[bobco85]

To the mother who saw me fixing a flat (thanks Fairfax County for having a 4 inch lip between Braddock Road and Columbia Road, another flat from riding in Fairfax for me) on Columbia Road at 11 at night, turned around (which actually scared me because you don’t know who is going to do what at night), asked me if I was okay, and then said, “My son is a cyclist. I live near here and will send him out to help you if you’re still here.”:

Thank you. That was probably the nicest thing I’ve ever had someone do to a cyclist, especially considering it was 11 pm.

Additional thanks go to her (teenage?) son, who did come by with a flashlight (I had my bike lights, but it did help to have another angle) and offered to bring a pump, spare tube, etc. if I needed them. I was prepared and was able to change the tube out, but did appreciate the concern. Also, if I were still alone at that point I’d be dropping f-bombs and such.

I was able to make it back home without any trouble afterwards, but felt it was definitely worth mentioning the acts of kindness I received last night.

[bobco85]

Here are pics of the collar fix at the N. Emerson Street crossing of the Bluemont Junction trail:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1482[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1483[/ATTACH]

They appear to have removed the collars and filled in the holes with asphalt. They are now flush with the rest of the trail.

Also to note: they also removed the collars at the N. Kensington Street crossing in similar fashion.

[bobco85]

@consularrider 27217 wrote:

Well, there is always the off chance that the westbound person will go straight instead of turning right towards the Sycamore underpass. It happens just often enough that it can be pause inducing, particularly if you can’t make eye contact.

You know, I don’t even have it on my mind that there is an access point from Roosevelt Street there sometimes (like this time) when I pass through there! I think I’ve only seen one or two people actually using that access in my 21 years of bike riding (a good portion of that being on the W&OD).

Hmmm, perhaps they could take a page from the new Wilson Bridge underpass and have a path painted on the asphalt (yellow line with two white boundary lines) that could keep the trail as the main right-of-way and show the intersection with the access from Roosevelt. The only issue would be that it… might look ugly?

[bobco85]

@jopamora 27175 wrote:

Metro posted this list of abandoned bikes.

It’s kinda sad. I swear, if they did a slideshow of those pics with that Sarah McLachlan song I’d be bawling my eyes out.

It’s also a good reminder to make sure you loop through both wheels and frame when locking your bike!

[bobco85]

I hate that curve, and slow down accordingly due to the multiple hazards (blind corner, sometimes slick surface, debris, etc.). Even then, I will sometimes still feel my back tire slip a little. I hope the cyclist is okay.

That said, regarding the next corner at the basketball courts, I tend to notice the following when I am headed from the blind corner towards the basketball courts: sometimes a fellow trail-user (most of the time a cyclist) who is headed in the opposite way from me will slow down heavily or stop as I approach that corner. It’s as if they don’t think they have enough room on the outside (I’d have the inside), when they have at least 10 feet. I think they should connect the yellow line from the blind corner to the basketball court corner, if at least as a guideline. Street intersections sometimes have dotted lines in the middle of the intersection for just this reason, and I think that would help here.

[bobco85]

@rcannon100 27005 wrote:

In the words of the prophet Ke$ha, “Blah blah blah.”
And according to the Wholly Land of London, 7 things you should give up to be a happy cyclist

#6 always puzzles me as I do not do it (also did not know it is called shoaling), and I mostly see it on trails at crosswalks. It’s like shoalers think that packing in ahead of you at the intersection will make things any easier. When the light/crosswalk finally turns green/walk signal, you end up with two clumps of people from either side of the intersection trying to maneuver around each other, around any obstructions (like a pedestrian crosswalk cut-out of an island in the middle or a driver blocking part of the crosswalk), into a good position to use the ramp on the other side (if on a trail/crosswalk), and lastly unnecessary traffic on the other side as everyone of different speeds are mixed that need to be sorted again. Again, I don’t get worked up about this, but I see it so often that I just prepare for it.

