Showing posts with label bicycle commuting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycle commuting. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Toe Overlap Mars Perfection - Perhaps

Bridgestone after snowy commute
The perfect commuter bike?

In 2011 I purchased the frame, including fork, of this 1982 Bridgestone Sirius road bike. At the time it was the "top of the line" road bike sold by Bridgestone in the U.S. I bought it used on eBay for a little over $100 including the shipping, which was a good price. The frame appeared never to have had components attached to it or to have been used - it was, in effect, a 30 year old unused bike. I attached a mix of components (many not "period correct" alas) and commenced using this as my main commuter to and from work, about 19 miles round trip.

Serious toe overlap with front wheel/fender
Winter cycling shoe (boot) cleated in to pedal and amount of overlap with front wheel and fender

I would suggest that any bike used for commuting represents a series of compromises, starting with how much money you are willing to spend versus your desire for certain features. (The perhaps trite phrase for bicycle choice generally is, "strong, light, cheap - pick two.") This Bridgestone is relatively light given that even after I bought components and assembled it all, it was only around $500. I chose to stick with wheels and tires that are relatively narrow compared to what is popular now. Most people are not crazy about downtube shifters but they are extremely low maintenance. I also like the dual pivot brakes which are more modern than what the bike would have had when originally sold in 1982 but not as good at stopping as the disk brakes I had on the bike I used before this - but I got tired of the maintenance associated with disk brakes. The dual pivot rim brakes are predictable for both maintenance an performance.

One problem however that I simply live with is the toe overlap. I fitted the bike with fenders, which makes the wheel extend back towards the pedals that much further, but in winter the problem is more with the bike boots I wear and where I have the cleats fitted on the bottom of them, which means that the front ends of the shoes are well in the travel path of the front wheel when steering. The crank arms are relatively short at 170 mm.

As it turns out in practice, awareness of this problem is the main thing - I haven't had a problem with this in years. And as it happens, as a practical matter, I hardly ever steer hard enough left or right that it matters, which may seem surprising but seems to be how it is. I ride up Capitol Hill on the Capitol grounds on a roadway where I zig-zag my way up (to decrease how steep it is for the ride) and even that at a relatively slow speed doesn't require a particularly tight turn, or enough that this overlap matters.

So if this is all that keeps this from being the perfect bike, I can live with it.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Arlington VA Winter Bike to Work Day->Friday Feb. 8 (2019)

Snow and Bike on Gravelly Pt
A winterized (more or less) commuter bike at Gravelly Point, near National Airport

EventBrite registration for the event Friday February 8, 7 to 9 am.

World Winter Bike to Work Day Twitter page.

Arlington County organized a Winter Bike to Work Day last year, but it was in Rosslyn, which isn't on my way to work. This one will be at Gravelly Point along the Mount Vernon Trail, right where I will be going. Yay!

1972 jet "roars" over Gravelly Point
1972 National Park Service photo of Gravelly Point (not in winter) and bicycles, from the Library of Congress (via Flickr).

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Commuting Choices (Mine)

1995 Trek SingleTrack 930 as commuter
1995 Trek SingleTrack with right set up makes a good commuter

I have a shoulder problem that has meant I had to cut back on bicycling. For a while I wasn't riding at all, which wasn't much fun. Thanks to a cortisone shot, I am riding some now, commuting to and from work most days, which is about 19 miles round trip.

Initially I didn't want to carry my stuff in a backpack or messenger bag as I usually have for more than five (?) years, so I put a rack and fenders on my Trek SingleTrack. This is a good commuter, and the fact that I paid only $65 for it amuses me. Because I started using Metro here and wanted to get the transit subsidy, my agency's transit subsidy person told me I couldn't keep a bicycle parking permit for our garage. This turned out to be wrong, but for a while I was locking up my bike outside during work and I wasn't willing to park a bike that would be sad to have stolen.

