Rides 3/30: Pollen

It's taken all winter, but it's finally spring. That's pretty much like every year, I guess.

I decided to ride through the city, following Pennsylvania and 15th Street and M Street and the other cyclists who were doing the same, and I found it to be an oddly relaxing experience, in spite of the fact that circumstances ("circumstances" is what I call things that block the bike lane) were abundant and that very easily could have bothered me, but I tried not to let it bother me because what good is being bothered going to do? Being bothered by little stuff doesn't get you to work any faster and it certainly doesn't make you feel better about anything. Like everything else, it's an expectations game. If you're a driver and you expect to be able to drive your car at 60 mph directly from you house directly to your office and get a free up-close parking spot as soon as you get there, of course, you're going to be disappointed by reality. And if you're a bicyclist who expects that there won't be detritus in the bike lane or an occasional jerk impeding it, that'll probably miff you too. But if the government is going to try to assuage these bothers, which do you think is more achievable? We've tried to build highways and tons of parking and all that and I'm not sure it's actually done very much to alleviate the stresses of car commuting. Maybe some things can't be unbothered.

 I rode up 28th Street in Georgetown, which is a lovely old street through a quiet residential fancy townhouse neighborhood and it's exactly the kind of place a bicyclist shouldn't feel like an interloper. It's not an 'arterial' and it's not wide and got parking on both sides and stop signs at every block. It's got a gentle incline from M to R, where the street stops at the cemetery gates. And yet, every time I ride on this street, I feel like I don't belong there because more often that not, some guy in a giant car is inches off my bumper (an honking!), as the street is too narrow to allow for passing me. It's an unpleasant feeling, made more unpleasant by my otherwise completely pleasant surroundings. If a person can't feel comfortable bicycling on a street like this, or, rather, if the expectation on a street like this isn't that it's a nice quiet place for bicyclists who want to avoid main roads and everyone else should get over it, then I don't know what to do. I've commuted by bike long enough to develop a relatively thick outer layer of 'fuck off,' but I don't think this should be a prerequisite or an expectation. I guess it just makes me sad how ingrained the expectation is that cars are the number one most important thing on every street, irrespective of whether it makes sense for that street.

Rode down New Mexico towards home, with a quick stop at the grocery store to buy soybeans and wine. I took 34th street, a residential street in west Georgetown, that has a bike lane and also serves as a pipeline for drivers heading from [I'm not entirely sure. points north?] over the Key Bridge. Car traffic backs up regularly, but the bike lane allows cyclists to get by just fine. I've counted cars stuck in traffic before, but rarely have I ever counted people in them. I counted 53 cars. They held a total of 57 people. That's 57 people spread out over 6 blocks. That's fewer than 10 people a block. Road space is precious, they tell us. How precious could it be if we give a whole block of road over to 10 people?

After the store, it was L to 11th. On 11th, I stopped behind a bus and a car, having no room to squeeze through. A superbiker in full kit then squeezed between me, the car, and the bus. Oh superbikers.

Farther down 11th, I rode behind a very hesitant bike commuter. I think he was new. Hello new bike commuter! Welcome!

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"- Upton Sinclair, on taxi drivers and bike lanes

This was a nice sight:

It's spring. 

Rides 3/27: Tip Time

It's possible I've written about this before, but even if I have, it's worth repeating, because repeating is pretty much what I'm writing about. There are only so many different kinds of bad weather you can bike in and once you've biked in that bad weather more than once, you've pretty much biked in it all that you can and so when you're faced with it once again (in this case, the bad weather is a cold March rain), you just say to yourself that you've already been through this crap before and you shrug it off and you just do it again. Because you've done it before. I think we're two Marches now past the March when I rode everyday in the same exact weather: cold and raining. I don't know if bike commuting inures you to coping with bad weather (I certainly don't like it) but it at least familiarizes you with it to the point where you just put your head down and your hat on and you deal with it, much in the same way that a regular car commuter 'deals' with the perpetual traffic and other ills that beset him. It's just the way it is.

All that said, today was a day that I wished my office was closer. About 5 miles in to the ride, I wished I could Samantha Stevens my situation and with a nose crinkle, find myself at my desk without undergoing the pedaling needed to get me there. But then I'd probably have associated Endora problems and who wants that? DID YOU KNOW that Agnes Moorehead was the mother in Citizen Kane? I learned that in high school! Why yes, I was exorbitantly popular and well-adjusted back then, why do you ask?

