsylvania. Didn't seem to slow down the drivers, but this caravel was having a hard go of it. After seeing another driver make a u-turn across the bike lane, I think it's time to talk about some solutions to this fairly serious problem. I have a couple of ideas, one of which involves gators, but I think the most workable would be to simply install white bollards every 3 feet for the entire length of the bike lane. Space them wider than that and drivers will pull right through. Space them narrower than that and you'll probably have spent the entire city's bollard budget. Also, that wouldn't be necessary. This winter has shown that bollards can be removed, and fairly easily, so really, enough is enough. The Illegal u-turns are an absolute pandemic and it needs to be stopped before someone gets really grievously injured. And if the bollard thing is too exteme, I mean, DC was a swamp the judicious deployment of a dozen alligators, with the proper training and deputization, would also get the job done.
Good crowd at coffee this morning and some new faces too. Here's some information about the Ride on Washington and your opportunity to join the ride for its last couple of miles. You should try to look extra-fatigued so you can pretend that you camethe whole way from New York. (When people ask, just say "yeah, I rode from New York" and simply elide the "Avenue" part. Just don't do it on a Bikeshare bike in that case because that would totally blow your cover.)

Yes, this is a picture of a flyer. What?

If you'd like to support Pete (PedroGringo, Dirt, @I_am_dirt) in his fundraising effort for this ride , you can do so here. As of this posting, he's $87 away from his goal.
When we left coffee, Jon and I rode past the White House through the rather imposing security perimeter that smushes bicyclists and pedestrians together between metal barriers and gates and walls in a way that's pretty uncomfortable. This didn't stop another bicyclist from dinging his way through the crowd in a manner that I thought was a bit pushy and totally unnecessary. When there's that little space, I'm not sure that bicyclists should really expect the right of way. At the security bollards at Madison Place, a woman walked in front of me and was all like "thank you, thank you. thank you" for my not running her down. Is bicyclist behavior really that bad that such pleading and gratitude is considered necessary? Geez, guys. If it is, yikes.
Fine going on 15th, though there was a driver who blocked the lane at Rhode Island by not being able to fully pull into the driveway at that hotel. That was kind of annoying, but nothing worth losing sleep over. I remember being struck by the rather wide variety in bicyclist attire, ranging from those shivering in shorts to others sweating in winter coats. Why can't it just be spring? My calendar says spring. Sure, it's a calendar from the Diamond Wire Spring Comapny, but still. And for all of you season "literalists" out there, I'm fully aware that spring doesn't start until the Easter Bunny reads that "Pastel Proclamation." Like everyone else, I learned that in high school science class.
If I told you that I have a love-hate relationship with the last 3 miles of my commute, would you believe me? Would you have reason to doubt me? Are you that distrusting and am I that dishonest? It's slow and uphill and I can't say that I especially care for it, except for when I do. Some day I'll live closer to work and I'll look back fondly on these rides, but on windy days after a long week, I have a hard time enjoying it.
Saw this:

A question for these trying times.

It's a pretty good question and one fraught with meaning and symbolic importance, especially when written over the crossed-out animal avatar for a Christian holiday. Paganism, folks, is on the march in Cathedral Heights. Don't say you weren't warned.

Ride Home 3/8: Chicken tender is the night

2012-03-08T20:24:00.000-05:00

No one ever leaves work early on a nice day and thinks "maybe I'll take a roundabout bus trip home today." At least no one I know. But this is a thing the bike commuters do and since I'm a bike commuter, it's sometimes a thing that I do and it's something that I think you might want to do, assuming you're a bike commuter, and you don't do it already. If you're a bus commuter who does stuff like this, way to make the most of your bus fare! One of these days I'll take the D6 home and really luxuriate in the 17 hours it will take the run the length of the line. Allegedly, a 5:04 bus departing from Sibley arrives at Stadium Armory at 6:26. Yeah, right. For what it's worth, it's probably a 50 minute bike ride.
Anyway, I rode down Nebraska and through the neighborhood and down past MacArthur to the CCT. It's pretty suburban up that way, but the roads were fairly empty and I didn't have to contend with anyone trying to get their Saab home at 45 miles per hour on quiet residential streets. I did have to contend with speed bumps, which I also suppose have to contend with the speeding Saabs. No one thinks about what the speed bumps have to go through. Poor speed bumps.
The Capital Crescent Trail is named about Capital Crescent, who I believe was a burlesque dancer popular with congressmen in the 1950s. Or perhaps, it's named after it's shape as it runs from Silver Spring (sort of) through Bethesda (a city named after the mother of a 1950s southern congressman) and along the Potomac down into the District along Canal Road and to K Street, which is named after the letter K. It's a pleasant path and shaded and makes for a quick route that's essentially antithetical to the city streets that I'd normally take. Also, before 4 o'clock, it's the prime pathway for those hastening their senectitude, whether hastening it on foot or on bicycle. It's also rather melanin deficient. Did I just allude that it was full of old, white people? Well, I didn't elude it.
[The B story line on tonight's Dance Moms is the making of a beef jerky commercial for a meat store in Canton, Ohio. You cant/shouldn't make this stuff up. Or if you can, maybe you should be a producer for Dance Moms. Also, Chloe has hipster glasses. This warranted an "oh my God" from the Official Wife. And she rewound the DVR for me so I could see.]
The wind wasn't so bad on the CCT, but when I turned along the river down by the Kennedy Center, it really started picking up. I'm terrible at estimating windspeed or direction, because after all, I'm not a metal chicken, but I can tell you that the wind was sufficiently strong to make me go slower than I would have without it. I don't mind headwinds too much (because, really, what are you going to do?) and I especially didn't mind it today. Perhaps a bicyclist with some more pride in the power that he or she generates would be a bit more chagrined by moving forward at the pace of a metal chicken, but that's not me. I was just happy to not be on a bus.
It wasn't Bernoulli's Principle, I think, that caused me to almost fall off the trail and into the road upon exiting the tunnels along Rock Creek, but I'm pretty sure it was just the bluster of the wind recommencing. (Recommencing is what you do with you finish a Masters. Trust me- I work in higher ed). Along Ohio Drive, I saw a bunch of superbiker types probably leaving Hain's Point. Many of them had bicycle shirts that advertised either a branch of the military or a brand of alcohol. Good thing I blended in with my Coast Gaurd Reserve Reserve. Never reserve a reverse. Instead, re-serve it. Perhaps at a recommencement party. Also along Ohio Drive, I saw some guys playing cricket. I was nearly bowled over. That's a cricket pun. I'm the Brian Lara of bike commuter bloggers. I wondered how they bowled with it being so windies.
A Japanese tour group by the cherry blossoms. Sorry dudes. A couple weeks too early.
The Anacostia River Walk "trail" was pretty easy. The fish market smelled fishy, but what else is new? I decided to take the new 4th street, SW bike lane and here's what I have to say about that: at least, they're sort of wide. The new lanes (between I and School Street, not D) are easily double the width of the 34th street lanes. Is there no guidance as to the size of bike lanes? Not that I'm complaining. If the street is wide enough to accommodate a wider bike lane, I will gladly take it. And yes, the pavement and man hole covers are indeed terrible, but this is why I ride a steel cyclocross bike and not one made of toothpicks and mini-marshmallows. Or at least, I won't until they come with disc brakes.
There are sharrows on Jefferson, at least by the National Gallery. I don't know how far they go.
When I got to Safeway, a guy, who I believe had a French accent, asked me about my rear rack. Inside, at the checkout, a little girl tried to steal my cherry tomatoes before I was able to bag them. So, that's what happend at Safeway.
Friday coffee club tomorrow. Woo.

Ride In: 3/8 What to expect when you're expecting...a wolverine attack

2012-03-08T15:13:00.001-05:00

Word on the street is that the weather is nice. I'm disinclined to disagree with any word on any street, so let me confirm, for those of you read this from your subterranean bunkers, that this morning was exorbitantly pleasant and I met its warmth and sunshine with too many layers for the occasion, and found myself almost immediately uncomfortable. I make lemons out a lemonade, or something like that. I think that's called alchemy.
The nice weather inspired many to take their bicycles with them to work and the bike lanes saw their fair share of use, which to my mind, is not really enough. I want bike congestion, darn it! If this make me sound crazy, so be it. I won't be happy until the streets drip with chain lube, though that might make things slippery and cause an excess of gunk to build up on your rear cogs. Sometimes I wonder how a larger constituency of everyday bicyclists (people you use their bikes from real-life transportation) would actually impact the policies and politics of DC. The way I see it, and this is myopic and twittish, is that the residents of DC vote for DC politicians and if the residents of DC want slower streets and more walkable neighborhoods and bike lanes and the like and essentially want make it more difficult and slower for car commuters from other jurisdictions to enter DC, then we can pretty much do that, right? Congress would never let us impose a congestion tax, or at least not a monetary one, but can't the residents of DC essentially impose a other kinds of secret taxes on out-of-state drivers that essentially makes it really unpleasant to bring your car into DC. Like with speed cameras and parking tickets. Wait, are they doing that already????
Some things worth reading:
On the L & M cycletracks and other bike lane stuff
On Director of Planning and her Brompton (ok, the Brompton part is incidental)
The DC Bicycle Advisory Committee Meeting from last night

I have a plan for eighth graders and it's not "put all of them on a barge and sink it in the ocean." It's much more reasonable and it involves their school trips to DC and a national bicycle licensing scheme. Ok, not really licensing, but training. Step 1) Establish a national bicycle training scheme and make it part of school 2) Instruct eighth graders on bicycle operational and let them get some certificate for the completion of this training course 3) have them take their 'final exams' in Washington, DC when they come here on school trips. We'll associated patriotism and love of country with safe and proficient bicycle operation and this will be a great and totally feasible thing to do. Everyone can get a certificate and it'll have a bike and bald eagle on it and you can hang it up in your room or whatever. You're welcome, America.
I haven't encountered too many school tour groups yet, but they'll be here soon. I encourage you to be patient with them, especially when they're blocking bike lanes, which will invariably happen on every commute through the more touristy parts of town for the next 7 months. Might be worth switching up your route, but that's up to you.
I rode behind a woman who had a Globe Haul, sort of like mine, but blue and with an IGH. Rare to see another one in the wild. I also saw Jon, who probably also saw the woman, since she was right on front of me, but I doubt that her bicycle was of as much interest to him as it was to me.
Please yield the right of way to bicyclists turning from Pennsylvania to 15th, especially when those bicyclists have the green bike light.
I don't remember when I first saw this guy or where I last saw him, but this is a picture of a man who clearly cares about his bicycle and Brooks products. He's got a leather pant strap. I'm sorry- I mean, trouser strap.

One of the worst places to have your dog sniff another dog is in the middle of a cycletrack. I think they only teach that in advanced obedience classes. When this happened, luckily, it was Kyle leading the pack of cyclists coming the other way and he had the good sense to stop for the dogs. I hate to suggest that other bicyclists wouldn't make the same decision, but I could certainly imagine a scenario in which someone trying to preserve their momentum and SAVE PRECIOUS SECONDS swerves around the sniffing dogs and perhaps collides into me. Here's the thing, people who try to SAVE PRECIOUS SECONDS, you're on a bike. There's only so fast you're going to get anywhere. If you need to arrive at work 4 seconds faster than you would have otherwise and can only achieve this 4 second time difference by doing stupid things like swerving around sniffing dogs rather than slowing down for a bit, then maybe bike commuting isn't for you. You should try a jet pack. Those go plenty fast and are plenty reckless. Jet fuel is expensive, but time is money, right?
I worry about pedestrians walking into the street from out of view behind parked cars on R Street. Car traffic tends to get backed up and this creates the illusion that traffic isn't flowing. Except it is, in the bike lanes. Expect bicycles.
There was a guy on a road bike and he was wearing a red windbreaker and sneakers and he just absolutely left me in the dust riding up Massachusetts. For a while, I tried to keep up and I mostly succeeded, sort of, but then I just sat back and said "screw it." I actually said this, aloud. I can't say that he was objectively fast, but he was certainly faster than me. I watched him for a little while and saw driver after driver refuse to leave the right lane to pass him, even when the left lane was totally open. I don't really get that, but it's hard to say whether they were passing him too closely since, after only a bit, he was a hundred yards in front of me. I ended up settling in behind another bicyclist and I pretty much stayed behind her until I got to work. I wonder where fast guy went.

Ride Home 3/7: Please sir, I want some more (calvados)

2012-03-07T20:09:00.001-05:00

Alternate titles for this post included: Vicky Cristina Lionel Messi and Auld lan sin, the latter of which is an oblique reference to trigonometry and the former of which I excluded due to my general disdain of a certain Catalan football club. This is a sample of the behind the scenes, making-of "action" that no one asked for about a blog that barely anyone reads about a subject that's fairly alien to the experience of most people. So, yeah. If there's a method to my madness, it's behind the arras.
Bike commuters can be so dour. The few I see always seem to be so upset, barely even suggesting a smile or any kind of enjoyment. Me, well, I make the point of painting on scary clown make-up before every ride so people I encounter know that I'm happy and/or hellbent on criminalizing Gotham City. Or, maybe instead of that, I just try not to look terribly upset, since, after all, I am rather enjoying myself and, more or less, having a good time, in spite of the fact that I must ride alongside a number of people who don't seem to be doing the same. As we all know, the greatest imposition one can ever have is sitting on a plush seat and turning dinosaur liquid into forward momentum with a mere push of your foot. It's the worst! Far be it from me to suggest that bike commuters adopt a visage that doesn't accurately reflect their interiority, but perhaps I might suggest that bicycling isn't the worst-est thing and scowling isn't entirely necessary.
There's one of those signs along Mass that measures the speed of passersby and my goal is always to exceed the speed limit and make the illuminated numbers flash, but my other goal is to get mad at the drivers that do the same. I suppose I should try to somehow rationalize these feelings in one way or another, but I elect not to do this. Speeding, as a crime, is sort of a weird thing. It's not exactly Dostoevsky material or anything and I can't get too worked up about it, but it irks me when I'm bicycling, though, I suppose, only insofar as it actually seems to actually impact me. In short, drive your car over the speed limit, but don't do it too close to me. I'll be fine with that.
Plenty of bicyclists about and I pretty much rode behind one for much of the time I headed southwestward. On Mass, it was a guy with a rear rack but no fenders and on Q it was a girl with short red hair and earrings and a voice like the voice of Lydia DePillis, whom I once heard on the radio when I was listening to Kojo Nnamdi (That's oddly specific, says me, awkwardly). The only reason I heard her voice is because she cursed out some driver in front of her who drove for a good block with his car's right tires in the middle of the bike lane and then blocked the bike lane entirely in an effort to make a right turn onto 19th from Q. I don't remember what happened to her, though I do remember getting a "come on!" look from a driver who was temporarily slowed down by another driver, the latter of which was in front of the girl with the short red hair. I think that in many instances drivers get confused about who exactly is causing them to go slowly. SPOILER ALERT: a bicyclist can't go faster than the driver in front of him/her, so just because you see a bicyclist in front of you it doesn't mean that the person on the bicycle is the one that's causing your "not going fast enough" problem.
At 16th, we had one of those situations where there were a few bicyclists stopped a red light. Me, red head, some other dude and a guy on a fixed gear Surly who rode in circles rather than just unclip his Sidi and put his foot down, but as the light turned green, some lady decided to weave her way between all four of us even though there wasn't really enough space to do so so casually and it seemed rather rude. "Rude!," I would have said, had I the gall to chastise her. It's generally not a good idea to do rude things to bicyclists, since as a class, we're very petty and might blog about it in a petty way many hours later. She turned on 15th and the red head turned at the JCC and the fixed-gear Surly guy turned at 14th and I was by my lonesome on Q until 11th, when I was again by my lonesome since I'm the only bicyclist who bikes down 11th, except for the times when others do so.
There's always another couple of bike commuters on Penn and one of them rode behind me, but I didn't look back, so I have no details to report regarding him or her. I can report that the wrongly placed sign at 4th street is now dangling upside-down, but still incorrectly placed.
Many bicyclists, but even more black SUVs, by the Capitol and even a superbiker on East Capitol. (The Capitol, from Penn, seems to be the same askance as the Budai Var is from the 2-es villamos [2 tram]. Tonight's the first night I've ever realized that). I wonder where he was heading. Maybe on his way back from Hains Point. He did the whole hand signal thing and I smiled a little when he told me, through the flick of a wrist, that he would be turning left. Thanks, superbiker. For me, it was the same route home as always, but I was granted the unique pleasure of seeing #bikeDC agitator Dave, biking to pick up his daughter from school or some kind of activity. I asked, but I didn't quite hear what he said. Anyway, DC is a pretty small town and if you ride a bike, it's even smaller. It's always nice to run into someone you actually know.
Lastly, quinoa. And, omnia gallia in tres partes divisa est. Sorry.

Ride In 3/7: The Co-opted Co-Op Board

2012-03-07T13:44:00.001-05:00

On one of the nicest mornings in some time, I forswook (a combination of forswore and forsook and a very hip new portmanteau in certain literary circles. Same who forswooks something is called a forswookie, which is what you'd also call a tetrad of Chewbaccas) riding my bicycle from my home to my work place and maybe I shouldn't even write a blog post because in a lot of ways, that seems like cheating. I did, however, mutli-modalize my commute and eventually hopped on a bicycle (not literally- the hoping part. The bicycle was a literal bicycle. I know this because it has "forswook" written on the side) for the final mile of my commute from Tenleytown to my workplace. According to the Bikeshare statistics (I follow bikeshare statistic closely because I play Fantasy Bikeshare with a group of friends. It's a complicated game with a lot of money riding on it and yes, that's a pun), I rode for .74 miles and it took me 4 minutes and 48 seconds from dock to dock. Here's my route:
I rode down the sidewalk at Wisconsin and crossed the street at Nebraska. I rode down Nebraska to Ward circle and went right onto Massachusetts. I crossed the street at the crosswalk and docked my bike. I really wish that I had Strava-ed it. It was epic.
My mutli-modalism got me thinking about two things. The first thing is the epic dollar bill vs. dollar coin ad battle going on in the Metro. Why did no one tell me about this?

The second thing was about "last mile" bike commutes, which is admittedly more within the scope of this blog. It's especially within the scope of the blog today, since that was pretty much my bike commute today. It's not within the periscope of this blog because, unfortunately, I don't commute by submarine. Anyway, what I'm trying to say about what I'm trying to think about "last mile" bike commutes is that it's exactly these kinds of bike commuters we should aim all of our collective advocacy. People who are willing to ride 5-10 miles are pretty much already convinced as to the utility of the bicycle as the means of getting around. I think focusing efforts of building good infrastructure for "last mile" commuters (and by infrastructure, I think I mean Bikeshare station and bike lanes and such) is really tantamount. And then all you need to do is set about convincing people that taking a bike for the "last mile" isn't that hard. I don't know about the convincing part, which might or might not be hard, but riding a bike for five minutes isn't very difficult and on a nice day, it sure beats waiting for a shuttle bus. Maybe even on a really crappy day too. I suppose it depends how much you dislike shuttle buses.
I sort of lost track of where I was going with all this, so I'm just going to segue into something else. According to this article, here are DC's top 13 private employers (as of 2009).

Georgetown University
George Washington University
Washington Hospital Center
Children's Medical Center
Howard University
Georgetown University Hospital
American University
Fannie Mae
Catholic University of America
Providence Hospital
Howard University Hospital
Sibley Memorial Hospital
George Washington University Hospital

By my rudimentary knowledge of geography and the metro system, GWU, GWU Hospital, Howard, Howard Hospital, CUA are essentially located at or within walking distance of Metro stations. That leaves 8 other top private employers not at Metro stations. But some of them have Bikeshare: GU and GU hospital, Washington Hospital + Children's (new station!) and AU. And each of these locations is within about a mile of a Metro station. So, that's good. Bike lanes and other improvements should be built between the Metro and these locations. This seems like a no-brainer. But this still leaves us with Providence, Sibley and Fannie Mae.

Providence Hospital is about one mile away from the Brookland and Fort Totten stations. This seems like a good candidate for a Bikeshare station (as does the Fort Totten Metro, but that's a different story) and associated bike improvements.
Fannie Mae is less than a mile away from Tenleytown and only a little farther from Van Ness and would also benefit from a Bikeshare station. It's on Wisconsin Avenue, which, in my opinion, would benefit from a road diet.
Sibley is probably the most isolated of the private employers, but it's still only about 2 miles away (a 10 minute bike ride) from the Metro, which is a totally bikeable distance. A signed bike route (maybe through the backways and residential streets) and a Bikeshare station would definitely a welcome addition.

So, there you go. Three of DC's top 13 private employers aren't connected to Bikeshare (nor the network of bike lanes) in any real way and I think that's a shame. It also seems pretty easily rectifiable. I guess the larger point I'm trying to make (other than dollar coins!) is one about inducing demand and making bike commuting, at least for part of the trip, much more viable. For your reference, here's the Bikeshare station map and DC bike infrastructure map, if you're inclined to do your own analysis or are just curious about these or other related things.

I know that not every doctor or fancy university administrator is going to stop driving in his BMW and switch to biking, but these places employ a wide array of people in many capacities, many of whom are paying a high percentage of their salaries just to be able to get to work. Make their "last mile" cheaper and easier and maybe that promotes an entirely new way of thinking about commuting. I don't really know.
I just think that bike infrastructure and improvements not only needs to be thought about in terms of building a network, but it also needs to consider where people are coming from and where they actually want/need to go. Bike lanes need to go where people need to go and if they don't, then they're not useful, no matter how many miles you put in. There's also a whole social justice/equity angle to consider, but you can consider that at your own leisure. Or not, if you don't like those sorts of things.

Will be back on the Cross Check for the ride home and, most likely, the evening post will return to the usual ranting/references to corn chips. Namaste.

Ride Home 3/6: Quakers! Shakers! Boilermakers!

2012-03-06T20:55:00.002-05:00

I work on a college campus, but it's not really rambly. It's not really that far to get from one end to the other and the walk from my building to the building that houses my bicycle (there's a whole separate building just to house my bike. It's amazing. Itt has classrooms and offices and stuff, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly for my bike) during the day isn't more than a three minute walk away. Nonetheless, it was just too far, so I decided to take Bikeshare, which is but 45 seconds away. I recognize that this is no Sophie's choice. Whether I walk back to my indoor bike parking near the locker room and showers or whether I take Bikeshare from the nearby station is a kind of choice reserved for only the most spoiled of us. I'm glad to be in that very small subset.

The primary reason I took Bikeshare (aside from the 2 minutes in walking time that I simply did not want to do) was because I was meeting up with some people downtown (including the Official Wife, woo!) for a bikey happy hour and I figured that taking CaBi would give me more options for the second part of the trip. The "more options" basically means Metro, which we ended up taking, but more on that later. (I guess. It's not a "I blog my Metro ride" blog or anything, but I'm willing to branch out.)

Caution tape. It's back.

Roughly 7 miles away.

I chose one of the newer CaBis, with the solid front rack. Always choose new CaBi over old CaBi. They tend to ride slightly better. And they're less scuffed and I'm just really vain and don't want to be seen on a scuffed bicycle.

It was a nice night for a bike ride home (good thing most are because I don't think sleeping in my office would very comfortable), and though my fingers were a tad cold, I wasn't overly put out. At least, not by the weather. I was put out, a bit, by a gigantic tow truck towing an equally gigantic dump truck. It was like the Devastator of trucks, except that Devastator is already the Devastator of trucks. It was super huge and one of those reminders that "sharing the road" is a sometimes preposterous idea. My idea of "sharing" was staying the fuck out the way because I'd rather not be flattened, crushed, maimed, devastated, or in any other way, brought to some sad end by the driver of a vehicle that weighed more than my house (the truck, not the driver, who seemed of average weight, at least based on what I saw of his elbow). And mission accomplished, but not like in that Iraq way, but in the real way where I actually stayed out of harm.

A little down the hill on Mass, I decided to get over the sidewalk, mostly because I don't ever feel comfortable on a CaBi descending a little but more slowly than I'd prefer. The sidewalk isn't great and I was worried about getting a tree branch to the eye. This is why all bicyclists should be required to wear goggles. Either the swimmer kind or the nutty professor kind. Your call.

For some time on lower Mass, I was behind a bicycling woman who was talking on her cell phone. This is always weird. Her phone-talking prevented her from alerting pedestrians to that fact that she was about to pass them too closely. That's a serious abnegation of duty. My ding envelope only extends so far, but I did what I could.

I saw a woman biking in tights that were patterned with a Jackson Pollack-type design. I also saw a guy who was wearing a shiny, silvery helmet that could best be described as Buck Rogers.

Q gave way to 15th (it didn't really give way. I just turned) and 15th was fine, but there were all sorts of police cars and flashing lights and backed-up car traffic and hubbub for reasons that I still don't fully understand. Perhaps it was a suspicious package. In any case, the combination of flashing lights and bad traffic always results in a terrible mess for bicyclists, the guppies of the fish tank that is the city.

I approached Lafayette Square and there were more sirens and blocked off roads and I asked a police officer if I could turn left and head down H and she didn't seem to have a problem with this, though I didn't really understand what she said and I hesitated a little because I didn't want to have my CaBi shot out from under me, like in the worse episode of Gunsmoke ever. H was empty for two blocks, but the traffic picked up again after 14th, but that's where I docked, so it wasn't a big deal.

Here are some bikes that I saw when walking to meet the Official Wife.

I'm not sure if there's anything remarkable about them, but I was bored and I figured taking pictures of things would be a good way to pass the time. Here, for example, are some cars:

And some bike lanes:

New York Avenue, before 13th.

They're new.

And here's a restaurant where they had some professional cycling on one of the tvs in the bar:

You can't see it.

Anyway, downtown was a mess of drivers and pedestrians and bicyclists and everyone broke the rules and hated each other and seemed miserable. Some drivers didn't make it through an intersection (I forget which one) before the crosswalk light was activated and a bunch of us ended up the middle of the street prior to the driver being able to get out of the crosswalk. The driver decided that the presence of us pedestrians (Is the Walking Dead a show about pedestrians? I've never seen it) wouldn't be enough to stop him from driving forward an angry man smacked the car and yelled something like "Don't kill us!" (It wasn't that, but something like it). Another guy, walking the other direction, responded to the angry man, snidely, "You don't have to hit a car. He's trying to drive, you're trying to walk. Geez" (or something to that effect) and this is what counts as civic discourse in the crosswalk. Pedestrians have very little class solidarity, it seems.

Happy hour, while brief, was great and I enjoyed seeing everyone. Apparently, I missed others who arrived after we had left. Next time.

We decided to Metro home and I'm not really a Metro expert and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten everything I've ever known about how to comport myself on the Metro. Other than standing on the right, which I know how to do. It was crowded, but we waited an extra minute for the next train, which wasn't crowded. So that worked out. I saw some people holding the doors, which is another thing one isn't supposed to do. Ok, I guess I know the two things you're supposed to know if you ride the Metro. But those are just basics. I also learned from the Official Wife that it was a good idea to move to a certain end of the train (the front end) as that would be less crowded and put us closer to the exit at our home station. Here's some Metro ambiance:

A poster for Game Change.

Dollar coins. C'mon, America.

