Post post crash

Riding in traffic: still scary. But this new Surly helps. A lot. Because I feel awesome riding it. I have also developed a terrible case of SBS, or Sanctimonious Bicyclist Syndrome.  But whatever.  I've earned the right to it.

Sponge Candy aka Honeycomb aka Sea Foam aka Cow Brains

The other day, my friend Marc was really excited to share some sponge candy that he had purchased at Wegman's grocery store--apparently, it's a treat out of Buffalo, NY.  He was surprised when I said that I'd had it before, under the names "honeycomb" or "sea foam." It's actually mass-marketed in the UK as Crunchie bars, which are the most delightful things on the planet.  I was thisclose to buying them on Amazon when I thought I'd look up the recipe for fun.  I was excited to find that the candy itself (chocolate aside) is naturally vegan, as it just involves boiling the shit out some sugar and the same chemical reaction that third-graders use to create volcanoes.  This batch was intended for the birthday of my dairy-free boyfriend.  Good news for me--he hated it, so now I have it all to myself.

I will say, it's better dipped in chocolate (fun fact--the 4 lb. bags of Kirkland chocolate chips from Costco are vegan).  Also, did I mention that it's the easiest recipe ever?  Ready? Here it is.

1 c. dark corn syrup (you could probably use light, but I like flavor)
1 c. white sugar
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 tbsp. baking soda.

Heat the first 3 things together on medium heat with a candy thermometer stuck in the pot and stir until the sugar is more or less dissolved.  Once it looks like a cohesive substance, stop stirring.

Let it boil (no stirring!) until it reaches 300°F.

Boil boil boil. Boil.

When the thermometer reading gets to 300, pull it off the heat.  Add the baking soda and stir quickly until the white streaks are gone.  Transfer to a 9 x 13 baking pan that has been greased.  It will look unseemly, sort of like a cow brain or a lump of flesh.

I will HAVE my pound of flesh and it WILL BE in a baking pan.

Let it cool completely.  I suggest taking it for a bike ride in 5° weather.  That's what I did.

Once it's done cooling, break the pieces apart using the destructive tool of your choosing.  It should look like this on the inside. 

Warning: this shit is also a great adhesive,
and you'll be scrubbing your pot FOREVER.
Or you will leave it soaking in the sink with apologies to
your housemates as you run out the door,
and they will decide to be nice and clean it up for you.

It is possible that I burnt the inner part ever-so-slightly.  It's unclear.  My boyfriend thought it tasted like burnt marshmallows, but I like burnt marshmallows, so maybe that was the problem.

I recommend a sealed bag or canister.

Eat as is, or melt down some chocolate, dip the pieces in it, and let them cool.  Or just get lazy and eat each bite with a few chocolate chips--it's pretty much the same thing.  I want to try this with agave nectar because I have a ton that isn't getting used, but corn syrup is cheaper and more widely available (unless you're ingredient shopping at Whole Foods, in which case you're stuck spending $7 on either ingredient).  

Otherwise, if you want to make this healthier, go find a recipe for something else altogether.

Ta-da!  Magic!  Or rather, chemistry.

On riding slowly

Yeah, OK, so these days, I'm getting passed by people on Capital Bikeshare (this morning, that included a man who passed me on the right within about a foot).  Once upon a time, that would have been shameful. But it's really not so bad.  I just have to add an extra 10-15 minutes or so to my riding time, and in some respects, it's less stressful.  I can't pass people, so why even try?  All I have to do is focus on getting from A to B.  To C.  And D.  And beyond.

IN THE MEANTIME, I'm looking at a sexy new Surly.

Post-crash thoughts

Happy 2014, Bike D.C.!

First off, I don't recommend being rear-ended by a Buick as a strategy for getting a new bike. The insurance company of the guy who hit me has been very obliging, and while I'm still putting together bills from physical therapy and mechanics' notes to send to my claims adjuster, it's been pretty well-established that I was not in the wrong.  But it's annoying to have to get that stuff together, especially because there's no manual on how to do it all correctly.  I've had more than one insurance person get annoyed with me on the phone for having absolutely no idea what I was doing.  If I had money, I would just hire a lawyer.  But I don't, so here we are.

Second, you know how, if you're involved in a crash, you usually become more cautious of certain things that you're doing?  For example--after I was doored, I was hyper-aware of riding far enough away from parked cars, and when I skidded out on some uneven asphalt/gravel and screwed up my hip, I rode slower through construction zones and was careful not to brake on uneven surfaces.  When something happens to you that is 100% beyond your control, like getting rear-ended, it's jarring to think that there is nothing you could have done differently to avoid that accident. The only thing you might have done is not gone on the ride at all, but that translates to living in fear and not doing whatever you love, so that's not really an option--so I'm back on a rusty English three-speed that I bought off of my roommate for very cheap (still waiting for those insurance payments to come through!), and I'm biking around the city like usual.

Except--it's not quite the same.  I have always been a worrywart, and it has gotten approximately 100 times worse in recent weeks. I can't hop on a bike without experiencing some degree of fear, particularly on busy roads.  Whereas before, I was very adamant about giving myself enough space on the roadway, I find myself shying off to the rightmost side of the road, but because I don't want to ride in the dooring zone either, I just wait for every car to pass before I start to ride.  The sound of cars passing stresses me out, even in bike lanes, and I have an irrational hatred for every car on the road--to me they all seem like evil death machines.

