Help Shape Cycling's Future in the DC Area

Taking a break from cleaning up from the aftermath of Hurricane Irene to share the following request from the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), which is holding a series of meetings this fall aimed at helping to "[shape] the future of bicycling" in the DC region. The pre-meeting for my jurisdiction (Alexandria) conflicts with one of my classes, so I won't be able to make it, but I do plan on submitting comments as part of the process.

http://www.waba.org/events/summit.php

Earthquake

The DC area continues to see previews of the worldwide calamities that will no doubt spell the end of civilization as we know it in 2012. How can I be so sure about the 2012 thing?! Because a critical mass of quackpots from all over the world agree and are predicting the end of the world in 2012.

The flavor of the week for last week was flooding. Today, it was a 5.9 magnitude earthquake that felt like it lasted a good twenty to thirty seconds. At work, the office was evacuated for some time before they deemed it safe to go back inside.

This did not happen in DC, but we did have an earthquake today.

Now, following the tremor, the following update is on the DC Metro's website:

Metro Earthquake Update 1

 As a result of a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in the Washington, DC area:

·         As of 1:59 p.m., all trains are operating at 15 mph.

·         Metro personnel are conducting track inspections of the entire rail system.

·         There are no reported customer injuries at this time.

Customers should expect significant delays on Metrorail until further notice due to the reduced operating speed.

News release issued at 2:34 pm, August 23, 2011.

Much in the same vein as last week's post on flooding, I am glad that I will not have to deal with the impact and delays this will mean for everyone trying to take the train home tonight.

 

Next on the preview list for 2012... a possible brush starting Sunday with Hurricane Irene, which looks like it might come straight up the Chesapeake Bay after hitting North Carolina. If this keeps up, I predict that by mid-September, I will have blog posts about how my commute has (or has not) been affected by the Ebola virus, massive swarms of locusts, and huge firestorms.

A New Direction

By the time I started cycling seriously again two and a half years ago, I had already long been a proponent of denser urban development and effective public transportation. My stomach has always turned a little when I've gone a few miles further away from the DC and the close-in suburbs into the land blighted, in my opinion, by suburban sprawl, generic strip malls, and McMansion subdivisions with two SUVs in every garage. (I'm stereotyping a little here, but you get the point.) All this is to say that on some level, urban planning issues were always something I thought about.

Suburban sprawl

Then I started cycling. The vast majority of the miles I ride are commuting miles. Given the nature of where I live, that means I don't just ride on quiet residential backstreets or lightly traveled multi-use paths on weekend mornings. I was riding on more heavily traveled city streets and mixing it up with weekday rush hour traffic on the downtown streets of Washington, DC.

This new first-hand exposure to cycling as a mode of transportation and not simply a means of exercise or recreation made me begin to think more critically and seriously about what makes for good cycling amenities and what, by extension, encourages people to walk, ride a bike, or take a bus instead of hopping in a car.  It also refocused my thinking on all kinds of issues related to the ways that communities are organized - land use and zoning issues, density, development - since all of that affects the quality of the environment, of our lives, and the transportation choices we make. 

I started reading and following DC area blogs about planning issues and cycling. Combine this with a relative lack of interest in where my professional life has taken me to this point, and it wasn't a big leap from this kind of thinking to the idea of pursuing a career in the field of urban planning. Well, I finally begin taking the plunge. Today is my first day of classes in a graduate program in urban planning. 

What began with a bike ride is becoming a career change into a field for which I feel a real passion.

Weekend Morning Ride

As a daily bicycle commuter, you get used to having a bike ride or two as part of your day almost every day... of the week, that is. You'll find me out on my bike morning and evening just about every day Monday through Friday. Most people think of riding a bike as a weekend activity, but that is precisely when I am less likely to be out and about on my bike. 

Don't get me wrong, I like getting out for a ride on the weekends, especially during prime cycling seasons (for me fall and spring). It just doesn't usually happen, at least not with the frequency that occurs Monday through Friday.

Today was one of those weekend days when I make time to get out and ride. With the exception of the areas around some churches, traffic is really light on Sunday morning at 9 AM. It makes for some nice riding. I spent a little less than two hours on my bike this morning and went about 20 miles. It was a good distance for working up a little bit of a sweat, getting the blood flowing, and having some time to not really think about much except for the road I was on, my legs spinning the pedals, and the fresh air blowing in my face as I pedaled along. I also managed to stop and pick up some needed groceries on the way home. 

I start a graduate program tomorrow (more to come on that in a separate post), so between reading and research for that and other plans for the next few weekends, I have a feeling this might be the last time I get to take this kind of weekend ride for a while. 

On the plus side cycling-wise, I'll be getting an extra three or four miles of bike riding in to and from evening classes three times a week now that my graduate studies are getting underway. But I'll miss my couple hours in the saddle on a nice Saturday or Sunday morning every few weeks if I can't work that into my schedule.

When I First Conceived of Bicycle Touring

Last month I went on my first overnight bike camping trip. I rode roughly 75 miles on back-to-back days, riding out to just past Harpers Ferry, WV and back. It was something I’d thought about doing for some time; I’d started thinking about doing this specific trip a couple months after I first started riding again a few years ago.

  

My bike and tent set up on my recent overnight bike trip on the C&O Canal

In a larger sense, though, I think the very first inklings of such a trip were born when I was still a teenager. I remember going to the beach with my dad in the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach. At the southern end of Sandbridge, the paved road ends at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. South of that is False Cape State Park, which sits on the border with North Carolina.

View Larger Map

According to the state parks' official website, there is “[n]o vehicular access.” (By “no vehicular access” they mean cars. Bicycles are technically vehicles, just not motor vehicles, but I’ll let that little legal technicality slide for the purposes of this post.)

Anyway, back to my story. My dad and I went on almost yearly father-son camping trips from the time I was a little kid through the end of high school. Our camping trips were always car camping trips. We went to local state parks in Pennsylvania when we lived there. We went to places in Virginia, North Carolina, and later in upstate New York and even Québec.

False Cape State Park is not accessible by car. That meant our normal car camping modus operandi would not work. False Cape SP is, however, accessible on foot, on horseback, and by bike. I think it’s maybe 10 miles or so to the camping area. I had the idea that my dad and I should sometime take our bikes to Sandbridge and ride to the park’s primitive camping area by bike.

(Primitive Camping and Beach Views at False Cape State Park, from official Flickr page)

I didn’t figure out any specific logistics and I wasn’t yet hip to the world of racks and panniers and all the things that can make bike travel easier and more convenient. But we each had a mountain bike, and I figured for an overnight trip we could probably get everything we would need (a tent, a few cans of food, toiletries, and maybe some water) in a couple backpacks. Incidentally, the tent I thought we could use for the trip is the same one as in the picture above. I’ve had that thing since I was probably eight years old. Still works! That’s all we’d need.

While I know it probably would have worked, that trip never did materialize. That’s probably because by the time I had the idea, I was already in high school and working summers. It may have been one of the summers that my work schedule kept my dad and me from taking a camping trip altogether. Even if it wasn’t I don’t think I ever mentioned the idea except perhaps in passing. Now, though, I realize that what I have come to know as bicycle touring or bicycle camping is something I wanted to try almost twenty years ago. And even if it took nearly two decades before I actually took a trip involving a tent and a bicycle, I’m glad I finally did it.