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Trail kitty

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Road conditions are pretty good. I ride my road bikes downtown all the time. I find the roads in my neighborhood in Falls Church worse than the ones downtown. The stuff that you might hit is visible from a distance that you can safely navigate around it.

Pedals are a personal choice. I ride clipless 320+ days per year. I haven’t really found a reason to need anything that releases quicker.

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@eminva 3139 wrote:

Another possibility is to take Roosevelt Bridge to New Hampshire, but turn right on H Street. Take a left on 20th, then right on L Street down to 17th.

Liz

Liz has listed one of my favorite ways to scoot throught the city. It is much easier now that the World Bank isn’t blocking H St. with its construction crane.

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I love those. I contemplated one. I think I may end up with a 2011 Felt Footprint. I just love the name.

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What is the frame? Just curious. I like seeing what other people are playing with.

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Do you have some kind of adapter cup that allows you to fit a 1 1/8″ headset into an integrated frame?

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Part of it may be that it is tourist season. This time of year the city is flooded with the lovable creatures. (I say that jokingly… I still feel like a tourist here after 22 years in the area.) They are sometimes more attentive to the wonders of our Nations Capitol than they are watching out for bicycles and cars.

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Thanks y’all. Even I need positive feedback at times to keep myself a happy cyclist. I don’t want to go back to feeling like a road rage cyclists.

I love win/win situations when for YEARS I could only see lose/lose situations.

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I don’t have an answer, but I do have a contribution.

I have all the local jurisdictions’ police departments on my mobile phone and I use them. I report every time a driver gets aggressive with me. I love and respect all mankind, but I also am realistic that some people don’t respect me or themselves enough to behave properly. I don’t get angry like I used to. I calmly and rationally do the one thing that can make our experience better.

Do the police act? Sometimes they do. DC has been helpful when I had incidents and there were officers within 100 meters. Arlington has had an officer return my calls to discuss what happened. Fairfax has been awesome. They have sent out a squad car to talk to me and the offending driver on more than one occasion.

There are a few things that you can do that really help. 1) Keep your cool. If you behave irresponsibly, it is hard to get the police on your side to respond. 2) Get the license plate number and, if possible the make/model of car and a description of the driver. The more information you have, the easier it is to report the incident.

If the vehicle that was aggressive with you was a work vehicle, get the number and name on the truck/car. Give that info to the police and also call the number. Many employers are interested to hear that their employees are threatening bodily harm on cyclists with their work vehicles.

Arguably the best win/win situation I’ve had with police, aggressive drivers and an employer happened when I reported a guy that repeatedly buzzed me in his work truck. I reported him to the police and his boss and included photos of the truck, license plate and the guy at the wheel (taken through the passenger window at the next stop light). The police were talking with his employer when he got back to the shop. I got a phone call from the guy later apologizing to me. He kept his job, but now gives me a friendly honk and wave every time he passes me.

Most of these people are not Satan incarnate. They’re normal people who react poorly to their environment. The environment around here creates people like that by the thousands!!! I work hard to not become one of them while doing what I can to stand up for what is right.

Rock on!

Pete

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One of the best discoveries with this bike is how wonderful the new Campy components are. I love the SRAM stuff that I have on my Cervelo, but I’d have to say that it will likely be rebuilt with Campy as the year goes on.

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We did a pretty cool ride down. I’ll post up the route that we took. I’m not sure that it would do very well for smaller groups, but it worked out pretty well for the 14 or 15 of us (with SRAM Neutral Support vehicle in tow). It dropped us into College Park and we took bike paths into the city from there. Very little of the ride was on scary roads. Lots of it was pretty.

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I love that bike! Perfect mode of transpiration.

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The dummy is not an easy thing to park or lock. I have a big u-lock that gets the frame and rear wheel. I then use a cable that goes through the front wheel, seat and the kit I have at the back. The bucket panniers are always there. I’ve had people open them hoping to find something worth stealing. When the smell hits them, they usually run in fear.

I’ve generally found the “ewwww” factor helps with security. The only bike I leave completely unattended is disgusting enough that no-one wants it. I use a U-lock and add the QR front wheel into the lock. The saddle never gets touched.

My other bikes only get locked outside briefly and never completely unattended, so I lock front wheel, back wheel and frame with a U-lock and I’m back before anyone snags the saddle. Someone could steal it, but they haven’t yet.

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That is another great neighborhood to add in. Thanks.

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We also keep the group together pretty well. We lost Sean once… he was leading the ride though, so that doesn’t count.

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