Deer, Sticker, and Regulars

Yesterday dawned with a nip in the air. Wait. Who am I kidding? It was downright cold. cold. Fortunately, it was the first day of standard time so the rising sun had warmed things up a bit before I left the house. I took my winter route, which shaves about a mile off my commute by riding diagonally across the Hollin Hall neighborhood rather than around it. Even with the warmer air, my face was covered in tears as my eyes rebelled against the cold wind.

With apologies to the late George Carlin (is that as opposed to the early George Carlin?) , the forecast for the evening commute was DARK. Dang. I nearly steered off the bike path a couple of times. And the headlights in my eyes from the cars travelling north on the GW Parkway weren’t a whole lot of fun either. Then there was the rider who came up behind me with a flashing death ray mounted on his bike.

Dark. Solar flare. Dark. Solar flare. Dark. Solar flare.

It’s always helpful to have burned out retinas when commuting at night.

South of Old Town, a young deer jumped out of the trailside shrubs and bounded across my path. In all my years of bike commuting I have only once hit a critter. It was a squirrel whose tail buzzed the spokes of my front wheel. The squirrel survived the encounter. I think making contact with a deer might not turn out so well for me.

I noticed recently that the “I voted” sticker on my helmet was weathered. Lucky for me, today is Election Day. I rode Big Nellie to my polling place and picked up a new one. (It’s always fun to ride my humongous recumbent to the polling place. It’s like saying, “I ride a lounge chair and I vote!”) Oh, and I voted. I wonder if more people would vote if they gave out pumpkin spice lattes or cheesecake.

The ride to work was not as cold as yesterday but the tears in my eyes were back. The tears might have something to do with the fact that I hit 34 miles per hour bombing down the hill from Park Terrace Drive. Weeee.

As I ride in these days I am monitoring the progress of a pregnant runner. She started showing a couple of weeks ago. Lately she’s been walking a bit. Today she had on a Purdue sweatshirt. I forgot that under my vest I had a Butler t-shirt. Who’s yur kawledge?

Another new regular on the trail is Smiling New Mom. She runs southward as I ride north, pushing a superduper pram with a near-toddler inside. Mornin’ Mom. The kid is so cute.

Today’s calvalcade of trail users also included Hoppy Guy, the Three Step Runner, Nancy “2 Sheds” Duley, and CAL. Hoppy Guy is a runner with a bad knee. Three Step Runner is a woman who runs three paces then walks then runs three paces, etc. Nancy “2 Sheds” Duley is a #fridaycoffeeclub irregular who bike commutes when she telecommutes. She is a confused soul. CAL is a sixty something man who wears a University of California shirt. Or maybe he has amnesia and wears his name on his shirt in case he forgets who he is.

For two days in a row no drivers tried to kill me in Rosslyn. There is a great disturbance in the force.

The ride home was peaceful. I was not threatened by any ruminants. I think they must have been at the polls.

From Dawn to Midnight – Another Day in #Bikedc

Friday means only one thing: Friday Coffee Club. Unfortunately, late September means DARK. I left before 7 am with my Light and Motion Stella light strapped to my helmet. This is my fourth season using the Stella. It seems to work just as well as when I bought it too. Light and Motion makes good stuff.

Since I was going to the night game at Nationals Park, I rode The Mule which has conventional pedals. This way I didn’t have to wear shoes with cleats. It was my first commute on The Mule in at least three months. It felt totally weird soon I was dialed in.

The ride in was uneventful. Your usual beautiful spin along the Potomac River. Over the river on the 14th Street Bridge, through the tourists at the Washington Monument, up the 15th Street cycletrack, and across the Pennsylvania Avenue plaza in front of the White House.

The tables outside Swings were packed with #bikeDc folks, including to my delight Elizabeth who rode the 50 States Ride with me this year. It’s always great to see new people at Friday Coffee Club.

Ellizabeth at the near head of the table presides over Friday Coffee Club

Ed, Mary, and I had made a date to attend the night game at Nationals Park. I paid Ed for my ticket and rode off to work resplendent in my Anthony Rendon Number 6 Nats shirt.

At 5 I was out of work like a rocket. This would likely be my last game of the year. I rode along the river to the 14th Street bridge, through East Potomac Park, over the Case Bridge to L’Enfant Promenade, then wound my way to I street and its smooth pavement and clearly marked bike lanes. Signs directed me straight to the bike valet at the ballpark. What a great idea.

