[DCLiz]

The difference between Gainesville’s ride type and ours is fascinating. 91 percent of their rides are recreational, vs 49 percent of ours.

[DCLiz]

Hi Clinkey,

Welcome! I suggest joining our Women & Bicycles Facebook group. In recent weeks, people have been lent bikes for an afternoon or even a three-month stay. I bet you’ll be able to find a bike to borrow pretty quickly.

If not, Bike & Roll offers 21-speed comfort hybrids with step-through frames to rent (not sure whether WSD frames are available for their performance or road bikes). I probably have a discount card lying around if you’re interested.

[DCLiz]

Your monthly prize update: we finally have a winner! Two, even! Both All-stars (and both Matt). Congratulations to Matt Eggleton from Alexandria and Matt Holmes from Fairfax.

[DCLiz]

I got passed by a bike cop going south on the 15th Street Cycletrack, on the block before Pennsylvania. He called his pass: “This is where you’re supposed to have fun! Whee!” [He may or may not have actually said “Whee!”. -ed.]

[DCLiz]

The New York Times article says, “Citi Bike’s gender gap is part of a broader pattern among cyclists across the country; bike-share systems in Chicago and Washington also have more male riders” but doesn’t cite a source. I’m curious if CaBi releases any data with this sort of information, perhaps from their annual rider survey.

I would suspect we have more female ridership in DC due to better cycling infrastructure (I feel comfortable commuting to work because I can ride on safe on-street and protected lanes the whole way) and programs like Women & Bicycling.

[DCLiz]

June winners have been announced. Looks like the DC area got shut out again. I think the fix is in!

July prizes are up.

[DCLiz]

I was sidelined in mid-June due to a bad summer cold, but resumed commuting from Capitol Hill to downtown this week. I noticed the lights on Penn Ave seemed better–and indeed my commute times noticed as well–but I thought it might be because I was leaving a bit later in the morning. It turns out DDOT adjusted the timing to improve the ride for bicyclists! A woman in WABA’s Women & Bicycling group posted this letter she got in response to her complaint about the new timing.

The timing in the evening is better as well. [ATTACH=CONFIG]8984[/ATTACH]

[DCLiz]

@Mikey 118742 wrote:

You think it’s hot here, it must be hotter in Gainesville.

According to Weather.com:
Washington DC at 1:30 pm: 92 feels like 104
Gainesville FL at 1:30 pm: 91 feels like 98

[DCLiz]

How does a crime like this go unsolved? There’s no way that you hit two people and their bicycles, nearly killing one, and have no damage to your vehicle. More than one person is complicit in this hit-and-run.

[DCLiz]

I don’t think I saw this posted here: https://www.facebook.com/events/100295263647064/

Direct action Biketivism: Stop U-turns on Pennsylvania Ave
Thursday, July 9 at 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Join us as we create a human shield to protect those using the Pennsylvania Avenue cyclotrack. DDOT is finally installing park-it’s on most of the blocks, but has declined to add any protection to the 1300 and 1400 blocks, in order to continue to “study” the situation.

What we’re going to do is this:

-Gather as many people and bicycles as we can in Freedom Plaza.
-Line up alongside the cyclotrack with our bikes.

This will prevent cars from u-turning, and demonstrate the unacceptability of continuing to “study” protections without doing anything to actually protect people.

We want to be peaceful and respectful–so we will try to stay out of the way of those who are using the cyclotrack.

If you don’t have/ride a bike, please come and show your solidarity and support smart transit choices!

[DCLiz]

Interesting. Does the “vigorous shaking” render it, er, dry enough to put back into a jersey pocket after use?

[DCLiz]

@Tim Kelley 117507 wrote:

Was it any better today with the updates?

Went out for a walk around Eastern Market this evening, and unfortunately no. I did discover the trick to logging on: submit login information, close browser window, open new browser window and go to Rackspotter and voila, I’m logged on.

However, I had a lot of trouble adding photos and generally completing the process of adding racks. I had the opposite problem of PotomacCyclist — sometimes the mobile version will not accept my previously taken photo because it doesn’t recognize it is landscape (it is; I can upload the same photo later from the desktop version). For a while, I was able to add the rack, then take a photo from within the site. After successfully adding 2-3 racks, though, everything just stopped working and no amount of closing and reopening Chrome would allow me to upload the final two racks, even when I got home to WiFi.

By “stopped working,” I mean I was able to place a pin, but the rack type page wouldn’t load. Or I’d get the rack type page to load eventually, enter the number of spaces, upload or take a photo (I tried both ways multiple times), and then land on an error page telling me I needed to reload the page. When I reloaded, there would be a weird error message about the photo parameters, and the information about the number of spaces would be gone. Next time I’ll take screenshots.

I should mention that I’m a fairly techy person, so I’m pretty confident it’s not operator error. I may try downloading another browser to see if it’s specific to the default Chrome browser. I will also try clearing the cache. There are a couple of racks near my office that PotomacCyclist hasn’t found yet.

[DCLiz]

Is anyone else having trouble using Rackspotter on an Android phone? I just entered my first two racks, but it took a lot of persistence. First, the website would not let me log in at all over my 4G connection while I was out. I was only able to log in when I got home to my WiFi connection. Then, I tried repeatedly to submit the racks, to no avail. I kept having to push “refresh” to get the rack types to show up on the “swipe to choose” step. Then, after uploading the photo and adding a comment, I pushed submit and the pins did not show up on the map (nor on the desktop version…I checked).

Finally, a couple of hours later, I tried again. This time, with the first entry, the rack types showed up right away, and I was able to successfully submit the spotted rack. The pin showed up on both the app and the desktop version. With the second entry, I again had to hit refresh to get the rack types to show up, and again the submission didn’t go through. So I tried again from the beginning and was finally able to get all the way through.

There are now two new racks on the map by the Foggy Bottom Trader Joe’s!

I am curious if anyone else has tried using the site on an Android phone (Moto X running Android 4.4.4, using the built in Chrome browser). I just noticed that Chrome had an update available, so I’m installing that and will try to enter more racks tomorrow.

[DCLiz]

@Rod Smith 117483 wrote:

Not really but you can see how many points you scored for each month in 2014 or for the whole year by clicking on leaderboards, then 2014, then select any month or All, then search for your name.

Thanks! I see I was doing more biking last year … at least to date. I wouldn’t have guessed that!

[DCLiz]

Does anyone know if you can look at your achievements from last year? It would be fun to compare where I am this year (points, badges, miles ridden) to the same time last year.

[Author]

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