Bridgestone Sirius with (cheap) fenders
1982 Bridgestone Sirius appeals to me more

Fortunately I was able to work out the business with the parking garage and have decided I can use a backpack, so I riding this bike again, which is zippier than the Trek and somehow more fun. Don't get me wrong, the Trek would be an outstanding "I can only have one bike" bike, but since I seem to insist on having 4-6 ridable bikes, the one I want to ride to work on most days is the old Bridgestone.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Bike to Work Day 2018

Bike to Work Day Shirlington, Arlington VA
6:30 in the morning at the Shirlington "pit stop" for Bike to Work Day in Arlington, VA

I was surprised to read in the Wikipedia entry on Bike to Work Day that it was created by the League of American Bicyclists in 1956. I would have guessed much more recently.

Bike to Work Day, 2011
From BTWD ride in 2011 - it doesn't always rain on BTWD

I have a somewhat ambiguous relationship with BTWD - I commute almost religiously; that is, I hardly get to and from work any other way than by bicycle. In theory I want more people to ride because it is the logical thing to want, but I have found in fact that so far for my commute, increasing use of the Mount Vernon Trail in particular has not led to significant improvements in the trail's usability. Most of the asphalt is the same as it was 20+ years ago - and this isn't because it is aging well or that there is enough of it (in terms of the width of the trail in particular).

Also, my sense is that the DC area BTWD has had amazingly bad luck in terms of weather - that is, more often than not, it rains. And in fact it rained yesterday for BTWD 2018 and it was fairly steady and heavy enough to keep many from riding. I had signed up and stopped at the local "pit stop" in Shirlington to get a free BTWD 2018 t-shirt (as I did last year, when the weather was better) as a way of showing interest and support (I suppose). It is inspiring (or something along those lines) to see the volunteers there, even at 6:30 am when it started. I was amused to see a small "convoy" of riders there right as they opened. A few seemed underdressed to me, given that it was wet and not really May warmth. (This turned out to be a ride where at the start the rain was light, but over the 10 or so miles it got more and more heavy, to the point that upon arrival at work I was pretty well soaked. Fortunately I have my own office and it is fine to have a clothes line, more or less. Well - fine with me, anyway.)

Bike to Work Day Shirlington, Arlington VA 2018
Another slightly out-of-focus shot

I was glad to get my yellow BTWD 2018 t-shirt. During the past year I have been amused how many times I have seen people wearing the lavender colored BTWD 2017 t-shirt - amused that I recognized it, as much as anything. I suppose eventually they will give away the 2018 t-shirts somehow but I assume most were not picked up by riders on the way to work, because I think many people took a pass on riding yesterday. Still, a good souvenir of what was not a bad ride - it was just another ride. The rides - they're all good.

Friday, January 5, 2018

The Evolution of the Bicycle as a Tool-for-Living

20180105_084937
A point of comparison - 15 years (or so) of mobile computing devices

One reason I appreciate bicycles is that a good basic bicycle can be highly useful even if only slightly evolved from what was in use over 100 years ago.

By comparison, we have mobile computing devices, which are disposable units (although we see uhm I forgot to dispose of several) that provide useful service for at best four or five years. Further, while mobile commuting are evolving, not all the evolution is in a positive direction for many users. The 2001 (or so) Palm Pilot M105 was a cheap plastic device that required docking with a PC in order to upload/download messages but it weighed almost nothing and having no glass, was difficult to break (and if you did, it was so cheap, it didn't matter that much). I was actually fairly good with the "shorthand" to enter text with a stylus. The next step, a "traditional" 2005 or 2006 BlackBerry, was much more truly a mobile computing device but best for doing email with its "real" (tiny) keyboard - the size of the screen made Internet browsing painful - but then, that wasn't the point. Then we have a now-old(ish) iPhone 6 - the main thing I use it for is email, for which the keyboard is not great (for me; I realize some are good at it). The browser is good but not the main reason I have this device. And compared to the Palm Pilot or the BlackBerry, it is heavier as well as fragile with its sheet of glass. (Alas now I find it necessary some of the time to have both a work phone and a personal phone and the two of them together weigh 5/6 of a pound, which is annoying.)