Bike Valet - No Car, No Worries — Bike Valet – No Car, No Worries

I ate what passed for dinner and took my seat. Ed and Mary arrived a bit late. They were delayed because they needed to get their gear ready to drive to the Seagull Century on the Eastern Shore of Maryland before dawn on Saturday.

The game was a romp for the visiting team but we had a good time hanging out and talking baseball and bikes. At about 11, game over (Marlins 15, Nats 7) I hopped on The Mule for the ride home. The air was dry and calm with temperatures in the mid 60s. Once I cleared the area near the ballpark, the roads were all but empty. I calmly rode the 18 or 19 miles home. Best bike commute ever!

I walked in the house at 12:38, 18 hours after I left.

Wicked Nice

During my gap year between college and grad school, I lived in Boston and bought a bike. It was a blue Raleigh Grand Prix. It had ten speeds and side pull breaks. After work I would ride it along the Charles River and on weekends I’d go for bike rides with friends out to the suburban kettle ponds called Walden and Farm. Riding a bike in New England in the summertime is bliss. The weather is so agreeable that I didn’t carry a water bottle on these jaunts. (I learned the benefits of hydration a few years later during my first summer in the DC blast-furnace.)

Today was like one of those New England summer days. Just wicked nice. So, naturally I drove to work. Well, not exactly. I drove to a mechanic in North Arlington and rode Little Nellie the two miles to the office. Down hill. On fresh pavement. Ahhh.

The car need to stay in the hospital overnight. I didn’t mind. I got to ride 15 miles home in this bliss. The Mount Vernon Trail was crowded but somehow the usual population of fair weather asshats stayed away.

Tomorrow I do it in reverse. Even after over 100 bike commutes, I am looking forward to commuting to work. I seriously doubt many car commuters could say the same thing.

Saddles and Rain and Turtles and a PSA

A short while ago I did a ride with my friend Florencia. I had a good time. Most of her had a good time. Her bottom did not. Her saddle is pretty much shot. It offers little support and is fraying all over the place. Ow. While I was messing around in the midwest, Flor and her friend Emilia rode to Harpers Ferry and back along the bumpy C&O canal towpath. Emilia rode a hybrid with wide-ish tires and a decent saddle. She rode the 120-mile ride with a big smile on her face. (If you are reading this Emilia, you are definitely ready for your first 50-States Ride next month.) Flor not so much. She rode her road bike with its skinny tires and the same old saddle. OW! At one point she even wrapped her saddle in what looks like a jacket of some sort to give her some cushion.

Flor’s misery got me to thinking about the saddle on Little Nellie. It’s a Brooks Flyer, a leather IMG_0220[1] saddle. You’re supposed to keep the leather taut by tightening an adjusting bolt on the underside of the saddle’s nose. I didn’t do this on The Mule’s saddle and the bolt bent rendering adjustments impossible. Well, long story short, the same thing happened on Little Nellie. If you look closely you can see the bend in the bolt as it extends from the nut. Today I sent the saddle off to Aaron’s Bicycle Repair in Seattle to get the bolt replaced. They did an excellent job doing the same repair on The Mule’s saddle.

As it turns out, I have two bikes and four Brooks saddles, three Flyers and a B67. So I put my third Flyer saddle on Little Nellie today. The ride in was pretty nice. The saddle being relatively new was firmer but I had no discomfort. I rode to work in my usual trance only to be startled by Chris M. speeding by in the opposite direction. “Rootchopper!” (I am so glad I don’t use an off color Internet name.) I met Chris on last December’s Cider ride. After seeing Chris I climbed up to the Rosslyn Intersection of Doom. It nearly lived up to its name today. I took my usual left across the I-66 ramp. The light facing the ramp traffic was red and had been for a few seconds. The driver of the car in the right lane stopped and made no attempt to take a right turn. The drivers of two cars in the center lane however blew through the light and made right turns. They didn’t come close to hitting me only because I always assume that drivers will ignore the light. One of these days this kind of thing is going to get someone killed.

