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@Judd 181003 wrote:

I would be up for doing some rides in FFX, particularly if it is to get food and then let the business know that we are so happy to have been able to use a bike lane to get there.

If that includes riding the Beulah lanes down to Wegmans I’m up for that any day of the week! That way we can also experience the awfulness of the super narrow Van Dorn side trail as it goes up the hill from Eisenhower, under the train tracks, and over a slippery boardwalk under the beltway before the steep climb up Oakwood Dr. This leads to another question – How are people supposed to ride in Fairfax County when getting into it is more difficult than riding the bike lanes themselves?

On the other hand I was pleasantly surprised to see a repaving of the Mt. Vernon Memorial Hwy had the addition of bike lanes. And it looks like Rt 1 near Ft Belvoir has bike lanes now too. I want to try them out soon too.

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@arlrider 180458 wrote:

An absolute figure just begging to be normalized by a population size…would not surprise me if the scooters were in fact more dangerous per mile or hour of use. Of course, they’re also early in the adoption curve and there has been little policy work directed at them, so it would be expected that these would be the subject of relatively more incidents than a more mature technology with established policy and infrastructure.

They also may already surpass bicycles with regard to embarrassingly bad “journalism”…. like this story from Cleveland.com. https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/08/woman_riding_electric_scooter.html

You wouldn’t know it from the headline, but the driver of the car was 19 and drunk! And it ends with this brilliant bit – “The scooters have been known to cause injuries to their riders in 32 other American cities where they’ve appeared over the past year.”

Yeah! Injuries tend to happen when you get drunk and mow people down in your cars!

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Best of luck on the Mt Washington race! That’s a beast! I hiked up it last fall with my nephews and it was awesome (Tuckerman Ravine).

The Whiteface race has been on my radar for a while, but I have yet to gather the courage to try. I am encouraged that they have a Clydesdale category at least.

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Avoiding River Road from Potomac is pretty easy. You can go down Persimmon Tree to MacArthur Blvd and make your way toward the Capitol Crescent Trail or Georgetown that way.

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It may be outside the scope, but I mentioned the bike detector on Commonwealth at Mt Vernon is terrible and only works sometimes.

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Ok, so thanks for the replies. They couldn’t really be more different in terms of products. And incidentally I don’t have any of those specific things already. The replies also tells me a lot – mostly that I’ve been thinking about this WAY too hard. Something is probably better than nothing.

I’ll see if the local hardware store has anything like white lightning. I would guess it will be a lot longer lasting than either chain lube or multipurpose grease.

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If you have your own mounted chainsaw you should be able to go around the simulated downed trees.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18147[/ATTACH]
For natural disasters

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For zombie disasters

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Something like this came up recently with Bobco, so I wanted to get it on here as a PSA as well.

Last week on the W&OD heading eastbound at Sunrise Valley Rd in Reston. I came up to the intersection and stopped as a city bus pulled up to a bus stop right before the W&OD intersection. Since it’s 2 lanes each way, I was paying attention to traffic on the inner lane which wasn’t exactly easy because the bus was mostly blocking my view. I caught a glimpse of 2 cars coming fast over the hill. Then I catch the bus driver’s eye and he starts waving me across the intersection. What the actual hell dude! I know you didn’t check your mirrors. I know you don’t know about the 2 drivers that are coming to kill me if I actually listened to you. In that situation I could easily imagine a tired, less experienced cyclist just assume this bus driver knows what he’s doing and “proceed as directed” and get killed by the 2 cars they can’t see. That guy was a dumbass, and I gestured as such after he finally checked his mirrors when he saw I wasn’t moving.

The PSA part – When you come across a Helpy McHelperton who’s happy to wave you through an intersection, don’t ever assume they know what’s going on. It is YOUR body on the line, not theirs. And even if you hold them up a few extra seconds by being cautious don’t ever cross any road where you haven’t made sure yourself that it’s clear. Especially at 2-lane crossings – GW Parkway for example, and in this case Sunrise Valley Rd. Thanks.

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Which route did y’all do?

All this enthusiasm is getting my interest piqued.

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@lordofthemark 178976 wrote:

It had to happen. Was laughing too hard to remember to get a pic. Today, at about 5:30, there was a car heading southeast in the PBL, about to exit it at 7th Street. Several people were laughing at the dude driving on a sidewalk.

Goddamn, really!? In no way, does that resemble a road. Wow. So now I’m guessing the next step will be to install bollards to make even more obstacles to weave around, in addition to all the pedestrians…. 😡

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The Chaise Lounge race is the Michigan Coast to Coast – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Iw9vVrJxk. FF to 2:05

If heat is a problem for you, then this may be a race to do instead.

EDIT: And thanks to Sunyata’s race report I learned that the Chaise appears at many events, including DK! I wonder why the Michigan race seems to have better lounge advertising?

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@mstone 179002 wrote:

the cleat alignment kinda depends on your feet/knees–if I rode a couple of miles with my cleats aligned like you describe, I wouldn’t be able to walk the next day. what you’re calling “wrong” in the picture is likely correct for the person wearing the shoes.

a good starting point for alignment is to sit on something where your feet can just dangle and see which way they point; set the cleats so that your feet point at the same angle relative to the pedals as they did to the edge of the thing you sat on. many (most?) people will find that their feet don’t point exactly straight ahead.

Yeah, I’m a good example of that. My left foot is really pigeon toed, and I think it all stems my hip being messed up somehow. So I can’t align my left cleat straight, but I definitely need to tweak something. I did more googling last night and found this as well from cptips.com…. This was the only thing I could find so far that addressed foot position on the pedal/cleat position wrt anterior knee pain.

Knee Pain: Anterior (see chondromalacia below)

Causes
pushing BIG gears – cadence too low
saddle too low or too far forward
foot too far forward on the pedal
crank arms too long
leg length discrepancy with seat set for shorter leg

Possible solutions
ride at 75 rpm or higher
raise seat (in small increments of less than 5mm) or move seat back
move cleat forward 1 to 2 mm
shorten crank arms by 2.5 cm
set seat for longer, not shorter, leg with correction for the shorter leg

I’ll try moving my cleat forward this evening.

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LOL to the tween kid who, on a rough section of trail put his feet out instead of standing up… I can’t imagine that must have felt too good on the tush!

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Reviving an old thread cause I got the bees!

I recently got new shoes. The same brand as another pair but half a size smaller. I put on the cleats using the older shoes as a guide but something is off. It’s patella pain, which I know well from years of volleyball. Amalitza suggested maybe heels out too far. Any other thoughts??

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Why would someone do a ride like that without some sort of sunglasses or at least clear lenses to protect your eyes from gravel and dust?

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The link doesn’t work for me. Is it correct?

Thanks!

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