Gear Prudence: I heard you’re quitting. That this is it. That you’re filing this column and then you’re out of the bike advice game. Why are you hanging it up? Who will give us bike advice now? How will we ever go on? —Thanks. Hope Everyone Learned About Some Things. Go Pedal. 

Dear THELASTGP: You heard right. Five years and approximately 300 bike advice questions later, the Gear Prudence column is coming to a close. GP is riding off into the sunset and retiring from the extremely lucrative, high-stakes world of bike advice. Sure, this will leave readers unmoored and without any help in sorting out bicycling’s most vexing questions (Presta or Schrader? 700c or 650b? Why is this asshole STILL honking at me?), but it’s time. 

In July 2014, Courtland Milloy, not for the first or last time, wrote about bicyclists in the Washington Post. If you haven’t read it, don’t bother, but if you did, you might recall the words “bullies,” “terrorists,” and “broomsticks.” 

Maybe your hackles were raised, because raising hackles is the entire point of writing a column full of slapdash generalizations and self-righteous invective against hypothetical bike escalators on Meridian Hill. Fulminating against Those No Good Bicyclists is a tried-and-true (and tired) method to generate scads of clicks and comments, and Milloy is only one in a long list of cranky columnists nationwide who’ve penned a “bikelash” piece or two. 

Say what you will about Courtland Milloy—I will forever be grateful to him, because without his silly column, there’d be no Gear Prudence, which was born as something of a rejoinder. (The first GP even tackled what to do if someone sticks a broomstick through your spokes: Stay upright and use unread newspapers, including the hyperbolic takes within, to pad your fall.)

Truth be told, when I started writing Gear Prudence for City Paper, I thought it had about six months. A bike advice column was a novelty, and how much bike advice could people actually need? (1. Wear a helmet. 2. Don’t fall down. 3. ??? Thanks everybody, that’s a wrap!) But over the past five years, I’ve come to understand the near bottomless well of topics that bicyclists wrestle with, and the surprising paucity of guidance available for those dealing with the travails of bicycling in D.C. Sure, “follow the law and use common sense” is an easy thing to say, but when it comes to bicycling in the city, it’s hard to know what sense is common, and strict adherence to the law as written is as likely to get you run over as it is to get you home safely. There are few universal rules, and no training whatsoever. 

Most urban bicyclists’ riding résumés go something like this: “learned to bike at 6, came back to biking in adulthood for whatever reason.” (Mine was because we got a puppy and I needed to leave work at lunchtime to walk it. Biking two miles each way was the fastest way to do it.) 

Aside from getting over the considerable psychological hurdle of giving cycling a shot, would-be riders face few barriers to entry. Bikes are relatively cheap, and the existence of bikesharing has, for many, made them even more accessible. The difference between someone who doesn’t bike and someone who does is just one ride. One ride becomes two, and then you’re doing it every other day, or maybe you’re fully converted and you’re doing it every day for every trip and that’s just how you get around now. 

Nowhere along the way do most people complete the equivalent of driver’s ed for cycling, and no one ever has to trudge down to the DMV to take a written and road test to earn their biker’s license. But even if the city enforced some kind of training, certification, or uniform understanding of the legal obligations of and best practices for urban cyclists, one only needs to think of drivers to see how this and “follow the law and use common sense” come up short in reality. 

Advice columns are for the gray areas, the ambiguous, the unclear. Bike advice fits neatly into this genre. Given the range of backgrounds of people bicycling, the lack of agreed-upon conventions, bicycling’s niche status in our overall transportation milieu, and the potential for misunderstanding that arises in almost all interactions between strangers in public space, the gray areas are abundant. The questions kept coming. 

Writing Gear Prudence caused me to think constantly, and somewhat deeply, about the sundry scenarios one might encounter while riding a bike in D.C. and the best ways to handle them. Every time I left the house, it was another chance to see what people on bikes did and didn’t do, and to contemplate why. Each new column was an attempt to express a coherent worldview related to the proper way of being a person who rides a bicycle. 

After years of wrestling with the serious and not-so-serious qualms, hang-ups, grievances, and calls for help from people riding bikes in D.C., I’m ready, as a kind of swan song, to share my accumulated wisdom and parting thoughts on five of the column’s biggest recurring themes.

