Ride In 4/14

Don't panic. It's called spring and it's perfectly natural.
I spent all morning (ok, like the 45 minutes I was awake before leaving the house) tittering (and twittering) about how excited I was to ride today. I would have slept in my bike shoes if my bed had a place to clip in. Or if Brooks made pillowcases. I wasn't disappointed- I spent most of my ride with a jackass smile on my face from how nice it was outside.
A few thoughts on transporting soup by bike:

• Put the soup in a mason jar. This allows for a tighter seal. (Don't misspell this word- it's a truly horrible mistake). Tupperware just doesn't work on account of the lid being more jar-able. Puns with made up words still count!

Ok, that's the only thought I have about transporting soup by bike. 
My chain slipped as soon as I started rolling my bike out of the door. I fixed it but my right hand looked like I just voted in an Iraqi election. But instead of the purple ink of freedom, I was rocking the black sludge of impromptu re-chaining.
The Washcycle endorsed my vague understanding of the Arlington Boulevard bike trail(s), so that' means I'm probably not too far off base. I decided to "go all jdland on it" this morning, in fact.

That's a vast improvement already. I'm not saying that JDLand doctors photos or anything, but has anyone actually been to a Nationals game to verify that the ballpark is really there? Just throwing that out there. 
I decided to ride down Wilson Boulevard today in order to people watch, but there were very few people out. A few on bikes, including a guy wearing headphones. I don't endorse this, not because I hate awesome tunes, but because I think listening for cars is a vital part of keeping yourself safe on the road. Why make it harder on yourself?
On the Georgetown side of Key Bridge (the Georgetowni hídfő for anyone Hungarian readers out there, who only visit the blog for pictures of substandard bicycle routes and crying George Washington), I saw a mom biking with her child in a bike seat. On the back of the seat, there was a sticker that read "CoPilot." Cute, but I hardly think a child so young should be given so much responsibility. He can't even reach the pedals.
On Tunlaw, I saw a coworker jogging. I said hello. I don't know if it's her day off or what. She recognized me, which I always figure unlikely to happen for some reason. I figure helmets make us all look the same, but I guess that's not true.
Further up Tunlaw, I saw a mom jogging uphill while pushing a duplex SUV-style stroller with 700c (estimate) wheels. It had no children in it. This must be the Glover Park equivalent of Rocky's punching slabs of meat. It was in front of the Russian Embassy so there could be an Ivan Drago connection.
When I got to work, I noticed that my mechanical mishap had somehow led to chain grease on my left leg. Odd. I'm thinking about tattooing various black splotches on my calves to make this less embarrassing in the future. "No, I didn't get chain grease on me. Those are my tats," I'll say to the no people that actually care.

Ride Home 4/13

Slow going tonight for some reason. Also, extremely boring. I try to keep my eyes peeled for pretty much anything of note, but I don't think I saw anything that passes my very, very low bar of worth mentioning. I might have seen an old guy in a hat. Maybe a group of teenagers. Sorry.
The Key Bridge is quite accommodating for bicyclists, but I'm pretty sure that they're going to have to move Georgetown (University) somewhere else. This might or might not be a stated goal of CAG. Maybe they can just put a giant curtain around it- if they do, I think this would be an excellent fundraising tool for the university. It's just too scenic (or picture-worthy?) and it serves as a veritable Medusa for pedestrians on the bridge. My many dings cannot break their stares and this causes me stress. I promise it'll still be there after you look up to see me coming and move slightly over. It may be "swift Potomac's lovely daughter" (while most alums have a pretty good, though mumbly, sense of the fight song- "lie down forever lie down" "touchdown/rebound" "dear old Holy Cross"- the alma mater is pretty obscure), but it's a hassle for bike commuters sometimes.
I decided that I would take the "trail," such as it is, that parallels Arlington Boulevard and take some pictures when I got to 10th Street. Here they are:

10th St Bridge. Trail will eventually go under new bridge (maybe). Sidewalk follows off-ramp.

On 10th St/off-ramp where I can finally cross the street.  About 100 yards off Arlington Blvd. Giant finger looming

I've crossed 10th street now. There's a staircase in the median. 

10th St Bridge takes cars onto eastbound Arlington Blvd. Sidewalk on right follows on-ramp to westbound route.  

Don't take the sidewalk on the left. It stops and you will be screwed. I've done this. It sucks. 

From merge of on-ramp and westbound Arlington Blvd. This will change (some day) and a trail will go under the bridge. 

"Trail" to Pershing Drive. 

As usual, the picture quality is dubious. The long and short of it is that currently the trail connections between Courthouse Road and Pershing Drive are non-existent to terrible and any changes that are made will be vast improvements. I just hope that the vast improvements are the best, most optimal, improvements that can be made and not just the most expedient. I was glad that no one reported me for "terrorism" on account of taking pictures near a military base.

Trying to Figure out the New Arlington Boulevard Trail Configuration

This story from Dr. Gridlock has prompted me to go here and here and see if I can make any sense of the the shared-use path(s) this might somehow exist in 2013 along Arlington Boulevard. I'm confused because in VDOT site uses eastbound and westbound, whereas Arlington talks about the "south side" of Arlington Boulevard. Here's what I think might happen.

