Cyclist Woes

Here are some things that are not helpful when I’m ridding my bike in the morning:

•Yelling out of the car window, “there aren’t any bike lanes over here. Be careful”. Duh!! I know there are no bike lanes but this is my route. Soooooo, please stop yelling at me from two lanes over. Just drive your car and try not to hit me.
•Screaming out the car at me the following, “it’s dangerous downtown. Don’t ride down there”! This you yell AS I’m headed downtown. Don’t put negative thoughts in my head or the Universe while balancing on two wheels in traffic. In fact, just keep your eyes on the road and it’ll be all good!
•Telling me what gear I should be in, how high my seat should be or where the placement of the handle bars should go is not helpful. I know how to ride a bike. I’ve been doing it for YEARS! I’ve had this bike adjusted for my height and the way I like to ride. Just focus on the road please and leave me be.

Finally, at no time, day or night, do I want you to share stories of who you know, who you heard about or who you saw get hit on a bike. This is in no way helpful unless you are giving me a tip to avoid being injured. Telling me a horror story just to be telling me is not amusing and downright cruel!

OK, I’ve got that off my chest. Now, everybody be safe out there.

Historic building puts bike parking in former bank vault

I bought a new bike in this past fall.  I LOVE my bike.  It’s the most expensive bike I’ve ever purchased and it rides like a dream.  The problem is, I love my expensive bike so much, I’m afraid to park it on the street as I ride around!!! During the week I bike ride as part of my work day commute.  But, while I take the train into the next state over, my bike is safe and sound in the Washington, DC Bikestation.  Then when I want to hang out after work, I usually leave my bike parked and the bike station and walk or take the Metro to meet friends.  That sorta defeats the purpose of having a bike.  It is, after all, my main source of transportation.

Maybe, if more places had a bike vault like the one below I’d be more like to ride more places in the DC.

The historic Spalding Building in downtown Portland has what might be the coolest indoor bike parking in the city. Tenants of the 12-floor office building get to roll their commute vehicles into what used to be a bank vault that’s capped by an immense 16,000 pound door.  You can read the full story on the  here.

Commuter Friday Evening Woe

Here I sit on the train… sleeping guy who didn’t bother to use deodorant sitting next to me and a mother with a crying baby across the isle. I can hear some girl crack gum like it’s the last stick she’ll ever have. Guy next to me is now snoring and taking up way too much of my personal space! Dear commuting God’s, what did I do to you today to deserve this hell? TGIF because I’ll need two days to recover before I can once again embark on this mass transit debacle. Such is the life of a workday commuter.

New D.C. Bike Lanes Coming This Spring

Biking has become a major part of my commute… mainly because I hate taking the metro with all the aggressive, angry, pushy, rush hour subway commuters.  Now, biking in DC has just gotten easier.

According to TBD.com and as reported by WashCycle reports the Bicycle Advisory Council met with the D.C. Department of Transportation and a list of new bike lanes may be coming our way  this spring. Based on WashCycle’s listing, the below map shows where these new lanes will be.

 

 

 

 

View New D.C. bike lanes in a large map

From WashCycle.com

Spring 2011 Bike lanes

At the BAC meeting on Wednesday, DDOT handed out a list of bike lanes scheduled for design drawings this spring. I’m not sure if these will be built, or just designed. It’s 6.6 miles of bike lane and 2.7 miles of cycletrack

• Columbia Road, NW – 16th to Connecticut – 0.86 miles
• 4th St – Eye, SW to Pennsylvania, NW – 0.87 miles
• New York Ave, NW – 9th to 15th – 0.57 miles
• New Mexico/Tunlaw Road, NW – Nebraska to 39th – 0.9 miles
• Upshur, NW – Rock Creek Church Road to Georgia – 0.64 miles
• Eye St, SE – 3rd to S. Cap – 0.33 miles
• Eye St, SW – 6th to 7th – 0.11 miles
• L, NW – Penn to New Hampshire – 0.17 miles
• Gallatin, NW – Fort Totten to New Hampshire – 0.24 miles
• Reno Rd/Tilden St., NW – 36th to Connecticut – 0.58 miles
• R St, NW – Florida to the Met Branch Trail – 0.64 miles
• Piney Branch Rd/13th St, NW – Missouri to Georgia – 0.5 miles

OK, grab your helmet and hop on your bike and RIDE!!!

Top Ten Reasons To Telecommute

I’ve been working remotely for the past two months.  It’s been great to work from home, although I did miss my fellow colleagues.  What I did NOT miss were the crazy people on my commute.  This morning was particularly irritating because the subway commuters were particularly rude.  Maybe it was the early hour.  Maybe it was the rain.  Maybe it’s because it’s Friday.  Maybe it’s just because.  Either way, it was a hard commute this morning so I decided to share my Top 10 Reasons To Telecommute:

 

1. You are never late for work
2. You don’t have to worry about getting germs from people who come to work sick
3. You have a much better work/life balance (you can do laundry or workout at lunch!)
4. Water cooler conversations are about topics you actually care about (of course you’ll be talking to yourself but hey…)
5. Every day is casual Friday (that is if you decide to get dressed at all)
6. No traffic
7. No creepy, Criminal Mind types staring you down on your commute
8. If you forget to bring your lunch you can whip something up in a jiffy
9. You’re home all day so you get to see what your pets, neighbors and delivery people are up to all day. (UPS didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell to see if I was home!)
10. AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON TO TELECOMMUTE… the people where you work are really  nice!

