Ride In 1/8: Tips and Trix

Another fine morning for bicycling. It is the highlight of my morning, even when the morning is cold, though the morning cold this morning wasn't biting or bitter or bituminous, though the it's not normally the last of those things as I rarely ever choose to commute via coal mines. Though that would give me an excuse to wear my canary yellow jacket.

It was an easy and quiet ride. I find myself savoring the quiet lately even more than usual. I've never found the prospect of being a hermit very appealing, but when you're in the right mood, there are few better feelings than luxuriating in the near-silence of a solitary bike ride on a cold winter morning. Even in the city, which is never really quiet and even in Washington, which is a chatty place. City quiet, to my mind, is far preferable than country quiet, which I find to be far to quiet and also better than Quiet Riot. I simply just don't want to cum on the feel the noize and especially not when I'm on my bicycle. I would probably fall off as a result.

East Capitol to Pennsylvania Avenue where I followed a guy and two kids as they rode, presumably, to school. They kids were young, maybe 7 or 8, but they were hauling. They turned at 7th street, about a block before I saw a taxi driver make one and then a second u-turn across the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes. I wonder if the driver has kids.

I followed Penn to 15th and stuck to 15th until R. The cycle track was crowded, especially heading south. It was even crowded with bicyclists and not just leaves. Near Rhode Island Avenue, an oblvious woman crossing the street nearly walked into me as I rode toward the intersection. If ignore of the world around them is bliss, then half of the people walking/driving/biking around DC must be transcendentally happy.

This sign is new, I think.

Begin Right Turn Lane/ Yield to Bikes

You might recognize these kinds of signs from the L Street Cycle Track mixing zones, but I'm not sure it makes very much sense here. The space between the green dashed lines, to which the arrow points, isn't wide enough to be a turn lane. Also, if the sign were referring to that space, there'd be no point to having the sign since drivers would have already crossed the mixing zone. So I guess it's referencing the area to the left of the green dashed lines, but that's not exclusively a turning lane, so I don't really get it.

Rode up Massachusetts and more than 3/4 of the way up, I was passed by another bicyclist. This hasn't happened in a very long time, mostly on account of not my blazing fast climbing skillz, but because so few others ride up the hill in the morning. I decided that I would try to keep up, but then I decided that giving up and continuing to ride slowly was more in keeping with sociability/my effort level. Plus, I caught up to him at the light at Wisconsin, so it's like I'm basically just as good at riding bikes as him so shut up ok. I'm adopting the posture of "competitive commuter bicyclist" for comic relief, such as it is, rather than from actual belief. I gave up caring about being slower than other bicyclists a long time ago because if I did care about that and kept a secret diary and voodoo doll representations of every bicyclist who has proven him or herself faster than me (and I totally don't do this so don't even look under my bed or other if you experience mysterious sharp knee pain), I would have run out space in that diary and in the compartment under my bed where I store my other, more practical, voodoo dolls.

Ride Home 1/7: Torvill and Dean and Deluca

Two days, maybe? Three? How many days of bike commuting would it take for someone who doesn't normally do it to realize how unfair the whole situation is? So, can we get them on bikes for just two days? How long before they become entitled cyclists?

I rode Massachusetts down the hill to 21st street, as I had implied I would in some previous post. Forget you, 23rd street. The reason I hadn't formerly ridden to 21st was because I would normally get stopped at the light at 23rd and it was easier to turn right than to wait. But 21st is a much better riding experience. And the street is one way and wide. I'm not sure if it's two lanes wide, but it's definitely more than one lane wide. I would suggest it as a good place for a two-way cycle track, at least until New Hampshire. I saw a lot of people heading north while riding on the sidewalks.

Speaking of sidewalks, that's where I rode from M to L. It's a very wide sidewalk, but I was still wrong for doing it. I should've waited in car traffic because these are the RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES that I must share for some reason in order to be taken seriously as an upstanding and sufficiently rightful road user or something. Because, as we all know, great strides in human progress have been made when people just toed the line and conformed to the status quo. Why yes, I am engaged in some preposterous self-justification. You noticed? Laid it on a bit thick, I guess. In any case, the block went quickly and I don't think I ruined anyone's life by doing it.