I love using Paint.

• A new trail will be built on the Fort Myer side (eastbound) of Arlington Boulevard. This trail will end at N Rolfe Street and will be useful for taking you nowhere in particular and certainly not Rosslyn, where many people work. I guess you could take 12th street down to the parallel Arlington Boulevard to Fort Meade and then go either down the 110 trail to the Memorial Bridge or over the Fort Meade Bridge to lower Rosslyn. Why you'd want to be on this side of Route 50 baffles me. 
• On the westbound side of Arlington Boulevard, there is now a trail. There will still be a trail, but it'll be moved over to parallel the C-D road, which will lead to ramps for cars to travel to Courthouse Road and 10th Street. From these renderings, it looks like users of the shared-use path will still have to travel about 50 feet up Courthouse Road in order to cross the street and then proceed under the bridge. This is inconvenient. 
• Also on the westbound side of Arlington Boulevard, the shared-use path will be extended to pass under the 10th Street Bridge, which it doesn't do now- it follows the ramp up to 10th street itself. Presumably, this also means that the trail will be extended and improved, since there's currently a "deadzone" between 10th St and Pershing Drive.Well, not exactly- there's a sidewalk that goes along the 10th street on-ramp. In fact, the whole "trail" section right now between Courthouse Road and 10th Street is a sidewalk, so maybe they'll build an actual shared-use path there. These trail improvements would be vastly preferable to anything done on the Fort Myer side of Arlington Boulevard. My only concern about this stretch is how the trail will interact with the car traffic entering and exiting westbound Arlington Boulevard since I don't think there will stop lights anywhere. Maybe they can get some cool blinking "watch out for us" crossing lights like they have in Shirlington. 

Anyway, I've got an email into the Arlington County planning staff to find out if I'm even remotely correct in how this is going to work and I'll update if I ever hear anything back.

Ride In 4/13

They say that virtue is its own reward. There's nothing virtuous about commuting by bike in the rain.
It was the kind of rain today that only seemed bad when you move forward into it. When I was stopped at lights, it barely felt like it was coming down at all. Only when I was pedaling did it seem like I was riding into a Hokusai painting.
It always seems like there is more car traffic on rainy days. Do people really eschew walking or public transportation to drive on days like this? I can understand not biking (though I don't think that it's fair weather bike commuters that make up the added volume), but there's a thing called an umbrella, so waiting for the bus shouldn't be that much more onerous than usual. Maybe it's just my perception. I'm something of a crank, so you might not want to trust me.
Way more cyclists out then I expected, especially in the District. Good for us. I think that once "bike commuting" becomes synonymous with "commuting," you start giving very little thought to taking another mode of transportation. That might be bullshit and I'm sure that the CaBi numbers don't back up that claim at all. But, there will always be a non-zero number of bike commuters and that seems heartening. I'm chanting NON-ZERO, NON-ZERO at my desk like one would U-S-A at an Olympic hockey game. Plus, bike commuting will always be relatively cheaper if gas prices and public transportation fare increases continue (I'm assuming) to outpace inflation. And you get qualitatively better at it the more you do it, so it starts to seem like less a "cost" on your time and effort. There's also the whole sunk cost thing of buying a bicycle instead of having to continually buy gas or metro fares. I'm sure there's some more economics-y way of explaining these ideas, but I've gone as far as I can go with it.
So much road spit. My bike was gross again, but I wiped it down when I got to work. I'm paranoid about the frame rusting, so I try to be diligent. It was nice and calming. Like brushing a horse. Not that I've ever brushed a horse.

Ride Home 4/12

The blog would be nothing without the support of its readers. This blog is barely anything as it is. I received an email from a dedicated reader (ok, it was my wife) pointing out the following:

red track suit = ben stiller in Tenenbaums

I can't believe I missed that.
It looked rainy this afternoon, but the roads were dry. This was a nice break for my bike, which I'm tired of getting so damn dirty on account of the puddles, road spray and whatnot. I don't know why I bothered cleaning it the other day. I'm going to have to do it again this weekend. Maybe I'll also clean the bike I'm planning to sell (I'm posting it on craigslist this weekend). Though it didn't rain, it was windy and that was mildly unpleasant. I'm not sure that tailwinds actually exist.
There were very few other riders on the road today. @BikeArlington was right, though there was hardly enough wheat to make even a half a loaf. A few mountain bike types and one lady who had an Obama 2008 spoke card in her front wheel. I don't know if the Obama 2012 spoke cards are out yet. Or why you'd want a spoke card. Whatever.
Speaking of politics, the DC Vote people went a-signing today and posted these beauties down by M and the Key Bridge:

Also, don't tread on grates. You might slip!

Maybe members of Congress will see it driving back to Virginia, where they live. Also, the outline of DC is hardly a compelling image to use. Might I suggest a crying George Washington?
My legs finally started feeling good by the time I was almost home. Funny how legs can be so temperamental. Some days I feel pretty spry, others I've got nothing. It's kind of funny how that works. If only I had majored in exercise science (if that's a real thing)!