Mostly the same way home as normal, except more time on L Street than usual to 11th and then from there on K Street, illegally until the Carnegie Library (it's one way and not the way I went. P.S.- DDOT, if you're reading, add a contraflow bike lane on K from 9th to 10th NW. The road is sufficiently wide and untrafficked to handle it) and then around the square and down K Street NW across town into NoMa, which is a place. I don't think there's a more incongruous street that K Street NW from 7th eastward, as it's been home to a significant amount of dense, tall-for-DC development and it's still treated like a 4-lane get-the-fuck-outta-town-ASAP arterial when it really could be something else entirely. My three favorite (and by favorite, I mean worst) streets that no longer come anywhere close to matching the kinds of streets they could be are K, NJ Avenue and Florida Avenue NE. Reality has yet to impinge upon these overbuilt roads and they remain host to far too many speeding cars at the expense of the many other ways that people might choose to use them. On K, though not today, I've had more than my fair share of close calls. Even if we don't rip out a lane (which we should), we could at least narrow them some. No one needs to drive that fast so close to that many people. But, you know, #waroncars and all that.

From there I took the contraflow bike lane on G NE over to the Argonaut, where I spent some time refreshing twitter and drinking a beer, then it was home down 14th Street. Both G and 14th were so full of potholes that perhaps it was instead the potholes that were full of 14th and G Street. Wear and tear. Where and tear? Everywhere.

Rides 3/26: Transition

I'm a few of these behind, but I don't think I'm going to catch up. I'll write about today, because it was warm and that somehow seems to validate the ink, whereas I've written about the cold days enough already. But I haven't written about warm days for months now and I feel I should mention that I wore shorts today. Shorts! I feel that I should also mention that tomorrow will be cold again, so this one spring-y day will recede back into the many winter days. So it goes.

Still recovering from the 'race' last night, my legs felt a bit gummy, which is to say languorous which isn't to say much of all. I took the city route down Pennsylvania and past the White House and out Pennsylvania on the other side. It's one of the more direct ways to go and except for the parts that are trafficky (namely Washington Circle), it's really not quite bad. There were potholes, but there are potholes sometimes. I gave up on Wisconsin at Volta, gave up on Volta when Volta ran out at 35th and eventually gave up riding the rest of the way to work when I finally got to work. At the driveway entrance to the parking garage where I park my bike, I did battle with a Lyft driver who found himself in the wrong lane before cutting back over to cut me off to stop short right in front of me to let out his passenger. Driving for a living, or even a part-time living, is a hard job and on a human level, I have nothing but sympathy. On a different level, the level that has to contend with being a bicyclist who has to deal with wayward drivers, it's frustrating. The more I think about the future of cars (whatever that is) and the future is car hailing services (whatever those are) the more I think that our built environment is completely unable to deal with addressing those demands. For example, the driveway to the parking garage is built with the idea that a driver will drive into it and then leave his car for the day, not the idea that a driver will drop off a passenger and then turn around. It's a different need entirely. So, in the future, whenever that is, maybe we should build driveways that make for better in and out and less in and stay.

We should also build more bike parking. Enough that it's not a big deal if people want to leave their bikes there forever. And maybe in the future, jerk bike advice columnists will cut people some more slack.

When is there a good time to mention that the song I was singing to myself this morning was 'Come Dancing' by The Kinks? Never? I see. Too late.

I took the trail home today, but not quite home first, as I had a lap to do. The trail runs downhill, but the headwind ran against me and it was a slog. Along the way, I saw spindly children- the skinny skinny types that even the narrowest of lycra hangs from their bones- in bicycle racing costume. RVC was on their kit. I know not from where they came or to where they were headed, but there was many of them, more than a dozen, and they were scattered out about the trail, stretching from tip to tail about a quarter of a mile. Bon voyage, spindly bike children.

I felt bonky on Rock Creek, but I was buoyed by Rudi, who pulled up alongside me past the volleyball courts on our mutual way to Hains Point, where we were to meet others to ride a lap of East Potomac Park in celebration of the sun and circles. (HP is not a circle, but 'laps' make me think of circles regardless.) We rode into the wind and away from it, but honestly, I can't tell you which direction was which. I begged off after one loop and took to the exit as Dave entered to catch the group and take my place. One out, one in. I headed to the fish market, but didn't buy any fish. I headed down Maine Avenue, a main avenue in SW and the surface, haven't been recently destroyed in the name of being soon-to-be repaved proved itself lunar and lumpy. It turned into M Street, which was better and that, via 11th and Potomac, more or less found me home.

Goodbye warm day. It was nice to have seen you. We'll meet again/Don't know how/Don't know when/But I'll know we'll meet again/

some sunny day

Crystal City Wednesday Night Spin on March 26, 2015

Alternative titles:

Note from the Underground
A Day at the Races
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Spin City

I went down fast, but I sprung up fast too. I only skidded for a little, but it was for enough time for me to realize that I had in fact fallen, though not with much of a thud, and I was back on my feet and clipped in before I fulled assessed whether there was anything wrong with me and the bike. No time for that. I was falling behind. I think.