Here is how someone is going to get very hurt while riding the L Street Cycle Track:

At the intersections where there are left turns, there is a mixing zone and this puts left turning car traffic to the left of the cyclists and leaves straight-ahead car traffic to the right of the cyclist. There is a three foot painted bike lane between the left turn lane and the go straight lane and on the right said of this painted lane, there are flext posts. To the left, there is a white painted line. This three foot lane facilitates the cyclist getting around the turning cars. This is normally ok. However, left turning drivers have developed a certain proclivity to curve their left turns, drifting a bit to the right before making the turn. A bicyclist, seeing this, will drift to the right to avoid the curving turn. Maybe too far to the right. And a driver proceeding straight will rear end end the cyclist. This is how someone is going to get very hurt on the L Street Cycle Track.

 I have a few suggestions:

1. Cyclists could not use the painted bike lane part and just wait behind the turning car traffic, obviating the need for the painted patch and slowing up bike traffic. This is the least good idea I have and that's good, because this idea stinks. 
2. DDOT could add a flex post between the left turn lane and the painted bike lane. This flex post would serve to push turning cars closer to the curb and prevent drivers from drifting right to make curving turns. This might work, but wouldn't stop curving turns from taking place after the end of the bike lane (in the intersection itself). 
3. DDOT could paint some lines across the intersection. There could be turning lines, which suggest a path for the turning drivers, and there could be dashed lines, which show how the cyclist should proceed. Maybe some extra paint could provide some extra clarity. 

Those are pretty much my only ideas about this. Just be careful at intersections. And especially at this one at Connecticut Avenue:

L Street at Connecticut Avenue, 2013. 

The median provides a refuge for pedestrians, but an additional object for left-turning drivers to avoid, causing them to drift even further into the desire lines of cycle track users. If you're stuck at the red at this intersection, get a good jump because you'll want to get across the intersection first. And if you get there on a green light, just be careful and get back to the left as soon as you can.

11th, Pennsylvania and no real problems on either. A bit of a bike traffic jam at Pennsylvania where it intersects with Constitution. There were four of us. My bar for bike traffic is low.

Rode up the hill and to the grocery store and I walked around the grocery store with a flashing red light attached to my bag and I am embarrassed about this because I'm fucking bike commuter Rudolph and Santa didn't need me to guide him to the soup ingredients. I realized the light was on while I waited in the checkout line and turned it off. I like to pretend that you can bike around the city, even wearing bikey clothes, and still look relatively inconspicuous, but this really didn't help my cause. After I checked out, I saw in a line a few over, Gina from WABA. "Hi Gina!" is what I said to her and we briefly talked groceries and we both carried on our respective ways. Outside the store, before going in, I saw this brand-new Surly Crosscheck.

A new bike

This bike reeked of newness. It sparkled. Must have been a holiday present. My advice to any owner of a new Surly: beat it up a little. That's what this bike is all about. Don't kill it; just don't baby it. It's not that kind of bike.

Blog over. Now it is time to watch the big game and by that I mean the big game of upper class soapy intrigue that is Downton Abbey. I bet Bates will cover the spread.

Ride In 1/7: Arse Artium

Sometimes I wish I used Strava so instead of writing this up, I could just post a map and some stats and be like "See?" But I don't use Strava, mostly because I tend to forget to press the 'go' button or whatever and also because beyond the mapping function, I'm not really interested in how far the ride was or how fast (slow) I rode it. My criteria for bicycle riding is this: did it get me where it needed to get me by roughly when I needed to get there? If yes, then it was a worthwhile enterprise and I am the King of my own self-satisfied Mountain. If not, then my bike probably broke somewhere along the way and I ended up taking the bus, which has its own allure. If you like Strava and maps and data, that's really cool; whatever gets and keeps you on your bike is a thing that I can wholeheartedly endorse (Unless that thing is fleeing from the zombie apocalypse. I do not endorse that). But when I think of Strava, here's what I would see:

And seeing this twice a day for all of the days I ride to work just doesn't really resonate with me. Except for the 'brown flip-flops' part because I love when my bike data tracking software lobs a diss at our Arlington friends. I'd like to think that if I've learned anything from writing up my daily commute for the past two (!) years (and I really haven't learned anything), it's that a bike ride can be so much more than a map and some squiggly lines and some numbers that don't mean anything and your rankings on "segments" against riders who were probably on mopeds anyway. I think that reducing your rides to those things is a great disservice. If I understood les lieux de memoire better, I'd probably even suggest that has something to do with it. But let's not stop my having no clue what he's talking about prevent me from quoting Nora at length:

Memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition. Memory is life, borne by living societies, founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations,  vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past. Memory, insofar as it is affective and magical, only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic- responsible to each avenue of conveyance or phenomenal screen, to every censorship or projection. History, because it is an intellectual and secular production, calls for analysis and criticism. Memory installs remembrance within the sacred; history, always prosaic, releases it again. Memory is blind to all but the group it binds- which is to say, as Maurice Halbswachs has said, that there are as many memories as there are groups, that memory is by nature multiple and yet specific; collective, plural and yet individual. History, on the other hand, belongs to everyone and to no one, whence its claim to universal authority. Memory takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images and objects; history binds itself strictly to temporal continuities, to progressions and to relations between things. Memory is absolute, while history can only conceive the relative. 

Yeah, that.

It was a quiet ride and I benefit from a clean chain an adjusted fenders and I was free of the noises that my bike makes when it isn't kept up well. I took the southerly route to work, riding down 14th to South Carolina to 11th to L, taking L to South Capitol Street before riding up the sidewalk for a block to wait for the light to change at M. Here's a picture of a church. Is it a lieu de memoire? Maybe? No? Hmm? Just an old-ish church? Is it? Is it really? (Yes).

It's not called Our Lady of the Taxi Parking Lot

I followed M to 7th before crossing the street and riding along Water Street, passing the pungent fish market (they only sell pungent fish, apparently), and following the rest of the forever interim Anacostia Riverwalk Trail to Ohio Drive, taking that to the Rock Creek Trail where Ohio Drive stops at Independence Avenue.

There's something about riding opposite the direction of a stream on onrushing car traffic that reminds me of a Star Wars hyperdrive jump. Except the streams of celestrial light are replaced by midsize sedans, which are, admittedly, less impressive.

I stayed on the Rock Creek Park Trail past K Street where I would normally turn, choosing the woods and trail through them over the bustle of the city or the other trail in the woods. I don't ride through Rock Creek very often. I rode past at least one cemetery. There was more bike traffic heading south than north. Near Calvert, where I climbed out of the park, I saw friend of the blog, Jon, also taking advantage of it being a Monday morning to take a longer, more bucolic, ride to work. He looked surprise. To be honest, I didn't expect to be there either.

My legs felt surprisingly good for how onerous the riding up various hills actually felt and I attribute this to my having eaten a biscuit for breakfast. On Garfield Street, someone had taped a handwritten note onto one of those movable flashing construction signs asking why the sign had been there for a month and to whom it belonged. Probably would be more effective to call 311, but snotty handwritten notes are the currency of the realm as far as complainy urban NIMBYs are concerned.

Capital Bikeshare is great, per Slate, which might mean it's not great because Slate is known for its counter-intuitive arguments. Either way, go #bikeDC.

Ride Home 1/4: No one is going to read this now

48 hours have passed since this ride and I'm blogging in the midst of watching the second quarter of the Pigskins game. Nonetheless, I won't let my being distracted and my barely recalling the ride itself prevent me from putting out a blog post of the quality you've come to expect (middling).

I've taken to storing my bike in my office on Fridays, the day in which I'm most likely to bike in normal people clothes. This Friday, the Dean (I work at a university) saw my bike and commented that I had ridden in that day. I assented. He pointed out that it was cold. I agreed. He asked where I rode from. Apparently, he's not a fan of the blog. But he was interested. It wasn't much of a conversation, but it also wasn't the conversation "why is this bike in your office and would you like to put your things in this box because you are fired because this is unprofessional." My workplace, and I'm really lucky in this regard, is ludicrously bike friendly and I am so grateful. I think that along with the accouterments (the bike parking, the showers, the bike commuter benefits) and perhaps even more important than them, the overall attitude about bike commuting at the workplace can play a really big role in one decision to keep doing it. I don't know what it's like where you work (unless you work where I work), but I think that everyday having to face "you BIKED HERE?" and "This one time, this biker totally was a jerk" would be really dispiriting and highlight an unwelcome othering that would only make me question my choices to bike. This just serves to highlight the need to develop a culture of bike friendliness (or tolerance or acceptance) alongside developing the physical infrastructures associated with it. Until, of course, bike commuting becomes totally mundane and then we can all go back to not caring, as is appropriate at the workplace.