Most importantly the two older mobile devices are simply unusable due to obsolescence. There is no comparison with a good bicycle!

Bridgestone after snowy commute
A 1982 Bridgestone bicycle that I ride thousands of miles a year to and from work

About six years ago I bought the frame and fork for this Bridgestone on eBay for a little over $100 including the shipping. I then spent another ~$400 on a combination of used and new components to make it into an outstanding commuter bike. Other than the brakes I chose, which are a design introduced in the 1990s, nothing about the bike now represents a technological improvement over the bike as originally sold in 1982. I would be fine with riding the bike to and from work with the components that it had originally - that is, there is no way to regard any aspect of this bike as sold 35 years ago as obsolete. No one gives a second glance to this bicycle as they would if I tried to use my plastic Palm Pilot at a meeting at work, for example, or to use a different example, if I drove around in a 35 year old car.

Trek Singletrack 1995
Another ageless bicycle, a 1995 Trek SingleTrack

I purchased this bike two years ago from a bike repair "collective" (http://velocitycoop.org/ that had too many bikes and was selling excess - it cost $60 more or less as shown, except it was missing a saddle (seat) and only had one pedal. Well and it was incredibly filthy. I added a pedal and saddle and cleaned it and it was immediately ridable. While at the time this was a "low end" Trek bike, it was still significantly more expensive than many similar looking bikes one sees for sale today - the difference was that this bike was made with well thought out double butted chromoly tubing for the frame that means it only weighs 27 pounds (which is good). I have put studded tires on this for winter and it is a great bike for icy conditions!

Side view
My one perhaps mistaken concession to modern bicycle technology - sort of

I did buy this bike new in 2007 - it is a carbon fiber road bike and I ride it in good weather. Avoiding rain reduces maintenance and the bike doesn't have fenders anyway. It is nice, weighs just under 20 pounds, or about five pounds less than the Bridgestone above. The "technology" that is advanced for this bike is the use of carbon fiber for the frame, which at the time had a certain appeal to me that I still understand, but I wouldn't do it again. Carbon fiber is simply nasty to dispose of, although apparently the bike frame is unlikely to wear out - but eventually someone will dispose of it. And creating it in the first place was not a green process, either. Carbon fiber bike frames didn't render my steel bikes obsolete for commuting!

I doubt I will ever buy another new bicycle. New to me, perhaps, but not new-new. New technologies for bicycles are largely optional (if not also perhaps highly attractive/sexy to some people) such as hydraulic brakes or electronic shifting. No thanks.






Saturday, September 30, 2017

Part of My Commute on YouTube



Someone's video of the trail I use for several miles of my commute. The video starts where I join the trail on my commute.

I understand why the camera angle is the way it is, to show the area traveled through more fully, but this doesn't show very well the condition of the trail itself and how (for example) the width varies. The last mile or so (starting around minute 11) shows the most recently "upgraded" part of the trail that is wider than most of the trails around here, but this isn't obvious from the video (alas). I also find it disconcerting when the video is playing at 300 percent of actual speed. . .

Saturday, September 9, 2017

My 2,000 Character Response to WaPo Article on Bicycle Commuting

The Washington Post has an article, "Cycling to work means better health and a longer life. Here’s how to get started." that I made a comment on (that will be lost in the sea of comments, which is probably just fine). I have reproduced it here. You only get 2,000 characters for a comment!

Bike to Work Day, 2011
Line of bicycle commuters on Mt Vernon trail several years ago on "bike to work" day

"Cycling to work means better health and a longer life. Here’s how to get started." The first part of this title is surprising since typical headlines for stories like this include the word "may" - as in, it MAY mean better health and a longer life - or it may not. I guess that the author (and editor) felt OK with leaving that out is encouraging.

I'm not sure that the approach provided that much useful "here's how to start" guidance but as a selection of somewhat inspiring stories with some selected suggestions it is fine.

