Ride In 6/30: Gated Community

Saw this:

First of all, while I love all chalk messages (especially when Bart wrote 'I will always yield to peds' a billion times in that one Simpsons opening), I think we can all agree that one of the biggest problems that cycling has had over the years is yielding to P.E.D.s. I know that everyone who commutes by bike is a Lance Armstrong wannabe and I know that it's physically impossible to ride a bike without taking some or other kind of drug (such as Claritin), but I think it's a pretty irresponsible message. Don't yield to PEDs! Remain steadfast and unyielding. Maybe you won't win your commute and maybe you won't garner the millions of dollars of endorsements that come from "being the best bike commuter," but you'll sleep soundly at night. Especially if you use PEDs (Pillow Enhancing Drugs). Those you can totally use.

Secondly, what's WABA trying to do here? Is this some kind of cyclist toll? If they don't get  no tolls, will they eat no rolls? Or could it be a trick? Maybe it's not a trick and they just want us to careen wildly into those "people," thereby normalizing cycling by treating it exactly like driving, wherein we crash into a bunch of people and experience no consequences whatsoever! Very clever, WABA. Unfortunately, it didn't work and while I stopped to take this picture, three cyclists rode around the gate, avoiding crashing into the paper people, and also failed the yield to the pedestrians using the crosswalk. Their loss. I waited until the WABAns lifted the gate and rode under, rather than through, the paper people portcullis.

How do I feel about this? Fine, mostly. I think it's a kind of funny effort to remind cyclists to yield in a spot where some cyclists don't always yield to pedestrians. Would I have felt differently about it if those two Bike Lobby toughs tried to shake me down for some money to spend on PEDs ("This is a stick up! Put your money and any allergy meds in the pannier!")? Sure, but that's not what they were doing at all. I don't think, anyway. Should I be offended that the Bicycle Advocacy Community (whatever that is) is reminding me, a bicyclist, to yield to pedestrians while no one from the Car Advocacy Community or the Pedestrian Advocacy Community is reminding those groups to be nice to bicyclists? I certainly don't think so. But maybe you do. Maybe you think any effort to alter the behavior of bicyclists is morally wrong, especially in light of the fact that there are far more consequential bad behaviors by other, non-bicycling groups that have much more negative societal impacts and that any effort to ask bicyclists to do anything differently is an effort spent on not addressing real (real!) problems. I mean, maybe I'd feel that way if it were police officers doing it and not bike ambassadors. Anyway, did you see this? What was your reaction? DO YOU HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT THIS, OR ANYTHING ELSE, THAT YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE? Have at. 

RIde Home 6/27: Artifice

Saw a one-wheeled tandem atop a four-wheeled station wagon parked near work. I assume the other wheel was in the back of the car, packed and ready for travel, but maybe it wasn't and maybe it was just a tandem unicycle. One of my favorite tandems, MG and Felkerino, ride a tandem bicycle, so maybe they have some particular insight into the hot new, and totally conjectural sport, of tandem unicycling. Twice the people! Half the wheels! Somewhere between 1/2 and 4 times the fun depending on whether the fun is multiplied or divided with the addition of people and the subtraction of wheels!

Drivers are idealists and cyclists are realists. Drivers in the city are so hopeful that today (any day) will be the day that they'll have no traffic and that today (every day) no one will be parked in the right lane and they'll be able to zoom by and today (all days) no one will need to make a left turn and today (today today today) the light will stay green and they'll zoom through and today (St. Crispin's Day?) all of the things that make car commuting in the city plodding and onerous and frustrating and, in the worst cases, downright ragey, will fail to appear and it will be glorious! Bicyclists know that the hill in front of them still needs to be climbed, that the lights will change when the lights change and that the inattentiveness of ourselves or those around us can have the somewhat dramatic effect of considerable negative consequences. But, I suppose, you don't need to be an idealist when the reality is mostly good.

21st Street NW could use a cycletrack. I thought about riding another few blocks east to cut back west on New Hampshire to then continue south to L, but the bit of Massachusetts between 23rd and Dupont Circle is a crappy, craggy, ruddy pavement that jostles and jars and gives little space for the slow moving cyclist as it's barely wide enough for the width of two big cars and the cars are always big. Also, I think I have a sort of mental hangup on going east to go west to go south but only because an orienteer beat me up in middle school. I have unresolved issues A compass rose by any other name remains a surprisingly effective weapon in close combat. (Just kidding- I've never been beaten up by an orienteer or any other -teer, including Mousketeer. Yet.)

11th Street is a street with a bike lane and I rode down this street behind a woman in a flowy yellow skirt and I rode on Pennsylvania Avenue with bunches of others, some dressed as normal people and others dressed as normal people in athletic wear. I passed 7th Street where there was an hour before I left work a report of an driver-cyclist crash, but there was no on still on the scene when I came through and I hope everyone was ok. On Penn was when I first noticed how strongly the headwind opposed me and I felt lumbering and slow.

Followed a man on a fixed gear bicycle down East Capitol and I've seen him a few times, but I think this is a different bicycle from the one he normally rides. It was a Bianchi Pista and it glimmered like the shiny side of tin foil. He rode deliberately and not too fast and I rode not too fast deliberately behind him. You can't learn a lot about people from riding a bicycle behind them (at least, not as much as you could from, I don't talking, talking to them or, I don't know, hiring a private investigator to prepare some kind of dossier), but even if you can't learn a lot, you use that time to try to guess what they might be like in non-cycling times or maybe even invent a whole back story for them. I didn't event a back story for this guy, but I noticed his black Nike high tops and I liked how matte they were.

