[lordofthemark]

We meet in person at Charles Houston Rec Center, 2nd monday of every month at 7PM.  There is also a zoom option, private message me here for the link.

Anyone may attend.  Anyone may request to be added to the Alexandria citizens google group.  People who participate and request may be added to the members group.  $25 dues makes you a voting member.   There are plenty of volunteer opportunties, whether helping with with rides/walks, helping with bike rodeos (teaching kids safety and tricks), or advocacy.

[lordofthemark]

I will NOT attend, due to COVID-19 (I’m feeling better,thanks Paxlovid, but still contagious)  Hope everyone has a good time, looking forward to hearing all about it.

[lordofthemark]

There should be a friends learderboard, right?  https://freezingsaddles.org/people/friends  appears to be blank.  Now there would be no miles for me (I have not ridden yet this year, because clavicle)   but I assume other friends have ridden already?

[lordofthemark]

@LhasaCM 226699 wrote:

Have people been pointing out how JBG Smiths’ renderings obliterate the bike lanes on Potomac Ave? They’ve rendered a double-wide parking lane. Unforgivable!

Potomac Avenue was always going to be rebuilt with development – the attorney for the developer said in the past “it depends on the nature of the development” (back when they were looking for approvals for the VTech campus” For the Arena project, we don’t have a traffic study yet, AFAIK, let alone a tranportation plan. Rest assured some folks with concerns for bikes are formulating “asks”

[lordofthemark]

@Steve O 227116 wrote:

A feature can be called something and be generally regarded as having that name, even if it’s not “official.” The Iwo Jima Memorial being an example: it’s commonly called that even though that is not its official designation. And everyone knows what is meant when it is referred to that way.

Personally I’d like to contemplate that while walking down 6th Avenue in Manhattan. Or to be closer to home, the 14th Street Bridge. I may say something about that on Twitter.

Personally I’d like to see a sign there that says “We should all go for a bike ride”, not sure what the rules about that are. Tools would be great too.

[lordofthemark]

@cvcalhoun 226883 wrote:

Um, what did you do to your clavicle????

So you shouldn’t ride too fast on wet pavement right? Maybe especially not if your tires aren’t exactly new, right?

Went down on my left side. Nasty scrapes on knee and elbow, sharp pain in shoulder. Bike was rideable, kind of, rode it home.

Orthopedist says broken clavicle, not displaced, no surgery needed. Gave me a sling, said “stay off the bike for 6 weeks” I need to check the portal to see when Im supposed to start arm exercises. Pain comes and goes, depending on time of day and arm position, gradually getting less.

But it’s now been over 2 weeks of full time telework instead of 2 to 3 days a week bike commuting – and I am exploring the world of fitness center stationary bikes (ewww) and long walks.

I had already planned on being a friend of BAFS instead of participating. Mostly to let new people have the slots, Ive done BAFS every year since 2015. But I WAS hoping to do a lot of group rides and focus (as I do each year) on at least one pointless prize. Still looking forward to HH, and then to getting back on the bike.

[lordofthemark]

I intend to be there – I have in the past not biked because Transportation Research Board (!!) and this year I have TRB and the added reason of my clavicle. Look forward to seeing folks.

[lordofthemark]

I think I am signed up to be a friend of freezing saddles.

[lordofthemark]

@LhasaCM 226676 wrote:

But while you’re taking feedback…would you give consideration to this extremely unlikely tiebreaker to also including any and all pizza places within a mile of the original home of the Capitals in Landover? (There’s one!)

Hmm, a suburban location that STOLE an inner city team? I will have to think about that

(and just so you know, Alexandria online discourse was absolutely exhausting yesterday, “a spiral of unhingedness”)

[lordofthemark]

As a former RR guy, and as someone who will tell anyone who will listen that apart from riding it, the simplest and best way to transport your bike is often or usually by train, I love this.

[lordofthemark]

@LhasaCM 226648 wrote:

After Alexandria’s formal declaration of war on DC this morning, the unlikely to apply tiebreaker for this pointless prize is taking on much more meaning…

Oh dear. Pizza starting to get salty?

