Sad Folks on the Beltway

[TimB]

On my way to work this morning just past where I-95 joins I-495 on the inner loop north of DC (not that this means much to 90% of you - lets just say this junction sees over 200,000 vehicles/day) and there's a state trooper with a couple cars on the shoulder gumming things up. As I come by the scene, I see a wad of mangled bikes over on the shoulder, still attached to a rack that HAD been mounted to someone's trunk. Looked to be 3 or 4 bikes - a family affair from the looks of it, and nothing that appeared to be high-end. But probably put a damper on some family's vacation plans...

[Sandy]

Please say hello to the sophisticated one and her mom for me. Hope that your family is doing well.

:) Sophisticated Sofia's Suitor :)

[Russell]

I take the train to work, but spent 2-1/2 hours going from Silver Spring to Aberdeen last night. Traffic around here keeps getting worse.

I also saw a bike ruined by a "minor" rear-end hit on the beltway the other day. Keep your bikes in the car or on the roof.

[zap]

Racks mounted to the back of vehicles should be illegal. The heavy duty ones are a pain in the .... in parking lots and cause far more damage than neccasary.

Razzed a friend of mine who had one and he bought a minivan. Well....., not sure how much I had to do with it but still, that addendum is gone :banana:

Wait until after labor day and traffic will get really bad around D.C.

[Tom]

We have a parking garage at work. There's one guy that drives a gigantic pickup truck that can't fit in a normal parking space. Where do you think he habitually parks it? Yup. Right on the end space by the entrance, up against the pillar for the second level. Since the hood's so huge he can't see how close he is, he has to leave a little extra room up front so his butt end sticks out three or four feet. It makes it absolutely blind for people driving around the corner toward where people are either standing around smoking or walking in to the building.

That's not good enough, though! One day he decided to mount a bike rack to the tailgate of the truck. There they were, two black pipes sticking out another three feet just about eye height. My smoker buddies tell me it was pretty funny watching driver's reactions until the amusement waned and one of them took it off and put it in the nice, scratch-free bed of the truck.

[pbbob]

hour and half from andrews afb area to columbia last night. when I see a car with bikes on the back I look at them as just another potential hazard to fall off and cause a wreck. kind of like the time my old vitus that was bungee cord and duct taped to my motorcycle went flying off at 55 mph. fortunately no harm to others or to the bike.