From the looks of the weather radar I thought I might get wet on the ride home. It seems the radar display is delayed a few minutes. Either that or the storm moved really fast between my last peek at the radar and my leaving the garage at work. I left the garage in a light rain which gave way heavier and heavier rain. It didn’t quite reach full on downpour status but I was soaked to the bone within a mile or so. Riding in the rain is pretty simple because once you get wet, you’re wet. Nothing to it. Cyclists and runners took cover under the 14th Street Bridge and the US1 access bridge at National Airport. Message to these cyclists: if you are wet and you stop, you will be cold and wet. If you are wet and you ride, you at least will generate some body heat. I kept riding.

The rain let up near Old Town which was a good thing since the rainwater had gotten into my eyes making them sting. I was riding blind for a while. I’ve often said that I’ve ridden the Mount Vernon Trail so often I could ride it with my eyes closed. I proved myself right tonight.

About two miles from home, the heavens opened up with roars and flashes and buckets of rain. By the time I got home, I was soaked to the gills. I normally ride across the lawn into my backyard. Because of mud and wet grass I dismounted on the front lawn. As I did, I spotted what looked like a clump of sod near where my foot was about to land. It wasn’t sod; it was a box turtle. My yard is a zoo.

Finally, a note about last night’s commute. I was 1/3rd of a mile from home, slogging along at my usual 12 mile per hour pace when a pack of riders (probably doing the weekly Potomac Pedalers ride in my neighborhood) passed me so closely that they forced me into some damaged pavement on the edge of the road. They gave no warning. A less experienced rider could easily have crashed. To the riders in the pack I have this to say: If you want to ride like a bunch of hyperagressive douche bags, do me a favor. Ride somewhere else. I don’t need the aggravation. Better yet, why don’t you chill out, call your passes, and give other traffic a little room.

Little Nellie Turns 13

Little Nellie reached yet anothe milestone, 13,000 miles. My Bike Friday has been my main ride all summer and seems to be handling the task well. I can’t say as much for the saddle and the chain, however. The chain started to skip the other day, almost surely because it is stretched. By now, my cassette (the gears in back) is lilely ruined so I’ll keep the chain on until I replace the whole works this winter. The saddle, a Brooks Flyer, has the same problem as the Brooks Flyer on The Mule. Somehow I bend the adjustment bolt in the nose of the saddle and I can’t re-tension the leather. So I’ll send it out to Aaron’s Bike Shop in Seattle for a repair.

In a bit of a freak coincidence my odometer turned on the same day. And today was my 99th bike commute of the year. So everybody sing:

99 bike commutes on the year, 99 bike commutes. You change your bags and clean your chain, 100 bike commutes on the year.

Well, the Ride in Was Fun

On the recommendation of Bob “Don’t Call Me Rachel” Cannon, I took my son’s car to Baird Automotive in Clarendon. They are a little pricey but seem to have their act together which is sadly unusual in the world of auto maintenance.

I could have walked to Metro but then why do that when Little Nellie’s around?

Off we went through Clarendon when suddenly the smooth pavement gave way to a milled mess. The milling was deep in spots, tossing LIttle Nellie wee wheels this way and that. Please cars, don’t kill me. The good pavement returned after three or four blocks, just in time for a screaming downhill to my office in Rosslyn. Once past the Clarendon Metro station I caught every green light. I felt like I won a prize. All too soon, I arrived at work, my two mile bike commute was short but invigorating.

The ride home, not so much. Riding back to the mechanic involved grinding back up that monster hill. Fortunately, the ride back had no milled pavement to deal with. Just one long mother of a hill. I crested the hill just shy of Clarendon as rain drops started to fall. Wouldn’t it be nice if I got to the mechanic without getting soaked in a down pour. And it was.

I always think that the people working at shops will take one look at me and my itty bitty bike and bust a gut laughing. I entered the shop and there was a nice Trek road bike on a workstand in the waiting area. Well, gaaawlee.

I do believe I’ll come back in the future.

I Gotta Learn to Shoot First

No this blog is not about firearms or the second amendment. It’s about taking pictures. When it comes to taking interesting pictures I am utterly inept. This is because I gawk instead of click. A ride doesn’t go by when I don’t think after some interesting thing goes by, “That would have made an interesting picture.” Doh.

Take tonight for example. I saw a bear and then a naked supermodel. Okay, not really. But I did see I guy riding an extremely low hand cycle. It was a recumbent that looked like it could roll underneath an SUV.

