Last Sunday, the Redskins trumped trends, history, and conventional wisdom, with a victory over the hated Dallas Cowboys ("opening up the windows of heaven and letting God pour out his blessings").

Was this a moment for gloating? Yes. Was this a moment to pump fists in your car as you listened to the locker-room interviews? Yes. Was this a moment to look deep into your friend's eyes and allow yourself to wonder aloud if it's time to start up some kind of Bandwagon? Yes.

Was this a moment to broadcast a racist remark about turban-wearers?

Well, no. That's a violation of even extremeskins or sports-talk etiquette. As the Examiner reports (key parts bolded for your pleasure):

"A Metro operator’s Monday morning attempt to celebrate the Redskins’ win over the Dallas Cowboys offended riders who heard him equate turban-wearers with terrorists over the train’s loudspeaker system.

'Don’t be afraid if you see a bunch of people wearing towels on their heads today,' the Orange Line operator said to a train full of people, according to riders. 'They’re not terrorists; they’re with the Dallas Cowboys. Go Redskins.'"

The Redskins may have the most racist name in all of sports. But fans need to comport themselves better! I love that the Examiner tries to explain the remark as something that just might be non-racist, non-offensive:

"Athletes whose teams are nearing defeat can often be seen throwing towels over their heads as they slump on the bench. But the allusion to the derogatory term 'towelhead' for people who wear turbans, and the implication that they are terrorists, offended at least two riders, who lodged complaints with Metro."

Thanks to DCist for aggregating(!) this item.

Flash of Genius, the film version of inventor Robert Kearns' life, comes out this weekend, starring Greg Kinnear.

I don't know what's in the movie, but I got to know the real Kearns, who lived in Montgomery County and on the Eastern Shore, back in the late 1980s.

I wrote for a small chain of automotive trade papers at the time, and his tale was more David vs. Goliath than anything I'd ever come across.

When I met him, Kearns had already spent years fighting pretty much every car manufacturer in the world for stealing his idea for intermittent windshield wipers. The design patents on the pertinent technology were good for 17 years back then, but had expired by the time his lawsuits went to trial.

Yet Kearns won his first infringement cases, against Ford and Chrysler if memory serves, with verdicts totaling about $30 million.

Read More "Brush With Genius: Me and the Windshield Wiper Guy" »

From the District government:

McPherson Square Metro Rail (1400 I Street. NW); the station is closed due to a hazmat situation being investigated outside of the station, shuttle buses is being sent to the location.

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

There was a fabulous anarchic feel around the Morgan Boulevard Metro station on Sunday. Fans going to FedExField for the Redskins/Saints game were met by a horde of vans and drivers shouting for their business as they came off the train.

This was the first regular season game since the team stopped providing shuttle service from the train stops to the stadium. New federal rules went into effect last spring restricting the use of public buses when private companies can provide the same service.

Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who has been using Metro buses all these years, opted not to bring in a private company, as the Washington Nationals use to transport fans from RFK lots to Nationals Park.

Snyder instead raised the parking rate at his cash lots by $5, to $40.

The private vans that I saw were all screaming offers of $5 per ride, but that seemed like an opening bid, and very negotiable given the amount of competition.

I asked a driver how long the ride was, and she said her GPS rated it at 1.4 miles, but they were not allowed to drive all the way up to the stadium gates. In the ridiculous heat and humidity, the vans were doing bang-up business.

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.)

TheWashCycle, which is really just the greatest thing, put questions to Council candidates about bike policy. Here are the people who responded (links when I could find them):

• Jack Evans
• Cary Silverman
• Muriel Bowser
• Baruti Jahi

And here are the lame-o's who didn't:

• Patrick Mara
• Carol Schwartz
• Yvette Alexander
• Marion Barry
• Charles Wilson

And here is the candidate whose e-mail box was too full to receive the questionnaire:

• Villareal Johnson

Silverman, who says cycling is his primary MOT, said he's in favor of striping bike lanes, adding bike boxes, increasing the number of racks, among other things. Evans likes bike lanes and thinks cycling should be taught in public schools. Bowser blew a bunch of hot air about encouraging cycling blah blah blah. Jahi said he used to be an avid cyclist but doesn't have much time for it these days.

Fair warning: The word Klingle is used frequently in this post.

You can read Loose Lips' primary endorsements here.

This weekend's Post tackled one of my biggest pet peeves---when politicians use "Washington" as a disparaging euphemism for the national political scene, in which they willingly participate. The topic, covered by Dan Zak in the Sunday Source section, has been ripe for the plucking for years. But, I don't believe I've ever seen a story on it.

And Zak's piece could not come at a better time, as he points out right away.

"The hating will reach a pinnacle in Denver and St. Paul., Minn., this week and next. At the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, we'll get soaring speeches about how awful Washington is. How it is a quagmire of corruption. How it does nothing for anyone. How it needs to change."

Yes, we're about to be pummeled by a bipartisan bunch of bullies. All the politicians will try to inform the good, decent, humane, wholesome citizens of America that Washington D.C. is a place where the bad, corrupting, manipulative, power-mongering people of the District seek to destroy their integrity. (Though their integrity is of course fully intact, even though they spend all day surrounded by the evil inhabitants of this sinful place.)

"'The city of Satan,' John McCain declared to a crowd in Nevada.

The place where people 'boil all the hope out of" you, Barack Obama warned in Akron, Ohio.

We are all condemned. And you know what, it's sloppy oratory...is what is!

Let's take for example a few quotes from the candidates, and consider some edits. Read More "Thank You Dan Zak" »

Everyone is gushing about the growing popularity of scooters. They get 65+ miles per gallon and are cheap to maintain and insure. Dealerships are selling out of popular models and buyers are acting like iPhone acolytes, making goofy plays to get what they want. My mechanic at Vespa Washington told me one guy recently got offered $6,000 cash for his Vespa by some dude on K Street. The dealership accepted a trade in of a 1965 Corvette (or was it a Mustang?) for a 50 cc Vespa.

There is one big downside, though, especially for us mishap-prone scooter owners: the wait for service is way longer than it was when the only scooter riders were mods and delivery men. If you want to schedule a tune-up at Vespa Washington, you'll have to wait more than a month. In my case, I had to wait nearly a month for the shop to fix my ride after thieves tried to steal it and only succeeded in breaking the fork. It's not as easy as just hiring more mechanics. There's a shortage of qualified mechanics who know how to work on scooters. I wonder if they make more than journalists? Hmmmm.

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!