Rides 12/11: laura and petrarch

For a couple of henceforth unelaborated reasons, I've been struggling with socialability for the last couple of months, but Friday Coffee Club (which is basically the gathering of juggalos sans juggalos plus bike people plus coffee) remains a fixture of my weekly calendar (as it has for the past, gosh, three (four?) years) and today, like each Friday marked another get together at the MESCO. The weather was warm, but the group divided into factions, an interior and an exterior group, and I stuck with the interior group. The coffee and chatting were, I assume, of the same high quality in both places. Of note, however, is the new advertisement postcard produced by the Swing's featuring many of the bikes that weekly gather in front.

Bikes welcome

I think this is great and for reasons exceeding simple vanity (my bike is in the picture and is now famous). I've always been a bit worried to that coffee shop found us to be a bit of a nuisance (us being, sometimes, more than two dozen cyclists crowded around tiny cafe tables), but I guess that's not a concern at all. Also, it's nice to see a local shop, perhaps unwittingly, get on board with the whole 'bikes mean business' thing. A lot of pushback on bike infrastructure comes from businesses worried about the the impact of losing street parking since there's an assumption that if drivers can't park right out in front, they won't shop and an even (in my opinion, more toxic) assumption that most people who frequent those shops arrive by car and rely on that parking. By putting bikes on the postcard, it's a repudiation of this idea and a recognition that this notion is just purely fallacious. Because for urban coffee shop a block from the White House (just blocks from the White House!) and a few blocks further from the World Bank and IMF and in the midst of the whole host of other office buildings and their office workers in the middle of downtown DC, OF COURSE their business isn't coming from people driving into town and parking right in front, so there's really worry about embracing people biking to the shop. It's just how people get there. Now, I'm sure I'm overthinking this- they probably just liked the picture because it's a nice picture and because it shows the name of the shop, but still, it's something. Anyway, thanks Swing's. It's nice to visit you. 

G Street, Virginia Avenue, K Street, Wisconsin, Massachusetts. Zero troubles or at least zero that I can remember. 

On the way home, I saw a road sign that had been struck by a car or bus or something much larger and more forceful than a person on the bike. The sign was knocked down to about a 60 degree angle and it was twisted. The sign had a picture of a bike on it and words underneath that said 'Yield to Peds.' Yeah, I hardly think this is the biggest issue here. 

Made the mistake/great decision to watch the new Danny MacAskill video before leaving work and while I wasn't so emboldened as to ride off rooftops and do backflips into the ocean, I did, quite radly, zip and zag on and off curbs as I saw fit along Mass Avenue. It was remarkably unrad, but I'm not going to let objective self-criticism spoil my deluded sense of self. 

People keep accidentally parking in bike lanes. Fire up the education campaign about what "No parking or standing" means. Just need a little more education, I bet. Just a little more. 

Sometimes a thing I think about is the "theory of traffic," which is to say where do people think traffic comes from. Like, if you asked people to explain why there's traffic and then asked some follow up questions about why the traffic exists at particular times and why not at other times and what, if anything, could be done about it, I have no idea, what they would say. To me, it seems quite obvious, but I have no idea what the average DC driver thinks. I would think that if pressed they would agree with me about what causes traffic (cars), but in my less charitable moments, I can't help but suspect that drivers think that there's some guy on a bike or some distracted walker not in front of his car (since what's in front of his car is another car) and maybe not quite in front of that next guy's car (because that's another car) but somewhere out there in front of somebody's car that is the cause of all the delays and if that bicyclist/distracted walker wasn't there, it'd all be going just fine. 

I was lucky enough to run into the running MG on the way home. This is her, leaping. 

I was taking a lovely scenic picture of the sunset when suddenly, from out of nowhere, @coffeeneur bounded into view

A photo posted by @brianmcentee on Dec 11, 2015 at 1:58pm PST

She's got mad hops.

It was ungodly warm for December 11. I think I forgot to mention that.

Ride 12/10: Astounding medical breakthroughs

I've been finding it increasingly difficult to get out of the bed in the morning (why did I buy that velcro duvet?) and accordingly, I'm been sluggish in leaving the house and the first mile of the bike commute is a quiet mile mostly spent listening to the things my bike chain has to say (fix me) and wondering when my legs and the rest of me are planning on getting interested in the fact that we're all collectively no longer in bed, dreaming about the things we could be doing if we weren't biking to work, such as biking somewhere else. The grayness of the morning makes the whole affair a bit subdued and that it's not bracingly cold doesn't little to snap me from the low-level reverie. Sometimes I'm shaken into alertness by an inattentive driver, but most days, like this morning, it's all very mellow, if not catatonic. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I like to imagine an alternate version of the National Mall when the roads aren't mostly set aside for parking and also where maybe the old Tourmobile kiosks are turned into breakfast taco stands. I don't think either of these events are forthcoming, but maybe someday fuel scarcity or the whims of of an evil despot will turn the Mall into a place that's less concerned about vehicle storage, like a kind of linear Walmart parking lot. Would the spots really be missed? Would anyone really notice? 