I project this fear onto other cyclists, too.  If I see a cyclist in front of me get close to a car, I envision a terrible accident and reflexively shut my eyes, only to open them a second later and realize that everything is fine.  This has also translated into a general concern about everyone's mortality, and I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about people being involved in horrible incidents entirely of my own imagining.  When I was at home driving my mom's car in the Phoenix suburbs over Christmas, other cars were whizzing by me as I barely kept at the 45 mph speed limit and crawled by pedestrians in parking lots.  Highway driving was out of the question.  

So...yeah.  While, six weeks after the wreck, my body is fine (minus two wrenched shoulders that I'm seeing a physical therapist for), and I'm very fortunate for that, my brain doesn't like me very much.  I'm not really sure what to do about it except to keep bicycling, eventually get a faster bike, and work my way back up to where/who I was before.  Part of me feels like I should just woman up and get over it, but that's much easier said than done. Could you call this PTSD? I have no idea, but I'm guessing there's a lot of folks that have been through similar experiences after car/bike/skiing/hiking/whatever accidents, and that thought helps a little bit.  I really don't want to make a big gigundous deal out of this, and I'm not looking for further sympathy, but talking/writing about it helps. 

One last thing--it's always been my dream to bike across the country, and I was hoping to do that after I get my M.A. this coming December.  But I was struck on a multi-lane suburban road, and unfortunately, there are a lot of those in America.  So it's going to take some time. For now, I'd just like to get back to being comfortable on city streets, because if there's one thing that getting back on a bike has reminded me, it's that I love bicycling more than pretty much anything else I could be doing (even in the nasty, wet D.C. winter).

Getting there!

Some well-deserved gratitude

WABA's Cider Ride was on Saturday--it was a great ride, and if you want to know more about it, my friend Rootchopper does a nice job covering it on his blog. I was assigned as a sweep to the 47-mile route, and around mile 34, I got into a wreck.  As we were riding down Arena Drive near FedEx field, a driver hit me square-on from the rear, and he was traveling at about 25-30 miles per hour.  He did not brake before he hit me. He was old and couldn't see very well. This was the second accident I've been in in about a month--the last time, it was due to some really shoddy road construction.

First, what sucks about this--having a scraped up face, sore shoulders and giant bruises down my butt and legs, feeling shaken up and freaked out by cars and loud noises, having the crash replay again and again in my head like a 4D horror movie experience, having a wrecked bike that I was really very attached to, and having to deal with police reports and insurance bullshit.

But what doesn't suck about this is that I got incredibly lucky--blessed, if you will. If the car had been anything taller than a sedan, it would have crumpled me instead of knocking my bike out from under me.  If I had managed to take off my rack that morning, like I tried and failed to do, the car would probably have done more damage, but the rack took a lot of the force. If I hadn't been wearing a helmet, I would have smashed my forehead instead of the helmet.  If the weather had been warmer, I wouldn't have been wearing all of the layers of clothing that very literally saved my skin.  After a quick ride to the emergency room, I got to get up and go home.  I am fully aware that many (most?) of these accidents do not end so well.

Mostly, what doesn't suck about this is the reminder that I have one of the best support networks anyone could ask for.  From worried parents, grandparents and a livid sister/brother-in-law out west, to a close (and also livid) friend in Indiana, to a worried boyfriend who offered to come get me (and waited for 6 hours at the ER the last time this happened), to the two cyclists who were with me and took care of me at the scene, threw themselves in front of the car to make sure the driver stayed there, then came to the hospital, to the staff of WABA who took care of my bike and drove us home from the hospital, to the housemates who offered to make me tea, to the friend driving me to pick up the police report tonight, to the many friends who have called/texted/emailed/tweeted at me to see if I'm OK and/or have offered to bring me food and/or alcohol and/or to keep me company--it's kind of overwhelming, in a good way.

I try not to gush, but I can't remember a time when I've felt more grateful.  There's not enough flour in the world to churn out the number of baked goods that I want to make to thank these people.  A blog post doesn't really cut it, but guys, I just have all these feelings.  So--thanks, everyone.

Thoughts on a shooting

Typically, as we watch shootings happen across the country, empathetic sadness sinks in as we grieve for those who have lost loved ones, but we’re grateful that we have never had to experience anything quite so horrible, and that our friends and family are safe.  This morning, for at least 12 families in the DC area, that tragedy hit home, and for the rest of us, it came disturbingly, frighteningly close.  It’s a cruel game of fate, and with the increased frequency in violent mass shootings around this country, you start to feel like a number on a very large roulette wheel.   

Shootings are something that crop up all too commonly in the news these days.  I started grad school last year, so since my life is once again divided by semesters, this frequency has been more noticeable for me.  My first semester of school, finals were marked by the school shooting in Newtown.  The next semester’s finals, just four months later, were marked by the Boston Marathon bombing.  Now, in September, the beginning of the third and current semester, we face a similar situation here in Washington, DC.

Over the last two months, I’ve been working with 4 others on a grant that sends us out to the off-street bike trails in DC every single day.  Since two of those trails, the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail and the Suitland Parkway Trail, are located east of the river, we’ve taken to spending a lot of time biking through and hanging out in the Navy Yard, which connects to the newly opened 11th Street Bridge.  This morning, around 7:30 AM, 2 of us biked past the Navy Yard and over the bridge.  Nothing seemed amiss.

