I am utterly besotted with my Ortlieb Brompton bag, which is tangerine in color and a complete and total extravagance. It's the kind of bag that makes me want to pack things and then set off on a long, small-wheeled journey to some exotic clime outside, but not too far outside the Beltway. The bag makes me sing and sing I did: "Hey Mr. Tangerine Bag, hold some stuff for me. I'm not sleepy and there's no place that I'm going to" (except work).
That was yesterday. I did ride to work and then home again. The rides themselves were unremarkable, bordering on forgettable. I struggled some climbing up 31st and I plan to address this by soon (soon!) putting an internal gear hub into the Brompton and then perhaps gaining some reliable shiftiness. It's taken me only three years to realize that I should've done this in the first place. Oh well.
The weather this morning was confusingly pleasant and I hope that you got the chance to bike through it. August in DC, per urban legend, is unremittingly awful, but I guess whichever Olympian deity controls the weather (yes, I believe in Olympian deities. I guess you could say that I'm Greek Orthodox) temporarily forget and so is luring us into some soon-sprung trap via the means of a few decent days. I'm sure the gig'll be up soon enough.
I watched a fellow bike commuter on Pennsylvania Avenue ring her bell 10 times at someone standing in the bike lane and then as she was about 3 feet away go 'YOU'RE STANDING IN THE BIKE LANE' and while this is a factually accurate assessment of where the person was standing, I'm not sure what outcome was hoped for by my fellow bike commuter. By the time she yelled, there wasn't much time to get out of the way and frankly, I'm fairly certain that the person standing in the bike lane heard the 10 dings and knew very well where she was standing and elected to do nothing about it. I question the efficacy of interactions like this and while I guess I can't really begrudge a bicyclist for being miffed that someone is, indeed, standing in the middle of the bike lane, I'm not entirely sure what's to be gained from acting of out pique- the same kind of pique that inspires the vindictive honking that haunts my ears' nightmares. I'm likely just a pushover (FUN FACT: I'm completely a pushover, in lots of things!) but maybe it'd be easier to just go around than make a big deal out of it? To yell at a person who's just standing somewhere, who's not really causing you any harm and who you see and can be quite easily avoided, seems so... inhumane? I don't really know if that's the word (or sentiment) that I'm going for, but it's something along those lines. And I guess I can't really be too mad about a bicyclist expressing frustration (because these things are frustrating!), but it just seems like maybe yelling at people standing in a badly compromised bike lane isn't the hill to die on, so to speak. I don't know. Why must feelings be so complicated?
New Gear Prudence is about weirdos.
8/10/15
Rides 8/10: Slide Guitar
It's Monday again. Seems like it comes around every week and always at the beginning of it. I did do some bicycling this weekend (I went to the Udvar-Hazy wing of the Air and Space Museum out by Dulles), but I hadn't bike commuted since Thursday, so who even knows how much the terrain of the city changed since then. Turns out, not by very much.
Though, that isn't to say, that there were no changes. Since I last rode, green paint appeared in multiple places along my route, most notably around Stanton Park and on the new First Street cycletrack. I like the green paint, though I do find it somewhat derivative. Can't wait until DDOT pulls a Marina Abramovic and just sits there doing nothing for days on end. Oh wait.
MBT to R and R all the way across town, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. I tried to go the same speed, but it's all relative.
Sometimes I think about Vision Zero, which I believe is a kind of Lasik malpractice class action lawsuit, but also a safety plan and I think about safer walking and cycling, which are part (though not all) of that plan. And then I think about pleasant walking experiences I've had and where I've had them and what have made them pleasant. A few come to mind. (I really do love walking. Sometimes I think about walking while wistfully singing "I will always love you" [Parton]) Anyway, the stated goal is Vision Zero is to make waking SAFER, but I don't that means the same as making walking NICER. Sometimes I wonder if we could achieve the former if we only focused on the latter- if the safety benefit was just an ancillary benefit of trying to make the pedestrian experience a genuinely pleasurable experience. If we did the kinds of things that made walking and biking less stressful and more enjoyable, would the safety benefits just follow? Aren't they ancillary? Anyway, I guess Vision Nicer is a bit more qualitative and harder to pin down and beggars and choosers and all that.
