My new stem and cleats got in at BBW today. Oh yeah it was time for new ones. The stem isn’t going on until I get 40-42cm set of bars to swap out with these REALLY wide ones I’ve always had on. Looking forward to the ride tomorrow, I’ll post some photos if I get a chance tomorrow night.

Protip : If your cleats look like mine did, replace them now. I shouldn’t have waited this long and it probably adversely affected my riding.

I got up around 7.40 today to see if I would have to leave in 20 minutes for class. Everything got delayed until 10am! I promply slept for an hour and procedeed to ride around in the ice & snow like a retard before class. Only ALMOST fell a handful of times. Mostly just a thin layer of ice with snow and slush under it. By the end of the day it was just a mess – then it started raining. Weather. Awesome.

This morning (January 26th) The Brian Lehrer show was all about traffic in NYC after the horrendous, terrible deaths of two kids in Chinatown on East Broadway last week.

The majority of comments on the webspace for the show on WNYC.org listed intersections around the city which were the most dangerous for pedestrains. Lots of other comments though brought up cyclists who ride dangerously and put themselves & pedestrians at risk. What do you think the top 5 problems with NYC street space are?

Option 1 -  This depressingly outdated website is a great starting point for planning a Baltimore to Washington DC ride. Things get complicated even with the detailed turnsheets in areas near BWI, Indian Creek trail, and elsewhere. Contributing to this is the fact that google maps doesn’t list all of the trails even though many of them are clearly visible via satellite. This means that auto route planning won’t work, so it can be hard to visualize the trip.

To make up for that, use gmap-pedometer.com . This software provides a solution for the lack of charted routes that the turnsheets will have you on and off throughout the ride.

Option 2 – Here‘s a route that reduces total mileage by just over 5 miles. That’s significant but it mean riding on a Boulevard for 30 + miles. I do not recommend this option and I don’t think I’ll be trying it anytime soon. Boulevards in the northeast are always bad for riding.

Option 3 – Angelo T. wrote this route in :

The main difference is that you skip the BWI trail (not very pretty anyway) and at Hammond’s Ferry take…

(Full directions in bikely link). AT’s route also provides a less residential (and probably safer) ride out of Baltimore city.

Here’s my planned route : gmap-pedometer route. If you look closely you’ll see I plan to deviate from the bikewashington.org turnsheet around mile 38. I found their directions lacking for that area, I plan to take Rhode Island Ave/Baltimore Ave for the last few miles of the ride.

I’m riding out on Friday afternoon so I’ll post back here when I’m in DC and planning the ride back to Baltimore. If you have any suggestions on my route feel free to post them here.