Yesterday, Loose Lips Daily linked to San Francisco Bike Blog– which thinks the Washington Area Bicycle Association should bring its bike valet service to Inauguration 2009.

“Who wants to get hands-runneth-over by security guards just so you can stand on a packed [Metro] platform with dudes in blue, carrying big, automatic weapons? Not me. People need to be able to go by bike, and they need a place to put their bikes when they arrive. The local cycling organization knows how to do bike valet parking - they should offer it at the inauguration.”

Turns out WABA has a Thursday meeting with DDOT to discuss doing exactly that.

If all goes well at the meeting, says WABA staffer Henry Mesias, the organization will set up a bike valet station towards the south of the Capitol and just outside the inauguration’s hard-security-perimeter.

Recently, my brother started commuting by bike to and from his job in Chicago. I love my brother, but his commitment to half-assedness is breathtaking—rather than buy a helmet, he made do with his 10-year-old son’s skateboarding helmet, which he perched on top of his head Chilly Willy–style, and instead of lights he had…nothing but optimism bias. It made choosing his birthday present pretty easy.

All this is by way of saying however you feel about bike helmets, it’s considerably harder to argue that bike lights are not a good idea, especially as the days grow shorter. And today at 4:30, if you trot your lightless bike over, you can get lights for free at the plaza in front of the SunTrust on 18th Street and Columbia Road NW and at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Church at 16th Street and Park Road NW. The giveaways are organized by WABA, which will also hold another such event a week from today at Cora Kelly Elementary School in Alexandria.

(Hat tip: TheWashCycle)

(Oh heck, DCist had this way before me, too. I am crap at service journalism. Get some lights anyway.)

Photo by adamscarroll

Oh heavens! Someone is blocking the bike lane in front of me! Quick! Let me take a photo and blog it!

Seriously, fellow cyclists, you know why people think we’re weenies?
1) The clothes. For Pete’s sake, yellow lycra?
2) The incessant whining.

Look, “Share the Road” goes both ways. I don’t like whooshing into traffic to avoid a double-parked UPS truck, but I can also chalk that up to the price you pay for being able to get a goddamn package from this place. For every oblivious a-hole trolling for a parking spot at 5 mph there is a hard-working tradesperson who needs a quick in and out on a busy street.

Living in a city means making tradeoffs. In our nonstop complaining about being forced to veer around cars’ blind spots, I think we’re developing a major one of our own. Personally, I think bikes are a much better way to get around town than cars, no matter the weather, and I bloody hate when someone’s parked in the bike lane. But we are a tiny percentage of the vehicular population in D.C., and I think it’s time we stopped acting like that gives us superpowers. Let it go and just ride.

Photo by Flickr user tvol

But it’s not their fault.

Bike DC coordinator Sheba Farrin asked ANC 6A tonight for their approval of the East Capitol Street section of the tour route. The commissioners were angry at the short notice about a plan that would cut the city in half for several hours, effectively trapping some people in their homes for an entire Saturday morning.

But a representative of the Mayor’s Special Events Task Force had ordered Bike DC not to approach the ANCs until the route was finalized. They started working with Special Events on the route in January. It was finalized in July. The ANCs don’t meet in August.

ANC 6A voted 3-2 not to approve the route, falling all over themselves to affirm their support for biking and community events, but they just couldn’t put their stamp of approval on such bad procedure.

WABA had some supernaturally bad luck with Bike DC for a few years (with cancellations due to terrorist attacks and hurricanes) and they let it go. There was no Bike DC for a few years. But now the car-free ride is back, due to the sheer will of its committed coordinators and the money of a private investor who does the same thing for Portland, Oregon. (He’s counting on 10,000 riders and praying for good weather and no whammies September 27.)

The mysterious practice of “air-locking” continues. Nikolas Schiller documents a case of a bike locked in a tree. It’s a fixie, so I guess air-locking is getting hipper. Or, as Mike Licht supposed, perhaps this person just put hydrogen in their tires by mistake and only managed to attach the bike to the tree before it floated away. 

[Previously: Artful Bike Suspender, Who Are You?, Art Bike Turning Into Parts Bike, The Art Bike Vanishes]

OK, so there’s more to the SmartBikes than the fact that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty knows how to ride one.

