[cvcalhoun]

Here is a direct link to the video.

[cvcalhoun]

Yeah, I think it’s a combination of their working on the site to eliminate the bugs in time for the challenge, and lots of people signing up at the last moment. But I’m glad to have you on our team!

@KLizotte 83948 wrote:

I just tried the link you sent again and now it is working! I have now joined. Lots of bugs in the website or perhaps they have been overloaded with people signing up at the last minute.

[cvcalhoun]

I’ve written to NBC, asking that the Maryland suburbs be added to WABA. Is there anyone on the WABA side who could help with this? I understand that they can’t put all the DC suburbs into WABA, because Virginia has its own organizations, but there really seems to be no reason to exclude the Maryland suburbs–including WABA members like me–from WABA’s local challenge.

[cvcalhoun]

Are you sure you are logged in to the National Bike Challenge site? The search button is there for me when logged in, but not when logged out. I know we’ve had issues from time to time with people getting unexpectedly logged out after they have logged in.

@KLizotte 83936 wrote:

No, the only join button on that page takes me to the initial registration page for the overall website, not for joining an individual team. I watched their YouTube video of how to join a team and that is how I learned that a section of a webpage is missing that is supposed to show you available options on what to search for.

[cvcalhoun]

Can you join by going directly to the team page, https://nationalbikechallenge.org/team/4296, and clicking the “Join” button?

@KLizotte 83933 wrote:

I just tried to join the team but the search feature is not working. Sigh.

[cvcalhoun]

But what I suggested was a multi-pronged effort, including enforcement measures. In the case of motorists, we don’t write laws saying what the speed limit is, and then assume they will behave sensibly. We put up signs and try to make sure the speed limits are sensible for conditions and set up barriers (timed traffic lights, speed bumps) to discourage violations and choose to ignore minor violations and have police patrols out there giving people tickets for bigger violations. I suspect that if we just left it to motorists to find out what the law was regarding speed limits and took none of those other measures, we’d have as many motorists doing 90 mph on the Beltway as we now have cyclists running red lights.

With cyclists, we rarely do any of that, and never do all of it. On the one hand, we rarely have police ticketing people even for the most reckless behavior. On the other, we have a whole lot of intersections in which the needs of bicyclists are ignored altogether–e.g., having bicyclists start up at the same time as cars so that they will get clobbered by right-turning cars that don’t see them, or having lights that will change only if a car (but not a bicycle) arrives at the intersection.

I seriously doubt that the innate character of cyclists is all that much different than the innate character of motorists. In fact, I suspect that the very same people who breeze through red lights as cyclists don’t do so as motorists. What we have is a system in which violations by motorists are dealt with by coming up with a comprehensive effort to figure out how to curb the violations and no generalized hostility toward motorists, while violations by cyclists are dealt with by generalized hostility toward all cyclists and no real effort to figure out how to solve the problem.

@KLizotte 83826 wrote:

I appreciate the sentiment but given how many (read: the vast majority) of cyclists who ignore the lights (and the signs at every intersection informing them to follow the ped signals) on the 15th St cycletrack, I have little hope that we can count on our fellow cyclists to act sensibly.

In fact, I was getting a little annoyed the last time I used the cycletrack at rush hour because I didn’t want to have to deal with a grisly accident.* I also had a cyclist almost go up my backside because I stopped at the red light and cursed me out for it. Sigh.

If we can’t even act predictable, alert and legal (PAL) amongst ourselves on the cycletrack….

*The reason cyclists are instructed to follow the ped signals is because the cars can turn left on green arrows and cyclists were flying thru on the green arrows without looking right.

[cvcalhoun]

I think you mean me, not dasgeh? There was a response to your post over there from Jakob (the guy who seems to be fixing things), asking when the last ride you tried to sync was. I checked your Strava records, and answered him, so I’m hoping he’ll have a response for you soon.

@Steve O 83831 wrote:

Dasgeh – I reported it at the link you gave.

[cvcalhoun]

This just confirms what I thought–I never pass or intersect with anyone else on Strava!

[cvcalhoun]

I don’t know how much of this is actually bad behavior by cyclists, and how much is the fact that so few people cycle. A motorist who sees a pedestrian doing something inconvenient for the motorist is probably a pedestrian at other times, and thus more likely a) to recognize that the action is legal, or b) to have some sympathy for why the pedestrian is doing it if it is not. By contrast, a cyclist is often assumed to be doing something illegal even when that is not the case. And people are far more censorious of cyclists who do things that are illegal but not unsafe (e.g., going through a red light when there is no traffic coming, which may actually be safer than trying to start up at the exact same time as the cars do) than they are of pedestrians who do the exact same thing.

