[thefalcon3a]

Before this gets too far off topic…

Thanks everyone for your comments on the situation I encountered. I mainly just wanted to check to see if either I blatantly missed something, or maybe if there was some sort of history at that particular area that I came into at the wrong time. To be fair, I likely would have not walked my bike in that narrow section I was approaching, so the guy would have had a sort-of-but-only-because-the-sign-is-dumb valid argument, had he waited 10 more seconds to start yelling at me.

To the comment about a mounted cyclist taking up less room than one walking: Because of this altercation, I obeyed the sign just after the zoo where there’s a narrow sidewalk on a bridge after a tunnel. Ironically, I got an angry look from an oncoming jogger who had a hard time getting past me. Had I been mounted, I would have stopped and moved all the way against the railing to leave her a lot more room.

An observation: I definitely have noticed a lot of the yellow diamond “walk your bike” signs in the Washington area, and they have been in strange places where I’ve made the decision to disobey them. Someone noted crosswalks on the MVT… there’s one just south of the airport that I don’t understand, since there’s a clear view of a long stretch of a ramp that cars rarely are on. There’s another one around a corner exiting a tunnel, which I (in my infinite wisdom) decided is just as safe to slow down and ring my bell until I pass through it. It seems silly for NPS to make us go through the trouble of dismounting in the name of safety, when there are other ways to safely and more efficiently navigate these areas.

For comparison, I live about a mile from the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail, which has dozens of intersections with residential streets, and they all just have stop signs. I’m unclear on whether or not I’m legally obligated to dismount at those intersections, but I never do… As long as you prepare yourself with a good gear setting as you approach, it’s much faster to get through the intersection on the bike than by walking… I like to believe that the motorists stopping for me are appreciative of this. Many of the intersections have long and clear visibility of the streets from the trail, so I give them the good ol’ Idaho Stop (had to look that one up when someone mentioned it, and it seems like a great law). I use the Idaho stop when I bike in Baltimore all the time. I’m not interested in getting mugged, so I’d rather keep moving!

Follow up question: After my ride I had lunch in Washington Circle, where I watched a ton of cyclists on bike share bikes without helmets fearlessly disregard every traffic law on the books. I can’t imagine how frustrating that must have been for the people trying to drive through the circle… Do you all think bike share, while making biking in the city a lot more accessible, has made it harder for us more responsible riders to advocate for ourselves? If you’ve ever been downtown to the tourist areas, you know how awful many of these riders can be!

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