I will spare you my 12,000 words on the western end of the Mall by the Lincoln. Maybe I should write a newsletter. PS- I am not a crank. (fun aside: I emailed someone at NPS today about the plan to put parking meters on the Mall. The 9 of you reading will be the first to hear about when I know more.) 

I decided to take New Mexico Avenue home and then ride through Glover Park, which has recently been besharrowed (to little ill effect) and then down into Georgetown and over to a grocery store where I bought some things and then it was the L Street cycletrack across town to 11th street. There are shitshows and there are disasters and then there are shitsasters (when after one shitshow and one disaster fall in love and get married...) and then there's 11th Street, which is a true hot mess on the night of games at the Verizon Center (on 7th). The street has bike lanes, but you wouldn't know unless you checked under the commuter buses and more than once (twice) I had to yell some combination of 'hey' and 'no' to alert drivers to not hit me with their cars when casually pulling out of parking spaces. It's just bad news and it's really unfortunate. I've been bike commuting in the city for a long enough time and I've developed a bit of too much comfort in shitsasters, but it's remarkably unfair to have a street like this and expect normal people to be ok bicycling on it. They don't deserve that. People have dignity and that doesn't go away when they get on a bicycle. 

Rides 12/9: this again again

Cold, but not winter cold. Sunglasses, but it was cloudy. December befuddles, but I'll take a befuddling December over a wintry one. How does this affect my seasonal mirth and more importantly, my atonal mumble singing of your favorite holiday tunes during my bike commute? Little. It affects it very little. The atonal mumble singing continues apace and this is regardless of whether there's anyone around and I'd just like to give a shout out to my fellow bike commuters for their remarkable chill. Not once has anyone freaked out to an atonal mumble sung line of Frosty and for that I'm grateful.

Mall route and I picked up behind another rider and more or less rode in his wake up to K Street, but he dropped off and then it was slow going up Wisco for the rest of the way. A couple of months ago, DDOT decided to stripe some very narrow lanes on Book Hill, where there used to be no stripes before. From the perspective of a northbound bicyclist, I can tell you that this decision has somewhat worked against my interests since the drivers used to pretend that there was only one very wide lane and leave me most of the right side of the road. Now with two, even though they're narrow, they occupy more space and that means there's less room for me. I mean, there's the same amount of room, but I'm more likely to have a driver in front of me or behind me and that changes the dynamic somewhat.

I bit further up the road a Prius driver with an NRA sticker (seriously) nearly made it such that the side of his car ended into my haunch. I wondered what he would say about my right to stand my ground in that situation. I declined to inquire.

Ride home was mostly uneventful down Massachusetts and 21st and across town on L. There was some car traffic but there's always some car traffic. Turns out that when a lot of people want to drive a lot of cars somewhere it doesn't really work out well. I hate car traffic. I might hate car traffic more than the average driver. Why else do you think I bike everywhere?

Saw this guy. If that's not the coolest bike in DC, I don't know what is.

bat-fiets

I also saw Justin. When I saw him, he was being honked at. Justin is a noted bike jerk and you can tell this because on the childseat of the longtail he uses to transport his adorable kid, there's a pinwheel and anyone who thinks to decorate his child portaging bike in such a way must be some kind of jerk deserving a punitive honk when, to my (admittedly biased, but not totally unobjective) eye, all he was doing was riding in the bike lane. Oh well.

Rides 12/8: this again

Graphomania must have been a harder disease in old testament times because who wants to spend that much time chiseling stone tablets and if in old testament times there were bike bloggers (and there weren't since the flood rusted all the chains of the once replete fleet of Eden's bikeshare system [which only had 1 bike and even then with only two people was gender imbalanced]) then those bike bloggers, after they biked about through old testament-y places, would've been considerably slowed in their efforts to record the commutes due to the overall unwieldiness of chisels, to say nothing of the difficulty of sharing the words with others because how many people would even be able to see your stone tablets anyway? So, it's much better now for graphomaniacs and bike bloggers and presumably those that enjoy reading the words of bike bloggers, as pointless as they may be. Hiatus over.

