I really could us some MD peps opinion on our so called 3' safe passing law: http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...-3-passing-law
Just vote, no need to post anything.

Oh the bike finally got outside today. Yay!

Great to hear!

I voted, but I'm feeling indifferent.

Right or wrong, I'm not letting any law place me in jeopardy. I have established the way I ride in traffic from 6 years of commuting and riding through the city during my forays to Annapolis.

There's a saying about process management--if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm waffling between indifferent, not supportive and strongly opposing hence the poll. Did you see noisebeam's comment? A bus buzzed a cyclist but since the cyclists was in a bike lane the 3' safe passing does not apply, just like our new law would.

Video from the bus (I have not watched the whole thing yet)

I don't have the bandwidth at home to look at it. I did see his post, though.

I have a new song for this, too:

Sung to the melody of "Give Me Three Steps" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Give me three feet
Give me three feet, mister
Give me three feet from your door
Give me three feet
Give me three feet, mister
And, you won't see me no more... for sure!

On the low bandwidth thing just pause the video and do something else for a while then play. I've brought Youtube videos to meetings with no connection at all just put my computer in hibernation mode with the video already loaded.

But watching the video is not that important as it is easy to understand a cyclists in the left most of a bike lane and a bus in the rightmost of the adjacent lane would be very problematic.

These issues and the political soup that they play in make my head swim.
It's difficult enough to understand whether the consequences of the new legislation are proactive (creating a friendlier road environment)
... or retroactive (giving the wronged rider monetary and legal compensation after something happens)

I made it home without getting killed--Always a good thing! (re: broken front brake cable and a rear brake that barely stops me and not at all on a hill).

Here's my ride data (blog entry w/pics in the near future):

http://bimactive.com/ba/journal/post/10783/30370 - Part 1
http://bimactive.com/ba/journal/post/10783/30371 - Part 2

http://bimactive.com/ba/ui/route_detail … teID=26479 - Interactive Google Map of the ride

I haven't figured out what to say for the two parts, yet, nor have I added the pictures that I took of Bob and John and the places that we stopped. The pictures will be added once I get home (since they're on my camera's memory card) and upload them to Twitter for linking into the blog entries.

Glad to see you're back on the bike. Roads are getting better each day. I voted against the bill. It seems it will give us what we already have(nothing and can actually "make" us the cause of the accident. We will eventually need to carry collision insurance.
Do keep us posted on your departure so we can do the BBBB ride: bike and beer B4 Barry leaves ride.

I would complain to the person that built up your bike;-) Glad to see you made it back OK. How were the shoulders? Were studs needed? I don't have studs on my Balto bike so decided not to ride. However the thought of riding studded tires for 100 miles also didn't appeal. I went Xcountry skiing instead.
I went into your journal before reading your entire post blah, blah, blah...

Yeah... let me at'em!

Actually, this is the second time this has happened with this shifter. It seems to be a shifter problem. It's like there is too much force on the cable anchor and it finally gives away.



Yeah... blah, blah, blase... is how I'm feeling about writing at this time. I might just put a bunch of pictures in it.

The roads were fine, but I had the brake issue nearing Frederick, and on the way to the ride start I went over some bumpy railroad tracks on Rolling Mill Road and my Dinotte 800's mount broke and the light wound up in my spokes. Luckily, it got past the fork without getting trapped inside the spokes and causing me to endo. The connector for the light got chewed up good and one of my carbon spokes has some hair hanging off from scraping the light and connector.

Last night, I fixed the brake with a spare cable that, in hindsight, should have brought with me on the ride--won't forget a spare for July 4th or any other future long ride.

The light is repaired, too, so I had all lights available this morning.

Almost took off my studs today but checked the weather. Looks like another snow storm is headed our way...ugh

It'll be Easter before we can finally change them--it seems.

My pedal fell off the way to the train this AM. Had to walk back home as one cannot cycle with one flat pedal. I actually stripped a few threads on the crank. Had to ream it out and used some loktite. Hopefully that is the right move at this point. Gotta try and catch the last train to Beltsville, bye.

I hope you got home.

FWIW I carry medical tape which comes in handy for scrapes or as an all purpose duct tape. I helped a fellow in the same predicament out by wrapping the treads with a small piece of tape. Worked well enough to get him home.

take acid. then read this thread.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...w-fast-can-you

Done?
Now then, who's riding in tomorrow?

On sunday, I'm driving down to Richmond to check out the NAHBS
Anyone interested in going with?

I went for a little ride to Princeton to pick up some brake pads, decided to make a loop out of it and road down Falls Rd to Mt Washington Village. I tell you the hardiest thing about recovering from a fall is getting rid of your fear of falling again. The roads were wet and the shoulders were not plowed and I started to get the shakes so I pulled off the roadway to recover for a bit and then again in Starbucks, climbing back home up Cross Country wasn't bad, it's just the wet down hills that scare the bajeses out of me. Slowly I am trying to work up to where I was before but it's been hard this winter.

