[Dirt]

What an amazing ride. It was a lot of fun… definitely monumental. Brad, Chris and I had a great ride. Brad gets HUGE points for putting this ride together. Chris gets HUGE props for being patient while we photographed. It is going to take me a few days to sort through the 348 photos I snapped. I’ll post up a link when I’m done.

Thank you Brad and Chris!!

[Dirt]

Thanks for the cue sheet! Looks like a great ride.

Here’s the GPS plot of the ride. http://classic.mapmyride.com/route/us/dc/washington/924129453190390460

I’ll have that loaded in my GPS to help with the navigation. It will hopefully help with navigating the route.

I’ll see you at 0800 at the Canadian Embassy. I’ll be the tall guy riding a fixie with fenders and jinglebells on the handlebars.

Pete

[Dirt]

I’m in. I’ll be downtown working that morning and afternoon. I might have to cut out in the middle depending on the timing of things. Can you post or send the cue sheet so I can enter it in my GPS? Makes the Nav a little easier.

Thanks! See you at 0800 at the Canadian Embassy.

[Dirt]

We do the 50 states ride as a karaoke event. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to do this as one too.

I too have a ride planned, but might have to ditch it for this.

[Dirt]

Nice commute, CCRew. Not sure even a long bike ride in could vanquish the scars a 50 mile drive each way each day would leave on me.

[Dirt]

@CCrew 1739 wrote:

Ruh Roh. I better start acting young, because I know I’m older than dirt

One of the nice things about this screen name is that making the comment “I’m as old as dirt” is 100% content-free for me. Not so sure about the rest of you though.

[Dirt]

Oh yah. Forgot you’ve got the long commute. That is a long way to ride on a cold day.

You’re riding Leesburg to Arlington? I met someone along Custis and W&OD before the holidays who was doing that ride. I don’t remember what we discussed.

My toes are actually my weak link right now. I’m fine if I put the MTB pedals on and use the lake boots. I don’t like the feel of the MTB pedals on a road fixie though. I may get a set of their road shoes. Who knows.

Keep on rolling.

[Dirt]

I’ve talked about this in other places, not sure if I’ve said it in this forum before. Sometimes we need to spend a little time in someone else’s shoes to understand their perspective. Nothing gives you perspective on how people view cyclists like taking a walk on the W&OD or Mount Vernon trails on a lovely Saturday morning. Cyclists complain about pedestrians and runners all the time, but I don’t think many of us realize how obnoxious we, as cyclists are. In a similar way, take a drive on MacArthur BLVD on a nice Saturday morning when there are lots of bicycles out on that route. It gives a whole different view of what it is like to share the road. I make sure to both walk and drive in the presence of cyclists a couple times per year. It does a lot for how I behave as a cyclist.

It doesn’t excuse anyone’s bad behavior. It does give you a really good understanding of where a lot of attitudes about cyclists come from.

I grew up in what was once a small town. The whole “us versus them” attitude where whole groups of people classify others into groups and have a huge chip on our shoulders in regards to them is somewhat strange to me. It is easy to fall into that… I do it from time to time and need a change of perspective.

It isn’t easy to keep a positive attitude with all that goes on out on the roads and trails. I’m sure a lot happier now that I don’t ride around with a chip on my shoulder.

[Dirt]

My approach to this is to selectively throw clothing/equipment at the areas of greatest cold. Unfortunately that takes money. It takes time to amass the stuff you need to ride in any weather, but it is easier when you take a “tool kit” approach. There isn’t any one garment that instantly makes you warm. It is the combination of things and how you put them together that arrives at warmth.

We’re all different and have different tolerances for cold too. I grew up with this, so I actually enjoy this stuff. For me, once I’m out the door, I’m having fun… no matter what the temperature is. The tough days for me are not the cold ones. The really tough ones are the 35 degree days with dumping/freezing rain. I think I have most of what I need for dealing with that though. I still need to get shoes to handle it better than my current shoe covers.

I saw an advert for heated bar tape this week. I gotta go out and find that. I think it was in the back of Velonudes (sorry… I really mean VeloNews…. I just have to use my derogatory term for it.)

[Dirt]

@Joe Chapline 1694 wrote:

I think the best thing to do is be a good example.

Amen, Brother Joe.

[Dirt]

@bkclmbkyk 1674 wrote:

You can ride the Old Carriage Road and Ridge Trail within Great Falls Park. They are not technically parts of the PHT, I think, but there are some spots with nice views of the gorge.