Some conference.

And then it was three blocks of walking and we were home. Huzzah, multi-modalism.

Ride In 3/6: O the goats in John o' Groats

2012-03-06T12:37:00.001-05:00

When I wake up ten minutes earlier than usual, I have the funny habit of using the extra time to fiddle with my bicycle. This morning I lubed my chain and I inflated my tires a little bit more, though I'm not sure it was totally necessary. I managed to curtail myself from doing anything more and that's probably for the best, though I'm not totally sure what else could have been undertaken. Perhaps I could have adjusted some bolt or nut or something. That sounds vaguely mechanical.
For whatever reason, I decided that I would ride to work in normal people clothes in place my what-has-become usual winter bicycling attire. Wearing the same-ish clothes day in and day out and riding on the same-ish bike day in and day out and taking the same-ish route day in and day out with the same-ish weather day in and day out at about the same-ish time day in and day out and seeing the same-ish people day in and day out has a way of getting repetitive and this repetition gets a little tiresome (See what I did there?). I don't mind wearing normal people clothes on my ride in, especially on colder days, but I'm not committed to making this commitment every day. I'll never be cycle sheep. (Oh, it's cycle chic? I won't be that either. But if you're cycle chic and like to ride bikes on the weekend, along a river even, then you should do this. Remember: urban-functional, contemporary and edgy (or everything that DC architecture isn't). Best of luck to these riders if their route takes them along the zoom-zoom fest that is the Mount Vernon Trail. Expect angry superbikers.
I saw someone undocking a CaBi at Lincoln Park. So much for surreptitious undocking.
The construction along East Capitol is still taking place and the sundry trucks and support vehicles extend for more than two blocks, blocking the bike lane. I think it's sidewalk replacement. It'd be ironic if it were for bike lane restriping. Speaking of which, check out Lauren's comments about NY Ave bike lanes. That's some intrepid reporting.
Does the location of the Pennsylvania Avenue cycletrack (in the center of the other traffic lanes, rather than on the sides of them) make me less inclined to turn on one of the cross streets to head north rather than waiting until the end of the track at 15th? Or is it the connection between two pieces of protected bike infrastructure that shapes my decision? These are the questions I ask myself when I'm trying to come up with something to blog about. Though, I sort of do want to know the answers. I'd think that in center-lane cycletracks would create a sort of path dependency, but I don't know. Maybe this is in one of those DDOT studies. Speaking of which, it's almost spring and that means the M Street cycletrack should be on its way...I mean, at least if my money orders made it to the right people. (Too soon? Not soon enough?)
Do a road bike and bikey clothes make someone ride a certain way or does a style and attitude towards riding dictate a certain kind of accessorizing? This is a real chicken and egg problem, sort of like my breakfast chicken tacos. If we were all forced to riding big heavy upright bikes (by law, for some reason. Perhaps because it's the Hunger Games...?), would people ride less aggressively? Or conversely, if we were required to ride skinny-tired road bikes, would every ride become a training ride? [And what amendment to the Constitution would allow this sort of legislative trampling of our individual freedoms? Where's the ACLU?] The interplay between bike selection and rider behavior is, to my mind, an interesting one, but it seems like a complicated relationship that requires a much greater deal of thinking than this forum allows. There should be a TED talk.
Why don't cowboys wear helmets? It seems dangerous and as we all know, the only prescription for potential danger is foamed head covering. Imagining the iconic figure of the American west with a Giro in place of his Stetson makes me laugh. Some other people who might should wear helmets:

Italian cruise ship passengers
People who shop at Home Depots in areas that are prone to earthquakes on account of falling tools and whatnot.
NASCAR fans (in-person attendees)
NASCAR fans (at home, in case of HD tv)

These are just some suggestions. I also recommend that everyone at all times wears a flame-retardant suit/sweater vest because only simply never knows when things might catch on fire. Safety first. .

The last 1.3 miles (and I know this because there's a sign) of my commute are the ones that I'd most like to skip. I start losing patience by that point and have thought all the things that I'm going to think (my brain just flicks on a Doogie Howser rerun at that point) and I start to feel hot and a little uncomfortable. I haven't really figured out a good way to avoid reaching this cut-off point, but if I do, I'll gladly share. Counting other bicyclists help, just as a way to keep distracted, but by this point, I've normally already seen everyone I'm going to see. It's sort of a dead zone between Wisconsin and Ward Circle on Massachusetts, though I suppose there are pedestrians that I could gawk at. For the most part, they look like college kids. Sometimes I think about how annoying it must be for the neighbors to live near this institution that I pass that has these loud weekend events with music and hundreds of people from outside the neighborhood taking up all the good parking spots and where alcohol is served to minors, but I've never heard anyone really complain about Church of the Annunciation, so I guess crowds, loud music, out-of-state drivers and underage drinking doesn't really both them. Oh.

Ride Home 3/5: Upside down upside down cake

2012-03-05T20:45:00.001-05:00

My habit on Monday evenings has been to write some elaborate lie in italics at the beginning of a farmed-out guest post, as I have been unable to write posts on account of my having to attend court-ordered Liars Who Write in Italics Anonymous classes. But tonight my class got out early (or did it?) and I was able to make it home before too late an hour and I feel like I can muster up something of the usual quality, which, admittedly, has been slipping of late. Perhaps it's a factor of my writing up bike commutes for more than a year, perhaps it's the Quaaludes (Just kidding. Say no to drugs everybody). Anyway, I'm going to stop the "forward" now and transition back to less slanted text.

Here's a situation that happens almost every evening commute and I don't know what to do about it. Massachusetts Avenue is two lanes in each direction. At the intersection with 39th/Idaho (it's confusing how sometimes three streets all intersect, but these things happen, I guess. I mean, I don't lose sleep over it or anything), I frequently get stuck in the right lane at the red light. The traffic on Mass in the other direction gets the green light first, so we all wait. During the waiting, it sometimes happens that a driver pulls up behind me. In the right lane in front of me, not immediately, but a little farther down the road, the right lane turns into a parking lane. At the green light, I go. And the car in the left lane goes. And the car behind me goes, and then gets really close to my rear wheel and then pulls out to the left to change lanes/pass me while we're in the intersection. It's this latter part that I don't especially enjoy. I normally take the lane (and this really isn't a big deal since the lane is about to end for cars anyway), but that doesn't seem to help since that just puts me more in the path of a driver trying who wants to move to the left to get around me. I feel like I've got two options and both of them are jetpacks. The third is crumpling up into a little ball and rocking myself to sleep. Ok, those aren't really my only options, but it just worries me that some day and impatient moron is going to clip me in his (or her. There are lady morons as well) haste to pass. This preoccupation, apparently, bothers me enough to write rather lengthily about it. But what's a blog if not a forum in which to air grievances (Air Grievance is the national carrier of Northern Ireland) and/or post captioned pictures of cats?
Fun fact about bike lights in DC: (This is at least true according to the WABA pocket guide. I doubt the law has changed, but you can check the code to verify if you want) If you ride at night, you're required a front light and a rear reflector, but not a rear light. So all of you morons (and lady morons) who are riding with only a rear blinky are BREAKING THE LAW. So, if you care about stuff like that, you should stop doing that and get a front light. You can keep the rear blinky because that's a good idea.
Side note: in the course of finding out this fun fact, I've discovered a totally new and hilarious 'fun fact.' Check out the second hit when I googled "dc bike laws"

The 50 States Ride will get a rise out of you.

It would be nice if pedestrians would at least look up when you ring your bell to let them know that they oughtn't jaywalk into you. Stopping would be nice, but acknowledgement would be good, too.
I was riding about an hour later than my usual commute time and I think there were more bicyclists out than when I normally ride home. Chatty, too. I sawa bunch of people riding and talking and having a good time of it. It's not even nice out yet. Bike commuting definitely has the potential for being a more sociable way to get home, especially if you're riding with someone you know. No one likes when you talk on the metro, even if it's to your best (or imaginary) friend, so if you want to talk and stuff, try biking. (That sounds persuasive. I bet thousands of people are now going to start bike commuting).
DDOT, are you out there? It's me, Brian. Can you please fix the sign at 4th Street NW? It says no u-turns, but it should be no left turns or u-turns. I really don't want to get hit by a driver. Someone make that turn (and almost into me) every freaking night. It's a simple fix. I just don't want to get wrecked in the interim.
My ride from Tysons made me miss commuter racing (in a way) and I tried to catch up with the guy in front of me riding up past the Capitol. He had a good head start, but I pretty much did, at least on the hill part, but then it flattened out and he was able to once again easily outpace me. I eventually caught up when we both got stopped at a light on East Capitol. I'm pretty sure I never actually came close enough to him during our "race" for him to realize that we were "racing," so that made me marginally less embarrassed about this whole affair. That's probably for the best. I think a good rule of thumb when "racing" someone is to never catch up to them. This normally isn't a problem for me. That way it's not a big deal an no one feels bad.

Ride In 3/5: Vegan Pineapples

2012-03-05T12:19:00.001-05:00

My usual routine is to eat lunch and then blog, but today I'm doing something different. I know that all of you read this for the "behind the scenes" action that I somehow let slip, like whether Dance Moms is playing or if I'm getting mayonnaise on my keyboard and not for the actual bicycle-themed content. Tales from Tales From The Sharrows, my meta-blog, full of blogging criticism in blog form, is forthcoming. But for now, I'll stick with the same theme as always, namely commuting by bicycle in the District of Columbia. And by theme, I think I mean content. I don't know- I'm not really an expert.
Seemed quieter than usual for a Monday. Perhaps everyone was still at their ski chalets or maybe I got a slightly earlier start than the people who normally drive through my neighborhood. One or the other.
For such a popular bikeshare station, you think I'd see more people undocking from Lincoln Park in the morning. Must be done surreptitiously. Surreptitiousness undocking is also something that they teach in the Navy.
On occasion, bike lanes can be blocked by construction equipment and cones and this was the case this morning. Unlike a far more conscientious member of #bikeDC, I failed to alert my fellow bicyclists of this occurrence. I think using the twitter machine to inform others about bike traffic conditions, so this was a big fail on my part. I also ended up riding on the WRONG SIDE OF THE CONES for about 10 feet, so I expect the cops to come storming through my office door any minute now. I'd like to personally apologize to the cones and I only hope that the judge will be lenient.
I rode past a bunch of people doing sit-ups on the Capitol lawn. I don't know if that's a metaphor for anything or maybe some kind of performative protest, like something Vaclav Havel would do. Maybe bracing oneself to be punched in the gut by Congress? Or explaining how the middle class is "crunched" and how "Joe Six Pack" can't catch a break? Or maybe it's just type-A DC workout weirdos who like doing sit-ups in the middle of their run. In either case, I'm surprised the state security services or the Architect of the Capitol didn't immediately put a cease to it. That grass is not for using! It's for looking at when you park your car in the copious surrounding parking.
Much of my ride on Penn was spent behind a guy wearing grey cotton sweatpants. He also had a Patagonia backpack. I don't have much else to offer in the way of observation, except that he, properly, didn't block any of the crosswalks with his bicycle at stop lights. So, he wins TFTS Bike Commuter of the Morning, which isn't a real prize and has no honorarium. So, maybe he should have gone for something more lucrative, like a Nobel for Chemistry, but there's only so much one can do while riding a bike to work. Speed bumps really screw up your titrations.
Some new bike lanes on New York Avenue. I stopped and took some bad pictures. In the time of my stopping, at least three other bike commuters came riding down the lane, so I think that they're working. I don't know how far east they extend. I would hope until 11th, maybe 9th?

They're not fully striped yet. I believe that they're part of the "catch-up" bike lanes that weren't put in last year. A welcome addition to downtown, but they're not exactly part of a network. They don't intersect with any other bike lanes (unless they extend to 9th and intersect with the bus-bike lane, which isn't a real bike lane and anyone who tells you as much is a liar) and while they might be useful to some people, since they're not connected with other bike lanes, there's not really a synergistic overall effect. I mean, don't get me wrong. I love seeing bike lanes on streets. I would just love it more if they didn't end after 3 blocks. Bike lanes shouldn't just be there to just be there ( though I sort of think sharrows should), but they should actually help people get to where they want to go.

Think about it. You're riding eastbound on New York Avenue from 15th. There are no bike lanes on H, so you skip that. I only runs west, so that doesn't help you either. And there are no bike lanes on K. So, unless you were riding to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, why not just take G (which already has lanes)? Heading westbound, they make a little more sense. I could see someone riding down 11th taking New York, but I'm not really sure where they're going after that. Maybe Foggy Bottom. Anyway, if you're one of the people who might use these lanes, let me know where you're going and how they help you. For what it's worth, I'm not pointing this out to call for less needless infrastrcuture, but instead for more.
I think the timing of the traffic lights on R street makes me miss much of the crosstown bike traffic. Whenever I ride it across from 15th, I'm by myself or maybe see one or two other people. Today I saw some guy at 16th and there was a woman who also rode up behind me, but then it was no one until Dupont when I encountered another guy, whose bike has a really squeaky chain and too flat tires.
I decided during my ride up Massachusetts that I really don't understand bikelash (bike backlash) and that there's a longform article to be written about it. I mean, other than this one. In fact, complete the opposite of this one. It's entitled Sometimes a Bike Isn't Just a Bike. It's one part bike, one part Yglesias, one part Katie Roiphe and 8 parts total bullshit.

Real wages have been stagnating for the last 30 years. Likewise, there is greater participation in the labor force by women. Also, multiculturalism and a the gay rights revolution. There has been a decline in the number of manufacturing jobs and a rethinking of the social compact that allowed post-war cooperation between management and unionized labor. Furthermore, the 'alienation of labor' vis-a-vis the molding of man and machine in industrial production has created a situation whereby masculinity is defined in terms of mechanical production. However, the paradigm shift created by higher fuel prices and globalization, has created a different situation in which industrialization has been supplanted as the primary means of self-identification and consumerism has overpowered a certain "Yankee thrift" as the defining characteristic of the modern American. So, that being said, one cannot escape the "idiom of power," through which one determines self-worth and value within society. In short, Don Draper, the stand-in for mid century masculinity, would never ride a bicycle. The bike commuter of post-Clinton America is Michael Bluth, scion of a criminal family that made "wealth" through the "production" of McMansions. All of this underscores the following equation:

Offhsoring industrial production + consumerism = driving as substitute for "End of Men"

Declinism + ("death of irony" - "idiom of power") * gas prices/Elizabeth Taylor in Giant = bike commuting.

I feel like that accurately sums things up pretty much. The combination of everything with everything else divided by contemporary tv shows and old movies pretty much explains why bike commuters get the short end of the stick. Pretty sure that The Atlantic is interested, but I'd be willing to shop it around once I'm done with the whole thing.

Ride Home 3/2: 1 Contact

2012-03-02T21:07:00.006-05:00

Another ride home in normal people clothes and yet more rain. The result: my jeans got wet. So, I cried for like 75 hours and I'm totally distraught and I'll never get over it because being wet for only a little bit of time is the worst thing that could ever happen to befall anyone and is also the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind. Or, maybe it wasn't really that bad. It only rained a little. It's hard to keep track of the emotional valence I'm supposed to have about these things. That's the last time I get a back-alley lobotomy.
I have grown increasingly confident with riding in the rain, perhaps because I've done more of it or perhaps because of those Tony Robbins tapes. In either case, I've pretty much learned how much room I need to brake and how fast I can go without being wobbly or what things on the road to avoid. So, good for me, I guess. Part of my ride on Mass, most of it actually, was on the sidewalk on account of some backed up car traffic and my willingness to avoid it. For the first time ever, I actually rode the sidewalk around Sheriden Circle and cut my way across 23rd and managed the whole thing without many terrible consequences. SPOILER ALERT: I was surprised by that, since it's an intersection of DOOM. I thought I was really gaining on this bicyclist in front of me but it turned out that he was riding towards me with a red blinky mounted on his handlebars.
A cotton hooded sweatshirt in a dark color, while a perpetual marker of alt-coolness, makes for terrible bike attire for rainy days. The guy behind me who was wearing one looked cold.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: anyone who says "I just want them to enforce the laws for everybody no matter whether they're biking, driving or walking" is lying. That's just not true. Traffic law is a morass of things people ignore every single day. Enforce the law on someone who honks their horn? Enforce the law on every person who speeds? or jaywalks? Enforce the law if someone doesn't come to a complete stop? Turn without signaling? Double-park in a bike lane? Hell, drive with two tires in a bike lane? Wipers without lights? Pick any banal traffic law. No one really wants "them" to just "enforce the law no matter what."All the laws? All the time? For all violations? Really? Are you sure?
Q street was mostly devoid of bicyclists. Saw another one around R and 13th, but she crossed to the other side of the street for some reason and waited at the curb to cross. Maybe she was going to ride up 13th. I don't know. This is the second time that this has happened to me recently, so I don't know if this is a cool new game that everyone is playing (Hasbro presented "Avoid TFTS") or maybe there's just some special allure about leaving a bike lane to cross the street from the crosswalk. Whatever.
I stuck on Q to 7th, after riding behind another bicyclist for a while (I remember very little about her other than her pashmina, which I could best describe as, a pashmina of indeterminate color). 7th is fine for a while, but like 11th and sundry other streets, the bike lane just stops after a while. THIS IS NOT A BICYCLE NETWORK.
The reason for my detour was to check out the new Bicycle Space, which can best be described as "not quite fully set up yet." It's really only their first day, so within a few more, even more will be out on display. Nonetheless, here are some photos:

I got the grand tour (bicycle joke?) from Jordan. It's going to be a really cool space once it's all done and radically different from the other shops in the area. I encourage you to check it out and buy a couple of bicycles. (Note: Bicycle Space is not a paid endorser of this blog. It's just my favorite bike shop)
7th from the shop was crummy. At 7th and New York, I sort of ran out of space between the sidewalk and the travel lane and wasn't exactly on either and was passed closely first by a black SUV and then by a taxi. An Orange taxi. I decided to get off and 7th and took G (maybe?) to 6th and rode that to E and took E over to Union Station, through the craters and then Mass and through (not around) Stanton Park. This is, I think, the first time I've actually ridden through the park. The park consists of an equestrian statue, some benches, grass and a kids playground. Luxe. (For DC parks, it actually sort of it)
I had to go to the store, so I did that, and there pretty much wasn't anything exciting about the ride there or my time in the store unless you think that my walking around aimlessly with some kale trying to figure out what else goes with kale is exciting. Note: we didn't even eat the kale. I think it's still on the counter.
Until Monday.
Hugs and kisses,

TFTS

PS: From now on, I'm ending all blog posts with "hugs and kisses."
PPS: When did I adopt epistolary sign offs? This is a blog, not a letter.

Ride In 3/2: March, of the Penguins

2012-03-02T14:46:00.000-05:00

Cold enough to wear gloves, but not cold enough to keep them on, even after deciding to put them on after leaving #fridaycoffeeclub.
I think this post will be impressionistic than anything else. That means that I'm going to dab paint on my computer screen, so don't look at the post from too close otherwise you won't see the picture for the brush strokes. I'm the Degas of bike bloggers, but mostly in that my posts frequently muse on the nature of dancers moms. So, kiss narrative goodbye. Not that there was ever very much to begin with.
Giving a wide berth when passing another bicyclist seems like a nice thing to do, but sometimes it feels like it's patronizing. You don't smell or anything. I'm just trying to be nice.
Sunglasses are good, but I don't think I'll need to wear them until summer. Moonglasses: not a real thing.
Some people really look tired when they're riding their bikes. I saw a guy who looked really beat. It's my goal on my commute to never really exert myself more than absolutely necessary. I don't think this is the goal of others, some of whom I believe are using their bicycle as a means of exercise. I'm much more likely to use my bicycle as a means to convey beer or tacos. Well, not tacos because DC has subpar Mexican food. But you get the idea. I think that more people would be more happy if they made the transition from thinking about a bicycle as a workout tool (a lot of bros in gyms are workout tools) to thinking about it as an easy and essentially free way to get to and from places where beer and/or coffee is served. Or work, I guess.
Let's hurry up on reopening E Street. Thanks.
I thought this was interesting. I also thought this was good. And these are pictures of lemurs. Did anyone click through only to find out that I actually did just link to pictures of lemurs and it wasn't a joke in any real way?
I predict double the bike traffic for 15th once the M street cycletrack is done. I predict no L street cycletrack, ever. I predict DDOT "studying" M Street and determining that it can be a two-way track. I'd like to predict that I'll be proved wrong.
There's a pretty steady stream of bike commuters, even after 9. I guess work start times are pretty variable. I wonder what time of the morning is the one in which the most local bike commuters are on the road. Maybe 8:37? Anyone got a guess? (There's no way to know, is there? Aside from massive self-reporting, which I think is beyond the organizational scope of even the 37th most popular bike commuter blog in DC)
The default position of any cyclist really needs to be "I will anticipate having to stop at stop signs and red lights." If you want to proceed with caution thereafter, do what you will, but I just don't know about people who seem to have the exact opposite default position, which is "I plan to run this stop sign/light, unless I absolutely can't." A question of perspective, I guess.
Since changing pedals, my bike seems to be running better. How can this be? Oh, maybe it was the new rear cassette and chain that I put on a week or two before the pedals. Nevermind.
There are no bike lanes on the Beltway, but there are still traffic jams. I don't get it.
You should always be extra well-behaved when you're biking by your office because the last thing you want to do is get into a collision with your boss. Or at least maybe that's the last thing you should want to do. Unless your boss is a really big fan of demolition derbys and you can somehow convince him or her that you were just indulging them in some awesome vicarious demolition derby experience. Probably won't be good for your bike though.

I BLOG YOUR RIDE: Christine

2012-03-02T14:14:00.000-05:00

Christine started our ride with two caveats, the first being that she wouldn't try to kill me. I appreciated that. The second is that she doesn't ride "vehicularly" and I assented that that was totally fine. In case I didn't, she was prepared to remind me of my own manta "Do whatever you feel is necessary to keep you safe" (or some variation of that theme. I don't even know my own mantra). I think she brought these two things up because Chrstine bike commutes from Tysons Corner. For those of you reading this who aren't familiar with metropolitan Washington (there's maybe like 2 of you. TFTS has a niche audience), Tysons Corner is a series of office parks and highways and stroads and on-ramps and off-ramps and a big mall and surface parking lots and, currently, above-ground subway construction. In short, it's a bicyclist hellscape and the antithesis of everything walkable and bikeable and right with this world. And yet, see how happy we look:

Us, pre-ride.

Well, Christine looks happy. I look a bit leany, and maybe sort of addled. But what else is new?
But why shouldn't she be happy? Aside from all the earlier stuff I said about how horrible it is to bike in Tysons Corner, Christine actually has a pretty great bike commute on her ride home from her office to her home in Arlington. It's 10 miles and it's mostly on the W & OD trail and for the parts that aren't along the trail, she's figured out a pretty good approach. Given the nature of her job and various project deadlines, Christine doesn't always get to make two bike trips during a day, sometimes having to leave her bike at the office for days at a time. Truly understandable. I won't want to bike her route at 2AM either. But, luckily, yesterday was an absurdly beautiful day for a bicycle ride and we set off as the afternoon began to wane, but there was still more than enough light to see us through the trip.
We rode up curving driveway type road to another highway-style (I would describe most roads in Tysons as highway-style, meaning at least two wide lanes in each direction, slip lanes at intersections and an overall design that encourages drivers to travel somewhere north of 35 mph) and then down towards the mall where we waited in a long line of car traffic rather than jumping the queue. No worries. We turned left and circled the mall on what might have been a road and might have been a driveway. With parking lots everything and roads all looking like highways, it's really hard to differentiate.
And now I take back everything I said about Tysons not being bike friendly. Look, a bike lane!

I'm slow

I think it extended for about half a block. But it was something and we were happy for it. Christine said that she makes a point of using it, even though it's sort of pointless since it just stops at the next stop sign. I wouldn't exactly call it a well-integrated bicycle network.
From there, we went over a bridge over a highway (on a narrow sidewalk with no guardrail) and then this is sort of where I lost track of the order in which we did stuff. We rode through a townhome community and we also rode on the sidewalk along Gallows Road and then past some not-exactly gated communities and then we turned into one and rode through, taking various cut-throughs as needed. Christine said that she used to ride on Gallows Road proper, but it wasn't especially enjoyable. I mean, for the name allow, right? In the residential neighborhoods (I think we passed a street called Tire Swing Road. No joke), traffic was quite light and I'm not even sure I remember encountering a driver looking to pass us. Christine told me about a 'coming together' (euphemism for gentle crash) with a driver at one of the intersections. Driver pulled out and it sounded like Christine sort of met the side of his car. No bodily or bicycle harm came of it, but it definitely made Christine more cognizant of the perils of blind drives and she now is extra vigilant about reducing her risk to these kinds of incidents. All things considered, while there wasn't much in the way of proper bike infrastructure, Christine has been able to come up with a pretty manageable route through Tysons aside from maybe a half a mile, I wouldn't describe it as intimidating at all. You don't necessarily need bike lanes and sharrows to have a bikeable route and I think this is especially true in quieter residential suburbs. Furthermore, many of the drivers we encountered on the bigger roads were really obliging, which isn't what I expected at all.
We wended a bit, went down a hill, crossed another intersection and arrived at the W & OD. In spite of having lived in Arlington for more than two years, my experience with this trail is pretty limited. I'm not even sure I've taken it out even past its intersection with the Custis. It's a converted rail trail, meaning it's pretty flat and straight. It's great and it's the primary connector for bicyclists from Arlington to Fairfax and back. It's basically a bicycle highway, but it's mixed-use and the nice day brought out tons of people walking, some with kids, some with strollers, which has a tendency to (rightfully) slow down bicycle traffic. At least for the most part. Some bicyclists belong the subset of people who are jerks and speed along at a pace that I don't think is especially advisable.
Christine rides the reverse commute back towards DC, while the overwhelming majority of bicyclists we saw were headed in the other direction. Christine told me that she has about five regulars that she sees (and nods to, though some cases without acknowledgment back) and her regulars pretty much match in demography the average bike commuter around these parts, which is to say older, white and male. I'd pretty much say the rule was that almost every bicyclist we saw was wearing some sort of athletic wear, from full on superbiker lycra to t shirts and mesh shorts. I think this is pretty much reasonable. We're not exactly talking a dense area here and I'd suspect that the average bike commuter is covering a pretty good amount of miles. While it'd be perfectly fine to ride a work clothes, there's something about riding on the trail that seems to lend itself to a more sporty presentation.
My current bike commute is sort of the antithesis of Christine's. On mine, it's basically non-stop stopping. On hers, it's not non-stop stopping, which is to say non-stop going. It's rather pleasant and I very much enjoyed it. It was also nice to ride along with someone and chat. Christine told me that sometimes it gets a little boring when you're riding by yourself and for that for a while, she had a 'commute buddy'. This seems sensible. There's not exactly a lot to look at.
It was a drama-free ride and I don't think we had any close calls or anything especially dangerous occur, though not necessarily thanks to the trail itself, which gets hilly and has some blind spots once you get on the Custis. I think the prudence demands a reduction in speed. We took the Custis to Fairfax Drive and rode Fairfax Drive for a while before heading over to Washington Boulevard for a drink. Here are our bikes:

They're resting

I learned that Christine's bike commuting began under entirely different circumstances, when she lived 5 miles uphill from her job in Crystal City. In light of a series of WMATA fair increases, she decided to give biking a try and it stuck after that. She even kept it up when her job changed locations, which I think is admirable. A ten miler isn't a small feat. Some other takeaways:

A lot of her coworkers are bike curious and some have even commuted by bike.
She doesn't see a lot of regular woman riders on her route.
Winter cycling sucks when they don't clear the trail of ice and snow and you might as well just take the bus.
A lack of shower facilities poses a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
She, like me, misses reading, which is something we both did more of when we took public transportation to work. This is one of the biggest trade-offs for bike commuting.
She is a fan of Ellie the Poodle. Who isn't?