As I approached Slaters Lane I spotted a police car parked on the trail just before the long boardwalk where the beavers build their dam. Not good. The car was empty. Hmmmm?

Interesting. At the far side of the boardwalk, I saw the cop talking into his lapel mounted radio mic. A cyclist had taken a tumble and was in need of assistance.

Help is here, ma'am. — Help is here, ma’am.

The handcycle guy came next but I gawked instead of snapped. Luckily I got a second chance of sorts. Nearly every morning I am passed by a bike with big knobby tires pulling a trailer that looks like a hand cart from a golf course. It’s an electric assist bike and it can move! I am pretty sure this type of set up will be commonplace in five years.

Of course no ride home would be complete without a resident of the 400 block of North Union Street obstructing the bike lane with the butt of his parked car. 420 North Union seems to be a repeat offender. I didn’t see a ticket on his windshield.

420 North Union needs some parking ticket love

In an attempt to redeem myself, I decided to go for what any good Bostonian would call a wickid ahtistic pickcha.

Blocked and Blockhead

The Blocked

After a late night of watching the rain fall down at Nationals Park, I awoke in a bit of a fog. Unfortunately the fog in my brain was accompanied by humidity outside. I rode off into the mugginess officeward.

There was considerable leaf and twig debris on the roads. Somehow this debris was concentrated along the right side where I normally ride. So I boldly moved toward the center of the lane. No drivers’ egos were harmed.

Near Belle Haven Park, a tree had fallen across the trail. According to fellow bike commuter Reba, the tree nearly nailed a passing runner. As a former marathon runner, I can attest that this can ruin your whole day.

I made my way around the tree on foot and proceeded northward-ish. Near the power plant, I came upon a tractor trailer which had fallen across the trail. I rode around it on the grass.

Near the Memorial Bridge, a gaggle of geese formed an occlusion of the trail. I rode through them undaunted. One goose mouth a goose obscenity at Little Nellie, I am pretty sure this goose is a columnist for the Washington Post. He was probably upset that in years past geese were ticketed for using the trail.

Over the course of the day, it got muggier. Or as the French say, “I’ll fait icky.”

I rode home under ominous skies. Sprinkles turned to light rain. Distant rumbles turned to thunder booms. The tractor trailer was gone but the trail was blocked by a cyclist chatting with a surveyor and a pedestrian. I stopped for the pedestrian almost certainly ruining my credibility as a bike terrorist.

On Union Street in Old Town, the bike lane was blocked twice. The first blockage was by an SUV double parked in the bike lane. Shortly thereafter the but end of a luxury car was parked so as to preserve the entrance to a townhouse’s garage. It’s butt end blocked the trail.

At King and Union a King Street Trolley (actually a bus) stopped mid-block obstructing my way up Union Street. I was begining to think this was Block the Bicyclists Day, sponsored no doubt by the Washington Post.

The last five miles home were under a steady rain. The distant thunder and lightning suddenly became directly over head. BOOM! CRACK!

Uh oh. Not good. The hairs on my calves (the lower part of my leg, not my baby cows) stood on end. Eek.

Pedal pedal.

Fortunately, that was the worst of it. I arrived home soaked having somehow not terrorized anybody.

The Blockhead

You may have noticed that I have been making oblique references to the Washington Post today. This is because Courtland Milloy, a Post columnist, wrote a column today that expressed his exasperation with having to share the city with cyclists. In addition to some veiled racist remarks, he said that the $500 fine for hitting a cyclist with your car was worth the expense.

Mr. Milloy’s column demonstrated an astounding combination of ignorance, intolerance, and race baiting, quite the trifecta. It also contained many factual errors. Here are some facts for Mr. Milloy to think about:

My wife was run over on a crystal clear day by a careless driver in a hurry. She was lucky. She got to spend three months in bed. It took her the better part of a year to get back to something resembling normal. The driver nearly killed her in another way, because the aftermath of the crash left her unable to have surgery for a malignant tumor for one year.
My friend Rachel volunteered to ride sweep during a cycling event last December. Her job was to make sure that the very last riders finished safely. She was run over by an inattentive driver near FedEx Field. She was injured but fortunately recovered rather quickly. She is still jittery about riding her bike in the city.
My friend Charmaine was run over by a pickup truck while riding to work on Michigan Avenue in Northeast DC. The crash broke her right arm and destroyed her bike. She missed weeks of work and endured months of painful physical therapy. (It was the second time she’d been hit by a car.)
I didn’t know Alice Swanson, but six years ago today, she was riding her bike in a bike lane near Dupont Circle when she was run over by a truck and killed.

