Small Change Where 14th St Bridge Meets GW Trail

National Park Service had a bit of asphalt added to make this better

This is where the "off ramp" from the outbound 14th St Bridge trail/path meets the north-south GW Parkway trail. The NPS apparently realized that for cyclists the narrow "T" intersection was not working particularly well (which it wasn't) and added some asphalt to ease things.

By the way, in the above photo, it isn't that the cyclist (heading left-to-right) is incredibly fast so much as the camera is incredibly slow.


Looking south - extent of added asphalt more visible

It isn't clear if they are done adding turf or if there was some particular reason to add turf right next to the path, perhaps to make things safer/better for bikes that run off the trail?


I suppose they will put it back up, but I liked seeing the "dismount" sign this way

Parking in the Bike Lane -Moscow

Moscow site with nothing but photos of cars parked in what is the first dedicated bike lane in Moscow, near Moscow State University. The person posting the photos, on a more or less daily basis, is a chemistry student who one assumes is doing this as some sort of protest.

I think acclimating Russian drivers to cycling will be tough.

Police Unity Tour on GW Trail

Sunday, mid-day - despite the excellent weather, not really that many riders out - any many were part of a local event supporting a national "Police Unity Tour" (by bike). The riders had event numbers on their clothes.


Came up upon this fellow heading north on the GW trail near National Airport


Riding with gun

I guess maybe this is a work-related activity? I don't see the need for this guy to be riding with his sidearm. I wasn't able to work out what jurisdiction he was from.

Cyclists in Stockholm, 1948

Photo from the Stockholm Transport Museum Commons in Flickr

Alas, for now it is the only one with bicycles.

Overdue Bicycle Parked at Library Branch

Bicycle parked at Aurora Hills Branch Library, Arlington VA

You can't leave your bike locked up at one location for more than five days, or it gets removed. To where is a bit vague.


Tag on bicycle parked at Aurora Hills Branch Library, Arlington VA

I guess we won't have any books published like Bicycles Locked to Poles with its photos of bicycles in New York City (in various states of disassembly, mostly attached to poles with chains as heavy or heavier than the bikes themselves).

Belgian Bicycles, 1910s (Photo)

Newly added to the Library of Congress Flickr collections online

Taken near the Belgian town of Diest, presumably during World War I. From the Bain News Service collection. As presented by the Library of Congress on its site, it isn't possible to "pull out" the images with bicycles much of the time, but users add tags in Flickr that help with that.


"France - Cyclists of Army" - another Bain photograph


The Austrians had some bikes, too.

Plastic Bike Design

Recycled plastic bicycle design - this seems pretty clever but I have my doubts as to how pleasant it would be to ride.

None of the comments seem to have been made by anyone who knows much about bicycle design.

The first thing I see is that the steering tube is quite upright, which might be fine for a racing bike but for something like this, it would make it twitchy and requiring more attention to control. It doesn't help that the handlebars are so short.

Can this really not have any metal in it? It would be pretty amazing if you could have crank arms (that connect the drive system to the pedals) that are just made out of plastic that would support an adults weight and transfer power reliably.

It appears that the pedals are relatively spread apart - usually there isn't much variance in the distance left and right of center that the pedals are. A larger distance ("Q factor") is apparently less efficient.

Is the height of the seat adjustable? Doesn't seem like it. That's probably the biggest problem.

Best Bike Parking - for Some

Four spots set aside for three police bikes

In my office building on Capitol Hill, we are protected by federal police. This parking lot has 24 slots for bicycle parking, half in the center and half at one end of the garage. Through some sort of unspoken tradition, the bicycle commuters know who parks where. This has been upset by the police taking four of the 12 spots near the center in order (at least for now) to park three bikes. (One of the bikes is made by "Smith & Wesson" - well known for making bikes! Stop or I'll shoot you with my bike!) This has completely upset the bicycle commuter ecology right in the middle of the prime riding season. (Well, ok with the heat wave, maybe not entirely prime in the usual sense.) So the police have three bikes on the four closest most convenient slots and the staff who are bike commuters have crammed ten, eleven, etc bikes into eight slots to see how much paint they can scrape off each others' bikes.

These police bikes are locked up with the most absurd chains and padlocks - you would think they were locking them up in some high crime area and not in a garage guarded like a fort.

PS - I thought perhaps this gift of parking places to the police might put us out of compliance with the DC "for every ten spots for cars, one for bikes" law but they count the slots on bike racks in front of the building. 95 percent of the car parking is in a garage and 75 percent of the bike parking is outdoors. Oh well.

Nice Steel Track Bikes for a Sunday

Fellow had these two bikes on his truck for riding at Hains Point (in Washington, DC).


Old school drilled holes in rims to lighten - and enhance appearance



French 1960s Abel Borne track bike - weighs only 13 pounds

Steel is real! But can be light.