Here’s what you need to know:

• After numerous delays, the program is now live. However, to use it, you need to get a SmartBike card, which costs $40 per year but allows unlimited bike use. You need a credit card and must be over 18. It can take up to two weeks to get a card after ordering one online.
• You can find racks at the following locales: Logan Circle (14th Street & Rhode Island Avenue NW), Gallery Place (7th & F Streets NW), Dupont Circle (Massachusetts Avenue NW west of Dupont Circle), Farragut Square (17th & K Streets NW), Reeves Center (14th & U Streets NW), Metro Center (12th & G Streets NW), Shaw (7th & T Streets NW), Judiciary Square (4th & E Streets NW), Foggy Bottom (23rd & I Streets NW), McPherson Square (14th & H Streets NW).
• You are allowed to keep a bike for up to three hours. If you keep the bike more than three hours, you get a warning placed on your account; do it a second time, and your account is terminated. Keep one more than 24 hours, and your credit card is charged $550 for a replacement bike.
• You may be wondering, if everyone grabs a bike in their neighborhood in the morning to ride to work, how will there be enough parking spaces downtown for all the commuters? That problem is solved by having a van that can carry bikes from full racks to empty racks; a computer in the van can track the status of each rack thanks to an RFID chip in the handlebars of each bike.
• The bikes are equipped with kickstands, mudguards, bells, hand and coaster brakes, and three-speed internal gearing.
• There’s some gaps in the rack coverage, Georgetown and Capitol Hill being the glaring exceptions. Transportation department spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc says the city is about to start looking at new locations, moving out “spherically” from the city core.
• All your other questions can be answered at the SmartBike Web site. You might ask, why isn’t it part of the city’s Web site? That’s because the program is being run by ClearChannel Outdoor as part of the city’s bus shelter contract.

About a half-hour ago, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty rode one of the District’s new SmartBikes without incident.

Fenty, some two weeks after a crash on his racing bicycle aggravated a prior foot injury and left him houseridden for days, checked out Bike No. 9 at the newly operational Frank D. Reeves Center rack and rode it along the U Street NW sidewalk for a good 90 seconds, maintaining perfect balance and impeccable pedaling technique.

After the ride, Fenty told reporters he’s back on the “CompuTrainer,” a sort of dyno for bikes, and that he’s been cleared to run next week. Fenty was no longer sporting the walking boot he’d been wearing before his trip to China.

A spot of news sure to please bike enthusiasts, lovers of art-rock, and managing editors alike: the New York Times reports that David Byrne, “cultural omnivore,” has rolled out a new line of bike racks across NYC, with whimsical designs geared toward the peculiarities of each neighborhood. My personal favorite: “Mudflap Tammy,” who racily graces the corner of 44th and 7th. Where does the bike go? I’m not quite sure. But I imagine I’d have a lot of fun finding out.

D.C., meanwhile, has some catching up to do. But who knows? Before too long, we might all be singing those infectious lyrics to “Hey Now”:

I wanna bicycle
I wanna popsicle
I wanna space face
Buy me a cherry face now

Hey now!
Hey now!
Hey now now!
Hey now!
Hey now!
Hey now now!

• FIRST NO. 1: A SPEEDING TICKET

I have been driving for 23 years. I have never gotten a speeding ticket, a minor but not inconsiderable source of pride. I’m not a candyass on the road, but I’m not a maniac, either. What you get from me as a fellow driver is alertness, consideration, and sweet, sweet moderation. I go with traffic.

That last technique has never let me down. Until Friday. I was driving with my family up 16th Street NW. We were on our way to celebrate my train-obsessed oldest child’s fourth birthday with a visit to the railroad heaven of Strasburg, Pa.

I take full responsibility for causing the officer holding a radar gun, standing in the middle of the road, to dodge the Metrobus blowing past me at far greater speed to whistle and motion me into a parking lot, where I was issued a ticket for going 36 miles per hour in a 25 zone.

I do not dispute the facts of this ticket, nor do I blame the police, to whose fraternal order I will continue to donate $25 every year, even if the sticker they send me as a result didn’t work as whispered. I blame myself, but I do think this is a lame way to get my first ever speeding ticket.

• FIRST NO. 2: ROAD RAGE DIRECTED AT CYCLISTS

A cyclist myself, I am very sensitive to the need to share the road (and yes, I am aware of the cognitive disconnect necessary to blaze through the city at 36 mph despite this philosophical bent). However.

