Behold: RackSpotter – A crowdsourced bike parking tool!

[PotomacCyclist]

Has RackSpotter gone national? I saw some bike racks in non-DC area cities.

It would be great to have a national map of bike racks, but I wonder whether the map display will get bogged down. I think all of the individual markers on the map cause the website to load very slowly. If there are tens of thousands of markers from cities all across the country, I wonder if the website will get so bogged down as to be unusable. Or maybe the website only loads markers in the visible area of the map? I do notice that the new Google Maps in general loads very slowly. Maybe it’s a Google Maps issue and there’s nothing that BikeArlington can do about the slow load times.

I don’t remember how quickly the site loaded at the beginning. It seems to have slowed down significantly over the past couple months, as more markers have been added. But it’s possible that is an inaccurate perception.

[Steve O]

Moving racks.
This pic is on the Tri-rail train in S Florida.
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[Steve O]

Now being used
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[PotomacCyclist]

You could honestly say that your bike is now traveling at 100 mph (or faster), although you couldn’t really say that you were riding at 100 mph.

[Steve O]

@PotomacCyclist 120350 wrote:

You could honestly say that your bike is now traveling at 100 mph (or faster), although you couldn’t really say that you were riding at 100 mph.

Sadly, not my bike. Other passengers. My trip to S. Florida was all of 30 hours, so I did not do any riding nor take a bike. Also, I believe the Tri-Rail tops out at 79 mph.

[Tim Kelley]

@PotomacCyclist 120329 wrote:

Has RackSpotter gone national? I saw some bike racks in non-DC area cities.

Yes, it’s gotten the attention of a couple different cities. We may think about going to some sort of “roll-up” method for displaying the locations. Check out http://www.cabistations.com to see what I mean.

[PotomacCyclist]

That map shows a CaBi station on the equator in the Gulf of Guinea. Awesome!

[The map says it’s an 8D OPS test. It would still be cool to have a station there. Who would be the first to ride there?]

[KLizotte]

@PotomacCyclist 120393 wrote:

That map shows a CaBi station on the equator in the Gulf of Guinea. Awesome!

[The map says it’s an 8D OPS test. It would still be cool to have a station there. Who would be the first to ride there?]

Consularrider.

[PotomacCyclist]

On the list of the top 5 worst installation jobs for a bike rack?

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There are actually two posts in the picture, bike hitches with 4 spaces total, only none of them may be usable. I listed the rack as having 2 spaces, but I doubt anyone will ever use those racks. The posts are right up against the hedge with one of the posts mostly buried in the bushes. They are covered with big masses of spider webs.

This is at the Ellipse Visitor Pavilion. I might have passed by there a few weeks ago without noticing any bike racks. If you don’t know about the posts, you will probably never spot them. I only discovered them by looking at the website for the pavilion. They mentioned bike racks on the southeast side of the building. I guess they are talking about the semi-buried posts in the photo.

[PotomacCyclist]

Insect repellent doesn’t seem to do much, other than to poison me. I’m still getting mosquito bites/stings. What’s the point of putting on the toxic spray if it doesn’t work? Maybe it decreased the number of stings slightly, but the spray makes me feel odd. (I was going to say that it makes me feel “off”, but… never mind.) The spray is also very foul-smelling, as if I accidentally wandered into a chemical weapons plant.

I tried a “natural” spray, but that smells just as toxic as the DEET spray does. Maybe I’ll have to stop by a Whole Foods or an outdoor sporting goods store to find a better “natural” insect repellent.

Mosquitoes aren’t normally a problem while riding, but they are when stopping frequently to map bike racks. I’ve never had this issue with mosquitoes while riding before.

[PotomacCyclist]

To follow up on the positive thread, I would like to point out that many of my interactions have been positive while riding around slowly, stopping and starting, while mapping bike racks. On multiple occasions, people have offered to help me find my way. This is because when I’m stopped on a sidewalk and mapping a bike rack, I’m trying to figure out the exact spot on the map to add the pin for the bike rack. I don’t want to be sloppy and just add the pin anywhere on the block. I try to figure out a more precise location, within reason. I look at the outlines of the buildings on the map (because Satellite View isn’t available on the mobile site) and compare it to the visuals of the buildings around me.

I often look for small features on the buildings, such as sections that jut out or unusual features. Or I take a quick measurement of how far down the street the rack is located. Is it halfway down the block (which is often the case)? Is it a third of the way down from the crossing street? A quarter of the way down? Is it just past the corner? How far? Then I apply that observation to the map.

This means that I sometimes appear to be confused and lost to others. Several people this summer have walked up to me, offering to help with directions because I look lost while observing the tops of the buildings and looking back and forth between the street and my phone.