Riding with Christine was a really great experience. She's a really genial person and generous and I'm happy to have gotten to spend some time with her. I think what I've been reminded the most from our ride is that bike commuting in the Washington area is really varied. You've got people taking 2 mile trips on cycletracks through downtown and you've got people making 10 mile jaunts on trails out to suburban-style office parks. Any kind of bike advocacy (broadly understood) needs to speak for both groups and redress a really wide variety of issues. But it's really heartening to see so many people turning to bicycles for their transportation needs regardless of their particular commute situations and I wish everyone the best of luck. Also, if you see Christine out there, please say hello. She'll say hello back. She's from Delaware where people say hello. So, stop being unfriendly.

Remember that time I waited until tomorrow to blog? Yeah, that was rad

2012-03-01T20:03:00.002-05:00

I'm a bit spent. There'll be an I BLOG YOUR RIDE tomorrow, in addition to my morning write-up. Sort of like last Thursday/Friday. This is the last in the I BLOG YOUR RIDE series, but there's still a BLOG + SANDWICH post to come (I haven't forgotten- I'll email you). I'd once again like to thank everyone who bought an I BLOG YOUR RIDE (and BLOG + SANDWICH), buttons, ~~my homemade salsa,~~ and tuxedo deliveries. Must be from all the extra money you have from bike commuting. Or your generosity in spirit and love of WABA. Or both. In either case, thanks so much.

Ride In 3/1: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Nuns

2012-03-01T12:42:00.001-05:00

Good morning, America. That's a tv show, but it's also a salutation that might or might not have been said on the set of Ugly Betty, another tv show. Regardless of those things, it was a good morning and I do happen to be in America, so it might be apt to use in opening this blog. They (I don't know who) say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb (Presumably they mean covered in mint jelly).I think that might even be in the Bible. If today's weather was leonine (Leonine Brezhnev was a former Soviet leader), then perhaps we need to rethink our collective view on lions or maybe we need to take to task the Biblical fundamentalists and their nonsensical aphorisms. All of which is to say that it was a beautiful morning for bicycle riding and I'm glad that I was able to partake in one. If I had my way, I would have skipped work entirely and just kept "commuting," but I had to blog from somewhere and I figured the office was as good of a place to do it as any.
I think that the most depressing commute on a day like this would be one in a car that takes from a garage to a cul-de-sac to an arterial to a highway to highway traffic to an off ramp to an arterial to an office park. I'd suggest to those people that have to make commutes like that to seek solace in the Bible, but all that's in there is wrongheaded sayings about jungle cats and weather. I just loving being outside. Always have. Even when I was a little kid and even when my parents took me out in the rain to make sure I wasn't a gremlin. I find this to be one of the real values of bike commuting.
To celebrate the day, I decided to alter my route. Typically, I ride down East Capitol (a street that runs from the Capitol east until it reaches the eastern apex of the once-diamond [shape, not pressurized carbon or baseball field] that is the District of Columbia, after which it turns into Central Avenue and then W Central Avenue then E Central Avenue then Mayo Road and Central Ave E and then May Road again and then Beverly Avenue and finally Grand View Avenue and then it looks like this. You might want to stop before then), but today I elected to ride down C Street NE, which parallels East Capitol but is roughly 3 blocks north of it. It also has a bike lane. It's a perfectly lovely street and I should ride on it more frequently. The bike lane on C Street terminates at Stanton Park, which I perambulated (or whatever the cycling equivalent is), and then found myself on Maryland Avenue which merges into Constitution, which doesn't have a bike lane, but does have plenty of car traffic. I used to make the Constitution to Penn Avenue merge, but then I thought that riding through the Capitol would be easier, which it is, so I don't do this any more. I actually bailed to the sidewalk (SCOFFLAW) for two blocks and then cut across back into the cycletrack where Penn and Constitution split once more. All of that seems picayune.
On Penn Avenue, a driver decided that it would be awesome to make a u-turn across the cycletrack. Or maybe not awesome, just convenient at the expense of any bicyclists safety. I did my usual thing, which is to slow down (but keep moving) and use the few seconds it would take for me to roll right past her car to shoot her a scowly death stare. It had the same effect as normal, which is to say, no effect at all. I think she had a "animal friendly" license plate. Proof that cyclists are not animals. Anyway, from now on, I'm riding with a cat in my front basket. Like at a sad lady spin class (h/t Official Wife).
Not nearly as many bicyclists out than I expected, but I have unreasonable expectations. I expect every morning commute to be like a mix of the grand tour and a tweed ride with a splash of Utrecht rush hour. In some ways, it sort of is, but not in terms of the volume of cyclists (To calculate the volume of cyclists, multiply l x w x h). Not to say that it wasn't at least somewhat crowded for a DC morning, but it still seemed sparse. If anyone has any idea, based on reading the previous sentences, as to whether there were a lot of bicyclists out or not, please let me know. I've confused myself.
Almost got into a crash with another bicyclist on 15th. Here's what happened. I was riding northbound, he southbound. A man, with his dog, was crossing the street and was in the crosswalk within the cycletrack. The southbound cyclist, moved to his left and into 15th street. I remained in the right-hand lane of the cycletrack. And then we did the awkward, "are you gonna move, should I move, should we both move, should we just stop?" sort of thing and I ended up staying in my lane and he ended up cutting back across in front of me. We narrowly avoided a collision. I said "sorry dude." To be honest, I'm not really sure to what extent any of this was my fault, but at least nothing happened. I'd suggest that his moving into 15th street rather than just slowing for the dog and guy was the source of these issues, but I suppose I also could have just moved over. I don't know. A bike-on-bike crash would be the worst. I mean, relatively speaking. A lumber truck would be objectively worse.
Fun times on R Street. Saw speaker girl (she rides her bike and plays music from a little speaker. I see her on R street a lot. DC is a small enough town that there's no way we're not within 2 degrees of knowing each other) and I rode behind and then in front of a woman who has a really friendly relationship with the crossing guard at New Hampshire. I counted maybe 7 bicyclists riding down New Hampshire while I waited at the light.
Wound up behind another guy on the other side of Dupont, but he dropped off before Mass. Plenty of other cyclists on Massachusetts and even one going the same way as me. Today had the impression of a lot of bicyclists out without it seeming crowded. So, that settles my confusion from a few paragraphs ago.
Get to leave work early today and I'm up to something bike-related this afternoon, so that's going to be fun. Details to follow.
Oh, and one last thing. Here's a press release I got. Consider yourselves informed. Iit was on WashCycle and really, that's where you should be getting all of your information about 'real' DC bike stuff, [seriously, read WashCycle. I can honestly tell you it's the first thing I read in the morning. Indispensable.], but the event seems like a cool one and I think it's probably worth checking out and maybe even taking part in. If anyone wants to put together a losing team...

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN FOR THE INAUGURAL
CRYSTAL CITY DIAMOND DERBY

COMPETITIVE CYCLING COURSES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND TEAMS,
A CASUAL RIDE FOR THE COUTURE CYCLIST AND
A FREE PARTY THROUGHOUT THE DAY FOR SPECTATORS

MARCH 10, 2012; 2PM - MIDNIGHT

Crystal City, VA — The Crystal City Business Improvement District, in association with Vornado/Charles E. Smith, Dandies & Quaintrelles (D&Q), BNA and Sciathan Productions, is proud to announce that registration is now open for the inaugural Crystal City Diamond Derby, taking place on Saturday, March 10, 2012. The event will transform the parking garage at 1850 Crystal Drive in Crystal City into a glitzy, urban cycling arena for the competitive cyclist, amateur biker and everyone in between. With plenty of free activities for spectators, the Diamond Derby is sure to please!

Competitive cyclists can test their skills in obstacle courses with the goal of winning awards and prize money, casual cyclists can bike to the event in style and spectators can enjoy the action free of charge (please see the full schedule below). The Diamond Lounge will be the hub of spectator activity, featuring a big screen displaying the on-course action, a full bar and live music throughout the day. Cyclists and spectators can also get a breath of fresh air as they head outdoors for a midway featuring food, vendors and a wide-open sprint lane for cyclists.   

What:	The Inaugural Crystal City Diamond Derby.
Where:	18th and Crystal Drive (1850) Crystal Drive in Crystal City, VA.
When:	Saturday, March 10, 2012 from 2pm to midnight.
Registration:	Registration and additional information is available via the event website. Although this event is free and open to the public, there is a registration fee to participate in the cycling competitions.
Who:	Competitive cyclists, casual cyclists and spectators.
Event Phone:	Cyclists and spectators who have questions should call (703) 412-9430.
Media:	Media who have questions should contact Jordan Stinnett at jstinnett@scottcircle.com or w:(202) 207-3662; c: (239) 938-4960.

Schedule:

2pm
Event opens.

2pm
D&Q River Ride begins.
Join D&Q for this casual nine-mile bicycle ride along the Potomac River, beginning on the National Mall at 12th Street and Jefferson Drive in Southwest DC and ending at the Diamond Derby just in time for open course time. Experience the Capital Region’s river vistas on some of our less traveled routes across the Potomac. True to D&Q's signature events, including the Seersucker Social and Tweed Ride, this fashion-themed foray invites cyclists to don contemporary, edgy apparel. Registration for the ride is free. All participants will be required to sign a waiver.

2:30-3:30pm
Kids’ events.

3:30-4:30pm
Bike polo competition.

4pm
River Ride participants arrive at the Crystal City Diamond Derby.

4:00-4:30pm
Open Course Noncompetitive Ride.
Noncompetitive cyclists will have the opportunity to sample the thrills and hijinks of the racing course. This ride is open to anyone with a bicycle, brakes and helmet. A signed waiver and release will be required.

4:30-9:30pm (Races)

Diamond Derby Open Class Competition (Scavenger Hunt)
Individual riders will compete in 20-minute heats, dodging obstacles and collecting as many laps and diamond-shaped prizes as they can! The field will be open to 200 riders. Prizes will be awarded to the top 10 women, men and children competing. A $17 ticket ensures participants’ entrance into one 20-minute heat.

Diamond Derby Team Competition (Team Entry Ticket - Four Riders)
High-spirited relay rounds will pit registered teams against one another in all-out sprints for swag and glory! Teams will compete head-to-head with top teams advancing to the finals. Maximum field is 12 teams of four riders. Bonus prizes will be awarded to the best costumes! A $60 ticket ensures entry for one team (up to four participants).

4X Comps Individual Competition
4X Comps pits the hard-core amateurs and the wily vets against the cycling elite in head-to-head four-lap heats around the Gran Premio course. Top finishers in each 4-lap heat will continue to advance until the grand finale! Daredevils and speed demons need apply! Maximum participants in this event are 120 riders. Cyclists must pay a $17 ticket fee to enter into the 4X competition.

9:30-10:30pm
Awards ceremony.

10:30-midnight
Diamond Derby Ball.
Entrance to the Diamond Derby Ball is free and open to the public. Enjoy food, drinks and music!

###

About the Crystal City Business Improvement District
The Crystal City Business Improvement District (BID) is a public-private partnership established in April 2006 to promote the vibrant Crystal City business, retail, restaurant and residential community. The BID is committed to showcasing the area as a world-class destination for visitors, employees and residents. Crystal City is ACTIVE, ARTFUL, ACCESSIBLE, and GREEN. For more information, visit www.crystalcity.org.

Ride Home 2/29: What happens when you cross the International Fig Line?

2012-02-29T20:18:00.001-05:00

I'd like to quote from one of my favorite bike bloggers:

Arrived at work mostly soaked, but not in bad spirits (like a poltergeist?). Might be crummy for the rest of the day, so it could be a wet ride home. And if not, I'll expect the worst so I can be pleasantly surprised by something marginally better. "Expect the worst so you can be pleasantly surprised by something marginally better" is the slogan for next year's buttons.

And did I expect the worst? No, not really. In fact, I didn't even think that rain would be much of a possibility, so I didn't bother changing and when it really started raining, quite late in the ride, but still maybe 5 minutes from home, I was ill-prepared. I mean, not that I would've been much more prepared in my other, still-wet-from-the-morning-clothes (not much one can do to prepare for rain; you get wet, it happens), but I didn't especially enjoy having my work clothes soaked through. Yet another reason to get a job at Sea World (first reason: delicious fresh chum)- you can ride home in your wetsuit.
Before the rain started, it hadn't started and I rode much of the ride in (and through) a quiet fog. There just wasn't much going on. There was at least one of those drivers who does everything in his power (which admittedly isn't very much) to try to get in front of the cars in front of him by driving past them on the right. It didn't work. Sometimes you can tell that a driver around you is going to be trouble. First way you know: look for the Maryland license plate. Other hints:

the driver is lined up at a weird angle relative to the road markings. Like not exactly parallel to certain lines and definitely not perpendicular to others.
the driver isn't really where other drivers normally find themselves. If ride ride the same route every day, you have a pretty good sense of where to expect cars. When someone is where you don't normally see a driver, then it might be a sign that something went wrong.
They're not driving and they're not stopped. They're doing something in between.
The driver is looking around, perhaps frantically.

I'm sure that there's other things, but those are the ones I can think of right now. Add more "tip offs" to the comments if you have them.

[Fourth wall alert: The Official Wife is having some "straight talk" through the tv with Holly from Dance Moms right now]

All sorts of problems with cars in Sheriden Circle. There was an event at some embassy and the valets (the ones who park cars, not Mr. Bates) were having a hard time getting the cars out of the road and the people out of the cars and car traffic backed up accordingly and I'm sure that drivers who weren't attending the soiree were appropriately miffed. Though, it's hard to tell appropriately miffed drivers from others. For the first time, I rode around the circle on the sidewalk on the inside of the circle. There is no crosswalk on the other side of the circle to exit onto Massachusetts. Pedestrian fail.

One of these days, I'll count the number of drivers who can't but have one or two of their car's wheels over the white strip of the bike lane. Not that this will "prove" anything. Although I suppose it proves two things, the first being that a white stripe of paint will not necessarily keep you protected from a driver and the second being that many drivers, while they would never admit it to a camera crew that would never ask them, are constantly breaking the traffic laws. But we all know that only cyclists have the monopoly on scofflawism.

Not a single bicyclist in either direction on Penn. Guess everyone was at the Wizards game.

I don't find parked cars to be aesthetically pleasing. I guess I don't find operational cars to be particular beautiful either. Is there an aesthetic case to be made against the east side of the Capitol being used as a parking lot? Probably. I guess cars are just too much part of the firmament and I doubt that my photo montage of "cars parked in front of famous buildings, thereby ruining one's appreciation of the architecture" wouldn't play especially well as I barnstorm it across these United States. Guess I'll need to barnstorm something else because I am very much committed to barnstorming something. "Very much committed to barnstorming something" will be on the buttons the year after next.

Ride In 2/29: A Flinstones/Mad Men crossover episode would feature Mastodon Draper

2012-02-29T13:46:00.004-05:00

I used to think that the bike commuters of DC were like the itsy bitsy spider and were washed away by all the rain, but it turns out that they're more like the Little Miss Muffet spider, in that they're badass and will go to no small lengths to scare people away from their dairy products. Or at least that they're willing to ride in the rain, so good for them I guess. There was a little bit of a drop off in numbers, but not nearly as much as I was expecting. It's hard to stop riding to work once you've developed the habit. Unless for you, it's not, in which case, that's a fine choice too.
Friends don't let friends ride in front of them without fenders. Strangers, unfortunately, have no say in the matter. I know it's the same wet that falls from the sky, but it seems worse when it's sprayed in your face from the back of someone's tire. She didn't have lights on her bike either. Since most bicyclists also drive (this is a real stat, but I'm not going to look up the source), does everyone drive around habitually without their lights on? I know that it's an after-market add-on for your bike, but shoes are an after-market add-on for your feet and I don't see too many people biking around without those. Get lights.
The other day I got new pedals and today, thanks to a 6 AM delivery from LaserShip (this caused no small incredulity from the official wife, both that they came so early in the morning and the delivery company was named Laser Ship. She thought I was making this up), I got my new bike shoes. They're of the SPD variety, so that's something different for me. I spent the time between making the coffee and drinking the coffee trying to attach the cleats. I should have waited until after drinking the coffee. First impressions? They're good. Seems easier to unclip from these style pedals. For anyone thinking about making the transition to clipless pedals (don't ask my about the clip-in, clipless, Clipse, clipper ship distinction or why anything is called what it is), I recommend a bike commute as good practice. With all of the stop lights and stop signs, you'll get really good at clipping and unclipping, pretty quickly, too. Or you'll fall over, not being able to unhook your shoe from the pedal. So think of that as incentive. Being used to clipping in, I didn't get the pleasure of falling over this morning, but there's always tonight. Even though they're pretty much superfluous for the commute, I like biking in bike shoes. But I also like biking in regular shoes, hence the reversible pedals.
Got out-guiled by a CaBi rider that I had earlier passed when she moved into the right turn lane at the intersection of Penn and 15th while I got stuck at the light in the cycletrack. Out-guiling is one of my favorite hobbies, so that stung a little. My decision to stay in the cycletrack and wait at the light didn't have any profound impact on the overall time of my trip, so, to that effect, it didn't really matter. But who wants to wait a lights when you can position yourself so as not to? Just don't tell WJLA. While I won't eat my helmet, I'm waiting for the same hard-hitting journalism-like-substance to be applied to local drivers.
Saw Kyle on 15th street. He said "TFTS Rules!" and I responded like the woo girl I am with a high-pitched "woo." And he's totally right, if by TFTS, he's using the well-known and not obscure at all acronym for That Friends Television Show, which did rule its time slot for a number of years in the 90s and early aughts. Unless of course, he was referencing an entirely different TFTS, one with which I'm much more closely associated.
Less bike traffic than usual for much of the remainder of the trip. Usual amount of car traffic. I arrived at a stop sign at the same time as a woman I suspected of being Australian. Not because she was munching on vegemite-covered eucalyptus, but from her accent. Fewer parents walking with their kids lately. If I was responsible for the well-being of a child unit, I'd take that child unit out in the rain all the time. Not to toughen him up or anything, but just to make sure that he's not a Gremlin.
Arrived at work mostly soaked, but not in bad spirits (like a poltergeist?). Might be crummy for the rest of the day, so it could be a wet ride home. And if not, I'll expect the worst so I can be pleasantly surprised by something marginally better. "Expect the worst so you can be pleasantly surprised by something marginally better" is the slogan for next year's buttons.

Ride Home 2/28: Sid and Repugnancy

2012-02-28T20:13:00.000-05:00

An update on the biggest story of the day from #bikeDC. According to those who know, or at least according to the librul media (so take it or leave it), it looks like the bicyclist involved in the crash this morning at 11th and U has serious injuries, but perhaps less serious than initially believed and even non-life-threatening. So, that's good. Once again, I advise you to avoid all comments left below this or any other bicycling story, unless you have a stronger stomach than mine. And whatever happens after the police inquest (do we have inquests in this country or did I pick up this terminology from a cop show on BBC?), the axe grinders and yahoos will still be there, so don't go searching for vindication, no matter your point of view. Because really, why do that to yourself?
Back to your regularly scheduled program, namely, my bicycle ride. I feel like it might as well be in reruns. There was plus change-ing and there was plus meme chose-ing. There were drivers of BMWs driving hilariously. There was me, biking, and wondering how little space I'd have to take up to convince people that it's not me that's the reason there's traffic. Spoiler alert: it is not possible. My favorite is when there's a driver looking to make a left turn in the left lane and there's me in the right lane and I perceive that it's somehow my fault that things have slowed down. Perhaps I'm being oversensitive.
This is new. Blocking the right turn lane on Mass where a right turn isn't even allowed at that time of day. I don't know if this is redundant or actually useful.

Don't drive into that car.

Some day I'm just gonna take 23rd street out of Sheriden Circle and ride to Washington Circle and then ride back up New Hampshire to Dupont Circle and then ride down Mass to Thomas Circle and then take Vermont to Logan Circle and then ride straight out of town and never come back because I'd be so sick of bicycling through traffic circles.
Mr. Red Pants, are you out there? You rode past me when I stopped at a stop sign at Q. You said "on your left." I got that, but I wasn't expecting you to ride through a stop sign on my left, one that I stopped at (and by stopped, I mean slowed for) and then wend through some pedestrians at various crosswalks along the way while sort of waiting for red lights, but not really. And then for some reason, you decided to cross to the other side of the street and wait in front of the driver who was wearing a tuxedo (for real) rather than wait behind the woman in the dress that might have been a shirt and the leggings and the boots. I don't know where you went after that. The dress that might have been a shirt woman crossed 11th and probably proceeded down Q, but I didn't, so I don't really have much to add. Good amount of bike traffic on 11th, all heading the other way.
Through downtown was what it was (I've take my Nobel for literature please) and I spent much of it right off the bumper of the SUV in front of me. I crossed into the Pennsylvania Avenue cycletrack from the sidewalk, where I stopped to wait for the light to change, and I tried not to overdramatically sigh my way in front of the guy who blocked the crosswalk with his car. I might not have succeeded.
Fewer lightless cyclists out tonight, which is good. And a little ironic, since I rode home earlier tonight than yesterday, when it was much darker. It's really not difficult to have lights on your bike. I promise.
What's your favorite scold for someone jogging in the bike lane? I've never actually said this, but I think mine would be "Nice bike!" Of course, I don't say stuff like that because I've made it through life thus far without being punched in the face and I'd like to keep it that way. Helmet isn't going to help that.
I rode behind one lightless woman who bipped and bopped through the bike lane on East Capitol and when some driver eventually blocked her path, I had already moved over to take the lane and I said something like "you can come over" which she didn't, but didn't really acknowledge. Umbrage: activated.
And then the guy in the Arsenal shorts decided that he would ride in front of me as I waited at the red light at Lincoln Park. Why? Some day I'll muster the effrontery to ask. Why does everyone think that they're so freaking important? Oh, it's DC? Sorry. Forgot for a moment. Do the same people shove their way to the front of the Metro line? Funny thing about pet peeves: they're actually like pets. You get used to them after a while and no matter how annoying they are, you're attached and you just can't get rid of them. I don't get what's so hard about waiting behind someone, but I suppose I should just stop caring. It could be a long spring and summer.
I stuck behind Arsenal shorts along Kentucky until I got to the store and then I shopped and then I went home. Ellie the Poodle, the original pet peeve, was there:

Ride In 2/28: Leap Day Eve Morning

2012-02-28T13:19:00.002-05:00

For whatever reason, and I think it's the pictures of the mangled bike, this really got to me. A commenter claims to have seen the incident (but other commenters elsewhere tell a different story) and I hope there's a full investigation as to what happened. I also hope for a speedy and full recovery for the bicyclist, whom I believe is still in serious condition. I can't write dispassionately about stuff like this and I can barely write coherently in the first place. I certainly don't like to dwell on bad things, such as the potential for grievous injury when just trying to get to work (that's why, amongst other reasons, the blog isn't title Tales from OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL DOOMED!) and I like to keep this blog light-hearted and I at least try to be amusing, so reading something like this, and it happens far too frequently, is upsetting. That's not to say that I would recommend that we all ignore it, that we look the other way at the potential for danger as we munch our corn chips and make our merry way, blissfully ignorant to what happens around us and with little regard or care to our fellow travelers, on foot, on bikes, in public transit or in cars. In fact, I don't think we should do that at all. But we can't dwell either, focusing only on the potential for terribleness. If we did that, no one would ever get out of bed, unless of course they're focused on the terribleness of bed bugs, at which point they'd never get in bed, which would be a perfectly good waste of a bed and much of the floor space of a bedroom, floor space that could be used otherwise for a ping-pong table. Do what you can to stay safe out there and do your best to minimize risk. No one's invincible, except for Superman, but he commutes by flying (probably) and is fictional.
One last thing on recklessness: please don't be reckless. Riding a bike is easy and fun and fast and generally wonderful, but being inconsiderate to those around you is fairly inexcusable. I will not excuse you. Not even if you ask me really nicely. Ok, maybe if you make a nice greeting card and write in calligraphy. I watch people do things every day (no matter what their mode of transportation) that really makes me wonder what's waiting at their workplace that's so freaking awesome that they're in such a rush to get there. Free beer and puppies? Because if it's anything less than that, it's not worth pissing off everyone around you by acting like a jerk. Even if it is that, the puppies won't want to play with you if you're an selfish asshole, so don't be. So please keep that in mind, even if you don't have beer and puppies at your workplace.
I detoured from the normal route this morning to take some mostly crappy pictures of some new bikey stuff. Here's the new Bikeshare station by Stanton Park:

It's right on C D Street, meaning every westbound cyclist is going to salmon in that bike lane, at least for a block. I rode Maryland Avenue over from 8th street (where I thought the station was for some reason) and it wasn't especially terrible, but I think I rode it during a lull in car traffic. It would benefit from a road diet and some bike lanes, but I'm biased.
Anyone out there live and work within DC and drive to work every day? I want to interview you about your commute for the blog. You'll become instantly famous (to 9 people). Please email talesfromthesharrows@gmail.com. I'd prefer people who both live and work within the Federal No Representation Zone (my catchy new nickname! Tourist Board, you're welcome!), but any other daily driver is welcome to email me as well. I'm just curious about some stuff, most of which isn't related to bicycling.
The other thing I went in search of today was the new contraflow bike lane and sharrows network in Eckington. To get there, I rode up 6th (behind a guy on a CaBi) and then over K (where there seem to be a lot of families with young kids) to 2nd NE and then to the Met Branch Trail. I love the MBT, but it always seems so dour. A little like NoMa, which I find to be too antiseptic for my tastes, but my tastes are weird, so what do I know.
Here's what's on the ground, as of this morning:

Bike lane starts at 3rd NE. Nothing between MBT and there, so far.

That sign says move your car on 3/1, so they can finish striping.

R Street NE between 3rd and 2nd.

That's the contraflow part. Then, if I remember correctly, the bike lane goes for another block with the flow of traffic and then it turns into sharrows. The sharrows cross North Capitol and extend to Florida, where the bike lane starts again on the other side. I would really like it if the bike lane was striped across Florida, kind of like a parallel bike crosswalk, but I don't think that's in the cards.
R Street seems far too narrow for the number of cyclists who tried to pass me while riding on it. Rhode Island seems like far too wide a street to roll through the red light without stopping. A CaBi seems far less than ideal for trackstanding. And turning left from a right-hand bike lane is, as always, inadvisable. That's just a sample of my crosstown commute. March came early.
I didn't notice any bad traffic issues related to Dupont, but they hadn't turned the traffic lights off yet. Ride up and down Mass was uneventful. I think I even made it to work faster than I had planned. Guess I did something wrong.