Stock markets crash for the same reasons bicyclists do. An asset becomes overvalued relative to its intrinsic worth. You get comfortable thinking that things can only go up. And then the bottom drops out. And you end up on the bottom. Recovery can come quick, but there are always lagging indicators.

When I fell I was maybe a few laps in. I had done the course a couple of times and was reasonably well acquainted with the layout of the underground parking garage that served as the setting for the fourth in the series of four Cystal City Wednesday Night Spins, a production put on by the Crosshairs Cycling Team and the Crystal City Business Improvement District. I had attended the first one, but only as a spectated. I spectated and speculated that I should return and after a two week absence, I came back, this time intending to race. It would be the first time in my adult life that I would pin a bib to myself with the aim of competing. My goal was to not brake any bones. At least, none of my own bones.

I handed over twenty bones to the registration table about 2 minutes before the race would start. Andrew Jackson- kill the bank, Trail of Tears. I didn't register in advance, so the process of signing up with frenetic, mostly because I hemmed and hawed when I got there, unsure of whether I'd actually muster the facsimile of courage and extroversion needed to actually go through with it. When the B race ended, and the course was opened, I took a few practice spins. I took them slowly. They seemed ok or at least ok enough for me to go through with what I had set out to go through with, competing in the C race (categories 4/5, novice, children, commuters, bike advice columnists). I frantically filled out the registration form/waiver and my handwriting proved even more illegible than normal. But they typed my name in the computer and they give me a bib and one of the guys there helped me with the safety pins. Safety first.

I use the term 'competing' loosely. I certainly didn't set out to win anything or really to beat anyone. That's for the best because I didn't win and I'm not entirely sure I beat anyone either. I don't think I'm an especially fast bicyclist, nor an athlete who really trains for things. By virtue of bike commuting, I do benefit from spending a lot of time on the bike, so I had that going for me. I wasn't looking to break any records and even surpass any personal goals. But I did race and it went something like this:

pedal, pedal, pedal, brake, turn, pedal, brake, brake brake BRAKE, pedal, pedal, breathe, breathe, pedal PEDAL PEDAL repeat

The falling down part was extra. The course had at least two long straightaways, one by the start line and one by the finish line. I wiped out when turning (or trying) to turn onto the finish line straightaway. But then I popped back up. Recovery. But I could tell I bumped my knee some and there was at least some road rash, if not blood. I didn't look down to see if there was any blood. There wasn't any blood. There's only a little bump and not even any bruising, so all things considered, I would recommend that if you must crash in an underground parking garage criterium style bike race, to do it that way.

The rest of the course, aside from the straightaways, were a series of turns, demarcated by the concrete support poles and red tape. Red tape is very Washington. These were the parts that gave me the most worry, as my bike handing lacks the level of confidence you need to really whip through these parts on a smart line. Over the course of the 20 laps or so, I tried to take inside lines and I tried to take outside lines and I tried different approaches and I tried pedaling through and I tried braking and I tried pedaling and braking simultaneously. I shifted my weight, as I could, or left it alone- really, whatever seemed right. I wished I had kept a notebook of my various approaches. I don't know how long the circuit was or how long each lap took. A few minutes? Time is a construct.

There was a level of self-preserving conviviality on the course. Racers would call out 'inside' or 'outside' depending on how they planned to pass. I appreciated that and I mimicked it. Imitation is the sincerest form of the flattery.

There were spectators. They cheered and loudly. There was some cowbell. There was exactly as much cowbell as there should have been. Calls for excess cowbell would have been rebuffed. Some spectators, those who knew me, would scream 'SHAAAAARRRRRROOOOOWWS!" as I rode by. I appreciated that. It is no small thing to be associated with the world's least effect bike markings.

I wore bib number 33. That's Larry Bird's number. The Hick from French Lick. He was sycamore and I'm equally wooden. Before the start of the race, when Taylor was adjusting my bib, I expressed to him my desire to not die. He assured me that I wouldn't die. Before the race, I had thought of Dante and his descent. Dante went down seven circles in the Inferno. I went down four levels in a parking garage and rode twenty circles. He had Virgil. I had a Surly Cross Check.

There were other racers on the course that I remember and many more that I don't, either because our encounters were so fleeting or because I was thinking of other things, like staying upright and pedaling with aplomb. I think everyone had fun, or at least I hope they did. I'm not sure the results of posted yet, but I don't think that really matters to anyone, or at least I don't they don't.

There were photographers. Grit your teeth before the flash. Give him the action shot he's looking for. Snap. Look. Delete. Probably.