Coming back, around 9:50 AM, I wanted to grab something to eat before we went back to home base.  “We’ve got some extra time,” said my coworker, “Let’s head to the Potbelly in Navy Yard.” As we biked that way, we noticed an usual amount of helicopter activity, starting at the US Park Police headquarters right off the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail, which runs underneath the 11th Street Bridge.  We got closer and noticed that there were flashing lights on the road, but the trail was still open, so we biked up the hill to see what was going on.

The bridge, which is usually quite busy that close to rush hour, was closed to vehicle, foot, and bike traffic. There was a police car sitting a ways past us, and traffic on the adjacent bridge had also been halted by a police car.  To be honest, the people who live and work in DC are pretty used to street closures due to accidents, bomb scares, presidential motorcades, or whatever else.  Since there was no one running up to us telling us not to be there, we talked about crossing. It was cold, rainy, and we were tired. But this situation was unusual, and something didn’t feel right.  As we stood watching, I noticed two or three police boats in the river, and across the river, one of the helicopters hovered over the Navy Yard.  It appeared to be lifting something, or someone, in the air. The ambient sound of sirens served as a backdrop for the whole scene.

I looked down at my phone to check what was happening on Twitter while my coworker went to go talk to the policeman.  There was a text from our supervisor--“Hey, stay out of the Navy Yard this morning.  There is a shooter on the loose and they’ve closed 11th Street.”  My stomach sank.  What?  A shooter?  On the loose?  Where?  Immediately my thoughts turned to the safety of those that I know who work in and around the Navy Yard, as well as for the safety of my coworker and me--standing by ourselves on an otherwise closed bridge, with emergency vehicles zooming around, we felt like sitting ducks.  As my coworker came back to report, another police officer on a motorcycle pulled up next to me and asked what we were doing.  Turns out they hadn’t realized there was a trail there, so they hadn’t closed it off.  After the officer told me there were “several bodies down,” and that we definitely shouldn’t cross that particular bridge, I asked him where we should go.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t have to pedal.” Unsure what else to do, we turned around and headed into downtown Anacostia for safety.

After about 15 minutes of scrolling through confusing and mixed updates on Twitter, we consulted a map and headed back across using Pennsylvania Avenue, which took us into Capitol Hill and skirted around the dangerous area. It’s a terrible connection for bicycles, but it was either that or South Capitol Bridge, which is right next to the ballpark and the Navy Yard, and we weren’t about to risk that.  I found out later that the area we were biking through was also under lockdown advisory, but there wasn’t really any other way to get back up to where we were going.

Everyone that I know, at least so far, is fine.  Once again, I feel lucky to be in the group of people that can sit on the sidelines and feel empathetically sad, and that the roulette ball hasn’t landed on me.  I am so, so grateful for the police officers who closed that bridge down on time, for the first responders and security guards that were in the middle of the situation, and that my coworker and I were fortunate enough to not be near the Navy Yard while the shootings were going on.  

I’m angry at news agencies for reporting conflicting and in many cases, wrong information for the sake of getting a “breaking” story.  I’m angry at whoever did this for terrorizing the city that, after seven years (almost a third of my life), I now call home. I’m angry that people are allowed to exist who have no conception of human life or its value.  I’m angry that the people I know and love who work near the Navy Yard had to be so scared. I’m angry at the NRA for merely existing, especially with their headquarters so nearby.  And I’m angry that there’s nothing we can do except offer condolences to those who have not gotten so lucky.  

It’s an existential kind of anger, the sort that nothing can really quell.  News stories always come out after tragedies like this about people helping out other people, and about heroes in times of crisis. These stories, I think, are meant to focus on the good in humanity, and to help us forget that people are actually capable of committing totally senseless acts of violence.  And the stories help, to an extent, and they honor those who deserve to be honored, but as these shootings become more and more frequent, I find that my own anger is growing, and that my faith and trust in other people, which once upon a time was almost boundless, is diminishing.  Events like this are tragedies not only because of the lives lost, but because of the pure, deep evil that they represent.

Where does it all end?  Are we fated to just wipe each other off the planet entirely?  Isn’t that what we’re talking about, after all, when we want to give guns to schoolteachers?  Do our governing bodies actually harden up and pass laws that might prompt some change?  Will that even solve the problem, or is the human tendency towards violence something that runs deeper than what our country’s laws say we can and can’t do?  

There are so many questions, and so much doubt, but in an attempt to end this on a hopeful note...

An event that happened on the 11th Street Bridge a couple of weeks back was called "One City," referring to the fact that the newly-built bridge connects both sides of the river. Today, that phrase seems to take on a deeper significance. As we sought people and information out in Anacostia (a part of the city that, upon coming here in 2006, I was told never to go into), and as we greeted everyone that we saw outside on the way back from our shift, in an attempt to bring some small kind of cheer to a very dark situation, I was reminded of what connects us and that we are, in fact, one city. I hope that there’s something in the empathy that we can all still feel for those who are grieving--maybe that ability to love and grieve together is what we're supposed to stake our hopes in.  

That being said, my thoughts and love are with the families and friends of those who were killed or injured today here in DC.

Spring has sprung...

...the grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdies is.

Here are a bunch of pictures of seasonally appropriate things.  Why, you ask?  Because I have a paper due, of course.  Also, the wind chill was 37 degrees this morning and DC just can't seem to get it straight.

Cherry blossoms.

Cherry blossoms and the people who go to see them.

Tulips at the Floral Library near the paddleboat station on the Tidal Basin...

At the National Basilica

Posing my bike with some cherry blossoms...

