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Oh yeah the recycling point got totally lost. I wondered that too, since I was a soda hog and had both a Coke and a Sprite afterwards. 😮

The free kegs are great (I enjoyed the Ranger IPA yesterday) but I can never bring myself to pour much more than half of one of those red Solo cups since I have to ride home shortly afterwards.

(and 24+ oz of water, two tacos and a cookie = wife said I looked pregnant when I got home)

dasgeh – I’ll try to remember to look out for you guys next time I do this ride

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We all just need a gravel racing bike.

http://salsacycles.com/culture/new_for_2013_introducing_warbird/

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Welcome back, Dirt!! We missed your sighting photos.

@eminva 27616 wrote:

Oh no. What are they looking for? Dropped foot?

Yeah, I want to know too. I’ve been riding Hains a lot lately.

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Others on the ride said it was some serious gravel. Swathe-y. It sounded like a horrible crash (I guess they always do). I was somewhere in front of it when it happened, but close enough to pull up and look back. Not a pretty sight, and didn’t give me much motivation to finish the ride hard/fast. I had taken the turn slowly as I was on the inside, it was a crowded ride, and I’m fortunately familiar with the variable conditions there. I hope the injured cyclists heal up well.

As for lights, yeah, it surprises me how few cyclists from that ride have lights, given how much $ a lot of them spend on their bikes/gear! The first time I did the Freshbikes ride was one of the last rides of 2011, and it was getting dark even before the ride finished, so I turned on my old trusty 4xAA halogen front light, but only one other rider in my pack had any lighting at all. Riding home last night a racer in front of me had the dimmest single red LED on his seatpost. I assumed it was facing the wrong way it was so dim, but I guess it could’ve been the battery.

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@Tim Kelley 27408 wrote:

I have a child seat that goes over the rear wheel. With a second baby on the way (eventually, that is–nothing yet folks, don’t get excited!), I am curious about baby seats that are positioned up front so I could easily carry two kids at once. I am concerned about safety though–in the event of a crash while moving, or tipping over from a stationary position, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of protection.

In terms of riding safely with babies/young kids, I’ve never really felt all that comfortable riding out beyond my neighborhood, or a park. I don’t know that any of a trailer, rear/rack-mount seat, or front seat would handle crashes above a certain speed/severity that well. As with dasgeh, I ride very conservatively with a child.

I have the WeeRide, a seat that attaches to a bar that you install over the top tube. There’s a piece of padded plastic in front of the child (around chest level) but it’s mostly for them to hold onto/sleep on, I think. I chose it because it was inexpensive, but I do actually feel more comfortable with a kid in there than in my trailer because you are physically very close to them. I do feel like I have to be more careful mounting/dismounting though since with the seat + child the bike is much more top heavy than you’re used to. Demo pic – you might notice I installed the stem and wide riser bars off my MTB on my hybrid to give me some extra room up front.

I have fallen off once with my son (then 3 y.o.), but it was just a tip over when we weren’t moving, in the backyard, on a grassy surface.

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Noticed this AM they also did the same to the N Van Buren/W&OD collars. Yay!

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@GuyContinental 26900 wrote:

My bike weighs ~17 lbs… I like it that way soooo much better than the 24lb steel bike I used to ride. The agility difference is huge. i simply can’t imagine strapping extra weight on just to carry “stuff,” particularly on a multi-hour commute. Obviously, there are two schools of thought- utilitarian vs sporty. For me, the added maintenance and limited utility of riding a high end, light bike on a commute are far out-weighed by the fun (which is what it’s about- if I were to “suck it up” I’d just drive).

I know what you mean. My road bike is probably closer to 20lbs, but I still prefer it to my other bikes (all around 25lb+) if conditions are good. It’s actually not so much the weight as the position/acceleration/agility although obviously the lower weight is nice on the uphills. And if I want to detour for a few Hains Pt laps it’s well-suited for that too.

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I recommend their chocolate croissants!

I didn’t make it today as I’m actually busy at work right now / was doing Hains Pt laps, and I had an upset stomach yesterday so I didn’t want delicious strong coffee and buttery pastry to start off my day.