Fellow said this was one of only 26 such track bikes produced.

Diplomats Need Cycling Exercise (1912)

Article in the Washington Herald from 1912 describes cycling tour in France of socialites, accompanied by an assistant secretary of state, Alvey Adee, who was noted for his cycling and cycling tours in Europe.


From the society page of the paper

Gen. Thackary believes that the whole consular corps should take a holiday on wheels for the improvement of the diplomatic service. For it would counteract the bad results of a life necessarily sedentary.

Alvey Adee at age 72 and his bike in Washington, 1914
Photo from the Library of Congress

More information about Adee.


Adee riding in Washington
Photo from the Library of Congress

Description of Adee's diplomatic career in "Washington close-ups" By Edward George Lowery, 1921.

Wheels & Bikes at Shirlington

Bike rack in front of the Shirlington public library

So, why the locked up "extra" wheels at this bike rack? How did this happen? (These photos taken early Saturday morning before they are obscured by other parked bikes.)


Bike rack in the Harris Teeter parking garage at Shirlington

100 yards/meters or so away, we have this sad Mongoose that has lost its wheels - perhaps they are locked in front of the library!

Patriotic Recumbent Bike

On the bike trail along Four Mile Run, Arlington VA

I don't really understand why he isn't hot in there, although I suppose some air circulates from below and it is somewhat open in front of him to let hot air out.

Bicycles Expressing Some Opinions

All free space covered in bumper stickers

Mostly Arlington is not a place where one sees lots of cars (and trucks) plastered with bumper stickers - or bicycles either. This one in Shirlington is an exception.

14th St Bridge to GW Parkway Bike Trail Detour Still Wanted

Fence opened allowing access to what was a temporary detour

When construction work closed off the regular route (now restored - see photo below) a presumably temporary detour was put in that was eventually paved (see photo above). Now that a detour isn't needed, the Park Service has installed temporary fencing along the top of short "cut-through" to prevent its further use, but people who like the idea of a shortcut (perhaps cyclists, perhaps walkers/runners) keep opening the fence up. Last night when I rode home, it was closed. By now I'm sure it's open again.


The USPS "authorized" route

It would make sense, I think, to have stairs (or something bicycles wouldn't try to use) instead of the old detour to pull some of the foot traffic away from the busy intersection (admittedly not busy at this time of the morning) shown in the photo above. In the meantime, we have this silly situation where there is a "sometimes" option that wasn't very good as a detour and isn't any better as a shortcut for combined bicycle-foot traffic.

I didn't get a photo of it, I'm sad to say, but one morning a cyclist had ridden up the cut-through only to realize that the fencing closed him off, and instead of disconnecting the fencing (or turning around), he had put his bike over the fence and was in the process of climbing over to join it. Hmm . . .

New Stop Sign, GW Bike Trail

New stop sign added for traffic coming off the 14th St Bridge (from DC) - sorry, lousy phone camera photo

A new stop sign has been added where traffic coming from DC on the 14th St Bridges meets the north-south George Washington Parkway bike trail. They have also added some helpful (I suppose) directional information - "trail north" and "trail south" for example.

The stop sign is in a somewhat unorthodox location - instead of being on the near side of the intersection, to the right, it is across the intersection, in the middle. I don't see that this clarifies the situation and it may just confuse things.


My favorite - "dismount before crossing"

For bike traffic northbound, there is a "dismount before crossing" sign, apparently pertaining to the humpback bridge a 100 yards on. The Park Service seems to have lots of these "dismount" signs to put up (to no purpose). Also, the sign is on the left side rather than the more conventional right side (presuming I am understanding who it is intended for correctly).

Aside from all this signage, this intersection is a mess for the kind of mixed cycling/walking/running going on here. Neither the north-south trail nor the one coming from the 14th St Bridge are wide enough.

Voice of America Covers DC Bike to Work

A good set of photographs from this month's Bike to Work day in Washington DC is on the Russian language VOA site - scroll down and the slide show launches. Knowledge of Russian not required.

As associated article in Russian isn't much for non-Russian speakers, but Google translate will render something like (but not exactly like) English - certainly it is understandable, if quirky.

Often in machine translation, the story becomes more dramatic in the telling, such as, "Move along the wide roads designed for a more dimensional and fast cars with gasoline engines - it's not only scary but dangerous. Therefore, local authorities began to pay greater attention to road safety. Cyclists immediately responded to these steps, rushing into the streets en masse."

I will be on the lookout for these cyclists storming the streets of DC.

(Not even slightly connected with bicycles, the translation business reminds me of the infamous Time article about Madonna's interview supposedly translated from English to Hungarian and back - which turns out to be an urban legend.)