About the e-bike commuter, it says, "And she gets to work without sweating, traveling nearly as fast as a car." Since we are talking about pedal assist bike, and since this is Washington DC, this seems unlikely on hot days. Simply standing around outside is enough to start sweating in much of July-August, and although the self-generated breeze from riding does carry away some perspiration, you can't get away from some sweating. And the "traveling nearly as fast as car" suggests a high rate of speed but it is really more the slow-and-steady-wins-the-raise over automobiles that kill a lot of time in traffic jams. Those e-bike commuters I see who want a high rate of speed, which is certainly possible with some of them (over 25 mph on some pedal assist bikes) often create hazards for themselves and others, particularly when on multiuse trails that were intended for around 15 mph max.

The article doesn't include the suggestion that seems most useful to me - anyone thinking about this is likely to have seen a neighbor who is a bike commuter - the thing to do is to ask that person their advice. A lot of getting started is overcoming certain seeming obstacles specific to a location that a neighbor can likely help with. And this ties in with a pleasing aspect of bicycle commuting, which is that most of us eagerly help each other. It's a community you get as part of being a bike commuter.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Summer of Glass on Mt Vernon Trail

More glass Mt Vernon trail
Bits of glass from a broken bottle distributed on overpass bridge of Mt Vernon Trail near National Airport

If you click on the photo you can see a bit more of the glass, which in this image isn't that bad looking. Some days there has been quite a bit more than this.

There are three different overpass bridges on this trail near National Airport. Since the beginning of June there has been new glass appearing on one or another of these bridges at least once a week and sometimes more often. One sees cyclists pulled to the side of the trail changing flats (not surprising) as a result. It is obviously malicious since it happens over and over with the same kind of clear glass each time, spread across the trail. There are never sizable chunks of a bottle as you usually see with a broken bottle. There have been several dozen different times glass has appeared anew.

The clever aspect here is that on this part of the trail, given how the bridges are constructed, there is no place for the glass to go unless it is swept up by someone.

I have regularly sent email reporting this to the contact email on the web page for the Park Service people for the GW Parkway. Apparently they are able to send someone out to clean up much of the glass but sometimes it takes a day or two. It is quite . . . annoying. (To clarify - it is annoying that someone keeps putting broken glass on the trail, not that it may take a while for the NPS to clean it up. The NPS is not funded to sweep the trails on a daily basis!)

Quite a few cyclists don't seem to see the glass, even when it seems very noticeable to me - they go riding on through it at speed. I slow down and sometimes walk the bike through it.

Ugh.



Saturday, July 29, 2017

Commuting in Heavy Rain


Tweet shows Four Mile Run as it was during my afternoon commute

The Washington Post called it a "heavy summer rain event" that was "very strange." Perhaps not the most sensible day to commute by bike? Where did I put my common sense?

Yeah well.

For one thing, in the morning there was no rain at all - the rain was only going to show up later in the day. It is easier to deal with any rain, including heavy rain, if it is only on the way home. Even if the stuff in my Timbuk2 bag got wet on the way home (although it didn't) it's no big deal once I'm home. Also, I have done this commute for a long time and I have a good sense of where the problem areas might be in different kinds of weather. I had decided that aside from getting pretty wet, there were few serious risks. I didn't ride down Independence Avenue but rather more slowly through the Capitol grounds and down the National Mall. Once I get past the Jefferson Monument to the 14th Street bridge I am on trails the whole way home (for about seven miles). There are parts of the trail that can flood, but there are ways around those spots.

It was 70-some degrees (ie, around 20 C) but I decided to wear a rain slicker. I wore a thin wool t-shirt under it. Of course, I was soaked after riding 10 miles, but I was neither cold nor hot.

The main problem is having water mixed with sweat (or who knows what) run into my eyes that then irritates them. It is kind of hard to ride with your eyes closed. I have this cap-thing I wear under my helmet (see below) that has a bill which is usually great but it failed with this amount of rain and my eyes got pretty irritated; I had to stop several times as a result.

