[Riley Casey]

Well that’s a good entre into a question Ive always been curious about. Can you characterize the difference between riding with a heavy load, say a child in a seat or heavily laden panniers and towing a trailer? Just curious. It’s been a verrrry long time since I rode with a child seat but I do virtully all my grocery shopping by bike and a cargo trailer would be the next stage.

@jrenaut 14178 wrote:

I’m trying to think if I increased by more than 10% a week – it’s hard to say, because I can’t really quantify miles with the trailer vs miles without. But I’ve been doing about the same mileage for a few weeks, and it’s only just now really getting to me.
.

[Riley Casey]

Well thats just a pitch perfect post for a day when its going to break 60 degrees. Great going Subby. Just think how much you’ll enjoy these rides when its 60 degrees during your commute in the morning. Thats what a bike commuter lives for. A commute becomes a pleasure cruise and its over all too soon – but it always happens again the next morning.

[Riley Casey]

I was foolish enough to try that hill once. It looked so promising, as if there might be a genuine reward at the top for the effort. As it turned out, blah , more inner suburbia – and more hills.

[Riley Casey]

I’m up for anything running down the MBT into or through the city. Plus I’m a heathen so Sundays are fine by me. Mt Vernon is a great ride but might get a bit long from Greenbelt.

[Riley Casey]

Ouch and double ouch.

And no use surfing Bike Forums for illumination for us mere mortals, they’re all Herculean cyclists on that forum. :p

@acc 13745 wrote:

Week #2- Ain’t Dead Yet.

First, I named them. Naming the hills helped me focus my anger, I blame the hill and not myself… The second hill is a tricky bastard, he isn’t hard, just a long slog right up until the very end (not unlike first husbands) so I named him Killawomanjaro.

.

[Riley Casey]

A bright sunny day on my handle bars with a light weight version on my helmet. Thats just about right. Trails, a theatrical spotlight maybe, just might suffice but in traffic a personal bit of noon day sun would be spot on. I run with a Cateye 350 as a headlight and a Planet Bike Beamer set on flash as front lights. These are low cost, AA battery lights with low lumens output and are more than adequate for seeing a trail or road but totally inadequate for being seen everywhere in traffic. I really need to invest in a high output helmet light combo as well. Seriously, no amount of light can compete with the bewildering visual cues a car driver gets on a rainy night so more and better light is a must for riding in traffic. Seeing whats in front of you is the least part of the equation. Being seen is the life & death component.

Gee, seems like I’ve beaten this horse before.

[Riley Casey]

PR is everything in these instances. You want to play up the stoic Spartan warrior element here for the best effect. This past summer I went down while I was working on a music festival in New England. Tried to jump a rail track only to slip out on the wet cobblestone that my front tire landed on. Fractured my left elbow which was a nuisance to no end as this was on a Thursday and I had to get thru the entire weekend and manage getting four trucks back to DC. As it was I wound up riding my bike to the hospital, well about a third way there and walking the rest. The word that got around the festival site for the remainder of the weekend however was that I had ridden all the way to the hospital and ridden back with my arm in a sling! This despite the fact that my bike spent the remainder of the weekend in the back of a truck. After that I was treated with a slight degree of awe where ever I went. It’s all in the spin, deliberate or not. 😎

[Riley Casey]

Whats next on this slippery slope?

http://www.google.com/patents/about/6476365_Toilet_paper_dispenser.html?id=XP8KAAAAEBAJ

[Riley Casey]

Hats , er helmets off to the serious winter warriors and their studded tires. I actually drove my car yesterday rather than ride. I’m an ice wimp. It occasioned however another one of those queasy ‘driving where I normally ride moments’ of being confounded in the Whole Foods parking lot staring at a sea of parked cars and wondering “wtf have I got myself into?”.

[Riley Casey]

Uh oh, I see this thread being a race to the bottom – real fast. :rolleyes:

[Riley Casey]

Thank the Maker.

[Riley Casey]

You may want to to take a buddy along if it’s not a busy time of day. There have been reports of robberies on the MBT. I’ve only ridden it a few times outside of rush hour but a large part of it is still on streets rather than a dedicated trail.

@KLizotte 12985 wrote:

… snip

I’m planning on using Dirt’s directions (from the pot luck dinner posting today) as my guide to the entrance of the Hyattsville trail network. I’ve been putting off exploring the Anacostia trails because I didn’t want to take metro to get there but now I see it’s easily bikable presuming I don’t get lost (again).

Hoping for another 60+ weekend so I can go exploring. … snip …

[Riley Casey]

So glad I spent the day doing house repairs 😡

[Riley Casey]

My first thought was to click the like button on this post and leave it at that but it occurs to me that perhaps more is needed. We here on the forum are on the head of the pin. I often ride downtown during the business day ( I have a very odd schedule ) and see legions of 20 & 30 somethings rolling around on CABIs and personal bikes – with women seemingly in numbers close to those of men. It seems unlikely that the bulk of those people are WABA members let alone forum readers. They probably are readers of general interest urban culture blogs though. At age sixty I’m a bit out of the loop on exactly what those blogs are but I’m sure that there are people here a bit more tuned in and perhaps a message to the writers of those blogs with the suggested notice about the poll would be a good direction as well.

@dbb 12663 wrote:

I think this is really important, because the policy and political types at Arlington County and the region need to see cyclists as more than just the hard-core riders. While 47 riders and 191K miles is impressive, I think the more compelling number would be 1200 riders with 300K miles. That says that cycling is more than a small group thing and is widely used for recreation, daily transportation, and commuting.

snip …

[Riley Casey]

This is a great tale of taking a vacation to the next level on the fly, thanks for posting. I was able to do something like this a few years ago when I was in Minneapolis on business – spent the day off riding around the old Victorian part of town and along their local bikeway on a pair of rented bikes. Even got to exorcise my curiosity about recumbents that day and picked up my first Cars R Coffins stickers. Your post has me resolved to do this everytime I am at loose ends in a strange place. BTW, on a strictly editorial note Ann, anyone who’s byline is Rhinestone Cowgirl simply must include her gem encrusted helmet in her post self pic :p .

[Author]

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