I left work, rode down Massachusetts and turned right at 23rd on my way to L. I think I'm going to start going to 21st. Maybe it will be better. Remember when I used to take Q Street? That was, like, forever ago. I don't miss it. Q Street does have a bike lane, but L Street has a cycle track and the latter is much better than the former. When I ride on L Street, in spite of its deficiencies (the flex posts should be replace by a curb), I feel so much more relaxed than do I in a standard white-stripe-only bike lane. I exhale. I wish we had more of these. Maybe wemoveDC will do something about this, but I'm worried that it won't. Anything multimodal that supersedes/replaces a Bicycle Master Plan isn't, by definition, likely to put bicycles at the fore. So, we'll see.

On Pennsylvania Avenue.

Wait, he's not gonna do this, right? 

Really?

REALLY?!

You suck.

Now, this is illegal. Both intuitively and because there's a sign. But worse than it being illegal, it's stupidly dangerous and so irresponsible that a string of expletives doesn't even begin to express the invective I wish to hurl upon the driver. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. A bus is just a bigger taxi with a set route. I'm writing a letter to WMATA. I don't think anything with come of it, but I can try. Inexcusable.

Easy ride up the hill after juking a tourist (I was just trying to go to the right, but I was glad to test of the ol' shake-n-bake on you) and then not much longer until home. I think I got passed at a stop light by another guy on a bike, but I don't remember the exact details. I think it had something to do with a minivan parked in a bike lane. Such is the way of the biking world sometimes.

Ride In 1/4: Arnolfini Wedding Crashers

This was a difficult bike commute to start because the alternative to starting it involved sleeping, flannel sheets, a space heater and two snuggling dogs. The first three days after a long break have proven especially rough. I'm relying on the weekend to help reset my normalcy clock and I hope that by Monday I'll be ready once again to approach work and the bike commute with my usual level of vigor, a vigor that's ever slightly more energetic than my stupor of this week. Stupid stupor.

Like bikes? Like maps? You'll like this. Like bikes? Like lazy tv journalism? You'll like this. Like bikes? Like Mallomars? I think they're just ok. I was surprised to learn that you can purchase Mallomars through amazon.com and I was pleased to see that they did not garner even one one-star review. They, a box of cookies mind you, did receive this two-star review:

Although this item did taste okay, the real fact is one 8 ounce package is only 18 cookies. I thought this was overpriced and not a good value. I will not be purchasing this again.


Currently, a pack of 3 8 oz. boxes retails for $23 (!). Thus concludes the first-ever edition of Tales From the Mallomarrows. (When said in the voice of the priest from Princess Bride, "mallomarrows" sounds like the name of a county in historical Hungary)

Well, this post seems to have gone off the rails earlier than usual.

I followed East Capitol to the Capitol than Pennsylvania Avenue to Pennsylvania 15th Street before following the cycle track for a little. I don't know when they'll close off the area in front of the White House but it's becoming increasingly cramped and soon with be unsafe for the swift passage of bicyclists. I'd recommend a detour but there aren't any that won't take you many blocks out of your way. I might just be better to be less swift.

After coffee, which a jolly gathering as usual, I rode G to 18th and then picked my way past commuter buses up the little hill from Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street and down the little hill to L Street, where I crossed the cycle track. This is a very small sample size, but I can't say for sure that I've ever seen another bike commuter using the cycle track when I've ridden uptown  across it. Maybe in springtime. Maybe when #mstreetcycletrack is done and people know that they'll be able to get back west.

I screwed up getting around Dupont Circle and rode counterclockwise on the sidewalk and just made a mess of the whole thing. I was unwilling to wait to cross into the circle and I should've just been more patient because the sidewalk around Dupont Circle, with it's many curb cuts and slip lanes, is not conducive in any way to bicycling.

Got a nice nasty glare from a driver who was mad that she had to pass me within a foot. I'm also sorry that there was a slow dump truck in the left lane, "forcing" you to squeeze between it and me. I wasn't overly perturbed, but as a result, I did start thinking abut cars in the city (a movie in which a computer-animated Sarah Jessica Parker finds the true means of friendship, family and expensive shoes?) and whether, if policymakers so chose (which they won't because this isn't really plausible or fair), driving could be made so painful and agonizingly awful that people would switch to another way of getting around. Basically, where's the pain threshold for car commuters?  It's apparently not the high cost of gas or the current level of traffic, which is an abysmal timesuck. I concluded, during the rest of my time biking up Massachusetts at least, that I couldn't think of a "stick-only" approach to getting people out of their cars and they'd need to be won over over with carrots. Maybe I will buy a bag of baby carrots and bike out to the suburbs to see how that goes.