If you’re not a pro cycling fan, click on. Otherwise, from yesterday’s TdF route presentation:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30bsHmVUdVg[/youtube]
Category: Cycling Page 11 of 34
From the folks at BikeDC:
On Saturday, October 17th, thousands of area bicyclists will take over the streets of downtown Washington, DC, and Arlington, VA, as part of Bike DC, a celebration of both bicycling and our community. Bike DC, the Washington and Arlington Community Bike Ride, is a noncompetitive ride offering miles of car-free biking past some of the nation’s most famous landmarks.
Bike DC is celebrating the beauty of our city with a photo contest sponsored by Penn Camera. Whether you’re riding with your friends and family, or enjoying car-free site-lines at DC’s most scenic monuments, we encourage you to capture the two-wheeled spirit of our cycling community with your camera.
There are many great photo opportunities on the Bike DC routes this year, including the Key Bridge, the Iwo Jima Marine Corps Memorial, the Capitol Building, the White House, the Air Force Memorial, and countless others! After the event, upload your photos to the “Bike DC Community Ride†group on the free photo-hosting site Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/1232071@N20/).
Winners will be selected by the Bike DC event organizers on Monday, November 9th, giving you plenty of time to upload your photos after the ride. 3 photos will be selected to receive: 2 Finalist Prizes of complimentary registrations to the 2010 Bike DC ride; and 1 Grand Prize of a $50 gift card plus $50 in photofinishing services from Penn Camera.
Penn Camera has been serving the photographic needs of our nation’s capital for over 50 years. From its origins as a single storefront along historic Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown DC to its current chain of nine stores throughout the Washington, DC- Baltimore metropolitan corridor, Penn Camera has steadily grown to become the premier supplier of photographic goods in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Follow Bike DC on Facebook (www.facebook.com/bikedc <http://www.facebook.com/bikedc> ) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/bikedc <http://www.twitter.com/bikedc> ) for more photo contest announcements. Check our official web site (www.BikeDC.net <http://www.BikeDC.net> ) for route information or to register for Bike DC.
WashCycle takes it on in a most sensible way.
Bike DC, after a successful test-run last year, is back for sure. On Saturday, October 17th, thousands of bicyclists will participate in Bike DC. This year, it expands across the Potomac to be the “Washington and Arlington Community Bike Ride.”  For those who are unfamiliar with it, this is a noncompetitive ride offering miles of car-free biking through the heart of DC and Arlington. It also gives participants the opportunity to enjoy cycling on the George Washington Parkway, which is normally closed to bikes (this is the part I’m particularly looking forward to, as will anyone who’s ever driven the parkway). I hope you’ll consider coming out and enjoying the day. Details are:
Time & Start:
There are two route options. The 25-mile Capital Ride begins at 8 a.m. The 12-mile Family Ride begins at 9 a.m. Both rides begin on Constitution Street NW in front of the National Archives Building and end across the Potomac River in Crystal City, Virginia.
Cost:
To make the event especially family-friendly, Bike DC is free of charge for children 15-years old and younger. Registration and helmets are required. The adult registration fee is $35 for the Capital Ride and $25 for the Family Ride. Registration fees are $10 higher on the day of the event. Details and registration are available online at www.BikeDC.net until 11:59 p.m. on Friday, October 16th.
Route Differences:
Both the Capital and Family rides pass by the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps and Air Force memorials. The longer Capital Ride also features a climb up Embassy Row to the U. S. Naval Observatory and the Twin Oaks estate in NW Washington, plus a rare opportunity to bike the tree-lined George Washington Parkway in Arlington and the Whitehurst Freeway in Washington.
While I’m definitely going to get a lap or two in on the GW section, I’ll be spending most of the ride as a volunteer near at the Iwo Jima rest stop. Say hi.
Update: this is a map of the longer route:
Andrew Leonard highlights a bit of inanity from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a “libertarian” thinktank):
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is unhappy with the suggestion that we should try to drive less.
From an e-mail alert:
Tuesday is World Car-Free Day. That means you’re supposed to walk, or bicycle, or take a bus, to make some sort of anti-car, anti-prosperity statement. Good luck getting to and from the grocery store. Even more fun if it rains (and can you imagine if this day were scheduled in the dead of winter?). The fact is, the automobile plays a major role in making our lives happen — it empowers all of us to get where we need to go (not to mention respond to emergencies).
The stupidity implicit in CEI’s attack on the idea that there might be some merit in sensibly minimizing our car use is staggering.
