Ride In 3/18

The weather couldn't be nicer for biking. A lot of people on the road, too. Finally, the "seasonals," a totally non-pejorative term I use to describe part-year, nice-weather-only bike commuters are on the roads full-force. How can you identify a "seasonal"? (You know, not because you want to make yourself feel even more self-satisfied about riding through the winter, but just because you're curious and stuff...) There are a few ways:

• They have clean shoes. Either sneakers or bike shoes. 
• They have a cable lock or no lock at all. I'm highly skeptical of people on bikes who don't have a lock with them. Maybe it's locked up at work or maybe they bring their bikes into their offices, but more likely, they're just riding in a big loop and heading back home. The head-back-home crowd includes the super-biker, lycra types.
• They're pedaling too hard. It's not a race, dude.
• They don't ride with traffic. I don't mean in traffic, but with traffic. One of the things you get used to after bike commuting a lot is how to interact with, and not totally avoid interactions with, drivers. It's the little things you can do, like making eye contact or using hand signals or knowing where to position yourself or whatever, that help more easily integrate you into the flow of traffic and make for an easier and safer commute. Less experienced riders tend to stick the bike lanes or sidewalks, even when moving into the travel lane makes more sense and is actually safer. 

Anyway, it's nice to have more people on the road because greater bicycle volume makes the roads safer for all users. Huzzah for safety! (I have that tattooed across my back in Carolingian miniscule).
Runaway wheeled garbage can came down the hill at Oak and 18th street. First time I've ever seen that.
Quiet ride through Georgetown and Glover Park. Thanks to local bike luminary, Mark Blacknell, I was able to borrow a "helmet cam" and record my ride up Tunlaw and New Mexico. I'll put that up that in a separate post later.
Such a beautiful day and I'm already looking forward to the ride home. Also, I saw this. Sorry, Tom.

Ride Home 3/17

I thought about sticking to trails the whole way so as to avoid potential drunk drivers (I have a real glass half-empty view today), but instead I went the usual way down New Mexico and though Georgtown. Traffic wasn't terrible and most drivers avoided blocking my path with their cars. The Key Bridge was full of people who don't know what a ringing bell means. It means "please move over". It doesn't mean "please don't react at all and cause me have to pass too closely after having to wait behind you for a little too long." I hate having to give dirty looks to people walking across the bridge who can see that I'm coming but still don't move over. You see that I'm coming. I'm not even going that fast. Wouldn't you move for a person walking? Seriously? I'm only looking for a little accommodation. Just a little assistance to that end would go a long way.
I avoided Wilson Boulevard in Arlington because it has something like 50 (okay, maybe 2) "Irish" pubs. I don't need to be blocked by drunk pedestrians in bike lanes. I took the Custis to Veitch to Key Boulevard. Key Boulevard, for all intents and purposes, is a bike boulevard. I ride it all the time and I'm almost never passed by a car. It's totally safe and I highly recommend it as a great pathway between Virginia Square and Courthouse.
Fairfax Drive has two lanes. I stopped to cross the street at the crosswalk at Oakland and a taxicab minivan flashed his lights indicating to me that he was stopping. He did, but the driver of the car three behind him decided to pull out into the other lane to try to speed around. Drivers, please pay attention. If someone in front of you is stopping near a cross walk, it's probably for a reason. Don't assume that the person stopping is an idiot who doesn't know how roads work. When you pull into the other lane to get around him, you should expect to see the reason why he stopped. In this case, it was me in the cross walk. I even yelled "STOP!" at the driver of the black Honda and I gave a "death stare" as I slowly (so very slowly) biked me away across the street. The driver of the Honda avoided eye contact and he was right to do so.

Don't be a jerk

View DC Central Business District in a larger map

 It's illegal to bike on the sidewalk in the downtown central business district.

An actual email exchange from my wife this morning:

Her: Cycle etiquette question:

Probably not cool for a superbiker with a brooks saddle to whiz by me (within inches) at top speed without dinging or saying 'on your left' ON THE SIDEWALK of 20th street, right?  This is what gives y'all a bad name, right?  Shouldn't you do some kind of PSA?  He was definitely riding faster than the traffic on the street, so I don't know why he was on the sidewalk.