At the same time, I try to help others when I can. If people are having difficulty with bike stations, I offer some quick tips. People continue to ask me about how Capital Bikeshare works, so I explain the basics. I make sure to warn them to keep each ride under 30 minutes (actually 30 minutes, 59 seconds) so they don’t incur per-ride fees on top of the daily membership fee. I told one woman about this and she looked surprised. While she wasn’t taking out a bike that day, she said that in the past she had a $40 bill for one day, probably because she kept the bike out for half the day.

Yesterday, one station was running low on battery power. (That’s what the support person told me over the phone when I called it in.) Almost none of the bikes were able to be checked out. I tried several at the station. The yellow light would turn on and stay like that for a couple minutes. Then it would fade out. Neither the green nor the red light would turn on afterward. I thought it might be my key, but then I saw several other people walk up and try to check out bikes. The same thing happened to all of them, except for one guy who was able to check out a bike, for some reason.

I also saw a key card left in the slot at one of the docks. I told the support person about this over the phone and read the number to her. She didn’t know when the technician would arrive to fix the station, so she suggested that I pick up the key card. They would contact the person and give them my info. I agreed. I received an email shortly afterward, then met up with the person at the station and handed over the key card. (This is the best practice if you find a lost CaBi key card. Call it in and agree to have your email address or phone number forwarded to the other person, via CaBi).

Maybe the mosquitoes will respect this and stop biting me for a few days.

[PotomacCyclist]

I also bought a bottle of “natural” insect repellent at Whole Foods. It doesn’t contain DEET or any other nasty chemicals with 4 or 5 syllables. It contains essential oils. Those might be harsh in concentrated form as well. I’ll have to see. I’ll test it out tomorrow. (I’m taking the day off today.) As I noted before, I get bitten far more often while mapping bike racks than while doing “regular” riding.

RackSpotter riding is nothing like regular bike riding. I can’t just zoom by on the streets because I would miss all the bike racks. If there are parked cars, they would block the sight of the bike racks. I can stay on the roads when there are no parked cars but sometimes I have to roll by VERY slowly on the sidewalk, or I walk the bike. (Sometimes I’m running or just walking, without a bike at all. I’ve mapped a lot of the bike racks while on runs.) If I’m on the sidewalk, I try to stay at pedestrian speed, whatever that happens to be at the moment. If that means 1 mph, then I ride at 1 mph or I walk the bike.

Then I have to stop frequently when I come across bike racks. This is when the mosquitoes attack. *&^$!!!

[PotomacCyclist]

Why Do Mosquitoes Bite Some People More Than Others?
Blood type, metabolism, exercise, shirt color and even drinking beer can make individuals especially delicious to mosquitoes

By Joseph Stromberg
SMITHSONIAN.COM
JULY 12, 2013

You come in from a summer hike covered with itchy red mosquito bites, only to have your friends innocently proclaim that they don’t have any. Or you wake up from a night of camping to find your ankles and wrists aflame with bites, while your tentmates are unscathed.

You’re not alone. An estimated 20 percent of people, it turns out, are especially delicious for mosquitoes, and get bit more often on a consistent basis. And while scientists don’t yet have a cure for the ailment, other than preventing bites with insect repellent (which, we’ve recently discovered, some mosquitoes can become immune to over time), they do have a number of ideas regarding why some of us are more prone to bites than others. Here are some of the factors that could play a role:

…

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Exercise and Metabolism

In addition to carbon dioxide, mosquitoes find victims at closer range by smelling the lactic acid, uric acid, ammonia and other substances expelled via their sweat, and are also attracted to people with higher body temperatures. Because strenuous exercise increases the buildup of lactic acid and heat in your body, it likely makes you stand out to the insects. Meanwhile, genetic factors influence the amount of uric acid and other substances naturally emitted by each person, making some people more easily found by mosquitos than others.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-do-mosquitoes-bite-some-people-more-than-others-10255934/?no-ist

This explains a lot. But I also get bitten when I’m just walking around casually. I must have the particular chemical signals that make mosquitoes bite some people more than others.

[cvcalhoun]

When I grew up, we spent summers in Maine, in which the mosquito is the state bird. The first summer, everyone got thousands of mosquito bites. The second summer started the same, but by the end of the summer, we’d still get bitten, but the red welts wouldn’t show up any more. Each summer after that, the welts would stop showing up earlier in the summer, until finally they never showed up. Decades later, I still don’t get them. So take heart–after a few million more bites, you’ll stop noticing thrm!

[PotomacCyclist]

I think we need to get some spam repellent for the forum too. The spammers have been showing up every weekend this summer.

[Author]

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