Guest Post: Lisa and the red ruby clip-ins

2012-02-27T20:35:00.000-05:00

The Sharrownator 3000, the machine into which I enter various bike commute "inputs" and receive a fully realized, borderline terrible blog post, is still in the shop. Apparently, it's increasingly difficult to find cathode ray tubes and the rare Norwegian butter it needs to keep functioning. That's the last time I ever buy a 'blogging machine' on CraigsList. Missed connection, indeed. Oh well. In place of my usual, here's a post from Lisa, the Rambling Rider, on tonight's ride home. Approximately, one million 'thank yous' to Lisa, who I absolve from the onerous responsibility of one million 'you're welcomes.' Read her blog. It's really good.

Going home, I always approach my commute with dread. By the end of the work day, I am tired, I am hungry, and I am wishing I could just click my heels three times and say "there's no place like home" and be home with a nice, hot meal waiting for me. Alas, I am not in Oz, and this also ain't Kansas.

But! It is now light enough that I don't need my lights or reflective gear, and it is warm enough that I don't need my flap cap or my scarf or my lobster gloves. Hooray! That makes me happy, and in this spirit, I unlock my bike and start on my ride home.

Intersection #1: where the car drivers and I do a little dance, make a little love, and play chicken. I wave them along, and then cross.

A few feet in, and then the pain starts. The saddle starts hurting me as I pedal. ow ow ow. And then downhill. Whee!

Intersection #2: where I wait for what seems like forever until I cross. This is where some bikers will cheat and either bike on the sidewalk to avoid having to wait for the cars or bike on the crosswalk to force the cars to stop. I don't do either, but there is a pedestrian who is waiting to cross, and for whom the cars will not stop for; I don't know why. Finally, she takes a step into the crosswalk and the cars stop-- and then this is my cue to cross. I do cheat by biking into the parking lot. Is biking through the parking lot better than taking the road? On one hand, the parking lot has its share of perils, like car drivers who back out of the parking space without looking, or kids who are running around, also without looking. On the other hand, taking the road means pedaling furiously uphill and making violent gestures to make the left turn. Some days, I open Door #1, other days, Door #2. The Tiger or the Tiger.

Intersection #3: another wait, but shorter. I signal a left turn, and ride in the sharrows. Some days, I am harassed by taking the lane, some days, it's smooth sailing. Today, no harassment. Good. I admit that I Idaho stop the stop signs, but I look both ways and slow down.

Intersection #4: lots of folks walking their dogs. I downshift, and downshift again. And then, The Hill. Today, I decide to granny-gear it and spin. I pat myself on the back (figuratively-- I don't want to let go over the handlebars at this point) for keeping an even cadence.

Home stretch. Uneventful, which is how I like it. I pedal on, glide up to my apartment, carry my bike up the steps, and fumble for my keys. The dog barks, as he usually does, and I open the door and arrive. whew. 23 minutes and 27 seconds.

Ride In 2/27: Sampson and Delilah

2012-02-27T12:41:00.000-05:00

When I set out to write this blog, I had one goal: to become the web's premier destination for bike commuter-themed Hello Kitty fan fiction. I soon have that up, on account of my own lack of interest in that subject matter, as well as the lack of interest from the remainder of humanity. So, I had some back-up goals, but here are two of things that I didn't want to do: 1. become the arbiter of proper bike commuter behavior and 2. become a bike commuter apologist. Perhaps it's because both of those things invite confrontation and when it comes to confrontation [I'm now hiding under my desk to avoid any potential confrontation from finishing this sentence]. Sometimes I slip up and express preferences, such as my thinking that it's poor form to pass someone at a stop sign or ride directly into a pedestrian at a crosswalk or cut off a rightfully turning driver, all things done within my field of view this morning by a woman in a camel (color, not material) coat. But it's really not my intention to foist my suggestions of what I think is "good" ridership on anyone, because, frankly, I'm not an expert or anything and I'm sure there are plenty of things that I do while riding my bike (juggling, eating corn chips) that rankle other bike commuters. We're all independent actors (like Parker Posey, maybe) and everyone should do what works best for them. You know, judge not lest ye be Judge Rheinhold, or whatever that saying is.
First ride in with the new pedals and I liked them very much. No clipping made me feel free and volatile and like it could fly off the bike at any moment, like a bird on a motorized scooter. Also, it being Monday meant that my legs felt relative springy (like a spring, not like spring) and the morning air was brisk and cool, like the copy on an iced tea print ad. I took the normal route and saw the seven people you meet when you bike down East Capitol (Mitch Albom is slipping), which included at least one person walking a big dog, one person walking a small dog, and one guy biking with a gym bag tucked under his left shoulder. I made it to First Street NE at the same time as the off-white SUV that I passed at Lincoln Park. Driving: not as a fast as you'd think.
Many a CaBi out today. System can't expand fast enough. Once the stations get in on the Mall, it's going to be in even greater demand. If Bikeshare did another Living Social deal (and I think they should), I bet it'd pick up maybe another 5000 yearly members. But that's just an ill-informed guess. I'm sure they have "math guys" (technical term) figuring out stuff like that. The overwhelming majority of Bikeshare riders seem to be of the variety that wear normal people clothes and skip the helmet [Judge (Rheinhold) accordingly], whereas I'd suggest that most people on their own bikes make some sort of sop to athletic wear and head protection, though this doesn't describe anyone. It just makes for an interesting dichotomy, but I don't very much about who people choose to attire themselves while biking. My commute is 8 miles one way and goes uphill for much of it and I don't like to wear sweaty clothes at the office and I haven't yet come up with a way to arrive at work sweatless (that braze-on squeegee just doesn't work), so I bring a change of clothes and bike in athletic wear. If I lived closer, I probably wouldn't. It's entirely circumstantial. So, there you go.
More illegal parking DRAMA in the 15th street cycletrack. Obi Wan was on it. As were others. And DDOT doesn't get why someone thinks this is okay. And yet, the read the comments here. How is any poor driver supposed to know not to park on the inside of bollards in a clearly marked bike lane? Um, how often do you see bollards and a dashed yellow stripe and think "ah, parking bollards and a dashed stripe by which I can center my vehicle for more accurate parking!" And clearly, the city has deliberately set up this confusing situation (nothing is as enticing than a dashed yellow centering strip, am I right?) on purpose to lure drivers into commuting parking violations. I mean, really. I get that bicyclists are evil and smug and self-righteous and all that, but surely in a situation like this, some people doth protest too much. Right? Or am I just being evil and smug and self-righteous and all that? Anyway, were I being those things I'd suggest the following: earmark the money for bike lane related parking violations to subsidize Capital Bikeshare memberships for those who couldn't afford them otherwise. Just a suggestion.
The usual R street race track. We all get caught at a red light eventually, so there's no real need to rush. You can't beat the system in a car and you can't beat it on a bike.
Probably the most downhill bike traffic on Massachusetts since the fall. It's been a mild winter, but it seems to be picking up even more now. March 1 is the day that I used to use as my "start biking now" day when I didn't commute year round. I'll be curious to see if there's a noticeable pick-up by next week.
The last 500 feet to my office always seem to be the most awkward, probably because I'm riding on the sidewalk and the sidewalk is crowded with pedestrians. I'd stick to the road, but I'm impatient and I don't want to wait in the long line of stopped cars. Oh well.
THIS IS A CALL FOR GUEST POSTS. Please write one and email it to talesfromthesharrows@gmail.com. Have an especially eventful bike commute? Don't? Great! That's exactly what I like to post. Experience all the fun of bike blogging with none of the remuneration.

Ride Home 2/24: If 'going Dutch' is splitting the check, what's 'going Hollandaise'?

2012-02-24T20:22:00.003-05:00

I guess that if I had one regret about this blog, it's that it doesn't have a soundboard. Of course, that's the most ridiculous regret ever and it isn't really a regret at all. Anyway, imagine hearing 'zoop zoop zoop' which is what I imagine to be the sound of my going downhill with some pace along New Mexico on a wet road behind the trepidatious driver of a white minivan. And then imagine the grind-and-squeal some some wet brakes and then imagine the sound of my nearly bellicose sigh at a driver who turns left in front of me when it's questionable as to whether that was a good decision concerning my safety and well-being. If you still want to imagine sounds, and most assuredly you don't, you could imagine a whooshing thud sound of my struggling to get up the slight incline on Tunlaw and a whirring whoosh sound of me going down the other side.
35th street needs sharrows. Does anyone have a sharrow stencil? I will buy the white paint. Or maybe whipped cream if we can't find white paint. I'd provide Cool Whip if you can't find/make real whipped cream.
Why did I ride my old route through Georgetown? Because of nostalgia? Because I spent all day doodling in my notebook TFTS + Biking through Georgetown= Love 4 ever? No, not because of that (and not because I didn't actually do that), but because instead I thought it would be awesome for a bicycle shoppe (old timey, like) to swap out my current pedals for the new pedals that I had ordered. I tried to spend that bike shop (not old timey) Groupon that I had on a pedal wrench, but of course that shop didn't have pedal wrenches for sale, so I figured it'd be easier to just have a different shop do it. So I headed to a shop in Georgetown and they did it, and for free at that. Free because they made me wait for a little, not because I'm a local bike celebrity, which I am assuredly not, though the mechanic asked me if I commuted on the bike (which I do) and I thought he might have been a TFTS superfan, but he probably just asked because the bike is dirty as all get-out. Anyway, swapping the pedals was a good idea and made even better thanks to the rain and I enjoyed pedaling on the new pedals as much as one can enjoy pedaling on any pedals at all.
I can't be the only person who rides through Washington Circle going "nowhammynowhammynowhammynowhammynowhammynowhammynowhammynowhammySTOP," can I? Press your luck, indeed.
The other side of Penn isn't much better. A cycletrack would help things. "Help me, Jack Evans, you're my only hope," is the message that I'd put in a droid that I'd smuggle to a desert planet with two suns. From now on on TFTS, he'll be known as Obi Wan Evans, which is a name that he hasn't used in a while, not since the Clone Wars/Control Board. To top it all off, after the misery that was Penn, I arrived at the White House plaza at the moment the state security services were closing off Lafayette Park for some reason and diverting pedestrian and bicycle traffic elsewhere. So, that sort of sucked. I rode down the sidewalk (ILLEGALLY. DON'T TELL WUSA9!) and then across more sidewalk in front of the other side of the White House, near the Eclipse. When I saw a member of the state security services, I decided that I would ask him what I thought would be a clarifying question. So I says to him, I says, "Can I ride in the road or do I have to ride on the sidewalk?" I asked him this because there's a perfectly good, empty road next to a perfectly full of pedestrians sidewalk and biking on the road would be considerably nicer/safer. He said "You can bike on that road," pointing the parking lot/driveway behind him, "but not on this one." I said, "So the Elipse parking lot, but not E Street?" and he said "Yeah" or something to the effect. So, consider that clarified.
Then it was down Penn and I rode through some (literal) horse shit. Thanks, horse. I'll be sure to have my bike excrete in your stable.
Up past the Capitol, slowly, and then down 2nd NE behind the Supreme (because it has sour cream) Court and past C and almost D Street and I locked up my bike and went into a bar to see some friends. Good friends, and you can take this to the bank, are ones that spot you a drink. But if don't spot or spot you too many, then you might have issues. After a quick stop, it was back on the road, a little too close to a Subaru hatchback navigating around Stanton and then basically home with no other issues. Saturday is tomorrow, so there won't be posts, but I might ride to the ATM to deposit checks of $2.48 and $6.06. So, just imagine the sounds of something that mundane. Have a great weekend.

Ride In 2/24: Pista Resistance

2012-02-24T14:39:00.001-05:00

It just started raining, maybe two minutes ago. We were promised this rain, along with high winds, but we were also promised a 75 degree day. The rain has materialized, but I'm skeptical about the temperature. Someone get me an amphibian and tell me if it feels 75 degrees. Or a thermometer, if you're skeptical of cold-blooded animals. In fact, when I was riding in, I felt downright cold. Perhaps this means that I'm an amphibian, I don't know. I thought it would be 50 or so and even though I had put on my yellow jacket after leaving #fridaycoffeeclub, it didn't seem like enough and I was more than a little uncomfortable.
I don't think the promise of a warm day lured out any more bike commuters than normal. Probably because of the equally, if not more valid, promise of the rain and 50 mph gusts. Not quite spring yet.
Same route as always, except after Penn, I went up 15th instead of taking E, as is my normal habit on coffee mornings. On 15th before the White House, I saw on a guy on an old Bridgestone with a carradice bag and over-wide SKS fenders. I could have sworn he would have been going to coffee club, but such was not the case. Perhaps I should have invited him.
Good crowd this morning and a very special guest, long-time friend of the blog, Kirstin, making her first coffee club appearance. Big round of applause. (I write this blog as if I'm hosting a game show. Who am I even asking to applaud?) A good time was had by all (I'm assuming), but unfortunately, it's not my job to stand around drinking coffee and make conversation about bicycles. I don't know if that's an actual job, but if there are any eccentric billionaires (or foolhardy millionaires or idiotic thousandaires) our there willing to pay me to do as much, please contact my agent/manager/pet, Ellie the Poodle. I'd also like to thank Roy for the strawberries.
It had just begun to spit a little rain when I left Swings. I think by 15th and P, it had mostly stopped. By the time I was on R, I think I was wholly dry. It wasn't much rain.
Sometimes I think about where I would pull over if I had to use a restroom during my commute. The answer is normally just work. I feel I might be oversharing, but this is of a practical concern and generally related to bike commuting. I don't know, it seems like a sensible thing to think about.
I passed another bicyclist riding up Mass. I think the morning up Mass (missa est?) commute will become more popular for people come springtime and I fully expect to see more bicyclists. Since I didn't have anything else to think about, I decided that I would think about my bike commuting mantra and I've settled on two of them. The first one is this: I'm not special. That's not humility; it's reality. Everyone on a bike is just another schlub trying to get somewhere, no different from anyone else. I wish everyone (bicyclists, drivers, pedestrians, zookeepers, blimp captains) were a little more clear about this.It would help things. My second mantra is Groove is in the heart, mostly because I want to see if someone from a Deee Lite fan site will leave a comment here, a la the Dean Cain people.
I'd like to thank that one driver who slowed down a little bit before passing me. Thanks.
Wishing everyone, in advance, a safe ride home. The only way you can "win" at bike commuting is by making it home safely, so take your time and take it easy, especially if the weather is crummy. I'm so paternalistic.

I BLOG YOUR RIDE: Marc

2012-02-24T14:15:00.000-05:00

Invariably, I'll spend more time writing this post than I did riding with Marc. If, in fact, I limited the length of the time I spent blogging to the amount of time I spent riding, I'd pretty much have to stop now. (Though spending the exact same amount of time blogging as I do riding would be an interesting conceit and maybe I'll roll out it for season 3. The conceit at the end of season 2 will be that it was all a dream. The conceit of season 4 will be that I'm inside of a snowglobe. Season 5, somehow, will be claymation. I've got gimmicks for 8 seasons, after which I'll reveal that bike commuting was a metaphor for purgatory or something and then you'll take the message boards to question why you even bothered reading so long and whether all of the "easter eggs" even made any sense. In conclusion, WE HAVE TO GO BACK!) Marc is a colleague and while we don't work within the same academic unit, we both work at the same place, meaning that this I BLOG YOUR RIDE could be the first I BLOG YOUR RIDE that's a ride home rather than a ride in. Of course, we sort of just rode to a nearby Mexican restaurant and not a ride home, though I think it was close enough to his home to qualify. I haven't read the bylaws in some time.
We set off from bucolic American University (home of the 'fightin' muricans' [I'm being told that's not the official mascot]) around 5:30. I was on the Haul and Marc was on a CaBi. He's a Bikeshare commuter, through and through. By through and through, I mean that he doesn't even own his own bike (he owns 1100 of them). I think that this makes him a rarity in bike commuting circles (bike commuting circles are for people who work from home), but with the growth in popularity of Bikeshare, I think this rarity is becoming only medium-rare, like a delicious steak. He started commuting by bicycle after Bikeshares' inception (it was all a dream within a dream within a solar-powered station) and rides most days. When he doesn't, he takes the Metro for one stop, which actually takes longer than biking. Sometimes he'll Metro to work and bike home and he enjoys Bikeshare for the ability to take one-way trips. I suppose that makes him a flexitarian or maybe just a Sagittarius. For him, a month of one-way Metro is half the price of a month of car parking and half the price of a year of Bikeshare. Think about that.
We made our way across Ward Circle (the most useless circle in Washington) and down Nebraska, sticking on the sidewalk. Not literally sticking. Marc prefers the sidewalk to the road on Nebraska because the evening rush hour traffic is a bit crazy. It seemed a little cramped when there were pedestrians, but it wasn't so bad. We turned right on Van Ness and then it was street-riding the rest of the way.
According to Marc, the brief stretch of Van Ness between Upton and Wisconsin is probably the most dangerous part of his trip. I would tend to agree, not least of all because it's close to a McDonalds and someone might spill hot coffee on you. Just a lot of drivers making blind-ish turns and other drivers speeding to try to catch the lights. Marc, because he's considerate of others, tries to hustle to make the green light when he can, just so doesn't put people out. He's a nice guy like that. The other thing he tends to do is try to ride 'vehicularly," meaning that he stops in line and doesn't weave through traffic and takes turns and all that. I think that given the vicissitudes of his route, he doesn't have much other choice. For the width of the road (one lane in each direction), there's nowhere else for him to go. Van Ness from Wisconsin to Connecticut does have sharrows, so that's nice at least. Amazingly, he's never been honked at (thanks, sharrows!), but he has been passed aggressively and closely before by impatient drivers. Van Ness has two stops signs and a red light, so it's not like an expressway or anything. And it's a residential street with maybe a 25 mph speed limit, so I was sort of surprised at how much car traffic there actually was. I guess there are only so many convenient cross-streets in that part of town.
Without incident, we got to Connecticut, where we decided to turn right rather than left, and head down to Cleveland Park and its myriad eateries/drinkeries. For a block or two, we stayed on the sidewalk on Connecticut, but then went into the road because the sidewalk narrowed and it was just easier to ride in the road anyway. I don't very much enjoying riding on Connecticut Avenue. It's rather thick with the worst kind of car traffic, namely the sort of drivers who think that they're driving on a road that's supposed to allow them to go fast when it actually doesn't. It's really all about managing expectations, ins't it?
Marc docked at the Cleveland Park bikeshare station. His was then the only bike there. Tough luck, anyone looking to take Bikeshare from Cleveland Park at roughly 5:45 on a Thursday.
Here's some more stuff about Marc and Bikeshare and commuting

he almost never sees anyone else biking his route in the morning, nor does he see any "regulars" at the bikeshare station.
The hill up Van Ness sucks. I agree.
He's plotted his bike commutes (bike commuters love spreadsheets!) and found about a one minute variability between fastest and slowest trips. Comparing this to the variability in how long a red line trip might take (upwards of infinity hours) and driving (you could be stuck at the light at Wisconsin for hours), this is quite a good reason to take Bikeshare
Getting dockblocked and finding no bikes at your station is basically a death sentence for your bike commute when you live on the outskirts of the Bikeshare system(Van Ness, Tenley, AU, Glover Park). It's because the stations are too far away from each other and walking 10 minutes to the next closest station sort of defeats the whole purpose of the whole 'quick trip with no variability thing.' I asked him if stations within the residential neighborhoods might be popular and he thought so, but there's no real way to know until we try. So let's get on that.
There's almost no real infrastructure in upper-ish Northwest. That makes March a vehicular cyclist by default. He said that when he bikes downtown, he's happy to use bike lanes and such and really loves seeing other people on bikes. I know how the feels, since that's more or less how I felt when I used to bike through Georgetown and up New Mexico. \
One of the nice virtues about the diffusion of Bikeshare is the ability to use it to explore different neighborhoods and to essentially play bike tourist all over the city. You can take the Metro somewhere, find the nearest bikeshare station, tool around for a bit and either ride somewhere else or just to the train home. It's real multimodalism.

It was an absolute great time riding with Marc and the generosity of his money and time is greatly appreciated. I wish him the best of luck with his continued CaBi commutes. As that Irish blessing goes, may bikes always be available when you need them and the road rise to meet your wheels! (I think it goes that way, but I'm not so sure).

As the Shirelles Never Sang, "Will You Still Blog Me Tomorrow?"

2012-02-23T20:56:00.000-05:00

The night slipped away from me and I posted the ride in late, so I'll post a post tomorrow and the post won't be about my ride home. It will be a I BLOG YOUR RIDE post for I was off riding another person's commute tonight. I mean, it's not like it was a secret; he knew and stuff. So, that's that.
In other news, which is pretty much the same news, DeBonis covered the illegal parking kerfluffle from this morning.
In news about Others, looks like MC Gainey has a few movies in post. That's a Lost reference, for those of whom I've lost. For those of you remaining, there's coffee tomorrow morning at Swings and the whole gang will probably be there. You might even get lucky and have MG race you there. She's fast, so watch out.

Ride In 2/23: Shrimp Scampi

2012-02-23T15:57:00.001-05:00

One of those mornings where the carryover effect of bicycling is a happiness that isn't immediately crushed by sitting down at your desk and opening your email. It was just that nice out. Hard to believe it's late February.
Another day on the Haul and another day wearing work clothes, albeit with sneakers and untucked shirt. It might have been cold enough for a jacket, but that would have spoiled the illusion. Nothing quite captures joie de vivre like an untucked dress shirt. And I'm all about joie de vivre, which is French for lazy and unkempt.
Every morning, I expect to see lines of bicyclists out on East Capitol and every morning I'm woefully disappointed. Maybe a couple here and there, but it's not like there are caravans or anything, which is a shame, because I think that the Hill (including Armory West) might be the residential area most saturated with bike infrastructure, has relatively calm residential streets and even the arterials (I hate this word. It makes me think of heart disease) like E Capitol, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and C NE have bike lanes and fairly low speed limits. Maybe the good weather just snuck up on everyone. Or maybe I'm leaving too early or too late. Or maybe it's downtown infrastructure that's the problem and people won't bike off the Hill. I don't know.
I wore a helmet today. May you judge accordingly.
I spent much of my ride behind a guy on a CaBi. He was wearing jeans and a jacket and looked like a normal person. "Bike commuters- they're just like us!" coming to a tabloid near you. Does anyone have a strong opinion about what a bicyclist should do when he needs to stop to take off his jacket, as did the CaBi guy in front of me? He stayed in the bike lane and I rode around him, but there's probably a case to be made that he should leave the bike lane out of courtesy to fellow bicyclists. I wasn't especially bothered, because, really, there are more important things in life (space exploration, corn chips), but I know that some of you have strong opinions about these kinds of things and I'd like to solicit them. Sometimes I stop at a light to check my phone or put something in my bag (corn chips mostly) and I don't know if I should be pulling off to the side or whatever.
I wanted to Storify this, but I sort of determined that it would take too long, so I'll just reduce it what happened into the usual TFTS-approved stilted narrative. You can read my twitter if you want play-by-play and analysis. Some driver parked his car in the 15th street cycletrack. Here's a picture:

At the time, I called him an ass hat and I deeply regret that, mostly because the correct term is asshat (one word). Long story short, enough people (the entirety of #bikeDC, so like 17 of us) complained about this on twitter that Jack Evans (Ward 2) roused the powers that be at DDOT and DCDPW and MPD and whatever other members of the local alphabet soup that handle parking enforcement and the car has now been towed. But not before the following: a parking ticket (which was there when I first saw it), a broken side mirror and a hilarious note. I applaud whomever left the note and I'll just assume that the mirror was broken accidentally because [DISCLAIMER] vandalism is wrong, even when someone parks in a cycletrack. I'd like to thank the many people who saw fit to tweet and retweet about this, as well as Councilman Evans, whom I pretty sure got involved because he hoped that car belonged to Vincent Orange. (Just kidding! Jack loves #bikeDC. Think he wants a Sharrows button?)
Speaking of buttons, I think I saw Rachel at the next intersection. I think, but I'm not sure. Another con for helmets. If it wasn't Rachel, then hi to whomever it was.
I've recently added a front basket to the bike I was riding today and I very much enjoy it. It was empty today, but I still liked having it there. Seems like it makes the front of the bike a bit more imposing causing the cyclists coming down the other side of the cycletrack to move over. Not without some reticence though. I'm thinking about making a sign for the front of the basket that reads "Move over." [phone ringing. "Hello...yes, this is he...really? An award?...most passive-aggressive idea of the year? Thank you so much! I'm honored. No really, thanks.]
I saw a guy on 15th with a plastic coat hanger dangling from his handlebars. That's kinda weird.
Too many drivers on R street and too many drivers driving alone on Massachusetts, where I counted six cars (out of approximately 1 million) that had more than one person in them. This, as usual, made me think about HOV lanes and congestion taxes and here's the thing: why aren't there HOV lanes in the city, where it's actually crowded? Like, what's the use of making the highways less congested if it's just going to dump everyone downtown on city streets that can't accommodate them? I suppose enforcement would be a hurdle, but it doesn't seem logical to have the narrowest, most crowded streets allowed to be occupied predominantly by lone drivers, right? I'm not a traffic expert, though. If you're not going to mitigate downtown congestion by having people to walk or ride bikes or take Metro (all of which are enviable goals), then maybe try to mitigate it by suggesting/enforcing carpooling. But this is America and that sounds like socialism or something.

Ride Home 2/22: My book about Elliot Spitzer would be titled Politics and Pros

2012-02-22T20:50:00.002-05:00

Best night for bicycling in awhile. Not even cold. Not even partially cold. Just really great, far too great for the too few people I saw out riding. Maybe it was because I left marginally later than usual. I don't know. But had I my druthers, the city streets would be flooded with bicyclists, but we're not quite there yet. Maybe tomorrow.
I forgot to do my usual plug for the JDAntos Bikeshare data crunching. Here's part 8 and it's about elevation and trip distance. It's interesting. I think that the "answer," insofar as there is an "answer," is just adding more infill stations, but that's pretty much always the answer.
[I'm trying to blog with TFTS "favorite" Dance Moms on in the background. I said to Official Wife that "this show is really distracting." She responded, "you mean fascinating?" Yeah. I should retire to my "office" which I think is what we're calling the second bedroom, which is currently used to store Christmas ornaments, extra toothpaste and winter clothes. Glamorous.]
I wish there was a way that I could somehow use harness the energy that drivers waste speeding to stop signs. Is there an app for that? No? Is there an app that can turn my frustration with their brushing past me into something? Like something useful, like extra Angry Birds?
Road work in Sheriden Circle makes things interesting. Have to merge into the traffic lane and then merge into the circle and then out of the circle. Not the most fun. For a spot, I rode on the wrong side of the cones, which makes me a dangerous scofflaw/rebel without a cause/guy biking on the wrong side of the cones. It was some real Thunderdome shit.
Lots of bike traffic by the bike shop on Q. I guess it's time for tuneups or new bike accessories or whatever. Shopping for bike stuff on the commute home is like going to the grocery store on an empty stomach.
This might or might not have been Spiderman. I don't know if Spiderman wears a Spiderman backpack and wears a Spiderman helmet. I also don't know if Che Guevara has a poster of himself on his college dorm room wall.