Crossing the street in the railroad heaven of Strasburg, Pa., on Saturday, takes a long time. Walk signals are not lighted until traffic in all directions in the town’s main intersection is halted. As I was crossing the street, my 11-month-old strapped to my chest, a cyclist on a supremely ugly yellow carbon fiber bicycle shouted “Heads up, heads up!” as he tried to blow through the red light that was giving us our walk sign and, by extension, my family. I said “Hey, we have a walk sign,” and he grunted and sailed through the intersection. I shouted “And you have a red light!” at his rapidly disappearing form.

Ever since, I’ve been angry at cyclists. I mean, here I am week in and out, posting about some road outrage or another, and then I nearly get mowed down by a member of my tribe, albeit one clad in yellow spandex that matched his horrendously ugly plastic bicycle. For the rest of the weekend, I fantasized about road rage.

Photo by Flickr user frankh

But O the heavy change, now thou art gon,
Now thou art gon, and never must return! —John Milton, Lycidas

(Champlain and Euclid Streets NW, today)

Someone has cannibalized the artfully suspended bike on the corner of Champlain and Euclid Streets NW, removing its wheels. Hey, wheelsets are expensive. If this is your bike, you better come get it before its frame, cryptically locked in mid-air, is all that remains. And if you don’t mind, please leave a note explaining your motivation because I’m going coconuts trying to figure it out.

Photo by Ted Scheinman

Some action in the comments section of David Montgomery’s Saturday Post story about bicycle commuting. I thought the piece was fine, even if it’s not the freshest idea out there. A lot of commenters are freaked about the lede (not about its florid style, mind you):

This is the summer of women on bicycles riding around town free as anything, wearing long dresses or skirts, sandals or even high heels, hair flowing helmet-free, pedaling not-too-hard and sitting upright on their old-school bikes, the kind with front baskets where they put their laptops, and handlebars that curve gently back in a bow shaped like the upper line of someone’s perfectly drawn red lipstick.

Specifically, the trouble is with the the “hair flowing helmet-free” part. I find the helmet vs. non-helmet debate dreary; people who pish-posh helmet use offer us a rare opportunity to test the theory of evolution at every sticky intersection.

The reason I hate this debate is that it turns a necessary conversation—should people in cities get around more by bike, and if so, how—into a mere safety question.

Plus, c’mon, it doesn’t take many trips through town to expose how flimsy the anti-helmet position is. A straight shot up 17th Street NW is rife with terror, from car doors opening (surprise!) to trucks in the bike lanes, to people who SCARE THE BEJESUS OUT OF YOU BY HONKING FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. And then there’s the vehicles that don’t see you before they back up (two times last month), the pedestrians who cross at you daring you not to swerve (though maybe that’s just my neighborhood), the pitted streets that threaten to turn you into a human cannonball…

But hey, argue about that all you like. We don’t have bike boxes, or car-free-streets days, or any number of good ideas for integrating cycling into daily life, but people droning on about helmets or cyclists running stop signs? Always available.

Photo by Flickr user kendra e

OK, I give up. What’s with the bike fixed to the fence at Euclid and Champlain Streets NW? Is it a protest against Christian Science? A demonstration of the little-heralded cantilevering abilities of U-locks? A prank played on a drunk friend? Telllllll meeeeeeeeee.

We’ve gotten several reports of D.C. police issuing tickets to bicyclists going the wrong way down one-way portions of New Hampshire Avenue NW near the intersection of 16th and U Streets yesterday and this morning.

A bystander took a picture of about 10 cyclists being ticketed north of the intersection at about 9 a.m. this morning:

We’ve heard the tickets came with a $25 fine. A police spokesperson said he hadn’t heard of any enforcement effort, but is currently checking into it. The ticketing effort comes about two weeks after the tragic death of cyclist Alice Swanson in Dupont Circle; it can’t be said enough that Swanson appears to have broken no laws when she was struck by a private trash truck, but the incident focused attention on issues of bike safety and road-sharing.

If you saw the ticketing or, gasp, got a ticket, tell us in the comments.

Flickr photo by p373

UPDATE, 1:05 P.M.: Pete Welsch, who lives near the intersection, is the fellow who took the photo. He calls in to report that police were waving down cyclists as they approached the 16th-and-U intersection from the north. “People were whipping out camera phones and things like that,” he says.