August 30th Ride

[CorsairMac]

I wasn't really sure where I wanted to post this but I really like the daily ride thread so decided to just start the one for today:

Excitement #1: I'm heading down the busy city street. There is a section where the lane squeezes and cars are making right hand turns so I have to be very alert when going through there. I tend to ride in the cross-hatching for the lane squeeze instead of the bike lane and boy was I glad I did....I was so busy watching the cars and keeping tabs on what was going on around me I failed to see the young girl riding against traffic in the bike lane with no helmet! My first thought was thank goodness I Wasn't in the bike lane - how do you explain a head-on collision with another biker in a bike lane? lol I was going to fast and to busy watching everything I didn't even chew her out.....just sent up a prayer for her angels to fly with her.

Excitement #2: Get passed by a young lady on a moped, catch up with her at the stoplight, get passed again (in other words she's seen me at least twice if not 3 times), watching the cars again nead a school and the moped swerves to avoid a turning car - swerves right into my lane, never even looked......whoa - all I could think of was I would post "taken out by a moped" on the board!

Excitement #3: On the bike path finishing the last leg of my commute. There's a walker on the path ahead of me. I call out "Biker Back" and move over to pass him. Suddenly I hear someone behind me mutter something, I glance over my left shoulder and there was a biker boy right behind me. I Never knew he was there nor did he utter a sound until I almost took him out. again - I just kept thinking about all the times we posted about people not calling out. Yes - I should've looked over my shoulder before moving over to pass, but I sure do wish he had let me know he was there.

Gosh - I can hardly wait to see what's in store for me when I go home tonight!!

[AuntieK]

Corsair, sorry your ride this morning was exciting in such bad ways. Rides where nothing seems to go right only come up rarely, right? So your ride home should be better.
My ride this morning was pretty pitiful. 12 miles of climbing, 12 miles decending. I was so sick to my stomach during the climb that I stopped at the top, got dizzy, got off the bike and sat for about 10 minutes before I felt good enough to ride back down again. Felt better coming down, but still don't feel so good and can't even think about eating anything. I didn't eat anything out of the ordinary before the ride, so I don't know what it could be. I hope it's not nerves, I have to race LOTOJA in ten days, and I can't feel this way for that!

[Cassandra_Cain]

Ack Corsair! That's terrible - and I darn well know what you mean.

How long must we talk about the passing without saying anything problem? Everywhere I go, it happens - the bike path, up the big mountain, and everywhere in between. How hard is it to say something - ANYTHING!

Ah but you are part of the choir on this one I know

I won't even start on the no-helmet, wrong way rider, or ms. vespa there.

Have a safe ride home - at least it looks like it won't rain!

[pooks]

Yikes, Corsair! Are you sure you weren't commuting through a Demolition Derby?

And AuntieK -- that does not sound fun.

I went about 5 miles and instead of loving it, was suffering with a sore tailbone. Sigh. I hope the seat adjustment I got does the trick. In the meantime, I'll just keep on riding.

[Geonz]

My ride in was delightfully uneventful, except that it seemed there was 5 times the normal traffic! Why today? Somebody else coming from an entirely different direction had the same experience. My last light where there are usually 4-5 cars... nope, backed up 20 deep! I had the pleasure of (not my usual practice but because of how this intersection is, it makes sense) streaking to the front of the line knowing the back of the line would take three cycles to get through.
I'd also had to wait two and a half minutes at a street that, the eight other times I've crossed it (it's a new route), I waited no mroe than 10 seconds for a HUGE gap between the light cycles (the roads to the north and the south each have a traffic light).
But... the gastrointestinal system was its old sweet self in the morning, oh happy day!!!!

[DDH]

DH and I took my 11.1 mile route this morning. We tried to go out and push a little harder to get our speeds up. I wanted to do a long route like 20 or more miles with him this morning but we just didn't have time because of other things that needed to be done.
Anyway, I have been getting around 10 or 11 mph on my speeds and today was 12.3 so I did do some better.

[7rider]

My morning commute was uneventful. My riding partner suffered from his all-too-common bout of insomnia, so I got to hear all about it on the way in.
This afternoon, as I was shutting down my p.c. at work, I heard a steady stream of emergency vehicles coming from the road below. I'd come to tune them out. I'm in downtown Silver Spring - a pretty big city - and sirens are a pretty routine noise.
So I got dressed and headed for the elevators down to my bike to meet up with my riding parter.
"Be careful" a friend said. "Someone just got killed out there."
Apparently, the sirens I heard were in response to a pedestrian fatality at the corner of East West Hwy and Colesville Rd. That intersection is horrible...pedestrians racing against the walk sign, cars taking the corner much too fast, buses blocking everyone's sight-line. It's a terrible place and unfortunately, someone paid the ultimate price. It was very sad.
My coworker and I had to take a roundabout route out of the city.
"You know," he said, as we finally reached a quiet neighborhood just outside the downtown area. "I was going to complain about how tired I was, but really, I have nothing to complain about."
"Yeah," I responded. "We both still alive."
Be careful out there, folks! There is rarely any place you need to get to so quickly that you can't afford to take care and watch out for others.