I can't say that I've completely reconciled myself to the fact that slower bicyclists will invariably ride in front of me at stop signs, but I've at least reconciled to not blogging about it so much. I don't know what effect this will have on the overall length of the posts. I haven't quite reconciled myself to not blogging about taxis parking in bike lanes. Why do we have a regulatory and licensing regime for them if it's not resulting in overall service and quality improvements, including better driver behavior? I can't imagine drivers are much happy about it either, especially since it causes bicyclists to have to temporarily leave the bike lane and putatively (but not really) slow down car traffic. Boo taxis. Boo Radley.
I still want a Brompton. It'd be as useful as a strawberry is to a hedgehog. [Official Wife dissenting. "A strawberry is useful- it's its headpiece." I think this is a Dance Moms joke.]
Joggers. Zombie joggers. Everywhere. From now until November. It was fun while it lasted.
Does Michelle Obama drive a car with the license plate 1STLADY? Cause if she does, I totally saw her. Not very discreet.

Take my word for it. It said 1STLADY

I stopped by my dealer to pick up some shrooms. Shrooms is what I call white button mushrooms and my dealer is Safeway. "Tripping" is what I call making a mushroom stroganoff. I'm glad I took the time to clarify, lest I give everyone the wrong impression.

Ride In 2/22: Crimea River

2012-02-22T11:37:00.001-05:00

In the spirit of combating bike commuter ennui (I think this is in the DSM 5), I opted for barbecue-style bike commuting, one defined not by mopped-on sauces or dry rubs, but instead signified by its lowness and slowness. If all bikes rides can be measured on a scale from 1 to "Dutch grandma," I was definitely at the "grandma" end of the spectrum. In fact, I see no reason why all bikes rides cannot be measured on such a scale and each gradient in the scale should be assigned a Colville-Andersen number (or European nationality and description, like Dutch grandma, Danish milkman, French mailman, etc) much as the way hot peppers are described in Scovilles. If this takes off, which it most assuredly never will, please mail all royalty checks, of which there will be none, to TFTS headquarters, which is my couch at home.
When I first started biking to work, in the course of deciding which bike to purchase as my daily commuter, I tested a few that made me feel like a milkman (upright, sturdy, slow, anachronistic) and I instead opted, as many others in this milieu do, for a hybrid, which made me feel sportier and athletic and all that. It was a good choice and the bike served me well and I very much enjoyed it at the time. But, whether through the pernicious influence of the internet or through the pernicious influence of sorcery, sometimes I crave the genuine milkman experience (not a Soderbergh film), so this morning I made it happen by taking the town bike outside of its usual bounds (namely west of 7th NW) and riding it to work. I also didn't wear a helmet. You may judge. I wore my regular work clothes and a jaunty cap. You may judge the jauntiness of the cap as well as my use of jaunty, which is an adjective I exclusively use to describe caps.

That's a picture of my basket and my messenger bag and my coffee mug.

That's a picture of a cone that might be giving mixed messages to Spanish speakers.
All in all, the ride was quite nice. Many bicyclists out, but no so many as to inconvenience me. Barely any going my way and the ones that were seemed nice enough. I don't think I even noticed especially crummy behavior from anyone, which means I have very little to report. I mean, not that I feel compelled to report only the bad stuff. I'd report the good stuff too, if anything really stood out. I mean, I took a picture of that cone, so that was something, right?
TFTS guest micro-post. Oh, and here's a bike commute movie (also not by Soderbergh).
I'd like DDOT to install a WATCH FOR PEDS AND BIKES sign at the intersection of Massachusetts and 34th. I'd also like them to install a mobile speed camera that takes pictures of drivers making right turns on red without stopping at the red. I'd also like a red rider bb gun and world peace.
I watched another bicycle commuter turn from Garfield onto Mass and ride up the street in between the go-straight lane and the right-turn lane.Watching someone else commute by bike seems to be much more harrowing than actually doing it, which seems pretty safe and easy. It's always interesting to see how poorly some drivers react to having to slightly slow down or give a little extra room. I wonder how they behave when there's real adversity in their lives.
It was a really pleasant morning and I'm getting excited for spring. Aside from fall, spring is the best. Unless you like summer and winter, which are also excellent seasons. Definitely top four, all of them.

Ride Home 2/21: Allah mowed

2012-02-21T21:01:00.001-05:00

Cold opens are hard. I guess I could use some sort of tired schema, like imposing a chronological narrative whereby I start at the beginning of my ride, at work, and end at the end of my ride, at home, and tell the story of the journey in the order by which the events of the journey happened, only stepping out of the narrative to add pithy, semi-related comments stoked by tangential remembrances. Or, since that's what I do every day, I could do something different, like muse upon the construction of a blog post, stepping back one degree or perhaps two degrees by musing upon my own musing. Or, and this would be really crazy, I could just instead adopt the same formal outlook as I normally do, but subvert that formalism by indicating my own rejection of it. Or I could just link to Simpsons clips, which is the vastly superior option. There's a reason I left graduate school and it has nothing to do with those bounty hunters and that missing Aztec treasure.

I like that immediately upon leaving work I have a gentle decline followed by a gentle incline. The incline gives me an idea of how I'm feeling, whether I have any energons (the constituent parts of energy, according to physics maybe), and to see how the bike itself feels. I'm mostly convinced that my bike has opinions about how it plans to handle the ride. Maybe I should ask the bike to guest blog so I can better gauge how it feels about our collective enterprise of riding to and from work. (Note: save this artifice for a time when I'm really desperate for ideas.) Anyway, the collective result of this gentle "testing" was realizing that my energon supply was mostly depleted and that it'd be best if maybe I just took it easy. So I did that.

Trouble in River City, if by trouble I mean some flashing lights on cop cars in front of the Turkish Embassy and by River City, I mean Turkish Embassy. More like Mustafa Come on. Am I right? Am I right? Actually, nothing much seemed going on and I'm glad for it. I ended up riding on the sidewalk because it seemed more prudent to do so. Nothing distracts drivings like lights on cop cars. Which, I guess, is the point.

Can I yellow jacket be bright enough to glint? Because I think the one on the guy behind me did. That's a bright jacket. I don't know where he went, but he was gone before I was separated from the bike messenger in front of me, who counted down the pedestrian counter aloud with a "5-4-3-2-1" before he pushed through the yellow light and I stopped for it.

Same salmon on Q as from last week (maybe), riding his CaBi in the bike lane. I didn't make eye contact and instead looked through him and he got the point, leaving the bike lane to ride in the travel lane (in the wrong direction), which is both unsafe and sort of dumb. Don't ride the wrong way in the bike lane. Don't ride the wrong way down a one-way street.

I meant to not take 11th, but I took it anyway. Take that, subconscience. Maybe tomorrow. I thought about riding down to the Met Branch and taking that a little and then heading over to 4th NE and then down thataway. That would have been a good ride. Let's pretend I did that. That blog post would be so awesome.

I liked to count the number of bike commuters I see at 11th and New York. Today was 6. This seems like as good a spot as any to make some perfunctory, unscientific count. A few heading uptown and a few heading downtown. I think there'd be more if there were bikes lanes on 11th along that stretch. Oh, if anyone ever wants to visit Washington (assuming you live somewhere else, like Kosovo or Loudon Country) and would like an official Tales From The Sharrows' "From my house to work and back" experience, just let me know. If that's how you want to spend your vacation, I'm around and also maybe I could give you some pamphlets about your brain disease and where to seek help.

Tucked in behind a dude on Penn. By tucked in, I mean followed about 10 feet behind, so as not to seem like I was too close. Everyone needs their space.

Near Lincoln Park, I saw a woman with a bike trailer and I'm certain I've seen her before. She was almost, kind of right-hooked by a turning driver and I kinda wanted to ask her what it feels like to be dragging a kid trailer and almost getting hit by a turning driver. But there's no real delicate way to ask that. Or one that doesn't sound sort of crazy. Anyway, I imagine that biking with precious cargo (like children or expensive tequila) must be tough, though I don't think it's unsafe in any real way. Probably have to just keep a cool head.

Stopped at the store and then home. It was dark by then, but soon it won't be dark (as much, and then not at all) during the evening commute and to get my night biking fix, I'm going to need to set up some midnight rides, perhaps to a 24 hour restaurant. I should actually do this. This might actually happen. I'll let you know.

Ride In 2/21: Have a cantaloupe, Lassie

2012-02-21T13:25:00.007-05:00

Sometimes you're the lead guitarist, thrashing through power chords with a raw energy and other times you're in the back with the tambourine, beating it against the front of your leg and swaying side to side. Today was a tambourine day for me. I was more than content to sit patiently behind the riders in front of me, let them dictate the pace and just have a mindless morning of gentle pedaling while looking at the backs of other people's coats.
My tires are great and I almost certainly will never pick up a flat from using them (which is why I bought them) but they're rather unforgiving and have reasonably unfun rolling resistance, making a lot of trips seem more like slogs than they should be. I think I might swap them out when it gets nicer, which will be approximately 2 days from now. I don't know. I'm confident that as soon as I switch tires, I'll immediately ride over a nail. But that's what I get for living in an old converted nail factory.
Along Pennsylvania Avenue, I watched the cyclist in front of me have to swerve to avoid a pedestrian standing directly in the middle of the bike lane at the intersection, rather than a few feet back in the part of the mid-street pedestrian refuge that isn't marked as a bike lane. Personally, I think it's sort of obvious that there's a bike lane there and it might be a good idea not to stand in it, especially when one can see oncoming bicyclists (who were plentiful), but maybe it's not actually obvious and I'm just in some sort of bike bubble. I don't know how, without re-engineering the lanes (again), it could be made more obvious that there's a cycletrack. Maybe glitter? Neon lights? Bouncers and velvet ropes? Bike lane heralds whose sole job is to trumpet the arrival on bicyclists and thereby clear the area with a blast of their horns? It shouldn't be so hard to peacefully coexist, and yet here I am suggesting velvet ropes and trumpets.
My decision to turn right and follow another bicyclist up 11th was based in part from commuter ennui. I've taken more or less than same route to and from work for the past couple of weeks and I wanted to break it up a bit and do something marginally different. I mean, I ride 11th every day, but do I ever ride in north? I think I've done it once before, but not in months. It was mostly fine. A lot of pot holes. A goodly amount of manhole covers. Wide enough streets, though the guy in front of me, black coat, earmuffs, road bike, chose to ride in the door zone, so I decided to do the same. Sparse car traffic and no one opening their car doors made this just fine. A bike lane on 11th would be nice. It would basically shortcut the "need" for the laughable bike/bus lanes on 7th and 9th. Were I DC bike czar (not a real position...yet), I'd try to space out the north-south downtown bike lanes every 4 or 5 blocks, so 15th, 11th, 6th and 1st NW. That seems like a reasonable thing to do. Of course, were I actually bike czar, I'd probably end up on Fox News and/or deposed.
It was nice to ride uptown behind another person, since I'm almost never traveling in the same direction as anyone else in the morning. I wonder where the guy was going. He turned down Rhode Island and I turned left at R and for a few blocks, I had a slightly different commute from normal and then it was the normal commute again.
I think that passing a bicyclist on the right is rude and poor form. I don't know if bicycling draws iconoclasts and libertarians who like to flout rules and conventions (I flout Comic-Con, nearly daily) or whether there's simply not enough standardized guidelines to proper behavior in traffic that no 'norming' can actually take place, and far be it from me to actually tell other people what to do, but there's a certain sense in behaving in a predictable, logical manner. I'm not even talking about following the law, which, being a Comic-Con flouting iconoclastic libertarian, I don't especially care for, but a separate set of guidelines by which bicyclists operate vis-a-vis ourselves. You know, like a social contract.
I spent from 15th to past Dupont Circle riding behind a woman wearing a green coat. I'm sorry that I don't remember more about her. Her coat was very green and it apparently wiped my memory with its greenness, like a high-powered magnet would do to a computer.
Budget Rental Trucks, U-Hauls, and the like are probably the most dangerous vehicles to bike near. This is because, unlike other larger vehicles in operation, these rental vans are operated by amateurs with little knowledge and experience and limited awareness concerning the size and parameters of their trucks. Being passed by one within two feet is decidedly unpleasant. I'm usually fairly ambivalent to bad driver behavior, willing to say 'no harm, no foul,' because really, why dwell on what could have, but thankfully, didn't happen? But I must have eaten the morose-flavored Pop Tart this morning and I was more bothered than usual about how someone else's lack of care for my well-being could have had such terrible consequences. Some days it's great to the "vanguard of the revolution" (all bike commuters are Bolsheviks. Dan Maes was right!), thinking that you know something "special" and what you're doing is somehow paving the way for others and helping the advance of a better, greener and more sustainable future (even if you don't brag about it). Other days you just think how much bullshit it is that you could've gotten hit by a truck by a driver who doesn't care on a road that doesn't cater to you by a government that barely acknowledges you in a society than vaguely disdains you. I recommend the former over the latter.
Well, that was glum. Sorry. To make up for it, here's a picture of Ellie the Poodle, looking cute.

"I'm cute"

As always, thanks for reading. See you on the ride home.

Guest Post: Oddman's journey of 2000 miles is a matter of inches

2012-02-20T17:26:00.001-05:00

I am currently on a train in the deepest,darkest jungles of Tibet, searching for enlightenment and a stick of spearmint gum. The wi-fi connection can best be described as "inter-mittens," which is also how I would describe a ball of yarn being played with by a kitty. As such, I've out-sourced my evening bloggery to long-time reader, Oddman (that's a pseudonym. His real name is John D. Ingcognito), but I will never out-source my gratitude to him for his time and effort.

“It’s all about the gear inches!”

I first got back into cycling at age 53 with a Dahon Espresso, their basic full-size 21 speed. In a week, I told the dealer that I actually hated that bike - it was very narrow-geared (I found out later 36-86 gear inches), the front gears would never shift easily, and I hated the way my arms hurt leaning over and my neck hurt keeping it tilted up to see forward. (How can anybody see this as natural?)

The dealer was great, and swapped me into a Speed D7 - great bike, I learned to really enjoy the ease of use and “nimble” handling. Problem? Still too narrow a gear range - I was starting out up hill in 5th gear, so I upgraded to a Speed P8.

Ah, a perfect combination; big chainwheel, wide-range 8 speeds, and almost-upright seating. I kept this bike for a long time, had a wild wipeout, got some heart problems, and couldn’t ride anymore, so sold the bike.

After getting better through some experimental medical work, I returned to biking with an old, well-used Bike-E recumbent bike. I took a long winter to clean it up and get back into shape. At the same time, I also wanted a small folding bike to keep in my van for quick rides around the monuments. I picked up what turned out to be a rusted hulk of a Classic Dahon, but took it all apart, cleaned up acres of rust, and put it back together. It survived. I sold it and began a CL buying/fixing/selling spree, not ever making much money (even lost a bit), but it was great healing therapy, something to do while I was getting strong again. I learned to do a lot of minor repairs, (but could never get a front derailleur to shift as smooth and immediate as the Bike-E’s Sturmey Archer rear hub-nor could many bike shops) and made friends with good mechanics when I did the repairs wrong. I did find some honest, reliable, and competent mechanics in the area: 1 in Vienna, 1 in Springfield, and 1 in DC (or so I thought).

With changes in residences looming, I sold the best folder that I built up (The Silver Edition P8) and the recumbent and began exploring “big-wheel” bikes. I considered going the CL route with these, but really just wanted to ride this Spring/Summer, not constantly repair things. So, began looking into buying a new bike, with hot cash in my account.

One year later, I finally have one but not by the route expected.

What I learned from the few years of riding, and taking into account my medical condition, was:

I’m a large person, and sadly, a small-wheeled folder just can’t take the strain;

I want gear inches to be as close to 35-95 as possible;

No aggravation of a front derailleur;

A riding position that keeps my head upright;

Looking for the $500 price point.

Why not another recumbent? My new digs in Sterling are right along the W&OD Trail, so I can ride into town and take Metro or MetroBus back home. I also want to use my bike for everyday use, never starting my van except to go to work (grocery shopping and such). The recumbent I really liked had no way to attach a rack and wouldn’t fit on Metro, so a “standard” big-wheel bike was the choice.

“Perservering through narrow-minded manufacturer decisions and nasty bikeshops.”

Beginning in January of 2011, I checked out a few bikes. First thinking that I wanted a “crank-forward” bike, to simulate the feel of a recumbent, I tried out 2 models, one from the dealer where one of my trusted mechanics worked. Nice bike, heavier than I thought, and discovered I had difficulty getting into a correct pedaling position. A CF just wasn’t the same as a recumbent. Also, the front derailleur wouldn’t shift well and the chain wouldn’t stay on the front ring. I didn’t want to think I had a bad mechanic, (and no one yet has gotten a front indexed shifter to shift well enough to suit me), so I looked into the next CF bike, sold at a recreational sports shop. Nice bike, but with all the engineering supposedly designed in, I still needed the handlebars moved up and back 1 inch. Should have been easily done with a $15 quill stem; the store wouldn’t do it without my paying more. Six months later, they still had the unsold bike, and still wouldn’t replace the stem for me without an additional charge.

So, began looking into every bike and bike shop in the Va/Dc area - “Oh, the Horrors!” I found stores staffed with absolutely clueless sales persons - clueless about the bikes they sell and clueless about simple customer service. One store, I just wanted to look at saddles (knowing what my, ahem, wide-track backside required), and the salesperson began to explain to me how my choice would hurt - my dear, I just rode 400 miles on one just like it, and it fit great. This same store has a 2010 bike that would work just right, except again, would need a more upright threadless stem. They wouldn't change its $15 part for less than $50 dollars.

I looked at another bike, a leftover 2010 model that might have been OK except the stem again – the sales manager said it wouldn’t raise, so I didn’t even test ride it. I found out later that it had a quill stem, the ones I like, easily adjusted, and it could have fit but by then, the 2010 bike was sold.

I went into one store, merely stating my needs - the salesperson immediately directed me towards a $900 bike, saying that nothing else he sells would fit my parameters. Odd, because at another of their local stores, a great salesman immediately knew what would fit my needs, was going to order one in my size for me to try out, and 2 months later, never got back to me.

Oh yeah -probably a reliable store in Reston, but the manager said he won’t order a bike without a 20% downpayment even for a test ride, and tried to direct me to, yes, a quality bike, one that he had in stock, but it had that threadless stem problem, where the part had to be changed to get the bars at my needed position. The manager said that he would get my body to like a leaned-forward riding position. Yeah, right! Arrogance!

Finally discovered a bike from a shop that has a good reputation, but he had a price tag on it $30 higher than the manufacturers listed price. Not even worth arguing about.

“It’s all about the gear inches”

I found out that almost all manufacturers consider single-front chainwheels appropriate only for their “entry-level” models (entry level at $400-500!). OK, I could stand an entry level bike, but for some reason, the manufacturers think these bikes should be geared as to not go too fast, almost every one with gear inches from 38-85. I need a better “low gear” for hills and I regularly travel at mid-90s, so as not to “spin” too much. My heart doesn’t like me when I “stand” on the pedals to get up to speed or spin too fast, so, how about swapping out clusters? Oh NO, not without great additional cost.

Finally, I followed the words from a trusted advisor- buy the bike that fits best and then make it work. One, and only one, bike remaining fit perfectly, looked great, and the dealer worked with me to switch out enough parts to get the gear range I needed. Great, except it had a brake noise that after 3 attempts, wasn’t alleviated. At the time, I didn’t blame the shop, I think the bike had some defective parts, but I also learned that even from “upscale” manufacturers, their entry level bikes have lower quality minor parts that won’t allow a proper fix, even by the best mechanics. I later found out that every bike I test rode from their shop had brake squeal.

I found an old beater to ride while waiting for the model that worked could be ordered, I showed it to the mechanic, and he went into scare tactics, that it needed complete overhaul before it could be even safe to ride (or how I heard his concerns), or all parts replaced. I decided to offer it to a friend, first doing all the repairs they suggested (new wheels and such). I rode it for 200 miles, and then left it for new-wheel adjustments. I picked it up, and on my first turn, the rear wheel fell off. It wasn’t the same since, making noises and riding poorly, and the shop said they couldn’t find anything wrong. During that visit, one of the owners berated me as trying to do a lot with a little – no, just that very few bikes fit my requirements, and they had one if only the sales manager knew his products.

I never gave it to my friend, had my trusted folder/recumbent dealer rebuild the rear wheel and sold it as a loss. The shop did give me some labor charges back, but still, I’m at a loss and still, not owning a new bike!

Finally, I discovered an exercise equipment chain that is going out of the bicycle business and selling off their 2011 stock of brand-name bikes (Jamis) at 55% off. I found a great basic bike, and let the above trusted dealer doing service and repairs, at my cost. Already I have had to have a spoke replaced, but the above professional wheel builder reset all spokes with proper tension.

I probably spent twice as much this year on CL bikes and bad repairs as the bike that the sales manager was uninformed about, but I finally have a nice new bike that I can rely on. In trying out all these bikes, I still rode 2046 miles last year, and hope to do that much or more, but with less aggravation.

And since December, with a TFTS button on the front.

Ride In 2/20: Dean Cain is able

2012-02-20T12:15:00.002-05:00

Ellen is over and while you're still in your pajamas, there's probably mostly eaten bowl of cereal next to you on the table by the couch and if you're not wearing slippers it's probably because you left them upstairs and rather then get up to get them, you just decided to tuck your feet under the blanket or maybe put them up on the coffee table but not in a way that disrupts the magazines or would leave foot marks on the glass. Or at least, this is the scene that I've imagined for you, the lucky many who are able to stay home today, freed from the bondage of your federal or federal-affiliated jobs and granted a not unpleasant February day to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of the presidents, all of whom were men, some of whom had beards. Maybe later you'll go for a bike ride or maybe later you'll sit down to write up a blog post that you'll email me (talesfromthesharrows@gmail) so I can put it up this evening as has become my Monday habit. I'd very much appreciate your effort, even if it's not much effort at all. I find that writing about bicycling (a commute or another ride, or even just tips or gear recommendations or anything really) is a great way to honor, let's say, Rutherford Hayes (male, bearded) and vastly superior to watching even more daytime talk shows. Considered yoursevles besought.
In case you couldn't tell from my pitiable first paragraph, I am at work today and I commuted here by bicycle. Over my eight miles (Cheddar?), I saw 9 other bicyclists. That's a rather low number, even for a colder day. Either people weren't working or they decided to drive to work (a possibility I even considered) on account the free parking. I'm guessing that most everyone was just off today. Car traffic was likewise rather minimal. Contrary to what you'd think (maybe), I don't like commuting on days when there's less traffic. Drivers seem a little bit too relaxed and not as attentive as usual (ha!) and perhaps not nearly as aware of bicyclists, since there aren't nearly as many of them to be aware of. Plus, what am I suppose to write about? The nine people on bikes I saw? Ok.

guy with bike trailer (penn ave), with hard plastic suitcases in them. For some reason I thought he was transporting stereo equipment. When I passed him, I said that I liked his trailer. He might have grunted.
Guy by White House. He rode through Lafayette Park, while I was stopped to adjust the tension of my pedals. I had tightened them too much and I couldn't barely unclip. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to unclip in time if I needed to (in case of emergency maybe?), so I actually stopped halfway through the trip to adjustment.
Purple track jacket. I see this guy a lot. This time it was on 15th between K and L. He might also have been wearing a headband. I appreciate bike commuters who wear the same distinctive clothes everyday. Makes my job easier.
CaBi on Mass. Guy riding towards Thomas Circle, mixed in with traffic.
CaBi by Dupont. Guy riding down Connecticut Avenue. Sort of evocative of earlier guy on CaBi, in that he was white and youngish.
6. Guy on Schwinn racing bike by Sheriden Circle. He was riding either on the sidewalk or very close to it. He looked cold and a little uncomfortable.
Guy riding down the opposite sidewalk on Massachusetts, by the Observatory. His bike might have been orange or I might just be making that up. He was the only person I saw riding down Mass today. I would've expected more for some reason.
Guy riding up Mass way fast. He came down Macomb in front of me and just took off up the hill. I tried to give chase (for what it's worth), but he kept well in front of me. He must've been feeling good this morning, because I certainly wasn't. Legs just didn't want to go to work.
Girl on Mass sidewalk with buttons on backpack. She had a few buttons, but none of them Sharrows buttons. I guess that means there's room for market growth.

I did put air in my tires this morning, but it only made my bike feel even heavier. Stupid heavy air.
I bike past the Superme Court every day and I never write about it. So, here are my thoughts on the architecture and ambiance of the Supreme Court building: it's fine. A bit ponderous.
By the end of the week, it'll be at least 60 degrees and I expect everyone to be out on bikes again. I'm going to wish safe and hassle-free travels to all. I don't know why I'm doing this now. Maybe because I've already told you about pretty much everything I seem to recall about my trip this morning, already exhorted you to write a guest post, and have completely run out of other things to mention. Or, maybe, it's just because I'm a nice and thoughtful person. I think we both know the real reason.
For those of you looking to spend your day not writing a guest post, here are some things to read:

How Public Perception of Light Rail Influences Its Economic Benefits

We Need a 'Broken Windows' For Traffic Crimes

How to Solve the Boomer Retirement Crisis

Enjoying the Saints in Late Antiquity

Or, as always, I encourage you to read selections from the many wonderful blogs listed on the right of the main page.

Ride Home 2/17: The Land of Milk and Hominy

2012-02-17T19:20:00.003-05:00

Freude! Freude! Beethoven totally got it right when he borrowed from Schiller and my tochter aus Elysium is getting the heck outta Dodge (euphemistic city, not car brand) when the clock strikes five-ish (the time, not Finkel) on the fifth day of the work week. Nothing that won't give you Diabetes is quite so sweet. (That was also what I wrote in the Official Wife's last Valentine's Day card.)
I left my bike outside today, rather than locking it up in the usual inside place, and it made for a quicker escape. I doubt that I pedaled any faster than usual, since I refuse to pedal any more than strictly necessary. Those draisine dudes had it right.
I received a LATE BREAKING text message that was late nor breaking re: an opportunity to meet up with some friends for a quick beer on the way home. The stipulation that the beer was quick was my own, in that I have a dog (aka Ellie the Poodle) who needs to be walked and fed irrespective of my desire for beer and camaraderie. Nonetheless, I detoured to make this happen, but not in a way that was sensible. I rode Mass almost until Dupont and took 21st down to M and then M over to 25th and down 25th to Pennsylvania, crossed Penn inadvisedly and crossed it back slightly more advisedly as that's where the drinking hole (note: not actual hole) found itself located. I locked up on a street sign, which I hate, but them's the breaks of bike parking in this city sometime. Some other bike dude (technical term) waited for me to lock up so he could do the same, which he did, as I found out when I left. I enjoyed a spot of ale (or bottle of beer, whatevs, but I'm trying to be 'poetic') and some good talk about how terrible a candidate Mitt Romney is (he's the Mitt Romney of terrible candidates) and then it was once again off on the rest of my ride home. All safe-like and such.
I didn't want to ride through Washington Circle (less dangerous circles include Xena's chakram) so I took L (no cycletrack yet) until 15th. I really, really liked riding L because traffic was moving but at a speed not so much greater than one I could maintain and I sort of felt like I was some badass urban bike type even though in reality I'm very much not that. Drivers along L have a funny habit of just using the right travel lane as a parking lane or idling lane or turning lane so there were some spots where I had to leave it on a few occasions, but that wasn't a big deal. In short, it was relatively fun. In long, it was relatively fun but more so. I shan't tell you what it was in medium (fun). I turned off at 15th and took that through Lafayette and the followed it to Penn.
Operating a pedicab doesn't look easy. Big props to those guys.
Oh so much fun just following along as the fourth bike in a caravan bopping from light to light. And then I saw someone with a SharrowsDC button! First time in the wild. I took grainy picture (that I can't post for some reason) of none other then #bikeDC's data crunching luminary JDAntos. He's also a resident of Armory West- South (not a real neighborhood) and we rode together most of the rest of the way home. We talked mostly about the soon-to-be brand-new secure bike parking facility at the College Park Metro station, which sounds pretty awesome and like a really great deal for College Park bike parkers. (The College Park Bike Parkers were a barnstorming baseball team in the 1890s.) It was nice to have a bit of conversation for the last miles home and I was glad that Justin decided to head down Penn instead of taking his new normalish route home. Bike commuting is, and always will be, a moveable feast.
For those of you having a three day weekend, have 150% more fun than normal. I'll be back Monday with the same old shenanigans. Viszlat.

