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@Greenbelt 13594 wrote:

A tax on surface parking, with revenues dedicated to rebuilding suburban roads as complete streets (with proper sidewalks, bike lanes and sidepaths) would be a start. Of course, I don’t recall hearing that idea in last night’s policy speeches… Rant over. (But follow the parking requirements… That’s where it all starts.)

Agreed. Free parking is certainly where it starts. From my personal experience, biking 13 miles round trip to work was a hell of a lot cheaper than the $10/day to park in Bethesda, or the $10/day to ride metro. My current situation is that parking at work in Suitland is free, and the prospect of riding 24 miles daily along major traffic arteries, through sketchy neighborhoods, over glass strewn side-streets (I have never seen so much glass along the roads as I see in SE DC and PG county) taking twice as long as the car doesn’t add up to the ease of simply driving to work and saving my riding for weekends and errands near my apartment. That and I’ve been doing 6am yoga in Tenleytown most mornings lately too. I’m gonna try to buck up and ride 2x/week once the days get a little longer but unfortunately there are too many things in favor of driving at the moment.

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@jabberwocky 13571 wrote:

Thats a failure of the environmental movement in general, IMO. They promote stuff like hybrid cars without really paying a lot of attention to getting people to simply drive less. I got into an argument with a coworker at my previous job who was berating me for driving my WRX (mpg=20 on a good day) and proudly stating that she was going to get a prius to consume less gas. I pointed out that I biked to work 90% of the time, and even if I was driving a hummer I’d be consuming far less gas a month than her. She said she couldn’t bike because she had a bad back. :rolleyes:

Wow, that’s a bold statement but I think there are initiatives out there to get people to drive less – like the 2mile challenge etc. Unfortunately people like yourself, and many others in this forum don’t understand how extremely lucky you are to be able to bike to work most of the time. I did it for 5 years in Montgomery county and even though it wasn’t easy, it certainly was better than driving or metro most of the time. For the vast majority of people though, it is simply not an option on a daily basis for a variety of reasons; therefore the need for fuel-efficient cars. It’s sad because if more people actually tried it they’d probably like it, or at least realize that it gets their sedentary fat asses some exercise. The fact remains though that humans are going to rely on cars for a long long time. The only thing that will change is the fuel.

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I also used bikewashington for my 3-day canal trip and found it to be pretty useful. And I just noticed that linked from the bikewashington site is a link to an app on itunes. Sheesh.

If you’re an iphone user, this may be useful!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/c-o-companion/id457469128?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

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Very nice!

My wife and I visit the Harris Teeter on Glebe Road and Shoppers at Potomac Yard on our bikes almost weekly. I agree with the 4.33 rating for the HT because it does have ample parking and it’s near the store entrance as well. He didn’t mention though that the exit out the back of the garage has a really steep ramp, which you have to be in, or prepared to shift to your lowest gear pretty quickly, especially if you’re carrying a couple of panniers full of stuff.

I guess the Shoppers about a half-mile south of there in the Potomac Yard is in Alexandria? My review on that is that the store has basically no designated bike parking, although there are lots of steel pipes near the front doors where one can lock up their bike. A rack would be nice, but I suppose it’s not necessary.

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Wow, thanks for all of the great ideas for stopping places! This is such a good idea, I can’t believe I haven’t done this before. I’ve been out to P-ville at least a dozen times but I usually only stop at 7-11s and Quiznos. I already suggested to me wife we make an overnight trip out to P-ville this spring eating lots of good food on the way. It looks like the only places to stay are B&Bs a few miles from the town center, but that’s ok. Taking the ferry on the way back to Poolesville could add a bit of excitement as well.

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I’ve done tours in Scotland, Nova Scotia, and a few tours in the northeast/mid-atlantic, and I can say that they’re all great places to go as well. Recently I did some research into La Route Verte in Quebec because I’d like to take my wife up there sometime, and it seems really nice too.

One resource I would recommend for any information related to bike touring across the world is http://www.crazyguyonabike.com. On that site people post journals of tours they’ve done, or are doing and they range from 2-3 day mini-tours to cross country trips, to multiple times around the world spanning a few years. It’s great because people post pictures from all corners of the globe giving you a glimpse of what life is like in a place you’re probably really unlikely to ever go. There are definitely some great journals about the New Zealand/Australia area, in fact I was looking at one couples’ trip across the Nullarbor plain in western Australia just a couple of days ago.

When you figure things out, I’d be very interested to hear what you come up with!

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@btj 12481 wrote:

If there is a change of clothes out of my biking gear, a significant amount of time between (i.e. multiple hours), or for some lucky people, a shower, I consider that the end of one trip. My commute to and from work has 8+ hours in between them and a change into work clothes so I counted that as two trips.

I completely see your point about the change of clothes, multiple hours in between rides etc and how a commute could logically be counted as two rides, however, I just don’t feel like a ride is completed until I’m back at home, or if I’m on a tour, my bike and I are at our final destination for the day. It’s hard to explain, but maybe consider it as the work is still not done for the day, and there is still some riding left to do, so the ride isn’t quite over yet.

On the other hand, to compare with CaBi data, any individual trip where one would re-rack the bike at a station to go on with their day – like a ride to work or home, should probably be treated as individual trips like you have done.