Ride In 6/27: Guaranteed Fresh Until Printed Date

The area in front of the White House was blocked with caution tape and stern looking uniformed men and I rode up 15th street, having little alternative other than turning around and going home. There's a cycletrack on 15th Street, but only up to the White House plaza and when that's closed, there's no direct way to connect to where the cycletrack picks up on the other side of H Street. H Street is one-way east and it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk there anyway, so you at least have to go two blocks north to I Street if you want to get back over. There's no bike lane or cycletrack on the blocks from the White House plaza to I Street, so you're riding next to parked cars in the door zone or maybe you're just riding in the right lane. To make the left turn onto I, you'd have to get out of that right lane and I couldn't do that because there really wasn't much room, so I kept riding on the bike lane-less stretch of 15 past I street to the next block, which is K Street, where there's also no bike lane. You could make a left turn from K Street and maybe ride in the K Street service lane (or whatever that is) and cross back into the cycletrack on 15th. But I didn't make the left turn on K Street, continuing instead on Vermont, where there is no bike lane. There's a traffic circle at Vermont and M and a block before that there's the L Street Cycletrack, but that also only runs east. To get to the M Street Cycletrack, where I was heading anyway, I could've ridden around the traffic circle 330 degrees or so or I could ride across in the crosswalk (or beforehand) and then ride on the sidewalk for a little before riding mostly across the street and then into the protected cycletrack. I didn't ride around the circle. 

I'm used to this. Sometimes bike lanes end and sometimes they're blocked and sometimes roads are closed and sometimes roads are just backed up. It's imperative to be intrepid. When a bicyclist has one good option and that one good option is taken away, that leaves no good options. That leaves being intrepid. Maybe bicyclists should have more than one good option. 

Rides 6/26: Rides 6/26: Rides 6/26

I did ride to and from work today, but I worked from home for a few hours in the morning and then rode to a place near my work to watch sport and then rode to work from there. From work, I rode to a bike shop and then to a grocery store, but not the grocery store I normally go to, and then from there, home.

Some thoughts:

1. Maybe not the best day to ride in jeans. Or flip-flops. Hot. Slow. Got hotter. Went slower. Wisconsin Avenue was interminable.

2. My plan to ride to a place near work to watch the game wasn't a bad plan, as it took my clear across the city on Soccer Match Game Day and I can report back to you that Districtians (and those who come from the surroundings into the District for work and/or pleasure) were a very patriotic bunch of soccer supporters. There were reds. There were whites. There were blues. Stars, they were spangled. I saw a woman with an American flag-inspired pashmina and her golden retriever was wearing an American-flag inspired bandanna. It was like Ralph Lauren vandalized the Humane Society. There were a lot of proper #USMNT jerseys too and other non-jersery shirts that evoked #USMNT jerseys. Some of these shirts might even have been made from jersey. Some of the people might have even been from Jersey. Anyway, DC is soccer mad and you kinda tell.

3. Is there a more silly thing than finally deciding to pass the guy riding in front of you and then getting stuck behind a turning armored car and then he passes you back and then you don't want to pass him again because if the universe put a turning armored car in front of you to make sure for some reason this guy stays in front of you, then that's pretty much nothing to mess with? Or am I maybe just reading too much into this?

4. On the way home, I saw a black BMW with the license plate LUV GOD. Funny. I would've guessed mammon.

5. First Street NE seems like a bad place to drive a car.

6. Columbus Circle seems like a bad place to drive a car.

7. Massachusetts Avenue until Stanton Park seems like a bad place to drive a car.

8. I biked home some burrata without spilling any of the precious burrata liquid. Sure, there plastic wrapping below the plastic lid, but you never know. I've spilled cheese liquids far too many times to take anything for granted.

That's pretty much all I've got. Have a great weekend after having another weekday! Or start your weekend early. In either case, enjoy biking and contained cheese liquids and patriotic dogs.

Ride Home 6/25: Can I Lease a Vowel?

This blog, first and foremost, is about urban bike commuting, but it's also about urban bike commuting and men's facial hair and I've noticed a number of urban bike commuting men with luxurious, thick, full beards and I can't even imagine what that's like when it's 100 degrees with 300% humidity. You would think for summer that these bike commuters might shave down to mutton chops (which also have the benefit of being more aerodynamic) or maybe just some kind of push broom mustache, like an 1890s postman, but no. Beardos ride among us. They ride bearded regardless of the heat and the invariable face sweat. It is not some follicle folly. It's an affirmative decision. They don't let their facial hair choices impact their bike commuting lifestyle. They ride past barber and barber and barber, eschewing them all. They cock back their heads and laugh at razors and strops and thermometers and hygrometers. "Hi, grometer! Bye, grometer!" And away they ride, borne on bikes, throughout the summer and into legend.

I cannot grow a luxurious, thick, full beard. I might be able to muster a wispy and wan beard, more gap between hairs than hairs themselves. I could pretend to be bearded. I could go to a costume shop and ask for the "full Lincoln." (Lincoln did indeed know about beards).  I am not confronted with the choice of whether to carry on boldly bearded, beat upon by the summer heat. But some gentleman bear this choice and so they do. To the bearded bike commuters of DC, we salute you. I mean, I guess. Whatever.