What up.

The Omni Shoreham and their ridiculously pretty landscaping

...I think they could use some more tulips.

Magnolia blossoms (NB: Not a cherry tree).

Fun with templates

I don't update, I just reformat.  I'm reminded of when I was 13 and had a Xanga site...when you opened up the page, the background was clouds, the cursor turned into a chick, and Billy Joel's "Root Beer Rag" (MIDI style!) started playing in the background. That was shortly after I taught myself very (VERY) basic HTML. Seriously, who needed templates when there were curly purple fonts to display?

I hope this is slightly less offensive.

DC Tourists

The other morning, when it was snowing, I was headed over to Barracks Row to spray paint the ground, and I was stopped next to some tourists on 15th Street.  They were obviously from out of town, because you can always, always tell, and a little girl remarked, "Daddy, there's SO MUCH SNOW.  Look at all that snow on top of the car!"

Never mind the fact that whoever the guy in the car was should have shoveled his roof (they never do), I was moved by this very cold but eager family with their rainbow umbrellas and DC sweatshirts shielding them from the misery of the late wintry mix.  The level of snow wasn't even that impressive--it was just wet and awful, but this little girl was nevertheless determined to be impressed by her surroundings.

When the light changed, I rode slowly next to them and asked if they were here to see the cherry blossoms (it was March 25th, and I think that was the original predicted peak bloom time).  The dad sadly remarked that there really weren't any around, and the grandma of the group said, "Maybe not, but we got some really cool t-shirts!" 

And that's what I love about tourists.  They're a breath of fresh air from my usually cynical internal monologue, they have different perspectives on life because they all come from different places, and (when they're not standing in a clump in the cycle track) they can be quite fun.  So sometimes I stop and talk to them, or I ask obviously lost people if they need help finding something.  Tourists, unlike most locals who inhabit the downtown area during the weekday, don't look at you like you have broccoli growing out of your ears should you dare try and engage them in conversation.  They seem, by and large, to be OK chatting with locals as long as the locals aren't condescending pricks--I know I welcome help and someone who knows what they're doing when I travel to different cities.

This is what I keep telling myself as I gear up for another season of giving bike tours--I seem to keep going back, and I think, aside from the money, that's a big part of the reason why.
 

Fruit and shit

As Kate pours her homemade jam from a pot into a beer glass to stick in the fridge that will sit alongside another beer glass full of homemade raspberry syrup from the Super Bowl:

Me: "I'm getting you a funnel and Mason jars for your birthday. So...enjoy those."

Her: "Alternatively, you could just get me a card and write, "Hey, stop boiling fruit into shit' on the inside."

I should perhaps explain that recently, she's taken to making sugary products that are usually store-bought (i.e. pop/soda and Nutra-Grain bars) and making them herself from scratch.  Personally, I'm enjoying this trend.

Is it a cookie? Is it a pie? It's both!

Last week, I made a pie with a hazelnut crumb topping, and it was so tasty that I was inspired to make some sort of Nutella-inspired pie.  But all the recipes I was finding were for icebox pies or cream pies (neither of which I especially like), or they called for lots of ingredients that I didn't feel like buying.  Then I ran across this recipe, which the blog author writes came from a baking experiment gone wrong.

One of my favorite recipes that I make in the fall is a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie that feels like a muffin--I call them mookies or muffkies.  Therefore, since these are a combo of pie and cookies, I hereby deem these "pookies."  Maybe that's a terrible name.  Suggestions?

The author makes her little cookies with cream cheese, strawberry jam, and Nutella.  I decided to leave out the cream cheese, and in the spirit of gilding the lily, I decided to drizzle some melted chocolate (I didn't have dark, so I mixed milk and baking chocolate) on top.  

This is what I wound up with:

Verdict: Good!  Next time, I'll try 'em with the cream cheese, and I might add more strawberry jam because you can hardly taste it. Instead of Nutella, I wound up using Whole Foods way-too-expensive ($8.49 a jar "on sale" from $9.99, but I was desperate) knock-off organic whatever whatever brand, and I think it held up in the oven better than Nutella would have.  It also has less sugar, so it kept the filling from being too sweet.

In the spirit of experimentation, I tried a batch with Speculoos Cookie spread (if you haven't tried this yet, go out and buy a jar immediately).  Since the first batch burned slightly, I turned down the temperature to 340 instead of 350 and baked them for a wee bit longer--about 27 minutes.  I melted some more cookie spread and drizzled it on top, along with a couple puffs of cinnamon sugar.

I'm excited about this recipe because it showcases the pie crust, whereas for most pies, the crust is kind of an accessory.  Plus, it doesn't involve fussing with the pastry dough in order to create an attractive fluted edge, so the pastry dough has a better chance of staying flaky and holding together.  I was pretty damn proud of this batch--it takes a lot of patience to make a decent crust, and patience is something I absolutely lack. Lots of refrigeration, and a lot less water than you'd think...you just have to work to disperse it through the pastry, but you have to do so without overworking the gluten in the flour.  I also refuse to use shortening because yuck.  The ingredients on a can of Crisco are horrifying.

The other fun thing is that this recipe can be played with.  I'd like to try something with raspberry, and potentially a peanut butter version.