I never really considered total trips to be an important piece of information to track before though so I never put much actual thought into it until now. For the past few years I just add up the total miles for a bike on a given day no matter how many separate rides it was.

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Added my data. I counted my commutes as one ride because my spreadsheet for tracking mileage is daily, so you can’t log two rides in one day. I only commuted like 10 times though so it shouldn’t make a huge difference. Also, many of my trips are 2-3 mile trips to the grocery store and back so they’re not very significant mileage wise, but technically a trip, and one where I would have driven otherwise. Overall, I ended up averaging about 34miles/ride.

I’m planning on commuting more this year, not necessarily to save time or money (unless gas prices explode), but partly because I miss it, and partly because the hill up Mass Ave between Minnesota and Alabama in Southeast is excellent for getting back in shape!

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Great idea! I’ll send the data as soon as I get home from my final ride tomorrow.

Also, if you need or want any help with data let me know. I have this weird love of playing with data in spreadsheets and making graphs etc…

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Congrats on going big for your first major group ride! You could have done a 60 mile Diabetes ride and been happy but this one should give you memories to last a lifetime. The ride itself sounds really cool and it’s a cause after my own heart, having a Master’s in climate science and all… so sad these days how scientists and years of research are treated like garbage just because some talking heads on tv consider themselves experts. Best of luck! Do you know what route you’ll be taking? I rode from Boston to DC in August and there was some really cool countryside in NJ and eastern PA that I wasn’t expecting.

My wife, her sister and I raised more than $10,000 for Sarcoma research at Dana Farber this year through the PMC, but most of it was from family, friends and coworkers. We did NOT have much luck with social media for some reason. Maybe we don’t have the right kind of friends like Dirt. This year we’ll need to raise more like $12,000 so we’ll have to figure out some new sources of funds.

I’ll be interested to hear updates on how training is going and how you’re feeling as it gets closer.

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On my Sunday evening commute home ~6-6:30 I saw several ninjas on the MVT between 395 and the Crystal City spur.

Can’t really say that they resembled any specific species of ninja, but there were a bunch of the let’s watch the airplanes in the dark ninjas at gravelly point, and I saw a couple of ninja cyclists heading north near the train bridge where it’s really dark! They didn’t have a single light on them, so I’m not sure how they could actually be riding. They must have been the oops, it got dark earlier than I thought and now we’re screwed ninja. Saw a few joggers too, but most of them had the minutest little reflective pin stripes on their shorts/shirts that they can’t be considered ninjas.

So as I come up to an on-coming person. If I look down enough so that my headlamp only illuminates them up to their waist as I pass, I’m not blinding them correct?

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I really liked riding on the left in Scotland. I think we as a nation should reverse all of our driving lanes. j/k

You won’t get any cycling infrastructure ideas out of Nova Scotia. They don’t even know what a shoulder is up there. Even on the 100Kph highways!

I don’t see the appeal of mixing buses and bikes. On the rare occasions that I do have to mix it up with buses a lot of time those guys really don’t care whether you’re there or not. Even if they know they have to make a stop within 50 yards, they’ll pull ahead of you and then veer to the right as they go by. Then you have to pass them again. It’s extremely annoying.

I think wider trails separating bike lanes from ped/jogger lanes would be useful. It’s not feasible everywhere, but we all know that the trails in this area are getting seriously crowded and as the trails fill with people many cyclists will get squeezed out – getting frustrated having to yield to peds/joggers/etc all the time on the trails, and then not being confident enough to ride significant miles on the busy roads. That will just lead to more drivers.

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I don’t know anything about triathlons but a friend of mine did this event this year and had a good time(fun, not fast).

It’s in Purcellville and instead of swimming in the river the swim snakes through a pool with a time-trial like start. They start you by estimated swimming speed, so that faster folks go first and the slow people don’t stack everyone up. It works in theory…

http://www.active.com/triathlon/purcellville-va/tri-the-valley-sprint-triathlon-2012-my482

Anyway, an option if you’re interested and skeeved out by swimming in the Potomac.

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@CCrew 11599 wrote:

But to directly answer the Potomac question, you’re good until another arm grows out of your back :p

Wouldn’t another arm be a good thing? At least on the swim leg? The more oars in the boat, the faster you can go. Heh.

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On my way to the AM sweatfest called yoga I have to drive through that intersection. And considering that a good 36% of all forum posts are about how much people hate the Lynn St death trap, I get anxious every time. I usually come up form the 66 ramp around 6:15, then make a right toward the Key Bridge.

I fortunately haven’t seen many peds or cyclists out, but I think today I creepingly kinda cut off a jogger who came up the intersection then turned left to go south on Lynn St. I stopped, then crept up to turn right on red, and he went behind me. So how guilty should I feel? Heh. In my defense, I’m almost certain I got to the corner before he did.

Anyway, at least you know there’s at least one driver who tries to be hyper vigilant while going through that intersection.

Side note – On Monday I believe it was, I saw a girl on a CaBi bike riding in a traffic lane on the Key Bridge heading toward VA. It was dark and a little foggy, she didn’t have a helmet, and the lights on those bikes are NOT bright. She kind of had the look on her face like, I should have taken the sidewalk.

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