We talk about making illegal actions by cyclists more “unacceptable.” But many times, just riding legally is already unacceptable to a lot of people. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been riding legally and carefully on the street, only to be told, “Get onto the sidewalk.” And if I ride legally and carefully on the sidewalk, I get, “Get onto the street.” If people learn that they will be yelled at whenever they ride, then they either stop riding or learn to ignore the yelling. And if they do the latter, social pressure becomes ineffective as a way of moderating behavior.

When drivers routinely violate laws, we look at why they are doing it, and try to change the conditions. For example, when violations of the speed limit are an issue, we set up speed traps (on major highways) or install speed bumps (in the subdivisions). We also ignore minor violations (driving a few miles over the speed limit) in favor of getting the ones that are an actual safety hazard. What we do not do is to treat all motorists badly because some violate the law, or to expect motorists to comply with the law simply out of the goodness of their hearts.

I would love to see the same thing happen with cyclists. On the running red lights thing, for example, let’s have green lights for bicyclists that start a few seconds before those for motorists, so that a bicyclist who waits for the green light won’t be risking getting hit by a car turning right that doesn’t see the cyclist. Let’s have tickets issued for people (pedestrians and cyclists) who go through red lights when there is traffic coming. And let’s treat pedestrians and cyclists who go through red lights when there is no traffic coming the same way, whether that means ticketing both or neither.

@KLizotte 83808 wrote:

^^The problem arises when a lot of cyclists behave badly and society decides to take away our “rights” because of the scofflaws. Or, people jump to conclusions, as humans are apt to do, and automatically assume a cyclist/driver will do XX because they have seen so many others do XX.

And remember that kids internalize how cyclists and drivers behave and learn from them.

I say be a good citizen and set a good example; there are real world externalities associated with good and bad behavior. Such is life.

[cvcalhoun]

Sigh! It seems to have been going up and down all day. It looks like it’s back up now, but I can’t make any guarantees about five minutes from now!

[cvcalhoun]

You can join by going to this link, and clicking the Join button. Of course, the site seems to be overloaded today, so it may take a few tries.

Or you can follow this video, which gives step-by-step instructions–and is actually based on our team:

[video=youtube_share;SyA_rGsHHck]http://youtu.be/SyA_rGsHHck[/video]

@Mikey 83805 wrote:

how do I join the Washington Area All-star team?
sorry if this has already been put out, I just find the website very hard to navigate.

thanks.

[cvcalhoun]

Can you please report this issue on the support forum at this link? I know they have been working hard to resolve the software problems that have been reported there.

@Steve O 83709 wrote:

Okay, so I was reluctant to join the NBC, because it was a hassle to manually log my rides in Endomondo after I had already uploaded them to Strava. NBC doesn’t use Strava.
Then the nice people on this thread told me how to use FitnessSyncer to sync Strava with MapMyRide, which would then automatically sync to NBC. Hassle free, right?

Well, I must be doing something wrong. It seems I got the sync from Strava to MMR to work (kind of – see below for weirdness). Now my Strava rides are automatically synced to MMR.

But nothing is showing up in NBC. I authorized the app just as discussed, and I can even click on the “Sync Now” button for MMR in the challenge. But it shows no miles; no rides. A big fat zero.

Please advise.

[cvcalhoun]

Yeah, FitnessSyncer has been working perfectly for me. I can force the sync, or if I just leave it alone, it syncs all by itself within a few hours.

NBC started out crediting MMF rides to the wrong day. Then it fixed that problem, and credited them correctly. But as of yesterday, my miles for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were not showing up on NBC, even though they were showing up on MMF, so it looks like NBC had some new bug. Jacob added it to the long list of bugs I’ve reported, and it looks like it was fixed within the past couple of hours. (I’m administrator for a league, a team, a workplace, and a school, so I get the privilege of finding all the bugs!)

@cyclingfool 83535 wrote:

I’ve had similar issues, although the data is eventually picked up, just not right away… more like w/in 12 hours or so. At least it’s crediting the synced miles to the right day once they do sync up.

But other uses for MMR data, like Earndit, are picking up the miles and syncing them instantly after I sync manually using FitnessSyncer.

[cvcalhoun]

Are your Strava rides not ending up on MapMyFitness, or are your MapMyFitness rides not showing up on NBC? FitnessSyncer seems to be working perfectly to get my Strava data to MapMyFitness. But in the past few days, NBC seems to have stopped picking up the MapMyFitness data, and I have a support request in on that.

@ShawnoftheDread 83346 wrote:

Fitness synced still doesn’t seem to work properly between strava and mapmyfitness, so I’m deleting that. I’ll just enter miles manually during the challenge.

[cvcalhoun]

I ended up putting my Bar Mitts back on.

@Rockford10 83376 wrote:

… would have been better with the full-fingered gloves I left at home.

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