Ride In 2/17: Great-Grandma's Birthday

2012-02-17T15:08:00.003-05:00

Let's keep this moving.
Three pedals in and I realized that the air in my tires seemed low. Though maybe that's just Friday sluggishness. I've wanted it to be Friday all week, not only because Friday marks the end of the work week and not also because Friday is the day of Friday coffee club and not also because once that girl sang that annoying YouTube song about it, but also because...well, actually, I sort of think it was one of those reasons, but I won't tell you which one. I guess it can't be Friday every day because then we'd have to get new calendars and there'd never be anything good on tv. It'd also be Friday the 13th every single month and I don't think that the superstitious among us would like that very much.
I rode down Massachusetts and past the train station. A little too far past, actually, and I had to wait on the sidewalk by the Bikestation before crossing the street to get back over to E Street. I never seem to do this correctly, mostly because my instincts are to ride in the right lane and the turn to E Street is on the left. I'm sure that when the construction is done (est. Friday 13, 2019) the proposed bike facilities will make this transition easier. No, I couldn't type that with a straight face, not that you can see my face anyway. [For $1000 to WABA, I'll see you a "making of" video of me typing out one of these posts. You actually don't want this. Trust me. The production values would be terrible, the narrator would be unintelligible and the plot twists would leave you scratching your head.]

Making-of panda

I could look this up, and I probably should, but I'll hazard a guess that the redesign won't make it any easier to cyclists to transition from Massachusetts to E, which is a shame because E is a relatively decent way to get across downtown. It has bike lanes at least. And stop lights every block for those of us worried about getting winded from continuous bicycling. In spite of the always having to stop, I do sort of like taking E, at least as a sometimes break from Pennsylvania Avenue. Though the street itself seems a little bit dead. But it was early, so maybe it livens up.
I'm opposed to the height limit. Even downtown. You may judge me accordingly. I find the buildings to be too squat. It's the 21st century. Let's pretend like that means something, like in science fiction.
[Glockenspiel solo]
Coffee club was great and it was great seeing some new faces. Great seeing old faces too. Not that I'm calling your faces old. We're becoming quite a club. Maybe 10 of us today. We might need a bigger venue, like the Convention Center or maybe just the same venue but outside. It'll be warmer soon and we can sit outside and drink iced coffee.
I don't even really remember much about my ride, except for how absolutely brilliant the weather was. Just gorgeous. On a day like this, I'd regret not riding a bicycle. Apparently so would other people because there were bikes everywhere, especially CaBis. There's no way the Bikeshare trips aren't robbing other modeshares, though probably those trips aren't replacing car trips but instead public transportation ones.
Yarn-bombing:

I sure hope there isn't a fire. It would be a shame to have to ruin such mirthful vandalism.
Spent much of my trip up Wisconsin mad about the low air in my tires and the lower air in my lungs. Not mad exactly, just a little miffed. I tried to counteract this by trying to keep pace with a guy bicycling up the other side of the street. I mostly did, so good for me. It's much better and less anti-social to "race" against someone when there's a whole roadway between you.

Ride Home 2/16: Karl Marx in Duck Soup

2012-02-16T20:54:00.001-05:00

Not quite the rain I was expecting, but it was a gray day with low clouds and a thick wet atmosphere of dampness hung about in a way that made the fact that it was still mostly light out seem somehow worse and not better. I greeted the weather by wearing (again) my gray fleece, which was perhaps the worst decision ever as it provided no real protection from dampness and was the exact same color as the low clouds and thick wet atmosphere. I was camouflaged, in perhaps the dumbest and most avoidable way possible. But I had lights, so that was ok. Please use lights. If you don't, I forbid you from reading this blog. You'll have to self-report and I suppose there's no way to prevent someone from printing out a copy and smuggling it you, except for the fact that I forbid the remainder of you from printing and smuggling blog posts to the lightless, though I suppose there's no way for me to enforce that except for me to demand that you immediately remove and mail your ink cartridges to:

Tales From The Sharrows
666 Never Gonna Happen Drive, North by Northwest
Washington, DC 20003

Having lights on your bike (and using them at night) is something I feel very passionately about and it's something that you should feel passionately about as well. They're cheap and easy and could save your life.
Tonight was the night that I ~~laundered~~ delivered your hard-earned and poorly spent button money to the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. I took Mass to Garfield to Cleveland to Harrison to Cleveland again (that's a Grover Cleveland joke. You're welcome) to Calvert and over to Columbia Heights (Adams Morgan?) to WABA HQ on Ontario. They had bike parking out front, so that was nice. The ride over was relatively uneventful. I rode a bit skittishly on account of the rain and not wanting to wipe out because the roads were the kind of slick that they are when it's only a little raining. Very little traffic drama. I'd say that every ride is an adventure, but that's not true by any stretch of the imagination. Jon, of manfredmacx.com, met me out front.
WABA, in case you don't know, has its offices in an underground bunker that could probably withstand a blast from a multi-kiloton nuclear weapon (Pick another target, enemies of freedom). The hard-working staff remained hard-working throughout and beyond our visit. It's not easy to make bike advocacy happen and they do a great job and I'm glad that collectively we found a way to help them out a bit. I have no doubt that they will translate your generosity into great things. Vote for them as best DC non-profit here. Here are some pictures, without context or explanation or even captions:

I'd like to thank Greg for the tour and the bike-centered conversing. I'd also like to thank him for the insider-y info about bike infrastructure that I hope will be brought to fruition soon. Or if not to fruition, at least to Fruitopia.
After leaving WABA, I salmoned down Ontario (Delicious Ontario salmon!) to Euclid (You klidding me, right?) and over to the 11th, where I saw a couple of other bicyclists, all heading in the other direction. I'm just never over in this part of town, so I won't even hazard a guess as to where. Home, I guess.
11th went from the 11th I didn't know to the 11th I did and then it was [insert previous ride home post here]. Chain skipped a bit, so I don't know what that's about. Probably some sort of gypsy curse. Took it really easy on Penn once I realized that the traffic lights weren't going to be any different if I went any faster. I feel like this is the key insight of bicycling: you can't beat the system. That was also the key insight of 1984. That and how terrifying cages full are rats are.
What if Congress was more like feudalism (don't tell Susan Reynolds) in that each representative and senator was responsible for providing a certain number of security guards?
Along East Capitol, I did my usual moderately paced dawdle. The driver of a Mercedes considered making a left turn across my path, but didn't because I didn't stop for him. He flashed his high beams at me, as if to say "stop for me." Perhaps I should have switched my front light to blink as if to say "nope."Later, I passed a charming looking family (or maybe just dude with his mistress and love child. I don't want to make assumptions), all of whom who thought it would be a lovely idea to have a conservation while standing in the bike lane. One ding and nothing. Two dings and I felt like I might has well have not dinged at all (don't tell Tennyson). I rode by and didn't say anything or even look askance. I suppose I could have made a big deal over being inconvenienced, but I wasn't really inconvenienced.
Swings coffee tomorrow, if anyone is inclined.

Ride In 2/16: A diplomat's caviar is embassy roe

2012-02-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

I took some time to adjust my front brake pads last night and to install new rear pads and to the best of my knowledge, my bicycle remained operable this morning, or at least operable enough to get me to work. With the new chain and the new cassette, my bike seemed like it was running better than ever. Nothing like a well-maintained bicycle to make one's commute easier.
It almost rained this morning, but it didn't and I was happy for it. I think it might be raining now and will most likely be raining when I head home. That should at least wash away some of the salt, or maybe just create Dead Sea-like conditions along Pennsylvania Avenue.
How many of you coordinate your helmet color with your jacket color? I pass a woman nearly everyday whose purple helmet is almost the exact same shade as her winter coat. Maybe she's sponsored by Grimace. I don't know.
I haven't taken a different route to work in a while and I still didn't this morning. Maybe tomorrow. I'm just somewhat certain that the way I go is the way that's most convenient and perhaps most expedient, especially insofar as getting from Armory West to downtown is concerned. Route planning is simultaneously one of my favorite and least favorite things about bicycling. Lots of potential for variability, but this is only rarely utilized.
Watching the car traffic back-ups at the usual places car traffic backs up, I wondered a little about the idea of 'mindless driving.' That's not to say driving without a mind, which is prevalent in the hypnotized community (I once attended Hypnotics Anonymous, but we couldn't get anywhere because this guy clucked like a chicken every time someone said "My name is"), but just getting in a car and driving without questioning whether there's another (and perhaps better) way of getting somewhere, like biking, walking or transit. Cap'n Transit hits on the same kind of idea with the Law of Transportation Mode Inertia, which I encourage you to read. Simply put, I'm just not quite sure how dynamic anyone's thinking (including mine and other bike commuters) is concerning the different ways by which we can get to work. We make choices and we repeat those choices and then the choices become habits and habits become hard to break. Not as hard to break at Hobbits, but still pretty hard.
I forgot to bring coffee again this morning. That's twice in a row. Ruins my commute. At stop lights I just have to stand look and look like some guy who's just doing nothing. I'm convinced that a lot of people smoke just so they can be doing something when they're standing around outside.
At K Street, a guy on a yellow mountain bike shoaled on by. He had money ($20 bills) visible through the mesh pockets of his backpack. I guess he wanted to make it easy for lobbyists.
Saw Jon in the cycletrack today, kid trailer in tow. We're going to WABA today to give them the $$$ earned from the button sales/ride blogging. I haven't yet secured a comically large check, so it might just need to be a regular-sized check, which is boring. I hope WABA doesn't mind getting one of my adorable kitty checks.
I spent much of my westward journey thinking about bike commuting as backgammon, something I've written about before and won't rehash here. I might eventually elaborate on those ideas and submit the article to Bike Commuting and Backgammon Quarterly, a Conde Nast publication. I wonder how the publishing industry loses money. Very few bicyclists about, but I did see a fellow bike commuter talking with the crossing guard at New Hampshire. He's a very pleasant man.
There's some kind of sweater affixed somehow to a tree along R between Connecticut and Florida. I don't get it. Maybe someone yarn-bombed the tree? One of these days I actually stop and try to figure out what it is or why it might be there.
Fun fact: a new Pakistani Embassy building will be kind of around the corner from the Indian Embassy. They're going to be neighbors and we all know how well that's worked out. I've been wondering if paying countries foreign aid in USD with the caveat that they have to spend it on embassy construction would be some kind of backdoor economic stimulus for the domestic construction trade. I'm co-authoring a book on foreign policy with Rube Goldberg. It's sort of like promoting travel to your country to boost supplies of foreign currency (which based on the bus ads, I believe Iceland is doing) but probably not nearly as economically efficient or useful.
Rode behind another up-Mass bike commuter this morning. I actually went out in the road to pass her since my legs were feeling all right and I didn't want to continue to feel afraid of riding in the road, which is ridiculous to admit, but entirely true. I just don't like getting passed too closely by drivers going 50. Is that so wrong?
It's cool when the third stopped driver looking to make a left turn which the two drivers in front of him doesn't think is possible to do before the light changes decides to honk and act like an ass. It's even cooler when all three drivers decide to make the turn after the light turns red, even though there's a bicyclist trying to cross the intersection with a green light. Funny that he though my look of indignation funny. Oh well.

Ride Home 2/15: Balsam Absalom

2012-02-15T19:59:00.004-05:00

It still isn't Friday. I need a better calendar.
It was exactly the right kind of weather for wearing a pullover (hu.: pulover) and I decided to wear my fleece in place of my yellow jacket. Fleece wearing isn't something I do very often, in spite of the fact that for a few years I lived in Colorado, a state with the motto "a fleece for every occasion (buddy)," but I did it tonight and it worked out well. I don't think I've worn my yellow jacket in weeks now and I don't know what that means. Maybe it means that I don't want to stand out or maybe it means I do want to stand out, being one of the few bike commute types who doesn't seem to wear one. Though I think I've perhaps overestimated the number of yellow jacket wearers among us.
I shouldn't even be writing this post. Instead, I should be toeing in my brakes. I'm just going to have this video on loop and watch it over and over and over and over until I'm able to stop the ridiculous squeaking, which is both annoying and embarrassing. (Did you watch this video? IT DOESN'T EVEN SHOW HOW TO DO IT! IT JUST STOPS ONCE THE DUDE PICKS UP THE TOOL. I expect more of you, eHow. I bet that guy rides a recumbent) I think I know what to do and I certainly have the resources, if not the patience, to make the very minor adjustments. This, for example, seems to be a reasonable resource.
This was my last ride on my old rear cassette. I got it replaced at Bicycle Space. Took maybe 15 minutes. Easy in and easy out and there were plenty of other people in the shop. So, I guess that's one problem that I can cease complaining about. I suppose I could have done it myself, but then my bike probably would have caught on fire and I would have likely been attached by a rabid raccoon. These are just the kind of (imagined) things that happen when I try to do my own maintenance. I resisted the urge to buy other stuff when I was there, but I guess I also resisted the urge to ask the mechanics about my squeaking brakes. D'oh (which I believe is a hydroxide).
Some guy was singing in French in Dupont. He had a hand held microphone. I don't think he was associated with a restaurant or anything, so, I don't really know what that was all about. Near the same corner I once heard a guy repeating into his cell phone "we got grandma a gift certificate to the French place she likes," so maybe that's the most francophilic corner in Washington. I believe the Spanish Civil War was fought between the Francophilics and Francophobes, most of whom were rather francophilic. Maybe that's why they lost. Growing up, I was always John Franco-philic, which is a totally different thing, but one equally associated with losing.
I'd like the intersection of Q Street and 11th Street and Rhode Island and Q Street to be entirely different. Pierre L'Enfant (terrible?) was history's greatest monster. Other than Mothra.
Rather than take M, I stuck on 7th until Massachusetts and got to Bicycle Space that way. Along 7th, I saw the new Bicycle Space (Bicycle Space Nuovo). It'll be smaller than the current shop, but it's in a great location.
From the bike shop, I took 4th to E and E to Union Station and then I took a train to Newark. Just kidding. I rode home instead. Had I gone to Newark I would have had to say goodbye to Columbus, but rather than do that, I just said goodbye to Columbus Circle, which is also something DDOT is doing with the massive reconstruction. I won't miss the old Columbus Circle (Columbus Circle Vecchia) and it's terrible terrain. I'm not sure that the pavement could be worse. Maybe if there was lava pushing through the surface.
Easy for the rest of the way. A few pushy types on Bikeshare bikes and a few drivers who could have driven better, but nothing new and nothing untoward.

Ride In 2/15: Oxford Constables Make Oxford Collars

2012-02-15T13:19:00.002-05:00

I live on a fairly quiet street between two less quiet ones and one block away from an east-west street with bike lanes, so I don't see too many bicyclists on my street since it's not really a major thoroughfare and it parallels one with bike lanes. This morning, when I stepped outside with my bike, a superbiker happened to be pedaling by, which as the first sentence might indicate, is something a rarity. He said "nice set-up," presumably about my bike and not about the first few sentences of this post which are both attenuated and somewhat unclear. I said "thanks" and then "your's too," even though I couldn't really tell you much about his bike other than it was a road bike and had skinny tires. "Nice set-up" is a nice pleasantry and one that I've used before and it sort of made me smile that someone complimented the "set-up" (which could mean anything) of my bicycle. He probably didn't know about my ongoing chain skipping problems (which I think I'll try to have addressed tonight) or my desire to entirely overhaul the "set-up" of my bike.
I hate when I don't see a pedestrian in a crosswalk until too late and don't stop. It happens sometimes when I'm in the bike lane and the person is walking across traffic and they're blocked by an SUV or some other kind of tall-ish car. I feel like a jackass when it happens, even when I apologize. Yet another argument for taking the lane? I don't know. Maybe just an argument for lucite SUVs.
More green bikes today. Green is the new every other color.
I think my favorite part about writing these posts is trying to remember all of the people, on bikes and otherwise, who temporarily drop into my life and then leave it. That's probably a sad metaphor for something even sadder, but it's at least a little true. And then there's the whole business of trying to figure out who to mention. Do I write about the lady on the vintage mixte, who I thought would turn right right into me? How about the guy with the leather gladstone bag tucked on the rack behind his kid in the kidseat? Or the guy on the red road bike who waited with me briefly at the light at 3rd and Penn, before making a left-turn and heading off who knows where? And did the man jogging in the middle of the bike lane really want me to ask him about public charter schools, as the words on the back of his shirt suggested? I would have preferred to ask him about why he was jogging in the bike lane, but as a compromise, I declined to ask him anything. Maybe next time.
Remember when they (?) said that the 15th street cycle track would be extended to Euclid and to Constitution? I do. This was from August 2010, which is roughly 27 DC government scandals ago, which is pretty much a lifetime. I just think that extending the cycletrack to Constitution might be a really nice thing to do before the Bikeshare stations are placed on the Mall. You know, so people could bike from the Mall to the White House in some protected bike infrastructure. Just throwing that out there. I'm fairly certain that I (through blogging sorcery) summoned that Stoddert Bikeshare station into existence, so maybe the same thing will happen here.
Looks like the DC Bicycle Advisory Committee has some vacancies. If anyone wants to be Vincent Orange's appointee (and for comedy reasons, one should), now's your chance. Someone needs to advocate for fictitious bike parking at the fictitious Ward 5 strip clubs.
I think the Jamis is gone, probably forever. Maybe the guy just moved it inside. In any case, it's not there and that's one less thing for me to write about. Doesn't the owner know I depend on shit like this for filler? Some people.
There's something about the timing of the lights on 15th street that causes bicyclists to bunch at Rhode Island and then there's something about bicyclists that causes them to act all crazy when that light turns green and start racing southward as quickly as possible, which makes me have to either hold my ground or nearly ride into the bollards. One woman actually left the cycletrack and salmoned on 15th so she could get around me and the other people she was racing against. Um, if the lights are timed the same way as they are in the evening, you're going to get stuck at Mass anyway, so, um, why is this happening? Also, shouldn't the stretch of blocks between Rhode Island and Massachusetts have some ~~funny~~ neighborhood nickname like Woonsocket?
Kids, don't do stupid stuff borne of vanity. Kids, also if your parents are letting you read this drivel, you'd be better off orphaned. Anyway, here's what happened. I got shoaled. Shoal me once, shame on you. So when the light changed, I passed the guy, and just because, I decided that I would ride in the drops and see how fast I could go in the bike lane. And this was all well and good until a taxi driver decided that he would leave the travel lane, try to cross the bike lane and get into the right-turn lane. Which he mostly did, but with enough room to allow me to come to a complete stop. So I slowed and squeaked, but I ended up having to use the rear right side of the car to come to a complete stop from the 3 miles per hour that I was then going, placing my gloved left hand near the gas tank and avoiding my bike actually coming into contact with the vehicle. Long story short, it was fine. It was barely even anything, but, generally speaking, one looks to not collide into things, even when going quite slowly. The driver said "My fault." Yes, that's incontrovertible. I said "We both got lucky this time." Then he said "I'm sorry" and I said "no worries." And then he didn't even make the right turn, instead moved his car back into the lane from which he had just exited. Also, the shoal guy caught up to me and ended up in front of me again on R when I decided to ride on the sidewalk to try to avoid some construction and ended up behind an old lady. So, here's the takeaway: bike lanes aren't for going fast and getting stupidly competitive about the relative speed with which one can operate a bicycle vis-a-vis a totally contrived positional hierarchy relative to stop lights is a dumb and you shouldn't do it. Implicitly, I know this, but maybe I should know it explicitly, too.
Mary Poppins Effect test while riding behind a helmetless blonde on Massachusetts. I didn't notice anything different from the drivers. She did the thing that some bicyclists do when riding in the door zone, which is move immediately to right (away from traffic) when there's a break in the parked cars, just to move back into the door zone when the parked cars appear again. It's probably better just to keep your line, but what do I know? I slowly collided with a taxicab, so I'm hardly one to give advice.

Ride Home 2/14: Catherine of Tarragon

2012-02-14T21:00:00.002-05:00

About four rolls of the cuff on the right pant leg of almost every pair of work pants I own is an unmistakable splotch of bike grease, visible to the world only when I'm riding home and apparently unavoidable in making. It's really not a bother. I noticed it today when I forewent changing back into bike clothes, which has been my habit of late. I'll wear bikey clothes in the morning and street clothes at night and let that mean what it means. My only concession to changing is slapping on an additional pair of socks because, according to my feet, it's still winter. My feet, after all, read the Farmer's Almanack.
The unmistakable single honk of a driver who either doesn't understand why I was riding mixed with car traffic or simply didn't want me there greeted me near some red light along Massachusetts, most likely courtesy of the driver immediately behind me. I wonder if he appreciated my effort to stay four feet off the bumper of the blue Prius in front of me. I bet not. At some point, I ditched to the sidewalk, only to make my way back onto the street a hundred yards down the road. Of course, I didn't ditch until well, well after the honk, which made me the victor in some sort of "battle" for the roadway. I didn't even bother shrugging at the honk, much less geting mad. It's just noise and there's no use letting that bother you.
I'm getting tired of Q Street, but I took it anyway, mostly because that's what I do, but partially because I had to mail an empty envelope (don't ask) and I was looking for a street-side mailbox in which to drop it. I'm guessing that the USPS doesn't have extra IT resources or anything, but it'd be kind of cool if the locations of all dropboxes were tagged somehow and available on the interwebs. Unless of course, that's already the case, in which I'd like to thank those that made that possible, but criticize those who've failed to publicize that fact.
Parallel parking is disruptive and it should be banned. I've beat this drum before. All I'm saying is that if drivers are going to get mad about everything that IMPEDES TRAFFIC FLOW, like pedestrians and bicyclists and stop signs and adorable baby goslings who need to cross the street, then let's ban parallel parking too.
11th street from Mass was a complete and total clusterfuck (technical term), most likely caused by a broken down commuter bus at the intersection of 11th and New York. The back-up had profound repercussions, like the driver of a gigantic tractor trailing screaming at the driver of a subcompact to make way for him, followed by the truck driver blasting his horn and the subcompact driver getting startled, then angrily mouth "where do you want me to go?" since she, too, was stuck at a red light. Car traffic didn't abate until after New York Avenue, but even New York was backed up. And backed up with total assholes, like the passenger of a taxicab who saw fit to roll down his window and actually tell another bicyclist, an older gentleman on a racing bike, that "Sir, your light is ridiculous." His front light was bright and blinking and apparently that offended the sensibilities of the man in the taxi so much that he thought enough to say something. The bike guy said "what?" and Taxi Asshole said "You're going to blind someone" and then the taxi drove off, at which point I said something along the lines of "Yeah, how dare you" to the bike guy and we rode together for half a block. The bike guy said "I was confused because I thought I knew him, but then I heard what he said. Clown." Clown, indeed.
I found myself stuck in the far right lane until G, which was a pain and then it was even more of a pain getting back over left. All in all, I'd say that traffic was well worse tonight than on a non-Valentine's night and I blame the idiocy of the "holiday" that demands people go out to dinner and buy sad flowers from Safeway for their partners because that's almost literally the least they could do. My wife told me not to make a big deal about it, but I did anyway. I think she really appreciated that I got Cool Ranch instead of the normal kind of Doritos.
Anyway, it was bad and I tried to warn everyone, but you know, #tweetswhilewearinggloves.
Lots of people in shorts. Still not warm enough for shorts.
East Capitol saw me a bunch of other bike types, one of whom was super, two of whom were mostly normal looking, but one can never tell, I guess. Kentucky took me to Safeway and Safeway was crowded, especially by the sad flower section. Frankly, I think some of the guys would have been better off by mesclun greens. In Safeway, I overheard a woman on a cell phone say "Oh, you mean like for women, not for dogs." For real. Anyway, happy remainder of Valentimes. This blog post, like all blog posts, is dedicated to the Official Wife, because of love and stuff.

Ride In 2/14: Media Martyrs

2012-02-14T14:05:00.001-05:00

I had a pre-9 AM work meeting, which I'm pretty sure is anti-constitutional (maybe just in France), so I left work no later than 7:30, which is no later than a half hour before I normally leave home. I encourage everyone to do this sometimes. It like putting on a new pair of socks: all the fun and comfort of socks, but with just a little bit of novelty and maybe a little bit of fuzz on your feet after you take them off, which in the case of new socks, will probably be a long time because as we all know, new socks are the best kind of socks and you'll want to savor (if that's the right word) their newness for as long as you can. When did this blog become all about socks? When hasn't it been?
In my neck of the woods (neither neck, nor woods), 7:30 is around the time that most dogs are walking their people and the parks and sidewalks were abuzz with ~~apian~~ activity. I even saw a guy walking two viszlas, which I assume is all he ever does, since vizslas are notorious for needing copious amounts of outdoor activities. This is not as true for shih tzus, another popular dog breed in my neighborhood, and might or might not be true for beagles and beagle mixes.

The chain in my (drive) train falls mainly the wane, or some such other Doolittleean nonsense (Eliza's aerial attack on Japan was thoroughly unexpected. "I have often walked down this street before/But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before/All at once am I Several stories high..." is totally different in that context.) I think before I derailed, what I was trying to say is that my chain continued skipping, especially on the gears that I had to this point been using most prior to installing the new chain. So, that will probably require some degree of mechanical intervention, perhaps by a mechanic. Nonetheless, I made it to work just fine.

Still bicyclists out, but none going my way. Felt a little lonely, but no lonelier than usual, I guess. Actually, the emptiness of the roads combined with the earlier-ness of the trip made it seem somewhat special and different and worth feeling good about. As special as biking to the Pentagon for the very first time? You tell me.

You ever notice that a lot of people have green bicycle frames? I think I saw at least 5 today.

