[Riley Casey]

Maybe someone didn’t pay their hosting bill? :confused::p

[Riley Casey]

I knew that post was a mistake :p

@Brock 4170 wrote:

See, now we need pics of THAT. Giddyup!

[Riley Casey]

Not sure this really rises to a picture-able offense but I enjoy a bit of low budget bike porn when the opportunity arises. The bungee & the carabiner are just to add some flexibility in load control and to restrain the grocery bag since I long ago broke the snaps that held it closed when not in use. The hooks are visible in the pic but the tension cords at the bottom are not. One nice thing about the whole arrangement with the hooks and carabiner is that when parking in a less than safe area I can, in less than a minute, remove both panniers and carry them over my shoulder in true John Wayne western style like saddle bags.

[Riley Casey]

I voted even though no one at Surly thought to make my fav color an option. I want a chrome yellow bike to match my jacket. Black is reserved for classic Raleighs in my book.

[Riley Casey]

I commute with a back pack and TWO panniers. My formerly fast Jamis Coda has gotten noticeably slower over the years too with the addition of fenders and 40mm city tires as well but it fits better the way I ride. Anyway, the rack itself weighs almost nothing. The panniers hook on to the rack and can be removed with just a few moments effort. On one side I have a ‘grocery’ bag net style collapsable bag. The carries my yellow jacket and not much else unless I have actually done some shopping. It comes off entirely for pleasure rides. The other side has a smaller zipper close bag with my flat kit, folding bike repair tool and some rags for clean up in case of road repairs. That is always on the bike, even for long rides ( 60 miles is long for me ). The rack is less a hinderance in getting the rear wheel off than the chain and assorted drive ware is by itself. With serious weight in the shopping bag handling is impaired to some degree, with the bags empty I suppose I have simply gotten used to it as I don’t notice any effect now. I’ve been a ‘bike as transportation’ rider for some time now rather than ‘bike as recreation’ rider so my perspective may be skewed a bit

[Riley Casey]

I was excited to ride my 30 year old Raliegh Tourist three speed this weekend. Does that count?

It is genuinely exciting to discover another convert to the biking way. Soon you’ll be biking to the store and to visit friends and after not too long you will consider cars and buses a nuisance and a distraction from your time on your bike. Congrats!

[Riley Casey]

AFAIK the rule that the uphill traveling vehicle having the right of way dates back horse drawn days. It simply recognized that there was more work involved in going up hill than down and fewer options for maneuver. That carried over to motorized vehicles, even though the physics had been somewhat over taken by engineering simply because right of way still had to be defined _IF_ there were no other factors that defined ROW better. A yield sign most certainly trumps the up versus down hill relationship. Riding carefully and courteously strikes me as being the ultimate rule of thumb but then I’m closer to 60 than 20 now and I might have a different perspective than even my younger self.

[Riley Casey]

Greenbelt makes me feel really unhappy about not taking at least a few seconds of iPhone video at the Silver Spring pit stop at the Discovery Plaza. Everyone there was in such a great mood. Smiles everywhere, people singing along with the DJ, a mom getting some adjustments done to her daughters bike by the folks from Silver Cycles. Whole Foods giving away fruit and power bars without any sort of mega advertising presence ( shocking ). Lots of bikes, lots of energy, a much higher turn out women compared to last year it seemed ( not a scientific sampling ). A larger commuter bike presence as compared to road & tour bikes at least for the 15 minute window I was there. My office fronts on the street that the CCT exits on to at the Silver Spring end and the number of riders was much higher in the afternoon. A great BTWD.

[Riley Casey]

Fenders are good for what ails ya’.

[Riley Casey]

Have you tried the Google Maps bike routing option? There is also http://www.bikely.com that has quite a few commuters posting and sharing routes. I know that there is the Bethesda Trolley trail that runs west of 355 starting around NIH.

[Riley Casey]

I biked today and the most I had to wait in the evening was twenty minutes to let the shower fizzle out. Thats pretty much the pattern with thunder storms. Day long rain showers in the winter, now thats another thing.

[Riley Casey]

It’s always a balancing act to be sure and, as has been noted it is bike ‘share’ not bike rental from an unlimited supply of bikes but none of this obviates the essential element – rebalancing if done badly is going to kill the appeal of Cabi and if done well is going to reshape DC where ever Cabi is installed. When I repeatedly go to a Cabi dock at 19th and Florida ( mixed residential and business area ) at 11 pm on a weeknight that is full to the max and that same dock is repeatedly full at 6:30 am the next morning preventing me from parking a bike there and thus making the dock and the Cabi system useless to me then I can only see that as a failure of planning on the part of CaBi. There are other docks in my experience such as 16th and Harvard that are similarly empty for long periods – well past the advertised rebalancing cycle. It may well not be a practical option to make CaBi a routine part of one’s commute from say Columbia Heights to downtown – the math is certainly against it – but CaBi can and should be golden on the simple stuff like rebalancing docks at midnight on Wednesdays. Any perception that they can’t get that right is not going to go down well.

@Mark Blacknell 3438 wrote:

I don’t quite get the idea of relying on CaBi as a part of daily commuting. All it takes is a small number of people in proximity to get the same idea to make it impossible (as has apparently been made clear today). It’s like signing up for ZipCar and expecting to use it to drive to and from work every day.

I do think they could improve ubiquity and balancing, but I don’t think meeting the needs of daily commuters should be the target.

[Riley Casey]

I tried one of those Bern helmets on at Bike Space a few weeks ago and instantly liked it as a winter helmet. Of course since it was the beginning of April and I was looking for a summer helmet I put it back on the hook. I will probably look for them to go on sale before the winter since it really was a warmer design but as noted by CCrew it would have been insufferable in a DC summer.

[Riley Casey]

YOu just missed a 50% off promotion thru the Living Social site but I don’t know if they have any other discount options. They apparently doubled the CaBi membership in a week with that deal.

[Riley Casey]

The BikeForums site has a good section on bike repair too. http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php/10-Bicycle-Mechanics

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