I could go on with more examples all night.

In my entire life of riding about 100,000 miles I only know of one death by cyclist. This happened when a kid at my grade school lost control of his bike and struck an old lady walking home from church. As bad as we all felt for the victim, we felt equally bad for the kid who was going to have to live with this for the rest of his life.

I hope Mr. Milloy parks his car and his hate. If he rode his bike in the city he might see what I see.

Riding through Anacostia on a Sunday morning is a joy. The church goers, dressed in their Sunday best, wave and say hello, even though in Mr. Milloy’s mind I am an evil suburban white guy on a bike and they are black and there are no bike lanes on MLK Boulevard.
That riding through all eight wards of the city during six or seven Fifty States Rides has revealed a city that is finally rising from the ashes of the 1968 riots and the farce of a crack head mayor. The restored Union Market and Lincoln Theater, the hundreds of rehabilitated rowhouses, the new buildings springing up everywhere, the resurrection of near Southeast. You miss this driving in and out of the city with a death grip on the steering wheel.
And that during those same rides and many, many more in DC, dozens of people have waved, cheered me and my fellow riders on, and made sure we didn’t take a wrong turn. Over and over again.
That little kids see me go by on my funny looking recumbent or my equally odd folding bike and say, “COOOL!”

I don’t like riding my bike in DC during rush hours, but I’ll do it to get where I need to be. That doesn’t mean I am an inherently bad person or anti-car or racist. It means that I am rational. I dislike driving in the city too. The difference is that in a car I have steel barrier between me and people like Mr. Milloy. On a bike, I am apparently a viable potential target for a pathetic man with a small mind.

Mr. Milloy should be ashamed of himself. As a 30-year subscriber to the Post, I have but one request. Stop running his columns. They are reckless, irresponsible, and hurtful. Find someone with a positive voice to fill the space.

So It Begins

And with very little warning, we are now biking in hell.

Overnight spring hit the road and summer crashed the party,

I left home a little after 8, about an hour later than normal. My legs were dead from yesterday’s urban excursion. The air was thick with humidity. In short order I was in my commute trance. 12 miles per hour. Chain going zzzzzzz. You are getting sleepy, very sleepy.

I look up and a young woman who reminds me of Katie. She smiles and says hello then is gone in the direction I came. Whoever it was my apologies for my response which went something like this: UH?

I rode across the 14th Street bridge to go to the credit union at L’Enfant Plaza. You’d think I’d follow my old bike commute route but my brain now equates the bridge with Friday Coffee Club. I was on riding counterclockwise around the Tidal Basin instead of riding along the river on Ohio Drive. All this meant was that I’d be riding with cars instead of dodging tour buses. The drivers in the cars were uncharacteristically civil and I made it to my destination without one tire mark up my back.

The bike parking was all filled up. This never happened when I worked there. Something must be done. I decided to lock Little Nellie next to the scrum of bikes and make fast work of my trip inside.

Little Nellie survived.

To head to work I rode the switchback bridge to East Potomac Park. Fellow blogger Mary recently triumphed over the tight turns on this bridge. I had no trouble at all. It helps that Little Nellie has itty bitty wheels. Mary was riding a big kid’s bike.

Just for the hell of it, I rode the DC side of the river to the Memorial Bridge. Then it was up Memorial Drive toward the entrance to Arlington Cemetery. I took the trail that passes the border of the cemetery. Thousands of white headstones arranged in military precision lined up along the green ground. It’s almost as if someone planted a crop of white stones. It is a beautiful sight and a sad one. I haven’t been into the cemetery in 20 years. I should spend a day there sometime soon.

Up the hill toward Fort Myer and past the Netherlands Carillon. For some reason there are two minature sphynxes standing guard. Did I miss something about Holland conquering Egypt?

From this direction, I do not go through the Intersection of Doom. Nobody ran a red light in front of me. Nobody tried to kill me to shave a minute off their drive to work. It felt surreal.

