[DSalovesh]

This sounds familiar. I’ve seen reports of a guy generally matching that description harassing a group of women who regularly run the MVT. He’ll ride straight at them and yell for them to get out of his way.

It would be great to get photos or video of him. It would be FABULOUS to figure out where he lives, and to pass that along to the police too, but knowing me I’d probably directly confront him in the process.

[DSalovesh]

Dunnon why these are popping out at me right now…

The National Mall Trails along the mall are crushed stone, not paved.

How about tracing in the Fort Circle Hiker / Biker trail (unpaved)?

[DSalovesh]

I’ve watched the Revolights saga since they first popped up for crowdfunding a few years ago. Since then I’ve seen them in the wild a few times. Under urban streetlights they haven’t seemed very bright, so they aren’t great “be seen” devices where that’s most important. I haven’t seen them in use in darker environments, but I doubt they would throw enough forward light to replace a good headlight. This latest iteration has battery and installation improvements, but I’d want to see them in person to figure out if they also work better. (Pretty expensive at $200, and they also make pre-built wheels with the same lights integrated into the rims.)

Beeline navigation looks really cool! It’s what my dad used to call “Polynesian navigation”: the destination is thataway and you merely need to take whatever path heads more there than away from there. Seems like a good idea for short trips on straight, grid-like streets that are all equally good options for riding, not sure it’ll help a lot where there are curves and disconnects – but the app may handle that like magic. I’d LOVE to see a version of this on Bikeshare, especially if it can be preloaded with things like station locations and preferred bike roads. (I think I would love it – it’s in pre-order so nobody has had a lot of hands-on experience with them in the real world.)

I’m generally skeptical about wearable signals and lighting. Cyclists tuck down against the wind, turn around to see traffic, and need to use the whole body to direct the bike. Body-worn lights won’t always be in the right place to be clearly seen and understood by others on the road, so clothes with signals would have to be thought of as secondary systems. Also, in an environment where street signals and lights on other vehicles are really bright the body-worn signals would have to at least match that, and this product doesn’t appear to. There are more videos on the Lumenus site that show the brightness level seems to be a pretty soft glow, though the animations use bright colors. Like Revolights (IMHO), Lumenus won’t be very effective in the environment where it’s most needed. This is also still in development so all examples are prototypes so far, no pricing or actual product is known.

Reelight is a well established company. Their previous range includes rechargeable lights with magnetic mounts and batteryless blinky lights that are driven by a wheel magnet. The Neo lights in the clip use a different principle to constantly make electricity from the way magnets interact with aluminum rims. This one is also in the “shipping soon” category, and I’m also skeptical here. Battery-free lights are great, and these look simple to mount and take off. But they look to be on the weak side for “see the road” lights, and they are directed ahead and behind so they won’t be great “be seen” lights either. Positioned alongside the wheel, they’ll be even dimmer from the opposite side and the rim and tire will cast a shadow. May be useful as a backup light, for getting caught out after dark or with a surprise dead battery. Ideally I think I’d want one of these on each side, but at $55 each the price is pretty high in any case.

Spurcycle bells are great, and available in many local shops now. Did you know they also make a key clip?

[DSalovesh]

HTFU, I think the kids say.

I haven’t seen any DC pit / count locations as there have been for previous years.

[DSalovesh]

On a “recent” coffee ride one of the cyclists had applied full-color LED strips to the main tubes of his bike with a microcontroller under the seat. It was fantastic to see it strobe through patterns and shift colors as he rode.

Great DIY project if you’ve done any tinkering with Arduinos etc. (Though the spousal response was “don’t you even!”.)

A simpler project is EL wiring. It’s marketed as a product called Bike Glow for about $25. (The components cost about half that and the only work is adding a connector between the inverter and the wire, if you’re comfortable with a soldering iron. If you DIY it the wire can be multi-color and trimmed to line your frame.)

[DSalovesh]

I made this mistake, er, learned this lesson on my kid’s old bike: it won’t scour through the paint, but it will dull a glossy clearcoat.

Never again.

I’d expect it to cloud shiny metal as well, but I’ve never needed to find out – solvents and soft rags get those plenty clean.

(One of my bikes – the one I cosmetically abuse – has a steel frame with a matte white finish. It gets all kinds of black splotches from the brakes, drivetrain, cable rub, as well as a lot of mud and muck on the underside, not to mention a bit of oxide from the weep holes, and only melamine sponges can get it back to mostly whitish. They affect the finish on this bike as well, making it GLOSSIER than original, but it’s not noticeable nor do I actually care.)

[DSalovesh]

I keep saying this because it isn’t part of what I believe people are thinking:

Every road is most important to the people who aren’t already there.

The map of bikeway locations is heavy in the middle because it’s the most heavily ridden area no matter where those people live. The middle margins are a mix because some middles lead to more heavily ridden areas and some do not.

Building a bikeway network from the edges out is somewhere between a bad idea and impossible to get right.

What’s actually shameful is the lack of connectivity.