Barrier cap-thing gift for Christmas 2014

My main concession to common sense in this weather is to ride at a conservative pace - it is easy to misread what you are seeing with water accumulating in unusual ways and it is better to ride into trouble at a moderate speed than while riding as fast as possible.

One aspect of being out in the rain in weather like this is how striking it is how little people driving cars are thinking about how unusual the weather is or are making the slightest adjustments to it. A modern car, with radio (or whatever) on, windows shut, AC turned up, isolates the driver a significant amount (says the cyclist). I could give examples but I am suddenly bored by this subject.

Spindle with cars

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Double-Decker Bike Parking for Commuters in USA

Bicycle shelter, National Cash Register [Company], Dayton, O[hio]
Employee parking in Dayton Ohio in 1902 - back to the future?

Bicycle shelter, National Cash Register [Company], Dayton, O[hio] - detail
Two parking levels of bikes visible in parking shed (or "shelter")

In the detail photograph, you can see clearly that the rider-commuter to the right has a clip (or something) to keep his trousers from getting caught in the front ring of the drive train as well as away from the chain. The fellow in the middle would occasionally work late, it seems, since his bike is outfitted with a headlight.
Bicycle shelter, National Cash Register [Company], Dayton, O[hio]
Contributor Names-Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942, photographer
Detroit Publishing Co., Created / Published[1902?]
Source Collection-Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection
Repository-Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
www.loc.gov/resource/det.4a20572/

Saturday, February 11, 2017

What One Sees While Commuting

Crew training on Four Mile Run
Unusually warm February day brings crew team to Four Mile Run for training

Not much room for crew on this stream, really
I guess they came up from the Potomac

Untitled
There were in fact two racing shell and a motorboat

Normally my commute is on the other side of Four Mile Run, where the Arlington water treatment plant is, but at the moment cyclists are supposed to use a detour while some work is done along the north bank.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Women as Early Bike Commuters

I copied a long first person description of the work of a NYC "bike cop" from 1896 into a blog post, Adventures of NYC "Bike Cop" of 1896.

Towards the end, there is this paragraph:

Teamsters [here meaning the drivers of horse-drawn wagons, the the-equivalent of trucks] make most of our trouble. The manner In which heavy trucks and freight wagons of all kinds swarm to the Boulevard in the morning hours, when there are thousands of cyclists, four out of five of whom are ladies, is most exasperating. On Sunday, when the asphalt is covered with wheel riders, what satisfaction can there be in driving a carriage or buggy into their midst? It looks like sheer contrariness. The hostility shown by many truck and wagon drivers against cyclists is of that mean nature that is found in envy of those who seem to be getting some pleasure out of life.

While the "four out of five" is not a scientific survey, it suggests many women in 1896 were commuting to work by bicycle, since it is doubtful they were out on weekday mornings for some other reason.



This 1899 film of employees leaving a Parke Davis factory in Detroit suggests also that women were bicycle commuters in those pre-automobile days. Presumably most of the manufacturing employees were men and the women in this video (given their attire) were the clerical staff? So their percentage of the total number of commuters is likely relative to their percentage of the number of workers there overall.

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Sometimes the Bike Commuter is Lucky

Shirlington
Slightly threatening weather - clouds, anyway

For the past several days, the promised or likely weather was always a little bicycle commuter unfriendly. I don't let that bother me or keep me from commuting by bike. For one thing, the promise of some rain doesn't necessarily mean it will be raining during the commute!

Bridgestone Sirius with (cheap) fenders
Even if it is raining some, a bit with well-fitted fenders like this makes it not so bad

Thursday afternoon I did ride in the rain, but for about a quarter mile - the rain squall was going one way and I was going another.

