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@eminva 7239 wrote:

Congrats to you on your accomplishment and big congrats to your wife on hers!

Let us know if there is any way we can support your fundraising ventures.

Liz

Thanks everyone for all the nice remarks. The PMC truly is a world class event and the trip home was a really challenging and adventuresome way to put an exclamation point on it.

For any one who may be interested in donating to our PMC fund, I have happily posted the links below. We recently broke the $10,000 mark, which is way more than we could have hoped for but every little bit helps when it comes to cancer research, and especially rare cancers like sarcomas.

For reference, the main PMC page is http://www.pmc.org – very inspiring. Our team page where you can make a donation as well as read a bit more back story about my wife and her ordeal and how things are going now is here – Team Puddin’ Thieves: http://www.pmc.org/profile/TP0132

Also, I’m also slowly writing up a crazyguyonabike journal about the PMC and my trip so that is where I will post pictures and a narrative of the trip in all its stages from planning to training to doing. http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/express

Thanks so much!
Chris

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I thought it had more to do with people being trained to walk along highways with no sidewalk against the flow of traffic so you can see hazards (cars coming at you) more easily. The distinction between walking and cycling to these people isn’t that great, so then they use that training on the bike.

Maybe it’s because they don’t know any different or it’s what they’re comfortable with. It is a real problem though that cycling advocates and the education folks are going to have to address sooner than later because like the OP said, I’m seeing it more and more too. I’ve come across more than one while in a car and it’s freaky to have some riding toward you. Even having direction arrows painted in the bike lanes don’t seem to help.

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I made it home yesterday afternoon and was amazed at how beautiful the weather was in the area. What a difference a week makes!

The PMC last weekend was good. I didn’t see Lance, and aside from the heavy, heavy downpours last Sunday we had a good time. The trip home I started last Monday. I survived all the climbing by taking shorter days when I needed it. Overall I rode 10 straight days (not highly recommended) and covered approximately 750 miles.

Now it’s back to work while attempting to suppress my voracious appetite.

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Wow, thanks for the eye opening posts. My wife just renewed our AAA membership for the year… does anyone know if they refund any money for cancellations?? I’d like to look into this BWC instead. Is it just DC area? Or is it nationwide?

The main reason we started up with AAA was because for a few years recently I was driving a very used 1994 Honda, and the possibility of a break-down was more likely than I wanted to believe. It’s great to know that there are alternatives though! I love that they’ll help you with bike problems too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left the house on a long ride and 30-50 miles out realized I didn’t have my mini-pump on me etc. I’ve been pretty lucky in the past.

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@Greenbelt 6641 wrote:

I used to stretch when I was younger and my muscles did.

Whoah, there’s a like button! Clicked it by accident. Not that I did NOT like your post, but just an accident.

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I’ve been practicing ashtanga yoga for a few years now. It’s a slightly more active yoga from what I hear. We only stay in individual postures for ~5 breaths or so. It’s great though! It requires a good balance of strength, flexibility and endurance.

In the morning, I feel pretty stiff -like I can touch my knees- then I’ll do a few sun salutes and voila, I can grab my toes. On the scale of yogis, that’s still remarkably inflexible but pretty good compared to the average American adult.

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If you want some long distance ride options this fall, there’s also the DC Randonneurs (http://www.dcrand.org). All the hard core randonneurs are gearing up for Paris-Brest-Paris right now, but starting in August they’ll run one 200K ride/month through December.

I am too slow to ride 200 miles in a day so congrats to you insane folks that did the Total 200! For next year I’m going to try to work up to a 300K. Last fall I did my first 200K brevet so I’m slowly working up to riding 100+ miles on a regular basis.

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I’m not too familiar with riding into the city from Silver Spring, but I lived in downtown Silver Spring for a few years. There was a guy in my building who commuted downtown and he took 14th Street. It has bike lanes pretty much the whole way. Beach Drive would probably be the most direct to Dupont Circle but on weekdays I don’t think that would be a good idea.

I tried out the 14th Street route while heading down to Alexandria on a Saturday morning a while back and it was a pretty good ride. A couple of blocks looked a little shady but nothing too bad.

There are probably 100 decent routes to get to 14th Street from the Forest Glen area.

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@OneEighth 5361 wrote:

35 mph on the Custis trail?

Yeah really… were you on the trail?

One of my favorite places to break the 40mph barrier is on River Road heading east between Seneca and Potomac. There are 2 really good hills there which, if the conditions are right I can get up to ~41.5 mph.

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@5555624 5339 wrote:

Oh, there was a time I was stopped by Catwoman and asked for directions…

Tell me that that was within a week of Halloween??

Unrelated to cycling, but one afternoon my wife and I were walking out of the lobby our of apartment building and saw 8 ft tall Bumblebee off of the Transformers standing in our path… we were a bit taken aback, but then we realized there were like 20 ten year olds running around and it was a birthday party.

It was actually a pretty sweet costume.

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Damn… my wife and I live right near there on 23rd Street. We ride in that area to get groceries and she’s been out on that empty road a few times practicing with her new clipless pedals.

We’ll definitely keep our eyes and ears open.

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Great topic. My wife began using them a couple of weeks ago so this is very good timing. She’s slowly working up the courage to go on a real ride with them. Otherwise, she has been sticking to the less traveled trails to get used to them and she thinks the whole idea is crazy.

What we did was go to a barren stretch of road near Crystal City and she practiced for an hour clipping in and out, riding with one foot clipped in, and then both, practicing stopping etc… it’s going pretty well. No falls yet.

I remember two of my 0 mph falls pretty vividly. One time was as I was pulling up to the bike rack in the garage at work. I was feeling good about myself and extra cool for riding in and I just forgot. Tiiimmmmbbbeeerrrr… The cool feeling instantly vanished.

The other time was in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the eastern shore with my wife. We stopped to wait for a car to clear a high-tide flooded section of road and I just leaned the wrong way. The driver gave me a nice thumbs up as he passed. It was pretty funny.

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@CCrew 4737 wrote:

My Fuji Cross Pro is still first choice for commuting and I run 32mm cross tires still.

That’s what I commute on too! My only problem with it is that being a bike designed for racing it doesn’t have the mounts for fenders, and I had to get an Old Man Mountain rack ($$) for it.

I love the bike, but when I got my custom IF Independence last year I realized how bad it really fits me. I got the largest size Fuji but I’m 6’5″ and it’s still pretty small for me.

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Isn’t it possible to report a license plate of a car where a driver may have been using it in a threatening or stupid manner even without causing any harm or an incident? If there is some sort of incident in the future then the police would have a record of past behavior on file. It may not be necessary in this case but I thought that was something you could do if you felt threatened.

Seems like ancient history now but last weekend I was out on a hundred miler heading west on River Road toward Poolesville where it crosses Seneca Creek. Some idiot pulled out of a side road to the left and completely cut me off. There’s no shoulder there and I had to stop really quickly so I wouldn’t get run off the road onto some really rough gravel/asphalt chunks. He saw me coming but decided to pull out into my path anyway! I was so dumbfounded and shocked at the time, all I could do was yell some profanities and give him a couple of birds once I was stopped. The only thing I remember was that it was a silver VW with a “I VT” sticker on the back.

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National just posted a temperature of 101 at 4pm so definitely take it easy out there! Yesterday I sprayed as much water on my head as I drank.

Storms are starting to pop now too so if you delay leaving keep an eye on the radar.

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