I'm surprised that the House of Representatives in all of its terribleness hasn't advanced the idea of a pre-tax subsidy for gas money for drivers. On one hand, this would probably be "stimulative" in that take-home pay would go up (I think) and that money could be spent elsewhere. However, I'm not sure that a pre-tax deduction for gas money wouldn't be the most terrible thing ever. Dear anyone in Congress who is reading this, it's all a dream and I totally didn't give you this idea. Oh crap. But what if you did it will flex fuel only? Then you could call it the flex fuel flex savings account. It would still be a terrible idea, but wouldn't it be kind of fun to say "flex fuel flex"?

And while I'm writing about non-bike things, here's this post about streetcars from Greater Greater Washington. I don't know, guys. I sort of would prefer if we built our transportation systems around the idea of moving people rapidly, not just in order to reassess properties for tax purposes. I know that's only part of it and that theoretically the right kind of redevelopment might be spurred, making neighborhoods more walkable and less car-oriented, but I think that might be hard to remember when you're watching through the streetcar window an old lady pushing a walker outpace you because you're stuck in mixed traffic. But, smarter people than me know far more about this than I do, so I'll just stick with the biking and the My Fair Lady stuff.

And while we're talking (who's talking?) about smarter people than me, the new JDAntos Bikeshare data analysis is out. It's, as usual, awesome.

So, yeah, my bike commute was good and stuff. Peace out.

Contes des Sharrows: A Guest Post From Marc in Paris

2012-02-13T17:20:00.001-05:00

Aside from being DC's 37th most popular bike commute blogger, I'm also something of a global media mogul. This affords me the opportunity to collect reports from abroad for your reading pleasure. FOTB (acronym for friend of the blog, not the Persian slang word for "woodpecker") Marc happens to be currently residing in Paris, France, European Union, Earth and was kind enough to write this excellent post on that city's cycle hire scheme and other aspects of its "bike culture." I offer him many "mercis" in return and wish a safe return from the land of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

First off, I'll give a little context to this post...I'm in Paris currently for my job and needed a distraction. This isn't my first long stay here before for work, so I've spent plenty of time seeing the sights, and this time I decided I'd try to document and explore Paris' bike share system, Velib, and the city's bike infrastructure, and see how it compares to DC. Many thanks to TFTS for helping me share my experiences and I hope this doesn't end up being TL:DR...

In many ways, DC and Paris are similar, just on different scales...wide boulevards with streets radiating from large traffic circles. Paris proper, however, fits about almost four times as many people into an area about two thirds the size of DC, so it is seriously dense. Like DC, Paris also is fairly car-dependent, unlike say Amsterdam or Copenhagen, so it's not some cycling paradise. Still, the cycling infrastructure is far superior to DC's the drivers are much more tolerant to used to sharing the road, so there's a much greater sense of security on the streets. Paris also has squeezed sharrows, bike lanes, and cycletracks into just about every nook and cranny available, so it's rare that you end up having to ride in the actual street.

Sidewalk, cycletrack, sidewalk, bus lane, traffic lane...and yet traffic isn't ground to a halt

Cycletracks often get preference over pedestrian space

Cycletrack meets sharrows

Contra-flow bus/bike line

Okay, so now on to Velib, Paris' bikeshare system. Velib started in 2007 and has something like 20,000 bikes and over 1200 stations. It is massive. Even the smallest Velib stations are larger than many CaBi stations. From my observations, the system gets plenty of use, too, even during one of Europe's coldest winters. The system operates similarly to CaBi. Choose a day, week, or yearly membership and you can check out a bike for up to 30 mins for free. Daily memberships are 1.70 euros (about $2.25) and an annual membership is 29 euros (about $38). There's also an option for a 39 euro annual membership, which gets you 45 minutes of riding time instead of 30...kind of a cool option. Originally, I planned to use Velib to commute, but my hotel is so close to my office it just doesn't make sense, so I've just been using the system for recreational riding.

Although I hear the kiosks only take the chipped euro-style credit cards, you can easily buy a subscription online and use it immediately. I have a yearly CaBi membership, so I haven't spent much time using the kiosks, but I did have to use it once and I found it very clunky. The Velib kiosks are extremely easy to use, with large, clear LCD screens and multiple language options. If you have an annual subscription, you can get an Smarttrip-like card that you can use directly at the spot where the bike is locked into the station. The bikes have a flange-type thingy on the side instead of the stem-mounted lock on CaBi.

[Ed. note: Marc isn't actually trapped in the machine. It's just an optical illusion. I hope]

You have to press the silver button to release the bike

The bikes themselves are similar to CaBis...three speeds grip shifts, with integrated hubs, chainguards, etc. I have to say that I enjoy the baskets on the Velibs much better, as they seem more functional than whatever those things are on CaBis. However, the bikes themselves do not seem as sturdy as CaBis and they don't seem to get as much maintenance. This could simply could be due to the age of the bikes. Another thing is that there doesn't seem to be a way to identify broken bikes, other than turning the seat around, which is what Parisans typically due. There may be a maintenance feature on the kiosk though, but I didn't look. Velibs also come with integrated locks, and it didn't take long to figure out why...


Why would anyone lock up a bikeshare bike?

Oh I see....

Like CaBi, Velib is difficult to use without a smartphone. I have an unlocked phone, so I got a prepaid SIM and it works like a charm. Once I checked out my bike and figured out where I was going, I was on my way. It was only then that an overwhelming sense of giddiness swept over me. Although Paris is a beautiful city, the major sites are somewhat spread out and to see them all you have to either walk a lot, or use the Metro. I certainly am not opposed to using the Metro and have used it extensively, but in a city like Paris, wouldn't you rather be above ground, taking in all the sights and sounds? So biking in Paris is, in a word, awesome. It's so quick and so easy, I can't imagine trying to get around town any other way. Between biking and some walking, I covered 14 miles in just a few hours. Can you imagine walking that far?

Place de la Bastille...on to...

...Notre Dame...

...to the Eiffel Tower. All in about an hour.

So Velib is awesome and Paris is a great place to ride a bike. Well, there are some drawbacks that weren't immediately apparent. I noted earlier that Parisians are much more accustomed to interacting with bikes. But that doesn't stop them from being jerks...

Ironically, this jackass parked in the bus/bike lane and ran into the bike shop

The curb separation for the cycletrack didn't stop this delivery truck

And Velib isn't perfect either. Although there supposedly are people out balancing stations, I can't say I ever saw a van or truck moving bikes around. For a system this dense, I was amazed by how imbalanced it gets.


A very common sight on weekdays

And either the Velib app sucks, or the system has some software issues that keep the app from getting updated information. This happens on CaBi sometimes, when station updates don't get pushed immediately, but with Velib, it's out of control and happened to me 4 stations in a row...

Sweet! 19 bikes available...

Awwww.....

So that sums up my thoughts on cycling/bike sharing in Paris. But in case you're interested, here are some additional nuggets.

Bike shops in Paris are awesome. One, Merci, is a bookstore/coffeeshop/furniture store/perfumery/puzzle store/art exhibit. If you find yourself in Paris, you really should drop in.

I also stopped at another, smaller shop just up the road:

Had to buy something French, so I picked up this sweet wool jersey


Taking the lane on the Champs Elysees

Sunday is an ideal day to ride...no traffic anywhere.


Paris is relatively flat, but there are some climbs, like up to Montmartre


It's cold out!

Autolib, Paris' electric carshare system

Ride In 2/13: I see Rhodes

2012-02-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

Monday morning and per usual, it was at least three attempts to get out of the house and even then I still forgot my towel, so sorry about the whole not showering thing, colleagues! Best to cop to that upfront rather than leaving it to the end up the post, just so you know the frame of mind in which I'm writing. And by frame of mind, I mean vague discontentment, not because showering is strictly necessary but because I would have really preferred to have met some hot water head on after a ride in which my feet froze and my chain (new) sometimes skipped (boo). I got the replacement chain on Saturday from UrbanVelos-Topographic location where Congress meets, as it was was the closest shop to my house and I have $20 in commuter checks, which they take that. Not my top choice (that "distinction" belongs to Bicycle Space), but $20 off is still $20 off (until OBAMA MAKES INFLATION HAPPEN AND AMERICA BECOMES THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC JUST LIKE GLENN BECK PROPHESIED ON THOSE TAPES I BOUGHT MY GRANDMA!) and I figured replacing a chain would be a pretty standard thing. And it was, but the mechanic informed me, rightly, that I might experience some skipping and need to replace my rear cassette because I guess these things tend to happen after you ride your bike for some time and the chain stretches and the cogs bend a bit. The skipping really only happened when I had my bike in the gear I mostly ride, so I don't know the mechanical implications of that. Probably overdue for some kind of minor overhaul anyway.
Aside from the skipping, the ride was fine. Rode behind a guy on East Capitol on an older Fuji road bike with a brown Brooks B17, tucked under which was a Brooks saddle cover, which I suppose he would use in case of rain. We made fine time and caught a bunch of lights and he almost rode directly into a guy who was crossing on the sidewalk where East Capitol meets First NE. The guy who he almost hit called the bicyclist an "asshole" because I guess that's what you call someone when they almost ride into you.
I'd make some comment about the amount of salt in the Penn Ave cycletrack, but that's already been done. However, I do want to point out that the salt in no way caused hyper-tension between cyclists and motorists. I'm here all week, folks.
More bicyclists out than I would have expected. It was quite cold, but there was virtually no wind and not a cloud in the sky worth remembering. I find that it's hard not to bike to work once you've gotten in the habit of doing so. Probably just like every other way of getting there. We slip into our routines (donning our powdered wigs and name tags and whatnot) and commuting becomes synonymous with the way we get there. I think it's important to "reclaim" the terms related to commuting from the exclusive domain of car driving. Commuting is about going back and forth from home to not-home, not about the means you use to do it and it's silly and imprudent to cede, verbally, the idea of commuting to those who do so exclusively by car. In exchange for the word "commuting," I'll let them keep "fender bender."
Construction by the White House security gates pushed me and the guy biking behind me up onto the sidewalk, which isn't my preferred way to go. Some jerk drivers at the intersection of the cycletrack an I (Eye, Aye!) Street decided it would be fun to block the track with their not-yet-turned cars, so I rode out into the street and salmoned half a block. I caught a glimpse of Kyle, doing his best neck-swivel, eye-contact death stare as he rode by in the other direction. That move is TFTS approved! (as are many products available through SkyMall. Check the catalog for the logo on your next AirTrain flight)
A little farther up the track, a woman who decided to shoal me, almost go hit by a guy pulling into one of the mid-block parking garages. He quite dramatically slammed on his brakes and looked peeved. I decided that I would stop and let him complete his turn, not so much because he had the right of way, which he didn't, but because I wasn't in any special kind of rush. I hope that my decision to do this didn't undermine the bicyclist in front of me, making it seem like she did something wrong. I mean, she was in the right and had the right of way and was riding in a cycletrack. I just stopped as a courtesy, not because I had to. Anyway, there's no way that anyone else in this scenario has given nearly as much thought to this as I have. Or at least I hope not.
Tree work on 15th pushed me out of the lane again. It would be nice is tree trimming didn't happen during morning commute times.
Q Street was fine, but seemed narrower than normal. I hope that someone isn't playing a prank of me by moving the sidewalk out by an inch each day. This would be an elaborate prank. I think it's just more likely that a series of construction projects and big trucks and stuff made me feel cramped and corralled. Not to be confused with Cramped and Coraled, the title of my snorkeling memoir. From Dupont for another block or two, I rode behind a man on a Bikeshare bike, who rode slowly and deliberately and slowly. It's tricky to try to pass someone on Q between Connecticut and Florida, mostly because there isn't very much room to get around before the stop sign and also because there's normally a driver gunning it from the light. So, it's normally just better to wait it out, since, if you're riding up Massachusetts, pretty much everyone turns by Florida anyway and two blocks of going slower than you'd prefer won't kill you.
I was really worried about my chain slipping during the climb up Mass, but it didn't. Perhaps it was because I tried to ride very gently, whatever that means. Heard a few horn honks, but none of them were for me. I'm of the opinion that horns either need to be removed from cars or their power needs to be amplified, so that a sonic blast is actually capable of lifting and moving the object at which it's directed. The in-between state, loud enough to be bothersome, not powerful enough to cause massive destruction, is just so wishy-washy.
Some horn honks were directed at me while I was heading down Massachusetts. It was of the double-honk "I'm behind you and I'm going to pass you" variety. Totally unnecessary. Just drive by me with ample room such that we're both sure you're not going to hit me with the front end of your car. If you can do that, then I'll be pretty happy.
Something special in store for you all tonight. Get excited.

Ride Home 2/10: Can I borrow a feeling?

2012-02-11T08:09:00.001-05:00

It was a Bikeshare kind of night and my 8 mile commute is kind of long for one undertaken on a CaBi, but the fact that the system can do it speaks a lot for the quality and diffusion of the system. One built a different way, with a denser grouping of stations solely downtown wouldn't get me home.
It took me 25:36 to get from Ward Circle to New York and 15th (NW) and another 17:34 to get to 15th and Independence (SE) and another 3:36 to walk home. That's 20 minutes faster than my Metro trip in the morning. But, then again, it was downhill. But then again again, I didn't have to idle for 20 minutes or cram in with a bunch of strangers.
There's a maximum velocity that a CaBi can achieve while going downhill before pedaling is pointless. I still pedal anyway, just for show. Don't want the drivers to think that I'm not even trying to ruin their days. Actually, it just gives me something to do.
I didn't notice any kind of "Dick Van Dyke" effect from drivers while I biked home in normal clothes and without a helmet. Pretty much the same as always. However, I did notice a bit of difference in the attitude of other bicyclists towards me on the CaBi. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. But it seemed like non-CaBi riders were a bit dismissive. But then again, other Bikeshare riders seemed dismissive of me as well, with at least one of them engaging in classic maneuvers like pedaling past me at a red light. This was at K and 15th and the result was that he got to wait at the red light to cross roughly 20 feet in front of me. That's cool.
People waiting in line for those Loudon County commuter buses always seem so sad.
Apparently, the head-covering of choice by the non-helmet wearing male members of #bikeDC is the wool winter hat. Almost no baseball caps.
From 15th, I took Pennsylvania, as usual. I noticed some street art:

X walks the spot.

From a distance, I thought it said "Fool," but when I got closer I realized that the first "o" was a "u" and the "ol" was a "ck." This must be a commentary on the somewhat poor design of how the bike lanes interact with the crosswalks. Or some kid wanted to write a bad word in marker.
Does anyone else, when coasting on a CaBi, pick their feet off the pedals and rest them in the middle on the frame? It's fun.
I think I'm going to get my chain replaced today. So, that'll be cool. Have a nice weekend.

Can You Wait One More Day for Ride Home 2/10?

2012-02-10T20:20:00.000-05:00

Because you're going to have to. Sometimes the vicissitudes of modern life (i.e. the opportunity meet up with some friends for some beers) interfere with the troubadour/blogger lifetstyle that provides your nightly "entertainment." I'll bang something out during Liverpool-ManU, which I anticipate watching tomorrow morning. And sure, "bang something out" doesn't necessarily indicate that I'll be approaching the post with a high level of seriousness and earnestness, but this is free and stuff, so I suppose that you'll have to just make due. "I'll suppose you'll have to just make due" is going to be on next year's buttons, so look forward to that.
Hugs and kisses,
Sharrows.

Ride In 2/10: Underground Railroad

2012-02-10T13:48:00.004-05:00

This is the story of a bike ride and the story of a commute, but different from most days, the former wasn't the latter. I biked to #fridaycoffeeclub and then home, worked from home for a while and took the Metro to work. Why not bike to work? Just didn't really feel like it and wanted to see how long the Metro would take. I've been justifying my bicycling to work on three fronts: it's more enjoyable, it's cheaper and it's faster. On two counts, I can say are assuredly true, but I'm not so sure about the faster. I mean, on average. Certainly today's trip to work by bike would have been faster than taking the train since I waited to transfer at Metro Center for nearly 20 minutes. But I think on a normal morning, with a smoother transfer, I'd probably make it to work in maybe 45 minutes, which is maybe 5 minutes faster than I'd get here by bike. But let's talk about that part later and do the whole biking part first, since that's why your here. Or maybe you just thought this was funny cat pictures, like the rest of the internet.
With the Cross Check chainless and locked up here, I decided to take the Haul to coffee. It is my 'city' bike after all and what better purpose could a 'city' bike serve than as vessel by which to arrive at a location in which one purchases and imbibes coffee. As well all know from our many history classes, the first civilizations to build cities, those in the Fertile Crescent, did so because that's where the coffee shops were and they wanted to live relatively close so that they could bike to them. That's why the first bike blogs were written in cuneiform (Ancient civilization wasn't really my specialty).
Rode behind a CaBi commuter fully kitted out in bike ensemble. It is a very small percentage of CaBi commuters who do this. Per all things related to bikes and clothes, there is no right or wrong. You want to wear lycra? Go for it. Flouncy sundress? Be my guest. Bolo and cowboy hat while calling your bike a 'trusty steed'? Um, ok. Pancaked make-up, powdered wig, eyeliner, britches, tricorn hat, and a name tag that says "Zombie George Washington"? Well, that's just sorta weird, but it'd be weird no matter how you're getting around.
A really nice morning ride. It was probably cold enough for gloves, but I didn't wear them. Because I left them at work. Same with my hat. Very light bike traffic, but the car traffic was pretty light too. Remember the predictions of traffic doom when they were going to take away travel lanes from cars to make the bike lanes? I've never seen car traffic backed up on Penn. I ride it every day. How empty of cars did it look before?
I stuck to the sidewalk by the White House on E Street (where Bruce's band is from, I guess?). The safety of America was accordingly preserved.
Coffee happened and then we all went to work. Work for me was back at home, so I don't know if this is technically a "ride in" or "ride home" post at this point. This blog is getting way complicated. Barely any more bicyclists coming back then I saw heading in. I must've missed the 'rush hour' of bike commuting. I think in Rush Hour 4, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan buy a tandem and hilarity/anti-criminal violence ensues.
I did ride behind a guy for a while and we diverged by the Capitol, after the traffic circle on First Street NW. Apparently, the rules of traffic circles (defer to traffic in circle) don't apply when the traffic in the circle is a bicycle. Thanks a lot, jerks.
On the other side of the Capitol, I saw Lane, who was at coffee. We exchanged pleasantries.
Also, and I don't know if you know this, but bike lanes become 'running lanes' after the morning commute. Thanks, zombie joggers! Maybe this makes me run-cist, but all joggers sort of look alike to me.
I came home to find Ellie the Poodle upstairs, but the poodle mayhem was mitigated by our closing the bedroom doors. She was just sitting on the carpet in the hallway.
[If this were a movie, here's where the director would deploy the 'work' montage: shuffling papers, furious typing, deleting emails, rubbing chin in contemplation]
And then I didn't bike to work. I took the Metro instead and I timed my trip, by means of comparison. First, a few things about Metro. I don't take it very often. Also, it sort of has a crummy reputation. But, our decision to purchase the home that we did was in large part due to its proximity to Metro (3 blocks away) and I'm a firm and dedicated believer of good public transportation and transit-oriented development. All of which to say is that I'm not trying to be a Metro basher. But it's just not for me. It's for a lot of people (and it should be: you can move more people via train than you can by car or bicycle, probably) and it should be better than it is. In part, because that's what people are paying for, but also because good public transportation abets good urban design and good urban design, in my opinion, is one that's on a human scale and places that are on a human scale tend to be more bike-friendly. If Metro sucks and people don't take it, the overwhelming majority of them aren't going to turn to bicycles for transportation. You'd have to be delusional to think that and while I'm definitely in the "bike bubble," I'm not that far out of touch with reality. Bad and unreliable public transportation puts people in cars and redesigning (or keeping amenable) cities to car-centeredness is absolutely the worst thing that can happen for bicyclists. Well, second to getting beaten up by flail-wielding, genetically modified evil chimpanzees. So that's my bike-y argument for good non-bike public transportation.
Here's how my trip broke down (Metro pun not intended). It took me 25 minutes to get to Metro Center. According to Google's bike directions, it would've taken me 19 minutes by bike. So, that's more or less a draw. And then I stood on the platform for 20 minutes, which isn't something I'm accustomed to and not something I deal with when biking. Even when I'm going slow, I'm always going. I got to listen to a podcast and look at CPAC-ers. And then the train came and it was 15 minutes to Tenleytown, a trip that would've taken at least double that by bike. But if I were going by bike, I wouldn't have gone to Tenleytown- I would've just gone directly to work. Instead, I had to take a shuttle bus, which I had to run for, but which left only a minute after I got there and then I was at work 5 minutes later. Had there not been a delay at Metro Center, it would almost certainly have been faster to go by Metro than by bike. This way, on an off-peak trip, it took maybe 10-15 minutes longer and it cost $2.15. Hardly the worst thing in the world.
This was only one trip and there's no real statistical significance to it. Trains go fast, trains have delays. Bikes go slower, but maybe you can keep moving. It's a question of preference and trade-offs and costs and lifestyle. I just want people to have a choice about it.

Ride Home 2/9: A 1996 Keanu Reeves Flick

2012-02-09T20:54:00.001-05:00

My bicycle trip home started with a longish walk down a hill. I happened to be wearing a tuxedo. Not so much happened as completely by design. I had coordinated my final button by bike tuxedo delivery and while I was able to deliver on the tuxedo, I wasn't able to deliver on the bike. Luckily, the abode of the very charitable Rachel (the proud owner of something like 67 sharrows buttons, more or less) wasn't too far from my office, so I hoofed it.
I enjoy walking. Like, a lot. But it's not nearly as pleasant as bicycling. And it takes considerably longer. And you can't "coast" downhill. You try to coast and you just fall down. I mean, theoretically. I never tried.
Meeting Rachel, friend of the blog, was a great pleasure. Here she is with her button:

"Thanks," I say to her.

Apparently, Rachel and I pass eachother on the 15th street cycletrack all the time. Yet another person to say hello to. Soon, I'll know everyone in this town who even thinks about bicycling, much less dares to ride one. This was the final tuxedo ride, at least for charitable purposes.
From Rachel's, it was an uphill walk through Glover Park. This is Stoddert School. There's supposed to be a Bikeshare station there, but it isn't installed yet.

Where's the bikeshare station?

Instead of some CaBis, I saw the following:

I wonder what kind of music they play.

And this:

"O R they?" says Max.

Lost wedding bands! (Drive Shaft?) Yellow stethoscopes! Even the detritus of Glover Park is twee.
I walked Calvert across Wisconsin and then to the Guy Mason CaBi station. There were ample bikes. From Observatory, I took the sidewalk down Massachusetts, since I knew I couldn't keep the CaBi at a speed that I would find conducive to merging in with car traffic. Figured better not to chance it. I'm very considerate. You're welcome, drivers.
I was a little bit worried that I would get jumped by #occupy since CPAC is in town and I was wearing a tuxedo. But then I remembered that no conservative (Tom Bowden excepted) would ever use a bicycle for transportation, so I relaxed a little. Phew.
I stuck to the sidewalk until maybe California and then it was back to normal. From there on, it was pretty much the same ride I do all the time, except by CaBi, which was a bit slower. I wish it had a 4.
Very few bikes along Q and none on 11th until New York. At New York, I fell in behind a guy who didn't seem comfortable or willing to take the lane and we rode awkwardly too close to the parked cars and gave barely enough room to allow drivers to whiz past us too closely. By the time I got near E, I decided that I should turn and take E and search for a dock to re-up. I was nearing 30 minutes, or at least so I thought and I knew that there was at least one station by Judiciary Square, so I aimed for that.
Along E, I might have passed a driver who might or might not have been trying to parallel park. Way to make a dude on a CaBi hustle.
Redocked and ready to go, it was a short jaunt up the rest of E and through the chaos that is Columbus Circle. DCMud did something on Columbus Circle and declined to mention bike lanes, but I'm pretty sure that they'll eventually be installed. Maybe.
I didn't get dockblocked at 15th and Independence, so that was cool. Though, there were only 3 spaces left. Hill East loves its Bikeshare.

Ride In 2/9: The Weakest Lynx

2012-02-09T13:34:00.000-05:00

I've always wondered what it'd be like if my bike commute was half as long as it is and today I got to find out. My chain broke, fell from my bicycle and my bike commute ended in Lafayette Square.
Here's some thrilling photography:

Chain in repose.

But first, before it was broken, here's what happened. A fairly normal ride down East Capitol, past the park and a nice pace behind a woman dragging a kid trailer. Then I went around her and found myself riding behind a gentleman about whom I can remember nothing distinctive. Perhaps he had a peg leg, but I have no recollection of it. Everything was more or less fine until Pennsylvania Avenue, where I rolled up behind another guy and we patiently waited at red lights at 3rd and 4th, while another bicyclist sort of patiently waited, but not as patiently and he crept up alongside me and was almost parallel, in a way that made my peripheral vision uncomfortable (I have no idea what that means, but I'm sticking with it). In the mean time, we were passed by the guy on the red LeMond that I see most mornings.
It was along Penn that my chain started skipping, hopping between two of the rear cogs. I thought it curious, but no more than a minor annoyance at first. I shifted gears a bunch, maybe thinking that would somehow alleviate it, but it didn't. At a stop light, I dismounted and checked the chain, looking to see if one of the links was bent or otherwise indisposed, but when I cranked the pedals, nothing terrible seemed to happen and I thought that things were fine enough to keep riding. My lack of mechanical aptitude led me to adopt the stance "if my problem isn't glaringly obvious, how big of a problem could it be?" It's the same stance I use in my full-time job as an SEC regulator (rim shot). I remounted and the chain continued to skip around, but it never occurred to me that the skipping would be anything worse than moderately distracting.
I passed the White House security entrance and turned to head up to 15th and then the chain fell off. My first instinct was to take a picture (see above). I think this says a lot about me and is yet another good reason that I'm not a volunteer firefighter. "Yes Captain, there do seem to be people trapped inside. But my flash isn't working, so it's gonna be a minute and then I'll get right on it." I picked up the chain and leaned my bike against a wall and then I stopped to ponder my next move. Due to some hilarious oversight, I didn't even have a multi-tool with me. I took it out of my bag to put in my my other bag the other day and didn't bother putting it back. The contents of my pannier were the following: u-lock, frame pump, bike button, tuxedo. I didn't think any of those things would help. So, what to do? I pondered walking the ten-ish blocks to BicycleSpace, locking my bike up there, hiding my bike key on the premises somewhere and sending a plaintive tweet begging for repair. But I didn't really want to walk in that direction, especially since I kind of needed to get to work in a somewhat timely manner. I also didn't want to lock my bike up downtown, something that thousands of people do every day and is perfectly safe, but for whatever reason, scares the bejeebus out of me. I thought that my lack of chain would somehow indicate to marauding bike thieves (marauding because downtown is basically Lindisfarne) that my bicycle was derelict and a target. Instead, I decided that I would walk to Farragut Square and take my bike to work. Why didn't I take Bikeshare? Because I was wearing bike shoes with cleats and I'm not confident that I would have been able to pedal. This might be irony. Also, Bikeshare would have required me to lock my bike up downtown and see above.
So I engaged in the indignity of walking and the indignity of bus riding. Actually, I don't mind the indignities of either of those things. It was a little weird to walk around downtown with holding a greasy bicycle chain and pushing a chainless bicycle, but no one seemed to mind. I didn't really know what to do with the chain, either. My instinct was to keep it, but I didn't have anywhere to put it. I was terribly worried about getting chain grease on my tuxedo and I also didn't want to keep holding it in my hand. And since it was broken, I figured I couldn't do any better than just throwing it out, perhaps out of pique. It might have been salvageable, but I don't know that. Also, maybe some charity collects old broken bike parts, so I would have preferred to do that, but I wouldn't have even known where the drop boxes are. I have a suspicion that this chain needed replacing anyway. One last picture:

Chain. 2011-2012. Rest in pieces.