It may well be that the folks at CEI aren’t stupid. But they almost certainly think their audience is (and, well, I’d say that most libertarians are fairly selective about where they apply rigorous thinking). Leonard goes on:
The point of exercises like World Car-Free Day is to encourage us to be less unthinking in our auto dependence. If it’s a sunny day, why not ride a bike, or take a stroll? Stretching your legs conveys its own reward. And you know what, if there isn’t a grocery store within walking distance of you, maybe there should be.
It’s not for everyone. Hell, as he notes, it’s not even possible for everyone. But the idea of Car-Free Day is to give it a chance. He closes with something that might be meant to be a bit of snark, but may well be the real point of disagreement:
CEI complains that World Car-Free Day is “anti-prosperity.” If their idea of prosperity is living in the suburbs where you have to drive miles to get to the nearest McDonald’s, I guess they are right. But World Car-Free Day really is “pro-good life.” A life in which we use our bodies instead of burning fossil fuels, reside in livable neighborhoods instead of sterile deserts of tract housing, and enjoy the wind on our face instead of the hum of the air conditioner.
The car-bound suburbs have become something of a cultural norm, in the US. And anything (like, say, cycling) that invokes city life – with its lack of space, rampant crime, and scary diversity – is automatically accepted as something to be attacked. But that only works so long as it’s left as an abstract. Once the specific is experienced – the walk to the bar, the grocery run on a bike, the ease of just locking your bike up – it’s much harder to discount. Don’t believe me? Try it.
From the Virginia Bicycling Federation:
The recent attack on all federal bike-ped funding has been thwarted, but the 39-59 vote for S. Amendment 2371 was too close for our comfort.
Surprisingly, Virginia’s own Sen. Webb supported Sen. Coburn’s attack on Transportation Enhancements. Needless to say, we’re very disappointed in Sen. Webb, and we’re sure many of you are too. So contact Sen. Webb’s office, and let him know how you feel. Tell him that you’re disappointed in his performance, and urge him to support Transportation Enhancements from now on.
Thanks to everyone who called and wrote to their legislators already. But the battle isn’t over yet. Your continued support is needed, to ensure funding will still be available for anything besides motor vehicle facilities. Let’s think about moving people — not just cars.
The background here is that Coburn’s amendment prohibited any spending of funds on pedestrian or cycling-related transportation improvements until every car-based priority had been fulfilled. It’s a terribly backward policy, and not one that Webb (or any other Senator) should be supporting. Please take a second to let him know. Thanks.
Then please consider donating a couple hours of your time. Arlington County volunteers collect bicycle and pedestrian count information several times a year, and there are still a number of unfilled positions for next week’s seasonal bicycle and pedestrian counts. From David Patton, Arlington County Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner:
We could really use more help to have full coverage at the 20+ locations where we count. The September seasonal count is the most important one of the year, and the one with the greatest number of communities participating. (Here in Arlington we have counted four times in the past year – other places only once.)
To check the sign-up sheet, and for lots more information, please visit the website: http://drop.io/september09bikepedcount
Much of what is there is pretty self-explanatory. Please feel free to write to me at this email with any questions. I’ll be checking it periodically over the holiday weekend.
With thanks, and best wishes for an enjoyable end of summer …
David Patton
I’ve done this before, and I’ll be out there next Thursday, at a minimum. Very easy, and very helpful. For more about the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project, in which Arlington County participates, visit: http://bikepeddocumentation.org
Just received a solicitation from SmartBike DC/DDOT to continue supporting its bike-sharing efforts by renewing my membership. I will not be renewing. While I very much support the concepts behind SmartBike DC (indeed, I bought a membership despite having more bikes than one person ought to), the extraordinarily poor customer service has soured me greatly on the implementation. While the occasional malfunctioning rack is understandable on a pilot project, the complete lack of any response to my multiple calls and emails about an improperly returned bike, the suspension of my account, and the sharing of SmartBike DC’s customer’s emails on the Internet is unacceptable. These failures weren’t the occasional mistake, but a continuous absence of any sort of customer service. And this doesn’t even touch on SmartBike DC’s ridiculous decisions to occasionally shut down its operations when people need it most (snow days, Inauguration). I hope that DDOT will take this story into account when selecting future vendors and (hopefully) redesigning its customer service standards. Bike-sharing is an important part of the transportation puzzle, but there’s no need to accept such dismal performance.
The email from SmartBike DC/DDOT is on the flip.
Almost missed this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn29DvMITu4[/youtube]