Snobbed in DC

I would be remiss not to mention that the Snobbish Enlightened Cyclist will be stopping by next week for a BRA (Book-related appearance). Noon, Wed 21 March at the Barnes & NOble. I know, it's not exactly DC, but close enough. We've been snubbed by the snob. Details here: http://www.chroniclebooks.com/bikesnob/

I hereby also grant my followers the exclusive scoop on the following breaking news from the bike lane: with the advent of spring, I intend to return to my regularly scheduled blogging. on hyper-mode (meaning: more than once every 3 months). "You ain't seen nothing yet." as they say in show-biz. or was that monkey biz. Anyhoot n' holler, over and out. for now.

Bike Out and ride it up!

Editor's intro: I wrote this to guest post to Tales from the Sharrows (a way cooler blog title than here, but he grabbed it first, so I won't steal it [read: until and unless I conquer the world, or at least a small corner of the blogosphere, in which case I want Sharrows included in my proprietariness]), and I now share with you, my loyal readers (ok, I don't know there should be an 's' at the end of reader, but a man can dream!)

Exactly two weeks after portaging my beloved black bicycle (bbb) home for the holidays (disclaimer: I celebrate Christmas, and was awake for the intake of the new year (2012 I think we’re on now), but more holidays were not included in my life, cyclatory or otherwise), I brought out the bike. <drum roll> At 6:37 this morning, I stealthily entered the house of the parents’ to access the garage. Since everyone knows time depresses tires, and that tires hunger for air, I fed my two black rings their share, and after having a quick run in with a lost presto screwin top, headed off for the commuter rail from Manassas. For DC’ers without geography, and no, it’s not local geography, Manassas is located this side of China, south of the 49th parallel, but otherwise beyond the pants-holding-thing way, And boy was bbb happy to be back on the road! I mean, it was great to be back on two wheels. The last couple days getting back to work after a long trip to a warm beach (80 degrees, beeches!), I went in too early to portage the bbb on that local train set from the Virgin-land-ia. For those unfamiliar with the system, counter-system, and procedure, full sized bikes are VERboten on VRE except on the last 3 trains of the morning and of the evening. Overachiever that I am {not}, I like to get in early, so I can get out early (read: by 6 pm), and apparently VRE serves best those cyclists who like to get to work later. No matter. I am honored to have joined the ranks of the free-wheeling, no matter that my commute was simply up from the plaza of our city designer and my namesake, Mr. Pierre Charles Seeing others with the freedom to ride the last couple days made me feel like part of the 99% Not that I don’t empathize deeply with my fellow man (and wo-man), but not so much the 4 wheeled prisoners।

My 1।5 mile commute this morning? Epically un-epic. It wasn’t even cold enough to claim frost-bite and get a sick day. I made the lights more than usual up Pennsylvania, saw a grand total of about 1 other cyclist, yadda yadda. Why did I write this post? Your reading pleasure. Let me know if it’s remotely been a success in pleasuring your mind. I’ve never blogged my commute before.

Ride free the new year!! And let those resolutions carry you smoothly on your wheels, wherever that may be, un-collidingly to a prosperous year for all. Carry on.

The new Tysons Corner

So, Walk Score (yes, it scores walkability) gave Tysons Corner a 66, which is fairly high on their scale. It's the third highest score of all Virginia cities, even ahead of Alexandria (!!), which is laugable. Tysons Corner is only remotely walkable. When I used to bike into Tysons Corner for work last year, I was happy every day I didn't get run over. The road-sidewalk set up is an utter disaster right now. Maybe they saw the blueprint for the new, improved Tysons Corner and rated it accordingly?