Anyway, if you want it, it's in the trash can at the southeast corner of Farragut Square, by the N4 bus stop.
And then the bus ride happened. Some notes on that: it was pretty boring and rather slow, but definitely less exertion was needed. Who was on the bus? Well, a couple of mousy law students, some overdone Italian women with big sunglasses, and the woman behind me talked on the phone to her mom the whole time in what I think was either Portuguese or Creole or both. At Dupont Circle, a gaggle of chaperoned teens got on the bus and it took forever for them to pay their fares. We really need pre-payment for buses.
I used my bus time to tweet a little and to try to read Bossypants, a book that just isn't turning out to be one that I'm liking and I really like Tina Fey. I only worried a little about my bike falling off the front of the bus, but things like that don't really happen, right?
My bike is now locked up in the garage where it spends most of its workdays. I haven't figured out my plan yet. It will most invariably involve Bikeshare. Maybe on Friday I'll take the bike on a bus to a bike shop and see about a new chain. I just don't want to deal with it today.

Ride Home 2/8: f(x)= illiteracy

2012-02-08T21:35:00.002-05:00

If anyone thinks that he or she has cracked the code of the subtitles, please let me know because I'd love to know what it is. You could probably save me countless dollars of money otherwise spent on therapy "unlocking" my id.
Meanwhile. back at the blogging factory, here's what I've got. I don't know how/why people bike in their street clothes. I wore khakis on the ride home and the rain got them and I was quite miffed about the whole thing. Maybe some people are just ok with wearing wet clothes? Not me, though. This is America and I demand to be comfortable at all times, in spite of the fact that I'm riding a bicycle in the rain.
On Mass, by Waterside, the driver of a Mini Cooper tried to merge into my lane, even though it was quite clear that I was occupying it. I gave him a Mutumbo finger wag, becuase I am, in real life, quite badass. (Note: in real life, I am not badass. )
I anticipated not being able to remember this ride, as I stopped half-way through and that's normally a good way to ensure that I won't be able to recall what happened, so I decided to email myself some notes as I hit various stopping points along the way. The first two were "wet pants" and "Mutumbo" and I feel like I've adequately explained those. The next two were "honking" and "taxi," which I'm a little less sure about. "Honking" I'll just assume has to do with someone honking at me. Big surprise. Some people are impatient. "Taxi" I remember a little bit better, since I recall a taxi driver making an ill-advised u-ish turn through and into the 15th street cycletrack, in order to go from driving north to driving south. I slowed down when I passed the driver, but I'm not sure that would have prevented him from reversing into me. The cyclist behind me, who might have been a local indigent, seemed rather miffed at the taxi driver's behavior and my welfare vis-a-vis the driver's lack of concern. I think he cussed, even.
A rare excursion down 15th and I stopped at all of the various stop lights which prove inconvenient in the evening. Then H to 13th-ish, where I locked up to meet some awesome people at Cafe Mozart. You know what they sell at Cafe Mozart? This:

Best Hungarian salami (a legjobb magyar szalami)

And this:

Musli (muszli)

Anyway, some food nostalgia.
But the purpose of the trip to Mozart was to meet up for some beers with some #bikeDC people and it was a good time all around. I've yet to be disappointed by meeting people from Twitter in real life and I don't know if it's because I have especially good taste in Tweeps or whether it just happens that when people coalesce in virtual space around common interest, that it turns out that when they coalesce in real life that they're equally compatible.
After I left, it was a relatively straight shot home. I took 13th, aka the Poor Man's 11th (ok, no one has ever actually deemed this, but it's mostly accurate) to Penn and up Penn to past the Capitol. And then, on the east side of the Capitol, I was lucky enough to run into Erik of Bicycle Space, ever so distinctive on account of his beautiful Pashley. I don't want to spoil anything, but the new BicycleSpace is going to be awesome. Just absolutely, freaking amazing. It was also just nice to see someone you know on the ride home. DC is a really small town sometimes.
The rest of the ride home was fairly quaint, if not a little boring. I guess, all things considered, I'd rather have boring and predictable to grave and dangerous, but you know. By the time I got home, it had stopped raining. This winter is pretty much lame. Bring on spring already.

Ride In 2/8: Eggs, Veal, Camels

2012-02-08T13:17:00.000-05:00

It's supposed to snow tonight, or maybe just rain, and I was curious as to the forecast's effect on morning bike commuting. Would knowledge of this afternoon's weather dampen (hah!) the spirits of would-be bicyclists? Is this a real thing that happens and if so, how to gauge it? Or will people just ride in and leave their bikes at work if it's raining badly or, god forbid, ride them home in adverse weather conditions? I'm not exactly a statistician (in fact, I know close to nothing about statistics or even advanced, non-finger counting), but if you know anything about me, it's that I'm a keen observer of urban life (why are you laughing?) and capable of construing anything I notice into some larger point about something, so when I passed the Bikeshare station at Lincoln Park this morning and noticed that it was empty as usual, I can only be conclude that most people who bike to work don't check the forecast in the morning, or if they do, they simply don't care. And I think that makes sense, especially as far as Bikeshare is concerned. With a Bikeshare bike, each trip needs to be thought of as one-way and completely indivisible (with liberty and justice...?) rather than one leg on a home-work-home commute. And I think that most CaBi users think of the system that way. Whereas those of us riding our own bikes to work might fell compelled to ride them home in the evening so that we can ride them back to work the next day, I suspect that it's much more likely that CaBi users adopt a "If it rains, I'll take the bus" attitude. Or, like the Official Wife pointed out to me this morning about the trip analysis I linked to yesterday, "If it's dark, I'll take the bus," which she, and I think rightly, believes explains the lack of return evening trips (Though, Justin, if you're reading, can you break down the return trips by season to see if in the summer, when it's lighter longer, there's a greater incidence of "receivership"?). I think that most people who aren't exclusively wedded (I now pronounce you man and bus) to one mode of transportation make their trip decisions based on present-time information rather than future forecast. But then again, I'm sure I'm wrong, so flay me in the comments.
Seemed like a kind of competitive morning morning. A woman on a flowery blue Canondale saw fit to shoal me from the right on East Capitol and then later on Penn, we were both based by some dude wearing a balaclava and riding a fixie. It all felt very racy (not that kind of racy) and I sort of got swept up in it, by passing the Canondale woman and riding behind the fixie guy, but then he turned a little later and Canondale caught back up and passed me again at some light. At 14th, we both watched the man tasked with keeping the intersection clear, scream at the driver of a big ivory Buick who didn't quite seem to understand that he was blocking said intersection by with big ivory Buick. Before 15th and Penn, she moved out of the bike lane to make the right turn to cut back in front of me, whereas I stuck in the bike lane, only to find that a large white truck had parked on 15th street cycletrack between E and Treasury. She went a different way through Lafayette Square, so that ended that. I guess you do what you do to keep yourself amused.
Fairly uneventful up 15th from H to R, except for a Kyle sighting and realizing that the Jamis I always see wasn't there. Maybe someone nicked it. I hope that the thief didn't use my surveillance to decide to make his move. I'd feel ever so guilty.
Got swarmed at R and 16th by four other bicyclists, each of whom independently or perhaps all collectively, decided that passing me and moving into the crosswalk before the light turned green would be a good idea. Here's my thing about crosswalks: treat them like you would want a driver to treat a bike lane, meaning don't stop in them. In the world remade for cars, it's the one lonely refuge for people to walk across the street legally and to block one with your bicycle is really rude and inconsiderate. Being six feet closer to the light isn't going to make the difference between your getting to work on time or not. If you think you're going to jaywheel (or the completely legal Parisian equivalent, which I ENVY SO MUCH because of its utter sensibleness), stop before the crosswalk, make sure no one is crossing and then ride to the other side.
Anyway, after being swarmed and shoaled, I found myself riding in the bike lane for a bit before deciding to move out into the travel lane, fall in behind a white van, and then pass two of the cyclists who just passed me. One of the cyclists in front, the one on a CaBi, moved left to turn down New Hampshire, maybe, and the other stuck in the bike lane, even though a driver in front of us threw up his right turn signal. I went back into the travel lane, the left guy made his left turn and the guy in the bike lane stopped for the turning car. And that's my story of how I was passed by four people and then passed those four people. There is no moral to the story. It's just something that happened and happens to almost everyone almost every day.
I feel like I've run out of ways to talk of my ride from Dupont Circle to my office. It's probably the most mundane part of my trip because it's kind of a dead space for pedestrian and bicyclist activity. Not that I can't tell you about all the fun stuff happening at some embassies, like, um, when sometimes someone pulls into the Turkish embassy and the gate opens or maybe about the ongoing renovations at the South African Embassy or how every once in a while I see some blonde women get off one the N buses and walk into the Finnish embassy. I mean, all that stuff happens, but even by the standards of this blog, it's not exactly noteworthy. I did see another bicyclist climbing the hill today. She was riding a mountain-y type bike and her frame had on it a Brazilian flag sticker. And coming down the hill I saw some of the same usuals that I've seen lately, including the guy who rides in the left travel lane on Mass and the woman who seems like she's overbundled with simply too much coat for the amount of body she has. I don't know if there's a name for this.

Ride Home 2/7: I got the date right this time. Why did no one tell me this morning?

2012-02-07T20:27:00.001-05:00

I don't blog anonymously or pseudonymously (though I tweet somewhat pseudonymously now, but that's a relatively recent development) and I've never really made a great effort to disguise who I am or what I'm all about (bike commuting, moderately priced gouda) when I write posts on Tales From The Sharrows or Tales From the Cheese Cheese (blog forthcoming), but I don't really advertise either. For example, none of my current or former coworkers, to the best of my knowledge, know that this is how I waste my lunch time. My professional self (whatever that means) is relatively distinct from my unprofessional self (slouchy bike blogger) and I don't necessarily feel the need to reconcile those two things, because honestly, this is a fairly niche project. That's why it caught me by surprise today, when, pulling away from the bike rack, an approaching (and then passing) cyclist said "Brian?" and I was like "yeah?' and he was like "Sharrows?" and I was like "Yeah?" and he was like "I know your blog" and I was like "Yeah?" (Note: all conversations relayed herein are based more on my perception of them rather than the reality of them, hence not verbatim) Anyway, I was happy to meet sometimes commenter Adam (We Ride North), who told me that he wondered if he'd ever run into me since I make no mystery about commuting to where I commute. I complimented his bike, which I've admired at the rack previously (a Jake the Snake from Bicycle Space. Erik and Jordan got shout-outs, as they should) and he wished me a safe ride home and I wished him a good class. He seemed like I nice guy and I wish that I had talked to him some more, but there's always next time.
Presidential motorcades are cool, right? But what are vice presidential motorcades?

Trust me. Biden's there somewhere.

Anyway, a Secret Service guy blocked both travel lanes on Mass and at the stopped traffic, I hopped up on the sidewalk and rode another 20 or so yards before stopping. He was out of his cruiser, looked over apologetically and said "it'll just be a minute." Dude, I commute by bike: a minute isn't a big deal. He was pretty friendly about it, which isn't always the case with Secret Service. But, it's just the Vice President, so, yeah.
Someone might have honked at me on lower Massachusetts, so I did what I always do when someone honks at me, which is nothing.
I rode past a red SUV with the license plate FEAR ME. It's rare that bad drivers advertise, so thanks.
Engaging in wrong-way riding in a bike lane is a jerk thing to do. Especially when there's a bike lane on the street one block over that goes in the direction you're heading. Come on, man. I declined to make eye contact. I have beautiful eyes, so this is a terrible punishment (I'm joking. My eyes are only ok. But I still didn't acknowledge him. Cold shoulder and whatnot. He knew he was doing wrong.).
I need to figure out a better way to get from 11th to Pennsylvania. Any suggestions? I find myself in the right lane on 11th and can't merge into the left-er two turn lanes to get to Penn, so sometimes I cut across the crosswalk and other times I sort of make my way into the middle of Penn, let the left-turning cars go, and then cross when the light is red.
While there's always a little bit of tension between "racing" bike commuting, rarely have I ever seen a bike commuter display such anger and bile as what I encountered tonight. I was riding along on the right hand side of the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lane and the woman in front of me was riding slightly to the left of the center line or maybe right on the center line. In any case, we were both just bopping along, when from behind us, another woman, she of the green jacket, said in a tone I could best describe as needlessly mad, "Ride on the right so those of us going faster can pass on the left!" Angry. First of all, why be so angry? An "excuse me" would probably have worked. And secondly. why the verbose explanation? Yes, that's what it would say in a bicycling handbook, but you don't need a whole sentence to get the point across. So the woman in front of me moved over and then green jacket beat us both to the red light, where we stopped. In the mean time, I ran over something plastic and I worried that what I had run over fell out of my pocket, so at the light I asked yet another female cyclist (THERE IS NO WAY THAT FEMALE BICYCLE COMMUTERS IN WASHINGTON DC ARE A MINORITY, but I digress) what that might have been and she suggested a reflector and I checked my pockets and everything I thought were in there were still in there, so I didn't worry. In the mean time, the light turned green and the race was off again and it was intense and silly. By the Capitol, the passed-woman rode on the wrong-side of the parking lot before Grant Circle and I passed the green jacketed cyclist and declined to say anything (because really, why be petty) and then it was up the hill and down East Capitol and home. At Lincoln Park, I think green jacket was again behind me, but I didn't really look back. I'm just going to give everyone in this situation the benefit of the doubt (in case they're reading! [yeah right]), but it's just a reminder that no matter the mode of transportation, sometimes people get annoyed at other people and have expectations that those around them comport themselves in a particular way and aren't afraid of saying as much.

Ride In 2/7: Lager Heads

2012-02-07T12:24:00.001-05:00

Who expects a dump truck to drive on the sidewalk next to the Capitol? Not me. I was mistaken. So I found myself patiently riding behind a dump truck on the sidewalk, not quite sure whether I had room to pass or whether it would even be prudent to do so. And then I was passed on the left by a guy on a CaBi. And then then woman that I had ridden past earlier zipped by on the street/parking lot on my right. I don't like to think of bike commuting as a race, because it's not, but I also don't like to suffer being impeded by dump trucks on sidewalks and I didn't very much appreciate the fact that other bicyclists managed their way past while I buffoonishly dilly-dallied behind. Oh well. I made my break and left the dump truck behind and that's pretty much all I have to say about the time I rode behind a dump truck on the sidepath next to the Capitol.
Brilliant morning for bike commuting. The sky was cloudless of the color of my living room walls, a grey that I thought was grey but was actually tinged with an underlying blue. Now the morning sky has turned to an afternoon one and it's just regular sky blue and while that's nice, I much prefer the look of the morning one. Temperatures were fine and barely cold enough for the heavy jacket I was wearing and too cold for that hat that I kept on until 15th and Mass. You could tell it was a good day for bike riding since the CaBis were out. (Speaking of which, here's part 6 of the 489 part [I hope] series of posts by Justin Antos on Capital Bikeshare data analysis. This one is concerned with the 'natural' balance or imbalance of the system. My theory as to why certain neighborhoods send more bikes into town during the morning than they receive in the evening is pretty simple: it's a combination of workaholism and happy hours. In either case, rather then coming right home at 5, maybe you're staying late at the office and less likely to bike home at nice or maybe you're getting drinks after work and less likely to bike home thereafter.) And not only were the CaBis out, but the CaBi racers were out and they were pushing hard and running lights and trying to pass people. Here's a good red light not to run: the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania by the National Gallery. There's a left-turn arrow there and if you miss the green light, you're going to ride right into someone's oblique left turn.Just a suggestion.
In any case, I made my way up Penn and didn't foolishly run into anyone, though I was passed at points by a wispy bearded hipstery looking dude on a LeMond and a District Velocity-kitted out superbiker on a Bianchi. It was like Bikeyface come to life and I was in the middle of it.
I'm in the market for a mid-weight jacket, something heavier than my yellow windbreaker and lighter than my navy pea coat. Yes, I ride in a pea coat sometimes. Suggestions?
It's really something to see a pedestrian get really mad at a driver who really almost hit him by really refusing to yield while the pedestrian was really halfway across the crosswalk. It wasn't one of those ambiguous situations where the guy just stepped off the curb and the driver felt like maybe he could complete the turn before the pedestrian was really in the intersection. Nope, the driver just turned and almost nailed the dude. The pedestrian screamed something that I thought sounded like "Trabajo!" but I don't think that's right. I asked the pedestrian if he was all right and without looking at me, he said yeah, and then continued his angry, blustering muttering. To a certain extent, all road users are self-centered, but I think that the self-centered ones that have the capacity to inflict the most harm ought to be held to the highest standard. With great horsepower comes great responsibility. (That is why I support equestrian licensing)
I saw Kyle again today. Either he was late or I was late or we were both late.
On R, I'm pretty sure that a truck I saw had a bumper sticker that read something like "Instead of putting something on your heard, support licensing instead." I'm not totally making this up, because it almost certainly had some of those words on it, but I didn't get the most prolonged look. I'd love to know about the anti-helmet, pro-registration faction or if this bumper sticker has anything to do with bicycling or maybe is just about unlicensed contractors? I don't know. Seeing everything through a bike-y prism confuses a lot of issues.
I wish I were about 4 inches taller. I think it'd make bicycling easier. Maybe not. I don't know.
Spotted during my ride up Mass. I'm sure I was bicycling awesomely at the time. I saw a bicyclist coming downhill just riding in the left traffic lane, which is a pretty rare occurrence. Makes sense though, especially considering how stop-and-go car traffic is and how dangerous downhill sidewalk riding might be. I heard a downhill sidewalk rider ding his bell no fewer than 10 times at a pedestrian wearing headphones. Seems rude, but understandable I guess.
Rare spotting of two other cyclists between Wisconsin and Ward Circle on Mass. Almost never see anyone in the morning, even though there's always a bunch in each direction every evening. Just a good day for it and I'm pretty content.

Guest Post: Laura's Fortnight and a Half of Fortitude

2012-02-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

Every so often, Walloon railway workers go on strike and to demonstrate class solidarity, I cease all blogging operations. Nonetheless, the Tales From The Sharrows juggernaut must roll on and I cannot let my sympathy labor actions spoil your right to reading about someone's bicycle commute. Tonight's post is brought to you by me, but from Laura, who heeded my desperate plea. My gratitude to her, much like Wallonian discontent, knows no bounds.

I've only been commuting by bike for like.. 3 weeks. I started building up an old Raleigh road bike into a city bike [Editor's note: this is a sweet bike] and the weather has cooperated enough that I can test it out as I make changes. Totally realize that this could mean that it fails on me on the trail, but luckily nothing too bad. The crappy, cheap derailleur I put on it as a replacement conked out last week, but thankfully that was only 4 blocks from work.

Enough rambling.. I work in Dupont (19/M above Chipotle, look for the huge green tear drop on the side of the building) and live in Crystal City. When I first started this commute 3 weeks ago it was hell. The hills going up to bridges wore me out and I wondered why I had even decided to do this. (Why are there so many bridges! Not even just over water but over roads and train tracks and itty-bitty waterways!) But since then I've been enjoying it more and more, and keep trying to remember that at least I'm not in a car or on the metro.

Leaving the studio I work at is always interesting - it's on a busy corner of M St, right on 19th where you never know what to expect. Sometimes there are a ton of cars and people everywhere, other times there aren't. Luckily tonight was a lighter night so off I went. I always feel like I'm going to slow when I ride on the rode, especially the busy roads like M. Normally I ride down M to where it connects with Pennsylvania Ave to loop onto the Rock Creak Park Trail. It's kind of a pain to get on the trail, the tight turns, all the people walking, all the cars. I can't wait until they get the M and L cycle-tracks/lanes in.

Riding the Rock Creek Trail is nice enough - though I always get passed by the carbon-dudes. I dress in my street clothes, don't wear a helmet half the time and peddle along at a leisurely pace. But whenever these guys pass, I always feel inadequate. Crossing in front of the Kennedy Center is always bumpy, literally. Who's idea was it to make a trail with a ton of bricks—bump bump bump. Always feel like my poor old bike is going to fall apart. This area is usually a busy thorough-fare which works when I want to peddle along slowly, but in this section all I care about is getting over the bricks.

Over the bricks, down the trail a bit more to where the volley ball fields are right before the Lincoln Memorial. I stopped here briefly to figure out my path because I wanted to try going over the Arlington Memorial Bridge instead of the 14th St Bridge. Glad I made the call - 14th St Bridge is noisy, windy and narrow in comparison. While checking my route a guy on a recumbent passed me. I don't get it. You're so low to the ground, and you take up so much room - which I found out just a bit later when I got stuck behind him. A cyclist coming the other way was almost pushed into the Parkway because his recumbent took up so much room.

Crossing the Memorial Bridge was fairly uneventful, but like I said much nicer than the 14th St. Traffic moves at a slower pace, and despite going into traffic it was a pleasant crossing into Virginia. The drivers were actually nice when I came to the crossings at GW Parkway and slowed to let me cross. Once on the Mt Vernon Trail, I proceeded to get passed by everyone on their bike as I grinned like a fool while staring over the Potomac at the monuments. I tend to take them for granted unless I see them at the right time of day, and the sun had just gone completely down, leaving a nice dusty tone in the sky.

I always pause at Gravelly Point to sit on one of the picnic tables and watch the planes. Partly because it's calming and better than sitting on the metro or in traffic, and partly because I'm still a lazy ass who needs breaks. I also like to take the time to watch the bikes, though sadly most of them were newer bikes; I really do have a place in my heart for old bikes, handle built bikes and all those lovely lugs. Yum. But I have to remind myself that not everyone cares about that stuff.

I continued on to Crystal City—traveling along MVT past the airport always presents two challenges, the smells and the oncoming traffic's lights. I've smelled pizza and chinese food (yum) but this evening it was jet fuel, which made it hard to breath. My only wish for the trails would be that they were lit. I realize this would be a big expense, but it's so difficult to see as you are biking along, right into oncoming traffic. Several times I've almost gone off the trail or ran into a ninja-runner.

The rest of my commute is pretty boring, down some hills, up some hills then along 15th St in Crystal City to home. Though I almost did get hit by some woman in an Audi who couldn't figure out 'enter' from 'exit' and decided that since there were no cars, she could just back into the road without looking for anyone else.

I'm enjoying the commute to and from work so far, and can't wait to continue full-time once the weather gets nicer. Hope to see you on the trails, say hello! :)

Ride In 2/6: Ronin Holiday

2012-02-06T14:15:00.002-05:00

Greetings, Earthlings. It's me, a fellow earthling, and I'm now going to write about my bicycle commute, in a way that will be totally banal and pro forma. Just kidding! It will be a madcap adventure like a cross between Tin Tin and MMA, Indiana Jones meets the Indiana Pacers, with a side of hi-jinks, revelry, plot twists, ~~murderous butlers,~~ red herrings, blue carp, freshwater sturgeon and bicycle commuting. Ok, it might only be some of things things and it probably won't include fish or the adventurous stuff.
For the second time in as many weeks, I've found myself behind a bicyclist who has bedazzled (?) her rear rack with fake plastic flowers (as opposed to real plastic ones). She also had them attached to her spokes somehow so that each rotation of her rear wheel resulted in some horrendous clacking. This was on East Capitol and on Pennsylvania. She had used a wine cork to serve as a means by which she could attached her rear blinky and she wore many buttons on her backpack, but not a SharrowsDC button. The other beflowered bicyclist I've seen recently was on R Street. Is putting plastic flowers on your bike now a thing? It'll make way more sense than flouring your bike, which creates a horrible roux when mixed with chain grease. I'm all about customizing your bike to match your personal style, but I'm not so sure I'd want to do it if it's results in a repetitive clacking noise.
Somewhere along Penn, I decided that I would pass the aforementioned cyclist and I took the opportunity of another cyclist passing both of us to make my "move," which consisted my moving my bike slightly to the left and pedaling marginally harder. Unbeknownst to me, there was a second bicyclist looking to pass us, but he had yet to completely do so. He said "careful" after I had moved over and I said "sorry." I'm readily willing to cop to my fault of not looking back, but I think it would've also been nice for him to have indicated something with a bell ring or an "onyourleft" to let me know he was there. Like I said, though, no excuse for me not to look. My bad.

Dear some other bicyclists,
Hi. It's me, your fellow earthling. It's kind of a jackass thing when you try to squeeze through a group of pedestrians crossing in the crosswalk rather than stopping to wait for them. I see this every day at the intersection of 15th, New York and the White House. They've got the walk sign and they don't need to make way just because you're on a bicycle. They're earthlings too, you know.
Love, TFTS.

I'm going to try to get complaining about other bicyclists out of my system soon because springtime is coming and with it will be the bicycling explosion (not real explosion) that put thousands more bicyclists on the street. WABA wants everyone to ride responsibly. I sort of just want everyone to ride with at least the vaguest idea that there are other people around them. Sometimes people will be in cars or on bikes or walking or on damn pogo sticks. If we could all please just remember that we're kind of all in it together and that there's no reason to act like a jerk, that'd be nice.
A reason that I don't think it's a good idea to pass someone while they're stopped at a light is because you might run into him when he turns his bicycle slightly. Saw some dude almost wipe out when he tried to time the green and pass another dude before the light changed. Also, can we all please remember the 15th street cycletrack is two-way? Just because I'm the only northbound cyclist ever doesn't mean that I should get run off the road because you need to pass some lady on a CaBi. Sorry. Just venting. Need to print some "Share the Bike Lane" stickers.

It's got a buddy.
I put new front brake pads on this weekend and was rewarded by being able to stop better. I also lubed my chain and cleaned the bike a little and I only ended up bleeding a little. No joke. I actually injured myself while doing very simple, routine bike maintenance. The maintenance paid moderate dividends on the go-uppy (technical term) parts of my ride and I can't speak highly enough of taking 10 minutes and a couple of band aids to make sure your bike is a little cared-for.
I was pleasantly surprised (shocked actually) to find out that DDOT fixed the lights at the intersection of Nebraska and New Mexico. Longtime readers might remember that I once wrote a letter about this. Previously, there was a green light sequence from the SIS parking garage that didn't correspond to any pedestrian walk interval which basically led to a lot of confusion about when pedestrians should cross the street or whether drivers should turn right from New Mexico onto Nebraska. The powers that be have now taken care of that and the green light from the garage doesn't come on automatically any more. Now it's clear when pedestrians should walk. Granted, it's still when there's a green on New Mexico, meaning that drivers are trying to turn right during the walk signal, but still. I suppose this change also had the side benefit of improving traffic flow, but I don't really care about that. Thanks to DDOT and the university for making this happen and thanks to all of you for ~~reading~~ skimming a paragraph about the most parochial and me-specific concern ever.