It’s not a very long ride, 2 miles or so at most, but you can connect to River Bend to about double it.

We did that as part of a ride with the Cross County Trail and Lake Fairfax a few weeks ago. It is a nice loop. Riverbend can get kinda muddy thoough. I like the new route on Difficult Run before entering Great Falls. It moved the trail way up away from the creek so that it stays dry.

[Dirt]

I’ve wrestled with the same topic for years. I’ve tried everything from being polite to being really rude and many variations in between. I found a few things don’t work well… The holier than thou attitude is one, sarcasm is another. The only thing that has ever seemed to reach some of the more crazy riders was a comment like, “Wow that was some fancy riding. Be careful. That Chevy almost made you his hood ornament.” It skirts on the edge of sarcasm, but somehow hasn’t been instantly written off by the Evil Knievel in question.

Honestly, if someone doesn’t want to listen, there isn’t much we can do to reach them.

As for my own observations, the number of cyclists that really obey the spirit of the law and really ride safely are very few and far between. In general I’d say that the cyclists I see are much worse than drivers. We earn our bad reputation.

I’ll check out the article when I get home tonight. Happy New Year, Tim. Keep the rubber side down.

[Dirt]

I have a love/hate relationship with 41st Street. On a fixie or Single speed it adds a bit of Newtonian love to the end of a long ride.

@CCrew: I still really want to do the Allegheny Passage. I’ve done parts of it while on holiday in Pennsylvania. I just need to find the time. Last summer’s tour (Up the east coast to the eastern end of Adventure Cycling’s Northern Tier, West through New York, South to Cleveland, then then the cut-off to Pittsburgh and home via the Allegheny Passage) got skipped over due to a shoulder injury. Went to Costa Rica instead. Maybe we’ll do that one in 2012.

Thanks for the inspiration.

[Dirt]

Difficult Run has kind-of been absorbed by the Fairfax Cross County trail, for the most part. You’re right, for those of us who don’t drive, it is an enjoyable ride that is easy to get to. A few weeks ago we did the North end of the Fairfax CCT + Lake Fairfax + Difficult Run + Great Falls and Riverbend. From Falls Church it was 45 miles in total.

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/149878

We walked through the construction site under the Dulles Toll Road. While it was entertaining, I’d recommend taking the detour over Guinea Road.

The new trails at Lake Fairfax are pretty nice IMBA Singletrack, if that’s your kind of thing. Lots of bench-cut, swoopy singletrack.

[Dirt]

The Lynn Street Death Zone (LSDZ for short) is never an easy place to get through. Generally, however, I have found East-bound to be by far the safer direction to travel. Which side of Lynn Street has the bus stop?

I had my trike decked out with reflectors and lights pretty well. I had two flashies on the back, two on the front and a quite powerful headlight up front. Usually when approaching the LSDZ I switch the headlight over to flashing mode too. I’ve found that adds a bit of emphasis that gets people’s attention. I haven’t had any close calls since I started doing that.

My problem is going west-bound. Unless I’m waiting at the light when I get the walk signal, it is VERY unlikely that a car rushing to get the green light is going to be looking for a bike going straight across the walk. I have on many occasions stopped at that crossing even though I have a light because the cars making a right turn are definitely NOT looking or yielding.

As for the section between Lynn Street and the bus stop, I used to ride on the sidewalks and just take my time weaving through foot traffic. The places where I had to ride had similar sidewalk width to Rosslyn. I used to ride on 14th St. NW between Constitution and the RayGun Building entrance.

Is that of any help?

I have to say that I do feel a lot safer on a bike than I did on the trike…. even completely decked out with reflective gear, flag and flashy lights. There were times crossing streets in the crosswalk WITH PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC that I had cars lurch forward like they were gonna hit me… or have to stop short to avoid me. It isn’t like I wasn’t visible. My trike is light up like one of the space ships from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and it is the most obnoxious color of hot pink. They’re just not looking where they’re going.

That said: Last year I rode the trike for 3 months and the bike for 9 months. I was hit in Rosslyn 3 times (if I recall correctly) on the bike and 0 times on the trike.

OH! I almost forgot one other thing. I put reflective tape on the SOLES of my shoes. Those were the reflectors that I tended to get the most comments on, because it looks really weird to people coming toward you. I had many cyclists circle back and comment to me that those were really cool and effective as reflectors. That tells me that people could really see them.

Pete

[Author]

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