The volume from Deanwood to West End will always be small, and the case for adding bikeways won’t be obvious, but the status quo says the volume will always be close to zero. It’s shameful, but moreover, it’s correctable – and it HAS to be corrected before it makes any sense to build bikeways on the far side of the divide. What we have now tells people EotR that “we” are giving them one good place to cross the river (11th St.) and a lot of marginal or even bad places. With that as the offer, is it any wonder it’s so hard to build community support for adding bikeways Deanwoodians can’t imagine using?

[DSalovesh]

This is a great start, and covers most of the main concerns we’ve seen over the last few years. I especially appreciate that they recognize that moving vehicles have to be a higher priority than parked ones.

I’m a little concerned about how this will scale as bike facilities expand from the ~50 miles we have to the hundreds we have our sights set on. Will these rules work in 2023, 2033? Will they work for trails and completely segregated bike facilities? There do seem to be an awful lot of weasel-words that might be challenging for DDOT to enforce, and I’m not exactly thrilled that it broadly incorporates the ADA instead of specifically talking about acceptable surface treatments for temporary accommodations and navigability.

[DSalovesh]

I named ’em for Strava purposes (otherwise they’re just the color):

Mo (greenie)
Clark (blackie)
Er… (whitey)
Sharky (bluey)
Stormy (“the mountain bike”)

[DSalovesh]

Apologies first, to the fully lycra-fied rider who was apparently drafting me when I had to slam on my brakes Thursday AM between Gravely Point and the bridges. I tried to catch up and be cool but … that wasn’t happening.

Here’s why I stopped so suddenly:

Coming north past the runways and parking I noticed I had picked up a tail. I was enjoying the beautiful morning on my most civilized bike, which was pretty well loaded because Thursday is “clothes exchange and farmer’s market” day, so I wasn’t blazing up the path, and the two riders behind kept a respectful distance through the turns. I could hear the conversation, all about how awesome your bike was and how you had already customized everything possible to the point where there was nothing left to upgrade. I couldn’t wait to be passed so I could take a look.

I was suitably impressed at the Pinarello / DuraAce setup, but didn’t really have time to appreciate it as you sprinted on. Thanks to bike and other path traffic your buddy had to hang back for a bit, but by the time we got to the river he managed to pass as well and you resumed riding two across and talking about your nice bike. I decided to push just a little to eavesdrop, so you never really got too far ahead. Just a little.

Good thing too, because somewhere in the middle of the straightaway I heard something fall. I eased off, and watched your cell phone bounce a bit and then skid along the trail. THAT’S when I slammed on my brakes and faded to the right – your phone seemed to be coming right at me! And THAT’S when I noticed the third following bike, because I heard him yell “SHIT!” (or was it “FUCK!”?) as he nearly clipped me from behind.

I skidded to a stop, with your phone half a foot in front of me and exactly in line with my pedals. Had I miscalculated, I probably still wouldn’t have hit it, but there I was, standing just next to it. Heard your buddy ask what that was as you turned back to retrieve it, then I rode on to try to catch the former wheelsucker. The last I heard you were complaining that your stupid bar mount was a piece of crap, and this was the second one that had failed on you.

So I guess there is one thing you could upgrade… (And if your phone broke, I have one on Sprint I need to sell!)

[DSalovesh]

Do you think they’d accept the constructive criticism that we need drive side pictures?

[DSalovesh]

Aww. Looks like possible snow Thursday and then a couple of sub-freezing days…

[DSalovesh]

(IT IS NOT exceedingly LAME. IT IS moderately LAME, but FOR. GOOD. REASONS.)

[DSalovesh]

That particular curbing at RI & Connecticut is very special because riders have the option to continue unprotected on M or jog right and then left on RI, for proper positioning to continue straight or turn left.

Widening that bottleneck on M was not chosen because it would require shrinking the rain garden (an Ellen Jones project from her days at Golden Triangle BID), and while DDOT may still add sharrows to the straight path I was pretty passionate a couple of years ago in suggesting, well, pretty much what they’re doing, in order to maintain a protected lane from end to end.

Came so very close, too.

[DSalovesh]

@DCLiz 66750 wrote:

This lane was supposed to be completed in August.

Wherefore art thou, M Street Cycletrack?

The original deadline was 2010, actually, as set in the bike/ped master plan of 2005. (Didn’t happen for a lot of reasons, only one of which is “they didn’t try to make it happen”.) As of about a year ago the deadline was moved to spring 2013 – that May meeting was supposed to be the rubber stamp on many years of discussion and planning, with no further obstacles. August was an ambitious start date, but (hope was) it signaled DDOT and DC’s commitment to ending delays and moving forward after 8 idle years.

I’m still hopeful, they still have two weeks and it really doesn’t take long to do the minimal revisions required: erase some paint, lay some fresh, and screw down a handful of flex-posts. Minimal signage gets updated. It could still be done “in October” or very close to it.

But if they somehow threw all necessary hands on overtime and made a heroic effort to complete this before November, in the end the best they deserve is credit for meeting a long and relaxed deadline they themselves set and ignored until the last minute. This simply isn’t the activity one expects of a committed, dedicated, progressive transportation planning project, and it gives the proponents of the project a lot to point to when explaining why people get so upset about “minor” delays and revisions.

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