Usual route home. Not much worse sometimes than being a cyclist in the right lane when a driver in the left lane insists on driving slowly because then the problem isn't the guy in the car next to you who's following the law, but the jerk biker who's going too slow. Can't win for losing sometimes.
I stopped at the store on the way home to buy ginger ale. I'm on a ginger ale kick lately. I like the ginger part, I like the ale part, I like them together. Good coda, Brian. Good coda.
Though, that isn't to say, that there were no changes. Since I last rode, green paint appeared in multiple places along my route, most notably around Stanton Park and on the new First Street cycletrack. I like the green paint, though I do find it somewhat derivative. Can't wait until DDOT pulls a Marina Abramovic and just sits there doing nothing for days on end. Oh wait.
MBT to R and R all the way across town, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. I tried to go the same speed, but it's all relative.
Sometimes I think about Vision Zero, which I believe is a kind of Lasik malpractice class action lawsuit, but also a safety plan and I think about safer walking and cycling, which are part (though not all) of that plan. And then I think about pleasant walking experiences I've had and where I've had them and what have made them pleasant. A few come to mind. (I really do love walking. Sometimes I think about walking while wistfully singing "I will always love you" [Parton]) Anyway, the stated goal is Vision Zero is to make waking SAFER, but I don't that means the same as making walking NICER. Sometimes I wonder if we could achieve the former if we only focused on the latter- if the safety benefit was just an ancillary benefit of trying to make the pedestrian experience a genuinely pleasurable experience. If we did the kinds of things that made walking and biking less stressful and more enjoyable, would the safety benefits just follow? Aren't they ancillary? Anyway, I guess Vision Nicer is a bit more qualitative and harder to pin down and beggars and choosers and all that.
Usual route home. Not much worse sometimes than being a cyclist in the right lane when a driver in the left lane insists on driving slowly because then the problem isn't the guy in the car next to you who's following the law, but the jerk biker who's going too slow. Can't win for losing sometimes.
I stopped at the store on the way home to buy ginger ale. I'm on a ginger ale kick lately. I like the ginger part, I like the ale part, I like them together. Good coda, Brian. Good coda.
8/7/15
Rides 8/6: Turgid Prose
The highlight of these rides was its lowlight, which is the clicking noise coming from my bike and this clicking noise has something to do with my chain, which is quite stretched and in need to replacement, and that means a new cassette too and they told me this at AdMo BicycleSpace yesterday afternoon, but they didn't have the cassette in stock, so I thought that maybe I could check the other BicycleSpace since they said that they might have it but then, after I was almost there, I remembered, after having briefly forgotten after having realized earlier in the afternoon, that I had left my skewer key home and that even if they did have the cassette in stock (I found out this morning when I called that they didn't), it wouldn't have much better since my wheels were goodly affixed, and so I rode past without stopping in and then down K Street still, but on the sidewalk between North Capitol and Second NE.
But back to the chain. It was the inaugural chain of the Ogre and now it's thoroughly dead. The mechanic asked me how many miles I rode on it and I was like 'a lot' and he was like '???' and I was like 'yeah, a lot' but what I really wanted to say was 'does it really matter? you've already used your chain stretchy tool and determined it's dead, so what's the point of finding out if I'm a Strava addict who knows quantifiable things like the amount of miles I've ridden on the Ogre in the past year' It doesn't much matter, does it? And furthermore, I continued "are all miles equal? Do all miles provide the same wear and tear? If you prick all miles, do they not bleed?" At this point, I was standing on a table. But I went on "Four score and 70 miles ago, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your chains, we didn't bike on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock biked on us, shall we crucify this chain on a cog of gold?, etc., etc." I said the et ceteras, both of them, aloud. For effect. Or is it affect? Anyway, this peroration was solely imagined and I didn't assemble a tired pastiche of bikified speech ripoffs, but instead thanked the mechanic for taking the time to diagnose the problem, a problem that I'll fix, someday.