My 5 pm meeting was canceled so I left the office at my usual time. There was nothing in my legs. Lead legs. An appalling number of people passed me. CaBi bikes passed me. It was sad. It was as if I had my own personal headwind. (Depeche Mode, eat your heart out.)

I started hearing an annoying clattering noise. It came and went. Finally I stopped to investigate. A lanyard had fallen out of my saddle bag and was draped across my front brakes. The metal clasp was dancing on the spokes. It it had fallen into the front wheel the wheel might have locked up. It would not have been pretty.

Near the airport an attractive young woman rode by, slowed and said, “Cute pin.” My brain, firing on all cylinders, compelled my mouth to grunt “Thanks.” I am so suave with my repartee.

It took me a full minute to realize that she was admiring the Sharrows pin on my saddle bag. This happened once before when Alex Baca introduced called out my Sharrows pin in Baltimore on the Tour de Port ride. We ended up doing several rides together after which she left town and changed her cellphone number. Savoir faire is everywhere.

The rest of the ride was taken up with all the clever retorts I could have said to the passing pin woman. You know, the kind of thing Sean Connery’s Bond always came up with. (“I’m Pussy Galore.” “I must be dreaming.”)

Little Nellie was behaving oddly. I felt like the bike was moving laterally beneath me. I stopped to check things out but could find nothing wrong.

We made it home without incident. When I hopped off my bike, the humidity hit me like a wet sock.

So it begins.

Floods and Bunnies and Goslings and the Ogremeister

It was Friday the 13th. A full moon would be risin’. First, we had to get the workday out of the way.

I left early for Friday Coffee Club. In the spirit of SharrowsDC, I fiddled with the cleats on my shoes. I moved them forward. I instantly became amazingly fast. NOT.

Even a child knows you can’t fake it.

The only way I can become fast on a bike is to be airlifted to the top of a ski jump and released.

The ride in was peaceful except for when the supermodels lined up and cheered me near the stone bridge. I awoke soon after. Sometimes on Friday’s I ride in a dream state for a while.

Don’t dream it’s over.

I had an eye out for snapping turtles but all I saw were my first three bunnies of the year. Yay bunnies.

I rode through flood waters at the base of King Street in Old Town Alexandria. And again on the trail near Daingerfield Island. There must be a hole in the river. Little Nellie didn’t mind.

Once I was on the 14th Street Bridge I could see the high waters of the Potomac. Muddy, fast moving, filled with debris. It must have rained like a bitch upstream.

Into the city, i managed to hit green lights all the way to Friday Coffee Club. That’s a first. As SharrowsDC might say, it was a perfect.

Friday Coffee Club was crowded again. I didn’t know about 1/3rd of the attendees. I got to play with my favorite soon-to-be two-year old, Hugo. Once he wakes up and gets a muffin in him, he’s a pretty happy camper. He was a hug machine this morning.

After coffee club I headed down G Street with SharrowsDC on my flank. Well, not literally ON my flank but kind of off to the side. He was riding his backup bike since he had his 223rd flat of 2014 on his new Ogre bike. I’ve never met anyone who gets so many flats as SharrowsDC. It’s absolutely uncanny.

He feels possessed.

The ride back over the river on the TR Bridge gave me another opportunity to see the big muddy.

Work pretty much sucked.

During the day it rained like a bitch. So the saving grace was the fact that I could have been out riding my bike in a deluge instead of pushing ideas around and around.

Then I got to ride home. The air was heavy like the bayou. This shoud have given me a zydeco ear worm but instead my head was stuck on Neil Finn.

They'll Soon Take Wing — They’ll Soon Take Wing

My possessions are causing me suspicion but there’s no proof.

I stopped under the 14th Street bridge to take some pix of some gosslings. These were about a month older than the ones I saw earlier this week. I imagine they’d be fledging any day now.

As I neared home a light rain began to fall.

I always take the weather with me.

The work week is over. 155 miles of bike commuting in the bag.

I’m taking the rest of the day off.

	halffastcyclingclub on Blanket of blood – Snow…
	Jim on Walk for Peace
	Jim on A Dollar in the Dryer and It A…
	ShopTherapy on The Wovel Dies a Hero
	Rootchopper on Shovel Unready – An upda…