The rest are situational. I’ll get worked up sometimes, but I would rather care and communicate than be passive, internalize it, or become apathetic.

[bobco85]

@OneEighth 26987 wrote:

Does anyone else find the original post a bit suspicious?

We’ll have to see if the OP responds. In my internet forum experience, when someone joins a forum and posts a rant thread on the first day, then never returns to that thread, it’s usually because that person only wants to rant/vent for others to see and doesn’t want dialogue a.k.a. anyone else’s opinion. I hope I’m wrong, but time will tell.

[bobco85]

This thread made me think about the whole “joggers in bike lanes” problem (I don’t want to derail the conversation, but the problem seems to apply here). I looked on this forum and found an old thread http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?519-runners-in-bike-lanes-how-to-handle, but still find the subject a little bit ambiguous. I keep going through different scenarios (like the safety of a jogger in the bike lane running with versus against traffic, time of day, does the jogger have a blinking light, etc.), but keep coming to the same general conclusion: joggers should not be in the bike lanes, but I could tolerate a jogger using the bike lane in very specific circumstances (visible, no crazy movements, sidewalk is jammed full of people).

[bobco85]

I saw on the Group Ride thread that you were going to be wearing your BikeForums.net kit, but I did not see you. I was wearing my HRC (Human Rights Campaign) kit. Kudos to you for taking on the 100-mile ride (I hope to someday be able to do it), and I agree wholeheartedly on the fact that the early morning had excellent weather that slowly became hotter and more humid towards noon.

Did you check out the professional photos they took? They gave out a card during registration where you can order prints online, and the photos look pretty cool. I checked out some of the photos to try and find myself (narcisissm be damned), but it was pretty tedious trying to look through pages and pages of thumbnails to hope the person in a yellow kit was actually me (eventually I succeeded).

I’ve done the 50-mile ride about 5 times now. I think next year I will shoot for the legendary 100!

[bobco85]

@ShawnoftheDread 25973 wrote:

Know of any ways to get to the Wilson Bridge from there that don’t entail military ID/bases?

I’ve gone through there once, taking MLK Jr Blvd -> Blue Plains Dr (very nice & straight downhill) -> DC Village Ln -> Oxen Hill Farm Trail -> Oxen Hill Rd which will put you at the top of that hill (it’s a doozy going up if you’re not mentally prepared for it) where a trail will lead you to the Wilson Bridge. My experience on MLK Jr Blvd was not very pleasant, as biking on the road seemed like it was taboo (lots of angry stares), there was little room for maneuvering, and there were lots of potholes.

[bobco85]

I just got back from a night ride along parts of the W&OD, heading west from Bluemont Park. The lights under the Wilson Blvd bridge are out. Lights are working up until you get to the bridge running under Roosevelt/Sycamore (no lights). The entire neighborhood between that bridge and the Lee Highway crossing is out, and the trail lights and neighborhoods are out as well stretching all the way to the bridge over Route 7.

Heading east on Williamsburg Blvd from Falls Church all the way to Glebe Road, most of the streetlights are out but the stoplights are working. If you take Old Glebe to get to Military Road and head south towards Ballston, be careful on Military Road because of all the debris that is in the bike lane (I found it safer just to ride in the car lane). Oh, and at the bottom of one of the hills where you cross Donaldson Run it is hard to see that bump in the road before you go from sharrows to a bike lane (I nearly caught air at 20 mph).

[bobco85]

I got a twofer in a stretch of about a minute along Fairfax Drive (how lucky of me)!

You #1: Coming off of I-66 eastbound onto Fairfax Drive in your silver pick-up truck
Me: Coming off the Custis Trail and waiting at the light. It turns red for you and green for me.
You #1: One Miss-iss-ipp-i after your light turns red and you don’t even bother to slow down as you run the red (it wasn’t even close).
Me: Halfway across the intersection, stopping to avoid being struck by you, yelling “Hey!” and bowels beginning to loosen in the process (I didn’t need the help, as I was bringing dinner home from Taco Bell).
You #1: Not flinching and not turning your head, Terminator-style, but luckily stopping for another biker (motorcycle) at the light at Glebe.