To work, in the morning, I rode up the way I had been going of late, on First Street and then the MBT and R and across town and up Massachusetts Avenue, chain clicking all the way. From work, after the bike shop, it was down 18th to Q to 11th to New York Avenue to K to 2nd to I NE and then around 13th or 14th I found myself in an alley somewhere behind that stretch of H Street where there's a bunch of restaurants and then over H to the Argonaut, where I sat for a bit and enjoyed a sip or two of the sudsy stuff. Then it was 14th up the hill and then home, more or less.
This week's GP is about two things: a buddy buying a bike and a parent getting peeved. Be sure to read it. There will be a quiz.
But back to the chain. It was the inaugural chain of the Ogre and now it's thoroughly dead. The mechanic asked me how many miles I rode on it and I was like 'a lot' and he was like '???' and I was like 'yeah, a lot' but what I really wanted to say was 'does it really matter? you've already used your chain stretchy tool and determined it's dead, so what's the point of finding out if I'm a Strava addict who knows quantifiable things like the amount of miles I've ridden on the Ogre in the past year' It doesn't much matter, does it? And furthermore, I continued "are all miles equal? Do all miles provide the same wear and tear? If you prick all miles, do they not bleed?" At this point, I was standing on a table. But I went on "Four score and 70 miles ago, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your chains, we didn't bike on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock biked on us, shall we crucify this chain on a cog of gold?, etc., etc." I said the et ceteras, both of them, aloud. For effect. Or is it affect? Anyway, this peroration was solely imagined and I didn't assemble a tired pastiche of bikified speech ripoffs, but instead thanked the mechanic for taking the time to diagnose the problem, a problem that I'll fix, someday.
To work, in the morning, I rode up the way I had been going of late, on First Street and then the MBT and R and across town and up Massachusetts Avenue, chain clicking all the way. From work, after the bike shop, it was down 18th to Q to 11th to New York Avenue to K to 2nd to I NE and then around 13th or 14th I found myself in an alley somewhere behind that stretch of H Street where there's a bunch of restaurants and then over H to the Argonaut, where I sat for a bit and enjoyed a sip or two of the sudsy stuff. Then it was 14th up the hill and then home, more or less.
This week's GP is about two things: a buddy buying a bike and a parent getting peeved. Be sure to read it. There will be a quiz.
8/5/15
Rides 8/4: Unsurprising Cakes
Yesterday didn't feel like a Monday and that's because it wasn't, so in that regard, all's right with the world. The morning was another one where I swung by the First Street Cycletrack, which was still not yet fully installed, in that it was missing curbs and that fact meant that it remained the site of truck parking. As I type, curbs are being installed and so things are moving along and tomorrow (Thursday) when I ride to work again (for I am not going in today), then there will hopefully be more pictures of a more fully completed cycletrack, one free of parked trucks.
Sometimes you look up and you see that all 10 cyclists around you are women. This isn't totally remarkable- DC is not a male penal colony and does, in fact, serve as both and workplace to all genders, but the quite gloss on 'biking diversity' is that that statistics tell us that there isn't much and that it's a commute mode dominated by men. And those statistics might be right, but they're not right everywhere and I think depending on where you count, you see something much closer to a gender balance. This seems to be especially truer within the city itself and the imbalance seems to tick up the farther out you go. On the CCT, for example. I see far more men than women. This is all very interesting because other conventional wisdom tells us that women prize safety (though this reeks a little of patriarchal notions of female delicateness) and a trail separated from cars would seem like a pretty safe place to cycle (though, biking through the woods on an unlighted trail might pose other safety perception risk). Anyway, the point that I'm failing to make is that 1) I'm not totally sure how true the statistics are and 2) I'm not sure there's any monocausal reason why people of whatever gender do or don't cycle. So, great paragraph. Definitely didn't waste anyone's time. Good job.
