[Brendan von Buckingham]

I work at DC’s building permit center. The day it happened, one of my semi-regular contractors said he was at the scene. I don’t think he witnessed it, but I’ll double check next time I see him. He said it was by the cathedral and that he was right behind the pick up truck that was involved.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

@DS re: Lynn and Wilson. I always hug the passenger side of left turning cars and make the turn parallel with them. Never had any of the Police at the semi-regular enforcement net there do a double-take. They’re too busy pulling over cars.

As to the original post, I do 1, 2 and 3 like Hoppy with the addendums that checking for clearance means checking for pedestrians too, I’m always prepared to swallow the ticket for my actions, “blow through” to me means coasting to under 5 mph and a double triple check there’s nothing coming.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Thanks for the link. That’s good info for her.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I went through about 8:30. Didn’t see it happen. He was sitting up on the NE corner sidewalk with a bunch of people attending to him. He was in civies and looked like he was in pain. Knee injury makes sense, but I wouldn’t discount broken leg.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Ugh, yesterday was my first taste of the side effect of the widened, buffered bike lane on this section of Wilson: driver lunacy. No matter how wide and buffered they make the bike lane it will still get blocked by buses, FedEx trucks, right turners, cows, double-parkers and you name it. Especially right at Courthouse where it seems like half the cars split across the green lane to get to the municipal parking. That’s where I move over and take the next lane, otherwise I have nowhere else to go.

So yesterday, even though traffic was crawling at 10 mph and I wasn’t splitting lanes, this lunatic woman in a Saab pulls along side of me in the left lane and starts shrieking at me to get in the bike lane and that I was “ruining it for the rest of us.” We stopped next to each other at the light at Courthouse Road. She was a machine gun of hysterical curse words that would give a sailor blush. She was so worked up she was literally bouncing up and down in her seat. There was no way she was ever going to hear anything I could possibly ask or tell her, so I just showed her a picture of my son, which I keep on my lanyard. Her response was a new one I hadn’t heard before: “You can’t make me feel bad if I kill you.” I’ve been around enough to know that’s true for the the most dangerous drivers out there, they feel entitled to no responsibility in an accident. But people usually aren’t so evil as to actually say it out loud. She sure showed me though: she peeled out at the green and raced through the merging traffic at the construction zone on Rhodes Hill at 45 mph.

The truth is, the “nicer” they make a bike lane, the more we’re expected to stay in it.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

The paving season is closing and Marshall Drive is still a patchwork of temporary macadam. I don’t think any engineers on the job have figured out that there a spring or water outlet in the saddle between the two hills right on the center line. It’s constantly outletting water and the crews on the job are always plugging it with new macadam only to have the water pop it out. They need a better solution. At least they mowed back the summer’s worth of tall grass at Marshall & 110.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Reading threads like this makes me just want a road bike.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I was camera banged on Alaska Ave too!

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/28978054@N00/8014450240/in/photostream

[Brendan von Buckingham]

@Certifried 32021 wrote:

I don’t recall seeing anything about T-shirts, sort of mad at myself for not going to the after party and getting one I was, in my defense, completely wiped out. Awesome and challenging ride that I had not expected to finish.

edit: damn, my fault I didn’t read

You see I was the opposite. It was all about the t-shirt for me. I’ve worn it 41 hours straight and counting.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

That was fun. Let’s do it again next week. Just some random thoughts and observations.

Cyclists were above average in terms of protocol compared to some other open rides I’ve been on. Sidewalk jumpers were still there. Cyclists in the back using the sidewalk to cut to the front are my biggest pet peeve in the first few miles.

50 and 13 got intermingled around NJ, LA and DE. Right after that on D St NE I interacted with three different groups. Not one followed the cue sheet correctly, including me.

My group completely fumbled WA. Turned hard right onto South Cap instead of continuing straight on Canal.

Of all the neighborhoods, the neighbors in SE are always my favorite.

Lost another group who turned right on MN instead of jughandling a right to really go left.

Was there really a Nazi rally and counter-protesters near Eastern Market?

It’s good to have friends on IL.

University Terrace after AZ is hard enough, but teenagers laughing at you as they fly downhill and you stomp and wheez uphill is not cool. Little turds.

Close second was Cathedral Ave before ID. It’s cruel you have to skip the first chance to get on ID.

Best moment? The marshal who thought I was 20 and didn’t believe I was 40. Thanks kid.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

@TwoWheelsDC 31874 wrote:

Check your spam folder…that’s where mine was.

D’oh! There it was. I’m cognitively exhausted. A 60-mile ride will fix that.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Thanks. I got my registration confirmation email on 8/24, but nothing since then.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I’m registered for tomorrow’s ride, but don’t see anything about where check-in is. All I can find is “Adams Morgan.” Am I crazy? Where’s check in for the 50 States tomorrow.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I was thinking more like Mark Twain in “Life on the Mississippi.” Here, a young man who is trying to learn how to be a river boat pilot is in the company of veterans. He’s realizing he has to memorize every bend, sandbar and tree banch in the ever changing river. I feel the same way about the pavement, curbs and sightlines of my commute. The insider speak of the pilots sounds like a bunch of cyclist insider speak too.

We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip. There were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in our great pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborate shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots. They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots. The others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall felt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.

I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say torpid. I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel when it was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest that stood nearest did that when occasion required—and this was pretty much all the time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the scant water. I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the hope all out of me. One visitor said to another—

‘Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?’

‘It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boys on the “Diana” told me; started out about fifty yards above the wood pile on the false point, and held on the cabin under Plum Point till I raised the reef—quarter less twain—then straightened up for the middle bar till I got well abreast the old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then got my stern on the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the point, and came through a-booming—nine and a half.’

‘Pretty square crossing, an’t it?’

‘Yes, but the upper bar ‘s working down fast.’

Another pilot spoke up and said—

‘I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from the false point—mark twain—raised the second reef abreast the big snag in the bend, and had quarter less twain.’

One of the gorgeous ones remarked—

‘I don’t want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that’s a good deal of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.’

There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on the boaster and ‘settled’ him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking. Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, ‘Now if my ears hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and islands and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes that can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the piloting business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it.’

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I work in SW, so you’re on my turf. I think I St is a better crossing point for S. Cap. Traffic is heavy on the SW side because of the long queue to use the DMV. The SE side is wide open and gets you to NJ Ave easy as pie.

Once you get the commute route nailed down you’ll see its big advantage over Metro. Your bike commute will be the same time almost no matter what. Maybe it will vary by 5 minutes. Metro on the other hand is an untied shoelace away from being on time or 30 minutes late. I can’t stand the unpredictability of Metro when I have to take it.

[Author]

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