Me: That's no only poor etiquette. It's also illegal. You're allowed under the "law of the sidewalk" to punch him in the head. 

Her: He was gone too fast.

Me: Asshole

Since the blog has such a wide reach (hi mom!), here's my PSA. While I'm not the biggest fans of so-called laws (WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?), I am a big fan of convivencia.  Don't do stupid shit like this. It only serves to alienate pedestrians, with whom we share a lot of common interests. I don't think that one person's bad behavior should be used to tar an entire group. In the LSAT test prep business, that's called a part-whole comparison flaw. But I also don't think that any one person should exhibit such blatantly stupid behavior! If you ride downtown, ride in the street. It's your right and, I guess, obligation. Be courteous to those around you because they deserve it. They're just people trying to get around, too. And if you act like a dick and get punched in the head, well, it's the law of the sidewalk.

Ride In 3/17

Ugh. St. Patrick's Day. I don't care for it and I have the most Irish name ever (my middle name is Francis, even). Let's just say I'm a puritanical New England prig and not go too much further into it. I made a chart so even economists can understand:

At least it's not Halloween.

The chart is courtesy of four required economics classes in college.
Since I had nothing pressing at work to do this morning aside from filling out my brackets, I decided that I would take a different route in this morning. I've only gone over the Chain Bridge via bicycle once and all I remember of that trip is the hilliness of North Arlington (or NoArl as no one calls it). I also remember that I had to take the C&O towpath back about a mile and a half to reconnect to the CCT because there didn't seem to be a way to get to the CCT. But it was just such a nice day out today, I figured that I would take advantage of that and that the hills wouldn't kill me.
NoArl consists of single-family homes, most of which look like they should be featured on a show by Sherwood Schwartz (not Gilligan's Island), and Protestant churches. My route took me along Quincy and Military Road through such tough-sounding neighborhoods like Cherrydale, Donaldson Run, Gulf Branch, Bellevue Forest and Rivercrest, the last of which I believe inspired a role playing card game that once rivaled Magic: The Gathering in the mid 90s. Sure, there were hills, but there were bike lanes the whole way! These residents must be super-IMBYs (as opposed to NIMBYs) when it comes to bicyclists because there were inspirational phrases spray-painted in the bike lanes. Things like "Keep Pumping!" and "Almost There!" I'm looking forward to similar adornment along the New Mexico Avenue bike lanes once those are painted.
I didn't see any other cyclists on the road today, but I think this route is pretty popular on the weekends. I don't think that many people, comparatively, commute by bike to upper NW via the Chain Bridge. Mostly because of the lack of connectivity to anywhere.
On to quibbles, then. This is the Bike Arlington map, showing the connection between the Chain Bridge and the Capital Crescent Trail:

Chain Bridge

According to this, it looks like you can pretty much just bike straight through and get on the CCT. Cool, huh? Well, it's not exactly that straightforward (at least based on what I saw- maybe I missed something). There's a pretty significant change in elevation (read: hill) between the bridge level and the CCT level. And there's no paved path between the two. Instead, there's this:

Not NACTO approved.

Yes, this is technically an off-street trail and that's all the red line on the map promises. But it's not bikeable. In order to access it, you have to bike/walk about 50 feet down the sidewalk (or lift your bike over the guard rail), cross the do-not-bike-on-according-to-the-map Canal Road amidst the stopped car traffic and work your way back in order to get to the trail, which as you can see the from the picture is not super. The map could be a little clearer. Serious portage opportunity.
Not much else interesting from the CCT to work. I saw this truck:

Om

So, if you're working on renouncing all desire but can't totally shake the desire for your own backyard zen garden, call this guy.

Ride Home 3/16

Before I left work I got the following email from my wife:


you took trail because you ran out of things to count? what about my vanity plate survey?