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@txgoonie 27158 wrote:

People westbound like to take the inside line on the curve, and people eastbound like to cut the corner at the basketball courts. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve have to slow suddenly or stop at that corner going westbound b/c some dufus (or group of dufi) coming toward me is cutting off my line. I don’t get it. When is it ever okay to cut the left apex on a two-way trail? That area is also bad b/c there are always tons of leaves and sticks.

Sadly, it seems to happen on all the trails around here. I try to ride like I’m always going to have to brake for someone else. When I do the turns myself I usually visualize them as if the trail is half the width so I don’t cross the yellow line.

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Good to hear you (and your love bike) are okay! Yikes.

Must be a bad week for that intersection! I had an almost-ran (over) a couple days ago, also coming up from TR island, and also a vehicle turning right onto Key Br:
http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?2730-some-things-i-love-about-my-commute&p=27253#post27253

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It’s mostly just car fumes in the garage where I park my bike – occasionally I’ll get smokers’ whiff when I’m riding closer to the front of the building.

@dasgeh 27198 wrote:

And the smells from the Italian Store/BGR Shack at Lyon Village are… EVIL, if you’re trying not to eat delicious pizza/burgers every day.

^ this! Especially after you’ve just come up the Rosslyn hill and are on your way home for dinner.

I’ve been taking the W&OD/MVT instead of the Custis lately though, so I get all those lovely smells instead. But the flipside is that I don’t have to worry about Custis traffic or the Lynn St intersection. I went home that way a couple days ago and almost got hit at the crossing (on a full green ped light). Black SUV. Car tires screeched. HR went up. I’ve decided not to go home that way anymore this summer unless I need to get back quickly.

Err. I love my commute! The morning views across the Potomac, whether it’s 14th St or Key Bridge, are marvelous, and I love passing the Lincoln memorial in the morning before the tourist throngs and segway convoys.

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Cigar? Sure it wasn’t rsewell?

@consularrider 27077 wrote:

I hope that guy you were drafting was a friend. :p

Haha. I never quite know what to do in those situations, when you ride fast enough to catch up to someone (at least on a stretch), but you don’t really want to overtake them and then slow them down. Especially on a narrow + high traffic trail like the MVT. I could’ve gone past him, but not easily, and I was tired today so he probably would’ve ended up wanting to overtake me soon enough. He was signalling consistently to me, so he can’t have been too annoyed. In any case, he was great to draft off! Nice pace and a decent amount of headwind on that stretch to be cancelled out.

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One thing that affects my knees (other than saddle height/position) is how wide/narrow I pedal. I find that the closer together my knees are the less likely I’ll get pain (esp if I’m riding hard). I’m sure it varies from person to person. When I ride the folding bike for a while and then go back to a full size bike I’ll often hit my knees for awhile on the top tube (since on the folding bike the “top tube” is very low).

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@Greenbelt 27047 wrote:

Drat, I was really hoping to win the one-year supply of K-C Cottonelle bath tissue & moist wipes this month.

I would definitely use them given all this humidity we’ve had. I’m constantly washing my helmet/padding/straps and HRM strap and it still gets funky easily.

@Tim Kelley 27059 wrote:

I’m protesting their shoddy interface and file size limitations and the fact that if you do a 216 mile ride that takes all day on June 30th and are too tired to think about updating your Endomondo profile before midnight then you don’t get any points for it.

That and I’ve been particularly busy. I’ve been keeping track of my miles on a separate excel list and will calculate my own totals when I get the opportunity. Expect a 3000 mile ride or something like that towards the end of August.

I totally agree the interface is remarkably shoddy for something so high profile, and that thing with the end of the month deadline is stupid. After August I won’t be using Endomondo until the next NBC or whatever.

I look forward to the 3000 mile ride! Or 10 200mi rides in a row. You do get 20pts/day just for riding, so you might want to spread out your totals (unless you compensate by adding 20miles x days you rode to your gigantic total).

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Quick thanks to BikeArlington folks and Mark to pulling this off! I finally got to meet some of the “other end of the table”-rs from previous Happy Hours and put a few more names<=>faces. At the end of Chasing Legends I was sure I would be riding at least 2 mph faster than usual on my next ride, but by the end of the night I was happy to just get home.

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