I think if I had to do it again, I would. I don't know if I'm committed to the idea of signing up for more bicycle races, either in underground parking garages or outside of them, but I can definitely see the allure, even if your goal isn't really to win or even prove your fortitude, physical, mental or otherwise. A race is a closed system and there's not much really going on outside of it. What matters most is hitting that turn or sticking to the wheel of rider in front of you or turning over the pedals with as much ferocity of you can muster and time truncates to a series of segments. One segment done, move to the next. Next one done, do one more. Keep it up until they let you stop. There is not outside beyond the segments. There's especially no outside when you're not outside. The interiority is the draw. And this, for me, is diametrically the opposite of how I normally approach bicycling. As a commuter and a sometimes flaneur (french for someone who wears flannel), for me, riding a bicycle is primarily a tool for engaging with the world around me- its novelties, its quirks, its changes. During the race, the bicycle became the means of tuning it out. That has a certain kind of appeal.

I didn't sleep great last night because my legs hurt. Not from falling, but from excessive use. I still rode to work this morning, taking again the bike that served me well last night. I plan to put the fenders back on tonight. I don't want the bike to get any ideas.

I would like to reiterate my gratitude to those who made this series of races possible. The bike guys and the parking garage buys and the guys who were there selling wine and the guys who were there selling pie and all of the people who raced and all the people who watched. Robert Putnam may say that we're all bowling alone, but I don't think he's ever been to a bike race in an underground parking garage in Crystal City. Unless he was that old guy who passed me that one time. Not going to rule that possibility out.

Rides 3/23: Shillelagh at the Donnybrook

Moths. They can eat your winter clothes. So, really, when you think about it, it's just great that the winter weather persists, as does having to keep wearing heavy wool well into March. It keeps away the moths. How's that for some positive spin? Unconvincing? Yes, I thought so too.

I spent a goodly time this past weekend cleaning the Ogre, thereby freeing it from the salt, dirt, gunk and grime that clung to its parts. Some of the parts so freed are the parts on the bike that move and in so moving, help give the bike its movement. That these parts are now clean plays no small part in the bike's better functioning overall. Cleanliness is next to go-liness. Some people are quite good at keeping their bikes clean, and therefore go-ly, but I lack such persuasion, convincing myself instead that a thin coating of dirt dissuades thieves and/or Tusken Raiders from absconding with my steed. Also, I am dreadfully lazy. And a bit hydrophobic. Perhaps it is I who is the Tusken Raider.

I took advantage of the bicycle's improved performance by taking a route that afforded a greater amount of open road and steady pedaling, which is to say, having a few blocks without a stop light. I pedaled away. I pedaled and pedaled and pedaled. And a man on a hybrid bike pedaled right past me, as if to express his disapproval is my earlier having pedaled past him. Or maybe he just liked pedaling even more than I did.

I met up with the Official Wife at 23rd and E, having to make an exchange of something she left at home for a toasted coconut donut. Quid pro donut. I suppose quid pro cronut would have also been acceptable.

Thereafter, it was the usual way to work. There were some inconsiderate people on bikes, on foot and driving cars. There were also some considerate ones. On the way home, there was also a mix of considerate and inconsiderate people and others among them who were neither considerate nor inconsiderate, but somehow on the cusp of both. A lot of it is situational, but it also comes down to decisions. There are always choices. And it's people who make them. Like the bicyclist who rode through the red light, only to stop before the crosswalk and the other bicyclist, who instead of just riding in front of her, rode behind her and then said something, maybe in response to something she said, but maybe not, to the effect of 'well, you ran the red light' and then she definitely said something in response, though I didn't hear it and they might have jabbered still, but I missed all that too because who has time to stop and listen to strangers argue. Other than me normally because I'm quite nosy and conflagrations, no matter how petty, pierce the mundane. It's really quite early in the season for bike commuters to be jabbering at each other over infractions both real and imagined, so I suppose you could say that #bikeDC is really performing above average. Or you could say that maybe everyone should just relax a little and be a little less willing to engage in pointless bickering. EVEN WHEN SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING WRONG. Like, even then. Even when you see someone do something really obviously wrong and bad, shrugging away a minor inconvenience is really expurgative (might not be a word) and maybe even good for the soul. He who rides a glass bike shouldn't throw stones and all that. And if you do ride a glass bike, that sounds fucking sweet.

Bikeshare riders asking for directions. I don't mind, but maybe that means we need more signs.

When I got out of the grocery store, I saw Will, who was with his son, Martin. Will had previously inquired about the Ogre, he needing to replace a bike that was damaged, and I had meant to meet up with him to let him take it for a ride, but failed in this, and so Martin and I stood together on the sidewalk as Will tooled around the Safeway parking lot, putting the Ogre through the paces one puts a bike through when test riding it in a grocery store parking lot. We will, Will and I, but maybe not Martin, who is quite young, get a beer some time. We will in spring.