It's been very hot, but I've been riding with a messenger bag and it hasn't been so bad. If you're going to sweat a lot anyway, the bag doesn't seem to make anything worse. I've got a Chrome one. It's rather quite nice and capacious. Fits a gallon on milk easy. Probably would fit a gallon of other liquids too.
I took L to 11th home and followed 11th to Pennsylvania and then rode up the hill, but on the House side, which is the less popular side for bike commuters. I watched a guy on East Capitol weave between some other bike commuters, which seemed mostly impolite and needless, but it was more annoying than dangerous. But annoying is still annoying. But it's only annoying.
Sometimes you look up and you see that all 10 cyclists around you are women. This isn't totally remarkable- DC is not a male penal colony and does, in fact, serve as both and workplace to all genders, but the quite gloss on 'biking diversity' is that that statistics tell us that there isn't much and that it's a commute mode dominated by men. And those statistics might be right, but they're not right everywhere and I think depending on where you count, you see something much closer to a gender balance. This seems to be especially truer within the city itself and the imbalance seems to tick up the farther out you go. On the CCT, for example. I see far more men than women. This is all very interesting because other conventional wisdom tells us that women prize safety (though this reeks a little of patriarchal notions of female delicateness) and a trail separated from cars would seem like a pretty safe place to cycle (though, biking through the woods on an unlighted trail might pose other safety perception risk). Anyway, the point that I'm failing to make is that 1) I'm not totally sure how true the statistics are and 2) I'm not sure there's any monocausal reason why people of whatever gender do or don't cycle. So, great paragraph. Definitely didn't waste anyone's time. Good job.
It's been very hot, but I've been riding with a messenger bag and it hasn't been so bad. If you're going to sweat a lot anyway, the bag doesn't seem to make anything worse. I've got a Chrome one. It's rather quite nice and capacious. Fits a gallon on milk easy. Probably would fit a gallon of other liquids too.
I took L to 11th home and followed 11th to Pennsylvania and then rode up the hill, but on the House side, which is the less popular side for bike commuters. I watched a guy on East Capitol weave between some other bike commuters, which seemed mostly impolite and needless, but it was more annoying than dangerous. But annoying is still annoying. But it's only annoying.
8/3/15
Rides 8/3: Gloop
Once thing I do, often and for no particular reason, is change tires on the CrossCheck. This morning before work- because one should take on tasks early on a Monday morning so as to achieve something to start the week- I decided that I would remove the fenders and the gatorskins- tires that I really like- and put on some cream Delta Cruisers [I believe the Delta Cruisers were a minor fraternity in Animal House, but it's been a while since I've seen the film] and I enjoyed the change, mostly because I like the way the tires look and also because they're a little cushy and I'm only second to Forster in loving the Kush. [Forster jokes = mega SEO]
I went to work via First Street, where I espied the progress on the First Street, NE cycletrack. The roadway has been paved and painted, but the concrete curbs haven't found their way there yet and accordingly, paint alone stopped not various truck drivers from parking a top the new cycletrack. Should we all freak out about this? Um, yes and no, I guess, but more no than yes. It'll get sorted out soon and my hope is that once the curbs find their way in, it won't be (as much of) a problem. The funny thing about First Street is that (to the best of my recollection) it's a cycletrack that wasn't part of the 2005 Master Bike Plan. It sprouted thanks to the efforts of the community and the NOMA BID (and probably DDOT too) and it's really quite a nice spine for that neighborhood and I can only hope that the cycletrack is extended somehow down Louisiana Avenue towards the Mall, though I don't really know who would ride it there or why. I have a very limited conception of where people actually work, but there are probably plenty of people who live in [parts of north-central/east DC] who work [somewhere nearish the Mall and/or Capitol] who take it everyday and I'm sure it makes sense for them.