Additionally, pies are a bitch and a half to transport by bike.  These, on the other hand, just need to be fully dried/cooled and tossed in a box.  My goal in life, if all else fails, is to open up a bike/bake shop and call it the Bikery...we'd specialize in portable baked goods.  Or fancy devices that would make portable baked goods portable on a bike (I have an idea for a rack-mounted rectangular pie pan that suspends the pie on springs).  It's probably a niche market, but whatever.

Anyway, thanks From the Little Yellow Kitchen for the inspiration!

Sidewalks: Not for cars

I've been bitching about this on Twitter with some regularity, but after spending a morning with a chisel, a hammer, and concrete bits flying into my face, I feel that this warrants a blog post. Presenting exhibits A through C....

 Take a good look at the rack furthest from the bike.  

 Someone pointed out that this looks like a string of licorice

 There's an alley directly across from this...

Aside from the bike racks merely being broken, here's what's wrong with this.  First of all, these three racks were all busted within two weeks of each other.  Second, in order for any of these to get as busted as they are, a car would need to go full-up onto the sidewalk and hit them.  DC regulations require bicycle racks to be placed 2-3 feet from the curb exactly for this reason.  We've all had the experience of running car wheels over a curb on an especially tight turn, but this is just BAD driving.  There is absolutely no reason at all why anyone who is driving sober should have their car that far into the travel lane intended ONLY for pedestrians and, occasionally, bicycles.    

For the first (on 11th and U), I have absolutely no idea what happened, but the vinyl coating on the rack was torn and bunched up towards the bottom. 

For the second (24th and L, outside District Hardware), that's a rack sitting in 10 inches of concrete in a brick sidewalk, so it's wedged in there pretty firmly.  In order for a car to exert that much force on it, it had to be moving at a good clip. I talked to the folks in District Hardware, and they mentioned that some guy was teaching his girlfriend how to drive, and she somehow got the car up on the sidewalk and drove halfway down the block that way.  

For the third (14th and Q, outside the Bike Rack), there's an alley directly across from that rack.  I'm guessing a truck was trying to back out.  That being said, there's a parking space right next to this rack, and since it looks like it was hit straight on, that means whatever it was backed directly into it.  This means that there was no car parked there at the time, which means the vehicle had the ENTIRE STREET to back out of the alley, so how the hell the driver wound up knocking over the bike rack, I haven't a clue.

I passed yet another bent rack downtown today, but I forgot to snap a picture.  It was one of those radiator style racks, so unfortunately, I won't be able to replace it.  Since August, there have also been struck racks at 25th and N, on Thomas Jefferson Street in Georgetown, and along Georgia Avenue near the Petworth Metro stop.

The nonchalance with which these racks are struck annoys me because 1) what if a pedestrian had been standing there instead of a bike rack? and 2) because I have to go in and fix them.  I realize that this is part of my job, but making up for other peoples' intense stupidity makes me unhappy.  It's at least twice as hard to remove and reinstall a rack as it is to simply install a new one.  Particularly for situations like the second one--that's going to require a good 45 minutes or more of chiseling to simply get that thing out of the ground.  In the meantime, that's one less bike rack for people to use.

I guess the point of this post is that if you drive in the city, CHECK YOUR MIRRORS and DON'T DRIVE LIKE AN IDIOT.  Otherwise things like this happen:

Thus ends my rant for the day.

Desert biking (or dessert biking, if you have ice cream afterwards)

I just got back from spending 10 days in the Phoenix area with my family.  Leaving Vancouver (my bike) behind and leaving DC (the city in which I live) behind are always a little difficult, especially this year, when after heaps of schoolwork, I finally had time to go riding and the city was looking especially nice for the holidays.

And yet family matters demanded a long trip to the Grand Canyon State, so off I went.  

I have long been highly, highly critical of Phoenix for being overly conservative and also run by people who are, frankly, bat-shit insane (*cough Joe Arpaio and Jan Brewer cough cough*), and this break was no different.  After the Newtown shootings, the attorney general of Arizona decided that one person in every school (preferably the principal) needs to have a gun because the state budget is just too stretched to stick a police officer in each school.  The logic behind this thinking entirely escapes me because, as someone who is vehemently pro gun control and also a human with basic moral principles, I don't believe that guns and kids mix well.  Guns don't belong in schools.  Period.  Anyone who argues differently is missing the point.

Anyway.  The point of this post was not to make soapbox speeches, yet here I am, making soapbox speeches. Believe it or not, the point of this post relates to bicycles.

Because I have been so dead-set on hating Phoenix for the last, oh, six years or so, I have drastically and mistakenly overlooked many of the bright points of the city.  Specifically--there are a LOT of cyclists there!  Maybe not in South Chandler, where my parents live, because it's pretty far away from anything, but that doesn't mean the city hasn't built the infrastructure for them.  In Chandler and well beyond, there are bicycle lanes everywhere, and when you hit the suburbs closer to Phoenix and, of course, Phoenix itself, there are LOTS of cyclists around!  I saw people whizzing by on intense-looking mountain bikes, I saw a man teetering to and fro as he carried a large sack of groceries home on his steel 1980s Schwinn, I saw a girl on her single-speed with a Chrome messenger bag pedaling along in cut-offs.  And honestly, why wouldn't you want to bike there?  It's completely flat, so a commute of 15 or 20 miles couldn't be so bad, and if you're into mountain biking, you're absolutely in the right spot for it.  I don't know if it would be possible to live car-free in the area, but it was heartening to see so many people out on two wheels.  So heartening, in fact, that it was torture, and I longed to have my bike with me.