I had forgotten. She suggested that I look for correlation between vanity plates and car types. This sounded like an interesting experiment and I promised her that I would do it. Then I promptly forgot. So I had a mission for the ride home- look for vanity plates, remember them and remember what kind of car they were on. This was very hard to do. When I got home, I rushed in and said "Can I use the computer? I need to write down the license plates right now!" She thought that I saw or was in some sort of crash and was confused when I dislodged her just to write down the following nonsense. She just wanted to know if there was correlation between car type and whether or not they had a vanity plate- not the plates they actually had. Whoops.  
Anyway, here's what I saw, roughly in the order that I saw them.

• DB 7841- Ok, I'm not totally sure that this was a vanity plate. It might be one for a soon-to-be septuagenarian douchebag. But, maybe just a coincidence. Black BMW. 

• 1024- This was on the Virginia plate for horse enthusiasts. I assume it's a reference to the equine military tactics of the Salian dynasty. I think it was on maybe a Toyota Corolla. 

• ROW VA (DC plate)- Maybe they know the SURF WVA guys? 

• GRAFIX- On an SUV outside of Duke Ellington. Um, I guess graphics are more about images than spelling. 

I didn't see any more vanity plates until DC. On 34th Street, there's a house with a Georgia Bulldogs banner and there was a VW Bug with an Alabama Crimson Tide license plate holder. The license plate holder must is the apotheosis of love of alma mater. I wonder if they ever rumble. Also, a Mercedes with a Princeton license plate holder. Maybe the guy from this morning? Also, a huge black SUV (not a fully-loaded Lincoln Navigator) blocked what will soon (?) be the painted bike lane. It had two window decals- the palmetto and a Yankees logo. This is probably the most loathsome person in the world. 

I crossed the Key Bridge, which was full of Bucknell fans. Make of this what you will, but they all looked like Bucknell fans. Lots of sweatshirts. I apologize in advance of your angry letters. 

• MS Z- On a sedan of some sort (I'd say most vanity plates were on small to midsize sedans). This seemed pretty self-explanatory- the driver has a Masters of Science in Zoology.

• IRIGHTI- This one confused me. I read it as I RIGHT (Roman Number One), but that doesn't make any sense. Maybe it's "right between the eyes," like one of those puzzles you do in fifth grade?

• ARKYTEK- I wonder if he knows GRAFIX? They can design a library together. Maybe go inside afterwards (after words). 

• WAZAABI- On a grey SUV pulling out of the Ray's Hell Burger shopping center. Some sort of Boston brahmin sushi chef, perhaps? 

• SONCBM- "My father was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile." I think a BMW. He had this kind of plate.  

• BFLO BUG- On a sky blue VW BUG. With a University of at Buffalo license plate holder. 

• LHORNS- Lena Horne is alive and well and misspelling her name and avoiding apostrophes and driving a Honda Civic. 

In conclusion, Virginia has 7 letters and I think it's pretty cheap to get vanity plates here, so that serves as incentive for better self-expression. DC just has 6 letters, so there's not as many interesting things to say.

Only other item of note is that I was almost driven into, but not really. I was in the left turn lane on Wilson to turn onto Quincy. Driver next to me (in the go-straight lane [technical term]) decided that she would also turn left. During the turn she was on my right. I was riding in the middle of the travel lane and she was in the bike lane. Shoe's on the other foot, huh? She decided that she would pull even with me, rather than drop behind me. I looked at her and went with the dispassionate and factual "That's not a turn lane." Nothing in response. She pulled in front of me and was gone. At first I was mad, but mostly because my voice is not that of James Earl Jones or Christopher Lee. It's kinda nasally and dorky and I think in my upsetment, it was even slightly higher than usual. I'm proud of myself for not swearing, but that's not from any virtue- just that what I said was the only thing I could think of saying at the time. I didn't feel in real danger- I guess that's what kept the anger at bay. I mean, whatever. No one got hurt, so I'm pretty content not to dwell. 

When I pulled into our building, two people were "playing" frisbee on the grass. They weren't very good. Spring training, I guess.