There will be no place in this post to brag about my new wheels on my Gary Fisher Lane, so I'm going to do that first. Velocity A23s with DT Swiss spokes. Do I know much about bike wheels? No. Do I know that these are AWESOME? Yes. Recommended by our shop mechanic and bought by me on super duper clearance. Cha-ching!
I live up near the Cathedral and generally commute to 12th and Pennsylvania...sometimes to Alexandria...sometimes to L'Enfant...sometimes to Glover Park....sometimes to Friendship Heights...so if, while I am bitching about this street or that street, my route seems very erratic, it's because I have three separate jobs (well, one is an internship).
The best word with which to describe today is "yikes". I walked out the door at 8:19 AM, and Wisconsin Avenue was a parking lot. Massachusetts Avenue was even worse. Perhaps it was a motorcade or something, but I heard no sirens...anyway, I wimped out and took the sidewalk down Mass. Sometimes I try and ride down it in the street, but it was pretty much impassable today, and I like not being stressed. The sidewalk has its own share of stressers, but fewer that could kill me.
Can we talk about Dupont Circle for a second? And how pedestrians there absolutely suck? People usually cut in front of me when I have the light on the inner loop, and at the south part of the circle where the inner and outer loops intersect. One time, I hit an old lady who was crossing in a pack of (pseudo folk etymology heads-up!) sheeple. She was behind a tall man, so I thought I was in the clear when he moved, but I didn't see her. Fortunately, she was fine, admitted it was her fault, and then she asked me for directions. Weird.
I'm also beginning to have serious problems with the 15th Street cycle track. A friend of mine once remarked that, "Cycle tracks must exist in heaven," and I must say, I profoundly disagree. Today, a lady cut the light where the road turns into Vermont Avenue while I was going one way and some other guy was coming the other way. She effectively blocked both of us at the same time and said, "Oh, sorry, I always forget that's there!" Ughhh. Then I tried to stop for a couple of pedestrians who I thought were going to step out in front of me (not at a crosswalk), neglected to signal the stop, and the guy behind me had to slam on his brakes. I apologized and explained why I stopped...fortunately, he was nice about it. He wasn't even following me too closely, so I can't really fault him.
To contrast with that, my coworker and I were riding down E St. today, and that cycle lane has its own set of annoyances. Namely, cars parked or driving in the bike lane (that site, while slightly overly territorial, makes a good point). There's that ongoing debate about which side of parked cars the bike lanes should be positioned in, and I'm not sure which side I'm on. You're really in dooring territory either way (unless, like in Montreal, you have a thicker barrier between the street and the bike lane), and when you're next to the sidewalk, you have the added hazard of clueless pedestrians. I still encounter people parked in the 15th Street lane, and joggers use it all the time.
There's also the alternative option of positioning the lane in the middle of a busy, wide road (a la Pennsylvania Avenue). The biggest problem with that, besides the pedestrian issue, are cars making U-turns in front of cyclists. I've been knocked off my bike once and had the shit scared out of me several times. Again, concrete barriers would help, but those are (probably) expensive and would (likely) annoy people. Though they would be ten times better than those flimsy plastic things they position every 100 feet that always get knocked down...
Is it an infrastructure problem? Or is the collective unconscious of DC just not attuned to the presence of bicycles? Will this get better with time? What does anyone who reads this think?
Next blog will hopefully be a cooking one. I am moving to Glover Park, so all of my kitchen stuff is packed, but I am in charge of pie for Thanksgiving...I'm thinking pumpkin cream cheese pie....
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