To me, a love a biking means a love of the environment, and in the smog and humidity-filled Valley of the Sun, there is absolutely a need for more people to care about the unbelievable natural desert landscape in which they live (fly over the state sometime and you'll see what I mean).  So I tend to equate biking with liberalism, because biker-friendly areas tend to be more liberal.  Most cyclists I know are vehement liberals, but maybe that's just because I live in DC and don't get out much in the way of the political spectrum.  But anyway, my initial thought, for whatever reason, was that maybe this massive amount of biking means that the citizens of Phoenix are less crazy than the people that govern them.

I realize, though, that this doesn't matter (it would be nice, but it doesn't matter).  If you're on a bike, it doesn't matter who you are or which way you vote, it just means that you like to bike!  If more people are biking, the government, no matter which way they swing, will need to start responding to this growing population, and ultimately, that means a safer biking environment for everyone.  My dad used to tell stories of biking around the city when he was a kid, and I had naively and blindly figured that was a time long past.  But apparently I was very wrong.  So, citizens of Phoenix, I stand corrected, and I look forward to riding with you at some point in the future.

I will say, however, that whoever is put in charge of installing bike racks has some serious studying up to do.  I saw this at least three times:

We won't get into that right now.  Never mind that a 4-bike parking capacity has been reduced to one, MAYBE two if you can squeeze one between the rack and the building.  Baby steps.

My one question to Phoenicians and anyone else living in a deathly climate--what on earth do you do in the summer months?

Thought for the morning

I once knew someone who, as a PhD candidate, was rather disparaging of Master's students and claimed that they never do any work, that they glide right on through two years of graduate school with nary a difficult task or assignment.

As I sit here working on this grant proposal for the umpteenth hour with five more large assignments looming over the next two weeks, and not really due to procrastination on my part (seriously), all the while having gained a few pounds from stress over the past two weeks, I would like to throw out a giant "fuck you" to this person.

I really hope subsequent semesters suck less.

New racks along 14th Street!

....you're welcome.  Now stop locking your bikes to those poor trees, dagnabbit.

Keep on Truckin'

I've had my eye on either the Surly Long Haul Trucker or the Disc Trucker for awhile now.  Any thoughts on either of these models?  Disc brakes v. not?  Expense?  Components that I should invest in if I get one? 

How not to use a grinder...

In general, I seem to be getting the hang of this job.  I'm home from work and don't feel like I want to a) die or b) cry.

Today brought a whole host of exciting events.  This morning, I installed a rack outside of Revive Catering on Florida Ave NW, just before North Capitol Street.  As usual, I was hauling around a giant trailer of stuff, so I opted to take the back roads because Florida Avenue at morning rush hour = a hellish nightmare in the best of times.  Aside from being unable to bike any faster five miles per hour, it was actually a really nice ride.  The sun was out, there was a light breeze, the temperature was in the upper 60s--perfect weather, in other words. 

The beautiful weather was, of course, marred by the usual cat-calls and even a "Hey, sexy lady!" from a gentleman (ha) in the park across the street.  When I proceeded to ignore him, he amended his statement to, "Hey, sexy white girl!", in order to clarify--as if I was somehow confused.  It wasn't really worth saying anything or telling him off, so I went about my business and he eventually shut up.  As usual, I drew curious looks and offers of help from passersby.  I was especially amused by one man who greeted me, offered to help, then when I politely refused, kept a constant 15 feet or so away from me and just watched for the entire 20 minutes I was there. 

I think that traffic control box is defunct.

On my way back to the office, I put in another rack at the new Pleasant Pops shop because when I stopped by this weekend, the sidewalk was almost literally littered with bikes.  The owner, as always, was super nice, and I had to force myself to leave without buying a popsicle.  God, those things are good.

I spent about 15 minutes trying to line that last (closest) one up, and I'm still not convinced it's right.

The highlight of the day was confusing the DDOT staff at their outcrop office along 18th Street in Adams Morgan.  My contact at DDOT had asked me to install the last Adams Morgan rack, so, assuming he had let the 18th Street office know in advance (which was stupid of me), I marched in, picked up the rack, said, "I was told to install this," and I was about to walk out when the guy at the desk stopped me.  He asked me (a bit more brusquely than necessary, though I suppose the line of questioning was warranted), who I was, who I was with, and what I was planning on doing with the rack.  When he got to that last part, he said, "So, I assume you're not planning on installing that by yourself?  You've got crews outside or something?"  I just looked at him for an uncomfortable second and said, "Nope, it's just me."  He sputtered and said, "Well, I didn't mean to suggest you're not capable or anything," which, of course, was exactly what he was suggesting. 

Lesson learned: Don't assume anyone knows who I am!  

I took the rack, went on my merry way, and installed that sucker outside of....where else....Jumbo Slice.

EIGHT HOLES.  Completely unnecessary.  Also, those things are about twice the weight of a normal rack.
That is my darling sledgehammer.

After all of this fun, I went up to 11th Street, next to Meridian Pint, to investigate a resident complaint.  Apparently one of the bike racks had long been used as a hitching post for a motorcycle, and unsurprisingly, two of the bolts had come off.  Unfortunately, the only way that you can really take out a bike rack is by using a grinder, and, perhaps more unfortunately, I'm not great at using one. The one I have isn't very steady to begin with, and I never once bothered to read an instruction manual or anything.  By the way, if you don't know, a grinder looks like this.  I wouldn't have known until about, oh, a month ago.  

