My Morning Commute

[Powerful Pete]

@dkel 91346 wrote:

… snip… would use a regular phillips head screw instead of a hex head is beyond me. I guess I’ll have to start carrying screwdrivers and box wrenches now… snip…

Don’t you carry a multi tool with you? Always useful [SmartA$$ mode off].

As an example…

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6321[/ATTACH]

[Greenbelt]

.

[Greenbelt]

15th St NW, southbound at Rhode Island in DC

[Brendan von Buckingham]

That’s an excellent illustration of why drivers freak out about cyclist behavior at stops signs. We all know the attitude: if a cyclist goes through a stop sign without stopping, the world is going to end. Well, that’s actually close to true for cars. It only takes one or two cars to gridlock an intersection. There’s a razor edge margin between order and chaos at a 4-way stop (if you’re driving a car). If a car doesn’t obey the protocol at a stop sign, gridlock can ensue. But how many bikes would it take to gridlock an intersection? 50? 100?

[jrenaut]

I’ve said it before – if you posted police officers all along 15th at rush hour, you could rebuild DC entirely of gold with the ticket revenue. Your only problem would be you could only do enforcement for five minutes at a time or else the lines of cars and bikes pulled over, waiting for tickets, would stretch into MD and VA.

Of course, DC has decided to take the opposite approach and never ever ticket there for anything or even acknowledge that the road exists.

[mstone]

@bobco85 91328 wrote:

…cannot process…

…so many people blocking the box! How did you all get through there? It looks like the red SUV would have had to stay put (as punishment) while you went around the silver minivan. Of course, this is assuming they didn’t decide to just press forward using their weight.

…Seriously, did all of you drivers expect to make it through the intersection at that point? The stupidity, it hurts!

I checked with Cortland Milloy and it turns out that’s OK because motorists who are close enough to the intersection or who have already been waiting as long as they feel like have a constitutional right to enter the intersection. (He said pretty much anything is OK on the road, as long as you’re in a car. But this one time a cyclist jumped a light at an empty cruising, and boy did that burn his biscuits.)

[mstone]

@Brendan von Buckingham 91356 wrote:

That’s an excellent illustration of why drivers freak out about cyclist behavior at stops signs. We all know the attitude: if a cyclist goes through a stop sign without stopping, the world is going to end. Well, that’s actually close to true for cars. It only takes one or two cars to gridlock an intersection.

That can’t be it. I used to live near Tysons and 123 would gridlock several times a week because of jackholes entering the intersection before it was clear and getting stuck after the light change. Yet I never saw crazy editorials on the topic or motorists ranting about all motorists, etc. No, the anti-cyclist rhetoric is nothing but a power trip, or fear of change, and it’s pointless to try to rationalize it.

[Greenbelt]

@mstone 91361 wrote:

No, the anti-cyclist rhetoric is nothing but a power trip, or fear of change, and it’s pointless to try to rationalize it.

People have invested so much in their isolated suburban car dependent fear-of-everything lifestyles. Now that things are changing, and the next generation isn’t so fearful and is not necessarily supportive of the fear based car bubble life and isn’t necessarily hunkering down, but instead is asking for public accommodations for a less afraid-all-the-time lifestyle, and the economy of the suburbs is stagnating while the economies of less car dependent city places are booming in spite of the huge public investment in suburban highways and car-only road space, the car-all-the-time people are freaking out. It’s culture shock to some extent, but also the shock of a huge investment that is slowly going bad.

[rcannon100]

It’s also tribalism. It’s “Us” against “Them.” Where “Us” is conveniently defined as whoever we are and “them” is whoever we dont like. It can be cars versus taxis. It can be trucks versus buses. It can be suburban versus urban. It can be WAshington and Lee HS versus Yorktown. It can be people in tin hats versus people who wear spandex.

Humans are instinctively tribal and they are quick to draw lines between who is Us and who is Them, particularly when Them is inconveniencing us even slightly.

[Powerful Pete]

@rcannon100 and Greenbelt, all good points. Also, I suspect that there is a twinge of jealousy/resentment that we are doing things “right” in terms of our own health and impact on traffic/environment/financials.

Also, for those of a certain generation they are unable to see the bicycle as anything beyond something that small children would ride in their driveway. They simply cannot grasp that an adult would willingly ride a bicycle for transportation (they can almost conceive of it as a fitness/sport tool, but I suspect that there is a large subset who view cycling as a foreign invasion of some sort).

This leads to hostility in and of itself, without even needing to add on the bits about “cyclists as scofflaws” and all the rest.

N.B. I have been told, several times while living in the US, to stop cycling and take up an “American” sport (this has invariably occurred at a red light). All the more humorous that I am not an American…

[KLizotte]

@Powerful Pete 91371 wrote:

N.B. I have been told, several times while living in the US, to stop cycling and take up an “American” sport (this has invariably occurred at a red light). All the more humorous that I am not an American…

Just start speaking Italian when that happens

[baiskeli]

@KLizotte 91375 wrote:

Just start speaking Italian when that happens

Or, if you noticed that they drive a foreign-made car, say “maybe you should get an American car.” If the car is an American model, mention that the automobile was invented in Germany.

[Powerful Pete]

@baiskeli, LOL. Mostly older gentlemen in Crown Vics or other larger US made sedans.

@KLizotte, I believe they would assume I am speaking Spanish.

On a slightly less polemic note, another fabulous commute into work. M Street FTW, along with the fantasticly pleasant weather.

May this atypical DC summer continue to be atypical!

[jrenaut]

I got about 80% of the way to work this morning before I realized I forgot my laptop. Since pretty much my entire job occurs on that laptop, being at work without it is not terribly productive.

Good thing I bike to work and it’s gorgeous out, otherwise I might have been upset.

[cyclingfool]

Great commute in this AM after a nervous commute home last night. Nervous last night because what had felt like a slight wobble in my rear wheel felt way worse when I rode out for lunch yesterday. Upon closer inspection, I had a few ridiculously loose spokes. Not sure how they’d gotten like that; I just gave the spokes a good once over a couple weeks ago to check they all seemed to be under tension. I’m going to chalk the fact that nothing broke on the wheel to the double butted spokes I used to build it up and the overly strong rim choice I made. Anyway, I put a little tension in the worst of the spokes before leaving work yesterday afternoon and nursed my bike home, willing it to make it w/o breaking any spokes. It did, and so last night, I sat down with the wheel, my “truing stand” (currently an old hybrid frame with some cut zip ties for feeler gauges), tools, and a good Nerdist podcast and completely trued/dished/retensioned the wheel.

It felt so much better this morning… obviously. No wiggle in the back. Between that and the nice weather, I felt compelled to take a very long way in to work, which involved some back streets in my neighborhood, Crystal City, Boundary Channel Drive, the MVT up to 66 and crossing the bridge that way. Stretched my usual 7-7.5 mile commute into 10 and wanted to do a lap or two around the Mall, but was already a little late for work, so I reluctantly stopped at the office. Man, what a beautiful day! (I don’t say that often at the end of July!) 😎

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