You #2: Pedestrian at Stuart/Fairfax waiting to get your beloved 7-11 goodies.
Me: In the bike lane crossing through the intersection. My light turns yellow midway through the intersection.
You #2: Probably thinking, “Yellow for cross traffic is a green for me, right?” as you step out across the bike lane with the kind of timing that would have gotten your foot run over by my back tire only if it hadn’t been for me seeing you and moving out of the bike lane to avoid you.
Me: Thinking that two white headlights (flashing on handlebars, solid on helmet), two red taillights (blinking on seat stem, blinking on back of helmet), two amber spoke lights on my front wheel (they make it look like a bright amber circle), front/back reflectors, and my cool Bike Arlington bracelet wrapped around my seat stem make me completely invisible when riding in the middle of the bike lane at 9 o’clock at night.

[bobco85]

@btj 16018 wrote:

Arlington Loop without the Custis (start and end in VA Square) + Haines Point via the 14th St Bridge.

Awesome video! This is what it would be like if I had a rocket strapped to my bike and I were able to pass like the bikes in Tron (original movie). Btw, how many pics were combined to make the time-lapse of your ride?

[bobco85]

@jnva 22984 wrote:

It’s not all about biking. This is a cycling forum, so what was I thinking posting an anti-cycling opinion? Must be crazy. It’s not all about simply obeying the rules. An 80 year old woman dies, oh well she wasn’t obeying the rules. A toddler gets run over – he shouldn’t have been there. This is what I am hearing from a lot of folks here. I hope that if I hit and kill someone on the trail that you all will stand up for me in the same way!

I admit I’ve been more of a lurker than a contributor on this forum (hopefully that will change), but it seems like there’s too much dichotomy going on in these incidents and not enough acceptance of the grey areas surrounding these kinds of situations.

The main two arguments that seem to be forming (both inside and outside of this forum) are as follows:
1) An 80 year old woman died because a cyclist hit her. He should have maintained full control of his bike, even if he called his pass. There’s no excuse for not respecting pedestrians on a trail. He is fully responsible for her death. [insert generalization of disrespectful cyclists]
2) The cyclist did what he was supposed to do. He called his pass, and she turned into his path. He’s not Superman, and the surrounding environment on the trail made it difficult for him to safely avoid hitting her. [insert defense of the 99.999% of cyclists who have not killed a pedestrian]

While I like the discussion that has risen up, I don’t like the fact that the middle (and probably more rational) ground is being left out.

That said, here’s my opinion of the situation (for better or worse):

Looking at the accident as a whole, I say it was a freak accident because most of the time in a collision between a pedestrian and cyclist, deaths are rare. While the cyclist did call his pass, he does bear some responsibility to slow down, especially in an area of trail where it’s safer to go slower. If his account is true and the woman suddenly turned into his path, then I wouldn’t fault him as much for not being able to avoid her in time. It’s a weird situation where the cyclist kinda did the right thing (called his pass and attempted to move around the left side) but also did the wrong thing (going too fast to be able to react and assuming that she fully understood his call), and the pedestrian suffered the most (falling and hitting her head which later led to her death) yet was also partially responsible (turning to the left instead of moving to the right when someone is passing and not being conscious of other trail-users).

[bobco85]

So it looks like the bollards on the north side of the bridge have no lights, but they thought black was such a great choice for color (it is thinning, maybe to make cyclists think they weren’t so big?). I hate that the south side has 3 that are off-center. I’d rather there be only one (if any) in the middle where the two ways would be divided. This makes me think of the mid-lane bollards along the Bluemont Junction trail (where it crosses N Emerson St and the east side of where it crosses N Kensington St).

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