I managed to get the rack out of the ground, and because bike parking is TIGHT along that street, saw fit to move it outside the restaurant Maple....only to be informed halfway through that installation that the only available bike parking spot left on that block was home to outdoor seating for the restaurant which had taken the owner 3 months to acquire because, surprise surprise, the permit had to come from DDOT.  Oops.  Back to the grinder.

Somehow, in trying to remove the rack for the second time, I wore the grinder blade down to its very nub.  It went flinging off the grinder followed by a majestic stream of sparks, and I was left with a useless spinning thing, a partially installed rack, and one very panicked restaurant owner who was apparently on her way in (someone in the neighborhood had called her).  Fortunately, I found a spare blade hiding in my toolbag, and unfortunately, I put it on upside down, which I only realized after I tried to use it and it got very, very stuck and the grinder came, quite literally, to a screeching halt.  

Right at the point when I was about to start frantically kicking the bike rack to get the freaking thing out of the ground, a man walked out of Columbia Heights Coffee and said, "Hey, I noticed that you put your blade on backwards.  Do you want me to get my grinder and help you finish this job?"  

I always knew there was a god.

As it turns out, Paul (appropriately named, because I'm pretty sure he was a saint) was working on construction at The Coupe across the street and, true to his word, he brought out his grinder and helped me get the rack all the way off.  He also helped me bang the studs into the ground, tried to fix my grinder, and even better, didn't judge me for being a complete and utter idiot.

If your blade looks like the one on the left, you've done something wrong.

So that was today.  Some very, very nice man at Glover Park hardware got the grinder blade off for me and sold me a new one, and Maple still has its outdoor seating, so no harm, no foul.  I'm actually really glad that someone stopped me mid-installation because as much of a pain in the ass as it is to get halfway-installed bike racks out of the ground, it's about 50 times more of a pain to get fully installed racks out.  Plus, I wouldn't want to upset any restaurant owners.  I'm trying to do a nice thing for the community, and pissing people off doesn't really fall in that category.

Lessons learned: Always double-check before placing racks, and learn how to use properly power tools before you get all gung-ho with them.  And, when all else fails, pray for a nice man to walk out of a coffee shop and save your ass.

Confessions of a Bike Rack Installer

This post is not coming from a place of complaint or unhappiness, but as a response to the constant stream of questions I'm getting about what it is I do, because it generates a lot of confusion.  Basically, I install bike parking racks around the city.  Easy enough, right?  Not so much.  It's actually pretty challenging, and here's why:

1) Each installation, whether it's one or five "hoops," as those inverted U shaped things are referred to, requires me to visit a site, take some pictures, take some measurements, determine how to fit a bike rack in to conform with DC codes (which, believe it or not, exist, although no one but me cares about them).  Then, I go back to the office, put together a proposal, send it to the requester, wait for confirmation from whatever landlords or powers-that-be exist, and find time in my calendar to return to the site with a generator, a socket wrench set, a hammer drill, the racks, a grinder, a sledgehammer, and other sundry tools.  If the ground is made of anything other than cement, there are different tools, and if the ground is brick, I get to work with DDOT crews who have to drill out the hole with a rock hammer.  At present, I have a backlog of over 50 places that want at least one bike rack.  Many of them want or need more.  There is one of me.  One of me, 50+ of them.  The District Department of Transportation, lovely folks that they are, only allots funds for me to work 32 hours a week. 

2) Very few people out there know what the non-profit organization I work for is.  When they ask me who I work for, I tell them. Usually, they respond with, "There's a whole organization that supports bikes?  What do they do???" Which is pretty exciting, because I get to tell them all about all of those wonderful things.  Unfortunately, the curious passersby are usually asking me this when I'm lugging around hundreds of pounds worth of stuff, in a set up kind of like this:

Or when I'm in the process of trying to drill some holes in the ground with a hammer drill OR when I'm trying to bang things into those holes with a sledgehammer.  If I tell them I work for DDOT, they generally say, "Oh," and walk away.  So sometimes I do that.

3) When people ask what I do my response inevitably produces a raised eyebrow, a visual up-down of my rather small frame, or both.  PARTICULARLY from men.  Whether or not they mean to be, this is incredibly insulting, and incredibly frustrating, especially when it happens on the job.  Just the other day, I was trying to install some racks outside of USDOT while the building supervisor (a male in a suit) stood by to make sure security didn't pitch a fit over this strange girl with her power tools.  I heard the following comments from two of his colleagues:

• "It's a man's world when the woman's doing all the construction and the man gets to stand there and watch her while wearing a suit."
• "They sure are putting your pretty little arms to work, aren't they?"

In response, I said nothing to the first, and threw out, "Well, I don't know that I'd use the adjective 'pretty'", to the second, which wasn't terribly clever or biting, but it shut him up.  I messed up the installation, due in no small part to the fact that I was getting angry and also very nervous under the judgmental eyes of several men standing around watching me and making comments.  Which made me feel stupid, because I really DO know what I'm doing. Anyway, it ruined my entire day and it's making me mad just thinking about it now.

4) Unfortunately, the learning curve for this job is fairly steep and largely based in trial and error.  My predecessor did a great job of training me, but of the several installations I've done so far, a few have been unavoidable screw-ups.  Sometimes this is due to nervousness, as in my last example, but sometimes it's because the ground isn't quite steady, or the pavement cracks from the drill bit, or there's actually sand where there's supposed to be concrete, or the fasteners that I have are the wrong kind and won't secure the rack in the ground....there's a rather large spectrum of things that can go wrong that I have very little control over.  Because I am something of a perfectionist, I don't like this.  At all.  It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, and because I'm only a couple of weeks in, it's going to take awhile to get past that.