Nice 1912 Columbia Bicycle Catalog

A nice catalog, digitized by the Smithsonian

Here is a link to the
catalog's cover and from there you can navigate to the rest of the pages as individual page image thumbnails. Columbia bicycles, from the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut.

The catalog is quite text-heavy for the first few pages, arguing heavily for the benefits of bicycles in various ways - economical, reliable, and health benefits as well (with a quote from a physician, as was often done in the 1890s).

Bicycle Built for Four (1898)

Orient Quad bicycle built for four, from the Library of Congress photograph collections.

Just for fun. Can't figure out why I hadn't see this before ~

Apparently Orient was known particularly for making tandem and other multiple riders bikes, such as this quad. There is a picture of an Orient "built for ten" that was presumably a stunt of sorts.

My BikeDC 2011 Experience

The last time I rode in BikeDC was in September 2001 - the George Washington Parkway portion was removed that year because it was something like ten days after September 11 and they could get the police support required (or something). I'm not a person who likes crowds but I have had this interest in riding on the GW Parkway so once it was clear that the weather would be OK this year (for a change - last year was a downpour) I signed up.

The event has a more or less rolling start - I got there (having ridden in on my bike from home) about 15 minutes are the first riders hit the course from just west of the (U.S.) Capitol, riding off through closed (to cars) streets in downtown DC, crossing the Roosevelt bridge into Virginia and heading north(ish) on the George Washington Parkway and heading a few miles down the Parkway before turning around and heading back up the Parkway, then the official route crossed back into DC for the finish (but I just road home).


Sparse (relatively speaking) bike travel in downtown

Starting 20-25 minutes after the initial bunch seemed to work out well at this point - not too much (bike) traffic.


Not long before the Roosevelt Bridge, we rode through a short tunnel

After crossing the Roosevelt Bridge and approaching the GW Parkway, the bikes bunched up more.

Here you get a sense of the mix of riders - there are some spandex "we could go a lot faster types" but the crew on the tandem are just rolling along and then there are kids, too.


Nearing the GW Parkway

Beyond the Key Bridge the bike traffic became quite heavy - the bikes only had one side (two lines) of the divided highway, with bike traffic in each direction confined to one lane (with cones down the middle). Round about now I began to wish for more common sense and more common courtesy from my fellow riders. As we climbed, relatively slow moving (bicycle) traffic filled the entire single outbound lane. Some people riding uphill nonetheless impatiently tried "on the left" when what they meant was, "you're in my way; I want to go faster." Some crossed over into the oncoming lane (for bikes - usually a lane of traffic in the same direction) to pass the entire column, then pull in with the other riders (who would more or less have to let him or her in).

Some riders barreling down the GW Parkway on the return side presented a more intimidating picture - here there were some people whose cries of "on your LEFT" really sounded like "OUTTA MY WAY or I may run into you."

Now this sounds like chaos, but probably it was one in 250 or less that was acting in this way, but when you have thousands of riders on a few miles of road, 1-in-250 makes an impression.

Fortunately all the bike crashing I saw was small-time stuff and no one was significantly injured. I observed several obviously (or one assumes) really new riders fall for no particular reason and on the Parkway, fortunately while moving only a few miles per hour, a bike turned into another causing a tangle of metal and rubber.


Nearing the turn around to head back on the GW Parkway


Last but not least - the one guy I saw who wasn't wearing a helmet, wearing a WABA jersey.

Yeah, image is a bit out of of focus, so his head looks funny - but there isn't a helmet on that head is what you can see readily enough. I don't believe wearing a helmet was required, but still.

The ride continued southbound on the GW Parkway and was, I thought, supposed to continue to the Air Force Monument, but at the Arlington Bridge there was some sort of accident (involving a cyclist? not clear at the time, or now for that matter) that had many emergency vehicles and a medevac helicopter. About a quarter mile beyond that was a turn around again on the GW Parkway to circle back and return into DC. Having had enough of a BikeDC experience for one day, I moved over to the GW bike trail and rode the eight or so miles home.

I guess overall I had an enjoyable experience, but I can't say I feel much of an urge to do it again at the moment, either.

Bike to Work Day, 2011, Arlington VA

Inadvertantly part of a "new rider convoy" near National Airport on the GW Parkway bike path

Since I pretty much bike to work every day, I am never quite sure what to think of Bike to Work Day - at least this year the weather was mostly good (in the afternoon it clouded up and at least a few drops of rain fell some places). The number of riders for this "event" looked pretty impressive, but the fair weather aspect of this is fairly apparent when compared to earlier in the week when it had been rainy.


In the photograph the barbed wire is more noticable - normally I am looking forward I guess and don't even see it.


As riders get into the District, the group disperses

I tried to take some other group photos of "convoys" but my camera had focus issues. Oh well, maybe next year!