I made it home(walked), repaired bike then headed back to the train. Caught the last train to Beltsville. Since I was running late I decided to cut through the woods to say a little time. Bad move. That snow was the most dense crap I have tried to ride through. I had trouble even walking my bike through it. Turned around and rode the long way.

Tried to read it. Hydrochloric didn't work, next time I'll try surlfuric.

too early to call. Could be fun though.

Didn't the Monkeys have a song called "Last Train to Beltsville" - errr, something like that.

I rode in. It was a non-challenge.

It was not bad coming in at 25 F ( -3 C ). The predicted snow came a little bit, but nothing is sticking to the road. It could still happen, but with this year 2 to 4 more inches would only constitute a dusting. Yesterday, going home, I picked up some glass where I know to look for it. I changed the tube. I got a couple miles and it went flat, so I pumped it up and rode a couple more miles. After getting within a couple
miles of home, I just walked it. The sidewalks are still covered, probably until May, so I had to walk my bike in the street. When I got home, I ran the inside of the tire and rim many times, but could not find anything. I patched an older tube and put it in there and it too got a pin hole in it. I will have to work on it this weekend. I rode my mountain bike in, just in case we get some snow anyway. On the up side, I heard a bird calling out around 5:20 am, and I saw at least two runners, spring can't be too far off.

Be careful out there. One of the Stoneleigh group hit a pothole on Thornton, broken hand, scraped up face, and steel frame broken in two places. I'm enjoying being inside :)

I get a lot of those mystery flats from my back alley. It is often from little pieces of wire and not glass. Very hard to see. These days I spend a lot more time locating the area of the leak on the tube and using that to locate the corresponding area on the tire. Then inspecting the tire until I can find the culprit. More time-consuming, but way better than getting a flat on your new tube.

Woohoo! Snurricane ride - http://bimactive.com/ba/journal/post/10783/30469

I was wondering if anyone got it. Figured it was an oldish sorta fellow that understood it. (It was Cklarksville in the Monkeys song).
Anyway both Thursdays and Fridays snow storms were much ado about nothing. The wind however was fierce. Gusts in the mid 40's. Black ice again. Really hard commute this morning.
I was thinking about retirement on this AMs commute. I'm close but still years away. I hope I will ride daily when I do retire but on days like today I don't think I would. It would be SOOOOOO easy to roll over and snooze. You have to think about something when riding straight into the wind.

High fives dudes. Adventurous ride for me too. -GB

Good going gents!

Not everyone in the BBC are wussies. But, we knew that.

Dang, Bob... you're running 76% (1391/1836) so far this year. Last year ended at 55%.

You know what I'm after. ;)
... and I'm already 170 miles behind pace.

Wow! You go, boys. :D

Here "down south" we didn't really get any snow -- lots of fine flakes blowing around like crazy, but not much sticking. The winds are horrendous, though! I remember a few years back on a Seagull Century that was crazy windy, I was approaching the bridge over the bay, and the cyclists ahead of me all looked like sailboats heeling on the wind -- noticeably leaning to one side! The bad part for me, though, was when the wind suddenly died down for a second, and I had to quickly compensate to get back upright again -- I almost overcompensated and crashed, which would have been no fun at all on that narrow bridge. I walked the rest of the way over it. I'm hoping to start commuting to work again next week; I think my route is relatively clear and dried-up now -- I'll probably do a daylight reconnaissance ride sometime this weekend.

So, I have a future cycling dilemma. I signed up with Pedal PA to do an organized, supported tour of the "northern tier" of Pennsylvania. 8 days, 450 miles, in August. They had both a tent camping and a lodging option, at different prices; I opted for the former. I recently got an e-mail from the organizer saying that because it had been much more difficult (and expensive) to try to arrange the camping than they had anticipated, and so few riders wanted the camping option, that they were going to cancel it, and do lodging only. As a result, the cost for me has increased 48%.

In absolute dollars, it's not like I can't afford it, and I don't have some moral objection to sleeping in a comfy bed :) but . . . I dunno. I actually do like the camping part. I've always had some ambivalence about the tour, anyway -- chiefly the time frame and the length of the tour, because of some other (non-biking) travel that I might be doing later in August.

I could -- and no doubt you all would so advise me! :D -- be more adventurous and just plan my own route and go, and that certainly has a great deal of appeal to me. (Although I've never set foot in that part of PA, so I know absolutely bupkus about it.) I could focus more on the area of the route that I'm most interested in (around Wellsboro, the "Grand Canyon of PA"), make it a little shorter in duration, maybe pick a different date. But I really want to try this year to not be so damn anti-social in my riding, thus the "forced group" concept. :)

Decisions, decisions. *sigh*