5) The work is straight-up draining.  There's the mental strain of trying to organize installations, and then there's the physical strain of actually doing them.  I repeat: I am a perfectionist, so trying to juggle this and being a full-time student (remember, I can only work 32 hours a week!) is, well, taxing.  

At the end of the day, I 100% love what I do.  When things go right, I have the ability to make people really, really happy.  Just yesterday, I visited an elementary school waaaaaaay out in Southeast, and the woman I was working with kept excitedly introducing me to people, saying, "This is Rachel.  She works with Department of Transportation, and she's going to give us some bike racks!!"  Each rack I install is one tiny bit closer to making DC a more bike-friendly city, and there's nothing like walking by a place of business and seeing a bike chained to something that YOU installed.  I also enjoy knocking down a few gender norms and stereotypes along the way, although that's a part of it I wish I didn't have to deal with sometimes.  Frankly though, it's all worth it!

Bleh!

3 sad days without a bike ride....my body decided to come down with some sort of mysterious illness that has left me sore and unable to ride a bicycle for any distance, particularly anywhere that involves hills...

The upside of this is that I've gotten to enjoy the fun that is the D1 (hey, that rhymed!), which picks me up from my front door and drops me off at work--and vice versa.  Occasionally, on normal, non-sick days, I have to forget this bus route exists because it could potentially make me very, very lazy.

After spending last night lying awake with a fever, however, I was forced to forego work at all today, and, to my dismay, it was GORGEOUS outside (as I discovered when I staggered out the door to catch the bus to go to the doctor's).  It's much easier to be sick when the weather sucks.  But the only thing I wanted to do was grab my bike and go spinning around in circles for hours.  Alas, it was not to be....

Keeping my fingers crossed that this bullshit clears up by Friday--between coffee club and Bike Prom, I feel I don't have much of a choice but to be up and about...

Back to blogs, bikes, and bites

A few visits to the Friday Coffee Club have helped me put faces to all the previously anonymous bike bloggers out there....and this morning, I felt especially remiss for not having updated since March.  It certainly was not intentional, but sometimes projects like this fall to the wayside.  In order to make up for this, I will attempt to summarize the last few months in pictures from my camera.  I take photographs with every intention of blogging about the events, and then I completely forget, so I apologize for the excessively long entry.

On the "bikes" side of things, I photographed Bike to Work Day (back in May), once again, with every intention of blogging about it.  It was a historic, momentous occasion for me because it was the first time in five years that I a) didn't have to work renting bikes out to people at 7 AM and b) registered in time to get a t-shirt.  I was a little sad that the t-shirts were a lurid green color this year, but hey--it was free.

Nifty sign

Nifty tandem

My bike, Vancouver!

Kate's first time biking to work!

Kate and Anjali

My shadow on a bike

BEAUTIFUL day that day, and many cyclists out on Pennsylvania Avenue

On the employment side of things, if you care, I quit my job selling cupcakes to rich people and making coffee for strangers, and instead did this:

That's right.  I've spent the entire summer riding Segways around the National Mall, managing the program for that company whose name you see on the bag (and with whom this blog is absolutely, in no way affiliated).  It was an interesting time for me, a cyclist who has more than once made loud, snarky comments to tourists riding Segways on the 15th Street bike lane.  It irked me to no end that those things were legally allowed to be in my way, so maybe this was just karma at its finest--I learned a lot in the way of patience.  As my friend Marc quipped, "Segways are the bikes of the bike world."    

Let's just say it was fun while it lasted, but there are bike people and there are Segway people, and I definitely fall into the former category.  They're about half as fun as riding a bike, but I really, really enjoy being on a bike, so Segways are not all bad.  

Moving on to the "bites" side of things, I've only made two pies that have been documented since I last blogged.  The first, a vegan strawberry pie, is not worth mentioning.  The second, however, was a cherry-berry pie that was delicious, if I do say so myself.

Cherries! ...but how to pit them without a pitter?

Smash 'em with the side of a knife!  The results were a little...morbid-looking.

A few cups of raspberries and cherries

A lot of sugar

...plus some lemon juice and 3 tbsp instant tapioca.  Let sit for 15 minutes.

Mixing butter, flour, baking powder, an egg, vinegar, and cold water

Forming into a ball....

....and measuring...

....and dumping some berries in....

....and HOLY SHIT, THAT'S ALMOST A PROPERLY FLUTED CRUST!!!

...with an awkward snowflake design on top.

And, most recently, Kate and Kate and I decided to go on the reverse of the trip we took in February, with the sole intent of eating pizza at the Italian Store in Arlington.  The trip, I would like to note, was much easier the second time around....possibly because we took the Custis Trail towards DC, and it was more downhill that way.

Thug life...plus some helmets.

They see me rollin'...

The Weenie Beenie!  My goal is to eat there someday.

AWESOME pizza.  I would have biked a lot longer for it.

So....that's pretty much it?  More exciting things to come, hopefully.  I may or may not have gotten a new job yet AGAIN, and in about a month I will start installing bike racks and answering pretty much all bike parking-related questions for a particular non-profit bicycling advocacy organization whose name rhymes with "Jabba" (as in, the Hutt)....*cough cough*....I'm unbelievably excited.