R Street all the way across town. What did we ever do before they painted green lines across Rhode Island Avenue?
I decided to take the long way home and that meant riding down Nebraska and Loughboro to the END OF DC- where the roads [literally] ran out. It was by the reservoir and there was a rocky dirt path down to the trail, but no sign or anything, so I was a bit trepidatious of the whole affair until I found myself eventually on the trail and zipping along under the shade of trees and happy for it. For some stretch of the trail, I rode behind a Swiss woman (she had a Swiss flag backpack, she spoke French, she seemed fairly neutral) and some kids in her charge and I couldn't quite pass them because the kids were sort of all over the trail and there were cyclists consistently coming the other way and it was all very FRAUGHT, except not at all because going slowly behind someone isn't really that much of a problem at all.
I've wondered where DC cyclists could replicate the SF "Wiggle" stunt and I think my answer is on K Street under the Whitehurst. I think that would get a point across. What that point is, I'm not totally sure.
Virginia Avenue is the worst avenue. E Street is one of the worst streets, especially in FoBo. E Street on the other side of the White House, where I also rode, is less terrible, but still not great. There were no curbs installed on First Street in the evening either and after checking that out, I rode down F over to 8th and then up the hill and over the Massachusetts, around Lincoln Park and home. The whole trip, the long way with stops, was under an hour. That's about 4% of my day. It wasn't a bad way to spend 4% of a day.
I went to work via First Street, where I espied the progress on the First Street, NE cycletrack. The roadway has been paved and painted, but the concrete curbs haven't found their way there yet and accordingly, paint alone stopped not various truck drivers from parking a top the new cycletrack. Should we all freak out about this? Um, yes and no, I guess, but more no than yes. It'll get sorted out soon and my hope is that once the curbs find their way in, it won't be (as much of) a problem. The funny thing about First Street is that (to the best of my recollection) it's a cycletrack that wasn't part of the 2005 Master Bike Plan. It sprouted thanks to the efforts of the community and the NOMA BID (and probably DDOT too) and it's really quite a nice spine for that neighborhood and I can only hope that the cycletrack is extended somehow down Louisiana Avenue towards the Mall, though I don't really know who would ride it there or why. I have a very limited conception of where people actually work, but there are probably plenty of people who live in [parts of north-central/east DC] who work [somewhere nearish the Mall and/or Capitol] who take it everyday and I'm sure it makes sense for them.
R Street all the way across town. What did we ever do before they painted green lines across Rhode Island Avenue?
I decided to take the long way home and that meant riding down Nebraska and Loughboro to the END OF DC- where the roads [literally] ran out. It was by the reservoir and there was a rocky dirt path down to the trail, but no sign or anything, so I was a bit trepidatious of the whole affair until I found myself eventually on the trail and zipping along under the shade of trees and happy for it. For some stretch of the trail, I rode behind a Swiss woman (she had a Swiss flag backpack, she spoke French, she seemed fairly neutral) and some kids in her charge and I couldn't quite pass them because the kids were sort of all over the trail and there were cyclists consistently coming the other way and it was all very FRAUGHT, except not at all because going slowly behind someone isn't really that much of a problem at all.
I've wondered where DC cyclists could replicate the SF "Wiggle" stunt and I think my answer is on K Street under the Whitehurst. I think that would get a point across. What that point is, I'm not totally sure.
Virginia Avenue is the worst avenue. E Street is one of the worst streets, especially in FoBo. E Street on the other side of the White House, where I also rode, is less terrible, but still not great. There were no curbs installed on First Street in the evening either and after checking that out, I rode down F over to 8th and then up the hill and over the Massachusetts, around Lincoln Park and home. The whole trip, the long way with stops, was under an hour. That's about 4% of my day. It wasn't a bad way to spend 4% of a day.
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