Commuting every day, it may be twice a year that I find myself completely soaked in a driving rain while commuting. Part of the adventure, and I try to be prepared for it.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Thanks National Park Service! New Water Fountain on Mt Vernon Trail

New drinking fountain on Mt Vernon Trail
New water fountain along the Mount Vernon Trail near National Airport

There has been some construction work ongoing since (it seems) the end of last summer to improve small parts of the Mount Vernon Trail where it was routed down right next to the parkway (roadway). These improvements took longer than one would have imagined - part of it took longer than six months - but are good improvements.

At the same time, this new water fountain was installed. For a long time it was surrounded by yellow construction tape, but it didn't matter much since it was cooler weather. Now that hot hot weather has really arrived, it is great for this to be there.

Thursday afternoon it was up around 95 degrees (Fahrenheit, or around 35 Celcius) during ~ten mile (16 km) commute home. I have my bottle of water filled before I leave work, but getting through the DC traffic out of the city was hot work it seemed so when I got to this water fountain, I was glad to be able to stop and get a little refreshed.

The photo was taken Friday morning on the way in, around 6:30 - Fridays are a day a lot of people telework so not too much traffic, bikes or cars.

The fountain post has a metal bowl at the bottom that can be filled with water for dogs. Nice touch.

Thanks National Park Service! Happy 100th birthday!

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Bike to Work Day - I Don't

1995 Trek with Michelin Run'r tires installed
Why don't I want to ride this (or some other) bike to work tomorrow?

OK, I guess I'm kind of a grouch, or something. My thought is that since I ride all the other work days, I can take this day off, not just from riding a bike to work, but take the day off from work altogether. The effort of bike advocates to identify a day when good weather can be assured seems to me to miss the point, which is that bike commuting isn't a big deal; no need to wait for perfect weather.

Whatever.

Bike to Work Day, 2011
Apparently this was the last time I rode to work on Bike to Work day, in 2011

If we look at the above photograph, maybe another problem I have with Bike to Work day is that it is an opportunity to encounter a bike traffic jam. Gee, uhm, yeah no.

Now don't get me wrong - I am glad to see more people cycling, and riding in a line like this that might be going more slowly than I otherwise would enjoy is fine too, but the kind of overnight increase in the number of cyclists on some of these trails demonstrates immediately that the existing cycling infrastructure is not all it should be if biking to work is supposed to be a serious alternative (and not a one day celebration). Much of the Mount Vernon trail, shown above, is not wide enough to support the kind of heavy use it gets on Bike to Work day. Where are the pedestrians supposed to go?

Bike to work day poster Moscow 2015
Even the Russians have bike2work day, as evidenced by this poster from last year - this year, same day as here in America!

Another reason why Bike to Work day annoy me is that it is an excuse for the Washington Post to publish more dumb stories about bicycling. Like this one, Biking to work is great. If you can put up with the cars. And the weather. This listicle complains about taxis and cars passing too closely, then moves on to complain that you might get wet, "Riding a bike in wet conditions can too often make people feel like they’ve been returned to a time when they tottered around in soggy diapers." Generally this is baloney - if you ride a bike with fenders, it is amazing how rarely the weather is sufficiently downpour-ish that you get wet-wet. I've been doing this for 15+ years. Really, it isn't that big a problem. "Soggy diapers" - is a reference like that what attracts clicks?

The front page of the Washington Post weekend section on Friday had an illustration showing cyclists around the Lincoln Memorial and a few pedestrians with no cars at all. A caption reads, "A capital idea: forget Metro, ditch the car and start pedaling - Washington on two wheels." Framing the discussion this way is a bit dim - for most people it is an unrealistic idea to make a complete changeover to cycling. I get that the Metro problems present what seems like an opportunity to encourage more cycling, but if we could just get people to make one in ten of their trips usually made by car using a bicycle, that would be grand.

Untitled
People in cars, myself included, don't seem to need "super fun events" in order to decide to use them

Monday, March 16, 2015

Joys of Commuting - Sunrise in DC


Stopped to take this with my camera phone

Not as good in the photograph as the impression made in person (so to speak) but you get the idea - sunrise, and so on. Nice after all the nasty weather.