I will take this input into account and modify the rules

In the event of a tie in the GLOBAL competition the winner will be based on the following – the sum of pizza places in Alexandria City (because the original meme), pizza places in Brooklyn (because I can) and pizza places in Baltimore City, within 1 mile (by bike, as per Google Maps) from the location where the Baltimore Bullets used to play. (I am pretty sure I remember the location, but will check before Jan 1) Plus as noted above, rides to pizza places that ALSO involve going to a meadery in Hyattsville (any meadery in Hyattsville) That should be easy to remember, right?

Edit. The old Baltimore Civic Center is at Howard and Lombard. Amazingly it’s still there. Its about as old as I am, and it’s on its fifth name. Wow. (There appear to be a few pizza places nearby, but it doesn’t quite match the pizza density of Del Ray)

(FYI, for those not following the Alexandria discourse, the City appears divided between A. “sports team subsidies are generally bad, but lets look at the spreadsheets and see what this does for us” vs B. “OMG, this will destroy the City, crime, traffic, its another conspiracy by the evil density loving Mayor to force us out of cars” And I, as BPAC chair, am going to mostly focus on “What can we get out of this in terms of bike/ped infra.” As a citizen beyond that, I will be “this only makes sense if WMATA is actually functioning, so the Commonwealth had better step up to the plate on funding”)

[lordofthemark]

@arlcxrider 226616 wrote:

Every Pointless Prize seems to descend into legalistic hairsplitting about “the rules.” Like what constitutes “public art.”

As much fun as 50 pages of talmudic debate on what constitutes “pizza” would be, I don’t think I have the bandwidth for it this year. I expect to use menu descriptions and/or yelp, in cases of uncertainty. But certainly side chatter on what is or is not pizza is welcome.

[lordofthemark]

@Meh 226594 wrote:

Not seeing why they should be?

I mean I reckon if someone local goes to MSA and rides at -30C it’s perfectly valid for the lowest temp competition; if someone goes to Connecticut and gets hot oil pizza that should be fine too?

They will first have to explain to me exactly what hot oil pizza is – I note that I forgot to actually specify definitions of what IS a pizza. Hmmm.

[lordofthemark]

@randomduck 226588 wrote:

I’m finding the tiebreak bias toward Alexandria a bit off-putting given it is a global contest.

Just sayin’…

A. I will be rather surprised if we actually end up in a tie?

B. You may not have been spending time in Alexandria urbanist Bluesky. This is deep into meme territory. We have agreed that the only thing Alexandria has in greater surplus than unhinged NIMBYs, Confederate street names, and obscure historical markers, is pizza places. I was thinking of restricting the prize to just Alexandria, but thought better of it (perhaps at the strong suggestion of coffee club folks) So my thought is that yeah, pizza places in Seattle or St Pete or Belgium should count, but I still want to pay homage to the Alexandria meme.

I mean I could have come up with some complicated scoring mechanism, like double points for Alexandria or something, but I think simpler scoring mechanisms are better in a friendly competition

To note, fairness is always modified by power “If anyone posts a pic from Brooklyn NY, I will likely add that in to the Alexandria number, because I can.”

Edit: Idea. If the concern is Maryland being dissed, here’s an added rule. In the unlikely event that we end up in a global pizza tie, the prize will go to the person with the highest number X+Y, where X is the number of pizza places in the City of Alexandria, and Y is the number of rides to pizza that also went to a meadery in Hyattsville. This would be totally fair and unbiased, right?

[lordofthemark]

@cvcalhoun 226497 wrote:

Well, given that the post in question was from four years ago, that’s not too surprising.

Ah, December 2019, getting ready pre pandemic, when the idea of a virtual happy hour was something I was unfamiliar with.

https://youtu.be/ifWOSnoCS0M?si=sGhdoQQsBT4zdK9K

And from context, I suspect the video in my old post may have been

https://youtu.be/Vlx6gQWfjp0?si=gFjslGaXxBL7s4uI

[Author]

Posts