They’re BACK!

I’ve been traveling a bit and have had a nice break from my local commute to and from work. But now I’m back in the normal grind of making it back and forth from DC to Baltimore. In a “we missed you and want you to feel like you didn’t miss anything” kind of way, the loud MARC train passengers are back in my life!

Please help me understand why someone who obviously has a limited vocabulary and finds they must pepper their conversation with superlatives every third word, speak so loudly? I’m no prude. I’ve been known to have a potty mouth and to be honest, I STILL haven’t found an adequate replacement for the “f” word. I mean, come on “fudge” or “freak” just will not do when you want to drop the “f-bomb”. Still, I have enough respect for those in ear shot of my conversation to not cuss in a high volume voice.

I am always completely surprised at people who have never been trained in the use of an “inside voice”. What compels these people, even the ones having a civil conversation, to talk on their cell phone as loudly as if they are home in their living rooms and with as much color commentary as if they were alone?

I say it over and over again but I’ll say it again. God bless the inventor of the headphones. It is my only salvation as I try my best to drown these rude people out. Truth be told, they are getting on my freaking never. See what I mean, it’s just not the same!

There is NO Reason Why!

I’m so glad the weather is nice enough for me to walk to work from the train station. But I have to say, I run across some odd things on my walk to work. You may not be able to tell from the photo in this post but resting on the base of the tree trunk is someone’s hair extension. Actually, it’s a track that is… or rather was… a track from some woman’s weave. Why is it outside on the street? Really, someone give me a reason why?

As crazy as my sidewalk discoveries may be I’m not ready to go back to ridding the bus. One of my fellow commuters said she sat down on the bus without looking and landed in a pool of urine. Yes, you read that right… a big old puddle of PEE!!! Again I ask, why? What explanation could they possibly give? I’ll tell you… NONE!

Telling It Like It Is… Now STOP!

I am always amazing at how much information people will share when they are riding the train. They talk about their ailments, family members who are suffering from substance abuse and their most recent sexual encounter. They don’t share this very personal information in hushed voices with the people sitting next to them or those they are speaking on the phone with. Oh, no… they speak in a pitch so loud that the entire car of the train Is aware of every intimate detail of their lives.

It is a fascinating look at human behavior but to tell you the truth, I wish they would keep some of this information to themselves. There are some things I just dont want to know about strangers… heck… there are some of things I don’t even want to know about people I know well!

There Are No Free Rides!

When you pull up to a train stop and see two Federal Marshals and two Police Officers approaching the train… it’s never a good thing.

Four young high school students boarded the train this morning. All four were cute, well dressed little sistas. Who knew they would be sneaky and devious as well?  One of them tried to use her friend’s train pass to ride the train without paying. When the conductor caught her, exposed the fraud, and demanded payment, the young lady, instead of humbling herself and apologizing got cross with the conductor.

I have to commend the conductor because all this went down in my very own car without any of us even knowing what was taking place.  I’m repeating the story as told by the conductor to the law enforcement officers. As we were stalled at the BWI station, wanting to go about our daily commute, the officers got on the train and started questioning the girls.  The one young lady, tall in stature, and “fast” (as my Grandmother would say) in demenour continued to have an attitude even though she was clearly in the wrong. As they are all working this out on the train a woman hollers, “put them off the train I need to get to work”.  The mob mentality then begins…

Another woman screams back, “relax, they are high school students. Shut up.”  Another lady yells, “you need to stay out of it!”.  The girl causing all the drama turns around and says “We want to get off  so shut up”.  The woman in front of me shouts “Lady, mind your business and let the police do their job”.  More superlatives are thrown around with words I’d rather not post.  All this drama… all because one little girls didn’t (or couldn’t) pay the seven dollar fare. Thus began my morning but please note, there are no free rides.

Biking in the SUN!

I rode my bike to Union Staion this morning… like I always do… for the first leg of my commute to work. I absolutly loved my ride this AM. Aside from the fact that I was rushing (I’m always rushing), I was riding with the sun beating warm, spring, almost summer-like rays on me skin.

For the first time this year, I rolled our early this morning with no scarf, gloves or jacket. All I had on was a t-shirt and jean skirt! Ok, for those of you who live it warm weather you’re saying to yourself, “so what”. But, for those of you who love in the north east portion of the U.S. you may know why I’m so excited.

The DC metro area had one of the worse winters in history. We survived record breaking snow falls and record breaking cold temps. Even worse, we haven’t had many honest to goodness warm days this spring… which is odd for us… because it’s almost JUNE. We’ve had a lot of rain. A LOT of rain. There have been a few warm days here and there and a couple of hot ones, but today was the first day I could walk out at 7:30 AM with no jacket.

I have to admit, I was starting to think this day would never come. I know it’s silly. Summer always comes around. But I honestly started to think, what if we’ve messed up the atmosphere so much, we now won’t even have a summer. I have been cold so long… and I’m so tired of being cold. I seriously just couldn’t trust we’d ever get warm again.

Well, it’s here. Finally! Summer is here. I’ll be complainig about how hot it is soon. The Metro area has a tendency to get very hot and very humid. But, you won’t hear those complaints for a while. I need only rememeber how very cold I’ve been these past five months to put things in perepctive. One thing about living up north… our long an oppressive winters make spring and summer that much more sweet.

See you out on the bike trails because it’s that time of year… FINALLY!