The Capitol dome looks a little odd because it is covered in scaffolding.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Fast Commute to Work


My route from south Arlington to Capitol Hill

According to the GPS driven app on my phone, the distance from my front door to work is 9.25 miles using my usual bike route. Today, thanks to some wind from the south (which is unusual in the morning), it took only 34 minutes and 18 seconds and my average speed was 16.2 mph.

Just to be clear, I'm not someone who obsesses about the speed of my bicycle riding efforts, but someone was asking about how far my occasional lunchtime jog is and I now have a so-called smartphone and found an appropriate app, so I was curious mostly to know what it would report as the distance of my commute. Years ago I estimated using Google maps that it was around 9.6 miles, so apparently I was a little high since it is almost exactly 9 1/3 miles. Oh well. I was amused today when I used the app riding in when I realized that the wind was coming from the south and that I would be a "fast" time (fast for me) because that wind pushing me up the river makes a difference. I don't think there are too many days where my commute is under 35 minutes. (Again - not that I'm paying much attention.)


Fanciful sail-bikes from 1894

One of those ideas from the 1890s that didn't catch on.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Four Mile Run Detour Re-Opens



This past Monday the detour for the Four Mile Run trail near the south end of National Airport was removed. The section of the trail that was under the bridge that was removed (see above) was widened somewhat and is edged on the inner side with some raised concrete. Work was being completed yesterday but the fences that enforced the detour were completely removed, so I am fairly sure it is OK to say the detour is done. It was open again this morning on the way to work.



The photo above shows the trail east of where the detour started - you can see that the bushes have taken over some of the trail while the work has been going on. Presumably Alexandria (I think this part of the trail is theirs) will send someone along to trim things up.

I was stopped to take this photo and blocking about 1/3 of the trail. The fellow in the photo came upon me and said, "excuse me" in a cranky tone which I took to be his way of complaining that I was blocking his speedy transit of this area. I don't know why people don't communicate more directly. What he clearly meant was, "you are in my f---ing way." Oh well. Mostly other cyclists seemed extremely pleased that the detour was over. I agree.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Commuting - Racing or Relaxing?


From user Landahlauts via Creative Commons in Flickr

In Paris for a week, I commuted about 3-4 kilometers back and forth to the National Library every day from the hotel to attend a conference. I would wear the clothes I would be in all day and didn't take a helmet to Paris, so no helmet. I mostly rode at a much more leisurely pace than I do at home but then the bikeshare bikes don't support much in the way of speed (or braking either, so perhaps that's good).



In my Arlington-Washington commute, I spend most of the time on trails and wear bicycling garb (ie, lyrca etc.) and try to maintain a high rate of speed - I work up a sweat. I shower and change at work. But then the distance is more like 17 kilometers one way. And I wear a helmet.


Parke Davis employees of 1899 leaving work, many on bicycles

Before cars become popular and extremely inexpensive, bicycles were briefly used by some for commuting much like Parisians do now, or so evidence like this short film clip seem to suggest.

I have given some thought about the similarity and differences between the commuting I did in Paris, which is less of a production (in the sense of not wearing special clothes, helmets, etc.) and what I do at home. I have concluded that the similarities (it is still biking) are more important than the differences. I regard Capital Bikeshare riders here as fellow travelers, so to speak, in a real sense.


Something unusual - an abandoned (unlocked) Capital Bikeshare bike

One thing I really enjoy about bikeshare biking, which I have done in Paris several times and in Boston, is that I immediately lose any concern with my rate of travel - unlike when I am on a road bike and I sometimes have to fight a desire to go fast (or as fast as I can, anyway). A typical bikeshare bike immediately says to me as I sit on it something about the improbability of going fast (I guess) so I don't think of the experience in terms of speed, but simply of pleasing forward motion. Since my misguided competitive urge that appears while sitting on a road bike disappears, the experience seems better than riding a road bike! (But I may be reading too much into this since I have done most of my bikeshare biking in Paris, and being in Paris may have something to do with this.)