I didn't bike to work this morning. At least not the whole way. I took The Bikeshare (gonna start calling it The Bikeshare from now on, like The Ohio State University #cbuscool #lifeincbus) from Lincoln Park to Union Station, which at one point was and maybe still is the most popular The Bikeshare route. I only took that route because the two closer stations were empty and I didn't want to walk east to get a bike to go west even though the station by RFK might have been closer, but I shuffled the few extra blocks to the park and picked up a The Bikeshare bike to ride up Massachusetts and around Stanton Park and down Massachusetts to the the The Bikeshare dock on the side of the train station. Last night I was at the train station attending a meeting about the train station renovation (because this is how I spend my free time) and when I got out and went to the The Bikeshare station, I was foiled by the long slow blink orange blink when the The Bikeshare docks judges your worthiness, Willy Wonka-style, as assesses whether you deserve to undock a The Bikeshare bike. And when that light went from blinking orange to angry red, I felt like Veruca Salt, but not like the awesome rock band of the same name, though I was hardly the seether, since these things happen. And I wasn't the only one that these things happened to at the The Bikeshare station and a woman also got a blinky orange-angry red message on the next bike up the line and so we both worked our way down the station to the next few bikes and I tried again and another red and then she tried a different one and it didn't work for her either and we commiserated over out situation as we worked out way down to the last three available bikes before one worked for me and I left and wished her good luck and I think it all turned out ok for her because when I looked over my shoulder a bike was gone and so was she but MAYBE she was a ghost and this is soooo spooky. Or maybe she just rode up the other way once the The Bikeshare bike finally chose to smile upon her and deem her worthy.

This morning there was no such trouble as the The Bikeshare bike chose me without incident and I docked without incident and was able to wrest another The Bikeshare bike on the other side of my metro trip, which I rode uneventfully to my final destination.

At the end of the day, it was another The Bikeshare ride down Massachusetts Avenue to Garfield and over into AdMo. Drivers sure don't seem to mind idling in bike lanes. Or if they mind it, they are quite good at suppressing their botherment. I'm not sure I've ever idled in a bike lane and I can't say that I see much allure in it. I have some peculiarities related that manifest themselves in curious ways, like finding it difficult to wear a watch while sitting down (it's a balance thing) and I think I would find it difficult to keep a car astride white lines that are too narrow to border it. It would seem very 'off.' Also, I wouldn't idle in a bike lane BECAUSE I'M NOT A HUGE FUCKING ASSHOLE. I mean, but the other thing too.

 I went into BicycleSpace and perused a bit and bought some spare tubes and then I was on my way to Columbia Heights, again taking The Bikeshare from the The Bikeshare Station to a different The Bikeshare station, which I unwittingly rode past before turning around and walking back. There is no assigned outfit for a The Bikeshare rider and the choices of attire vary from the 'what I wear for work' to a modified 'mostly what I wear for work, except maybe a reflective jacket or sneakers' to a separate bicycling ensemble, which seems to fly in the face of the whole espirit-de-The Bikeshare, but people should wear whatever clothes they want when they bicycle, whether using their own bikes or The Bikeshare. I feel that having a commuting uniform- which I do have and normally don, though not today and not normally when riding The Bikeshare- is not only totally acceptable, but kind of fun, irrespective of distance. fun fact: in the original comics, Bruce Wayne just wanted to wear a weird ass commuting outfit when driving to work in his tricked out car and then he got pulled over and was like 'uh, yeah, um, I, uh, fight crime? I'm not just some weird guy who wears a cape to drive to work.' Sartorial guilt doesn't make for the most epic superhero origin story, so they changed it to the whole 'parents getting murdered' thing, which I find to be much more bleak honestly.

Car2Go is great except when the driver of the Car2Go is having too much fun taking a selfie and too little not fun paying attention to the me that she passed too close. Nice duckface though. I also had duckface, but it was more of a duck-and-cover face. I was on The Bikeshare too, so I guess there's no mutually agreed upon covenant on sharers looking out for eachother. Idea: the Geneva Convention, but for Millennials.

14th Street and again with the bike lane idling and Thomas Circle and through McPherson Square (is biking allowed? I don't know) to 15th and then 15th and Pennsylvania and the usual way home. It was a good night for a good night ride. Good night.

a few rides a few days apart

This past weekend, I rode my bike through a few parts of New York City for not a lot of time, and while I don't know if it's possible to make generalizable observations about what it *is* to ride a bike in New York (I can barely make those observations for DC, where I do have much more experience with the terrain, but mostly it's impossible to generalize because the experience of riding a bicycle is so individualistic and so varied based on all of the the social markers of who each individual is because riding a bike, unlike driving, is a much more a public act and fraught with all the perils and pitfalls of being a person in public) but I can tell you that there are parts of it that feel different and not necessarily because I wasn't totally familiar with where I was going. For the most part I knew where I was going because I had gone those places once before and not too long ago. (Also, I think New York has better signage than here. But we're always improving!) Mostly things felt different because different cities develop different norms and different ways of being and this is why I would wholeheartedly recommend taking your bike somewhere else and riding it around there some. You'll still remember how to ride your bike (after all, it's like riding a bike), but doing it somewhere different shakes some of the cobwebs brought about by familiarity and repetition, both of place and people.

tl;dr: take your bike somewhere else and ride it around there and soak up all the different feelings and notice all the differences and similarities. It's worth it, even if it's only for a few rides and not that many miles.

P.S. hot take: New York and DC are two different places and they each have good and bad things about them and comparing them is kind of silly.