1. What the heck am I supposed to do?

The population of the District of Columbia has increased by more than 100,000 people since 2010, and the percentage of D.C. residents who commute by bike has more than doubled from around 2 percent in 2009 to around 5 percent now. Capital Bikeshare launched in September 2010. The system hit 20 million rides total in April 2018 and is on the cusp of 25 million right now. In short, today’s D.C. has both a lot more people and a lot more people on bikes. And they are confused! 

Whether it’s dealing with wrong-way cyclists, runners, delivery robots, or scooters, cyclists continually need help navigating the unexpected, tricky, and dangerous situations they encounter. They seek help because many of them are new to biking or recently re-discovered it after an absence, and because the roads and transportation culture do not account for the experience of a person traveling by bicycle. 

Most bike lanes are supposedly inviolable white stripes that provide little in the way of protection or help, and the lack of a contiguous, dedicated bicycle network often deposits cyclists in places where they are either unwanted or unanticipated. People ask how to handle the situations they encounter on the road not solely because they are new to biking, but also because the answers are neither intuitive nor readily apparent. It is not always obvious how to make a left turn, how far to the right they’re supposed to ride, what to wear, what to bring with them or how to carry it. In spite of bicycling’s recent rise in popularity, it’s still a marginal activity, especially among commuters. Rules learned as a child or behaviors developed while riding for fun on the weekend don’t translate especially well to most kinds of city riding. It’s no surprise that so many people have so many questions about how to deal with seemingly mundane yet shockingly complex problems. 

If GP offered any guiding philosophy on dealing with the myriad complications of cycling in D.C., it was this: Do your best. Cyclists can face crazy situations that come with no clear or instinctive solution. That’s not their fault. The best way of coping is to keep two questions in mind: What do I need to do to keep myself safe, and how can I do that without imperiling anyone else? If these questions are your lodestar, you can often (but not always) see yourself through hairy situations. 

2. Why do bicyclists…?

There is nothing quite so mysterious as a person who rides a bicycle. Don’t they understand that this choice is Out-Of-The-Ordinary and Very Against the Grain? Untangling the reasons why some bicyclists might do something in some situations is no easy task for a bike advice columnist. Guessing people’s motivations is never easy; doing so based on a subjective description of those actions after the fact by someone who is aggrieved or confused makes it nearly impossible. 

For the record, I don’t know why the parent yelled at you for biking near her kid. Or why the woman on the trail didn’t have her lights on. Why is that person’s helmet on the handlebars instead of on his head? Beats me. It is shall forever be a mystery to me, too, why the guy wasn’t riding in the bike lane when there was a bike lane right there. 

The best I could ever do was to attempt to provide insight into the kinds of things cyclists think about when they’re riding. That said, there is no single Bicyclist Way of Doing Things, and while the transportation mode one selects for a trip might prompt certain behaviors, it by no means guarantees them. Behaviors don’t come from the bike, but from the person on it. And people can be jerks!

Is the gap between people who ride bikes and the people who don’t unbridgeable? Are we forever condemned to perpetual misunderstanding and distrust? I don’t know. Maybe. 

One thing I’ve found to be useful is reconceptualizing my understanding of “cyclist” away from a fixed identity (He rides a bike. He must be a cyclist.) to a temporary state of being (He is a cyclist now because he’s riding a bike, but once he’s off, he’s not). 

What a person does when they’re on a bike is no more a referendum on the activity of cycling than my burning cupcakes is a referendum on the utility of baking. Depersonalizing bike riding and shifting it away from an activity done by a specific group of people helps break the perception that all bicyclists must conform to some kind of common code that can be readily deciphered. The backgrounds and motivations of people on bikes are just as diverse as the groups who walk, or ride Metro, or drive. It might be easier to understand (or cast aspersions) if “cyclist” were a monolithic identity, but it’s not, never has been, and never will be. 

3. Bikes and relationships: It’s complicated.

Within the category “all bicyclists” exists a subset of people who proudly make cycling a central part of their identity. All of their home decor is bike themed. They bike on first dates (and leave their bike at one night stands). They get mad when their dates pretend to be avid cyclists and aren’t, and are mean on Twitter when someone says anything impolitic about biking. They wear bike-themed Halloween costumes four years in a row. Within any subculture, there will be people who identify strongly with it, and cyclists are no exception. 

This has a way of creeping into people’s relationships, and it can get complicated. A bike blocking a first kiss is surmountable; needing to store eight bikes in the first apartment you’re sharing with your girlfriend is trickier. Leaving your wife with your lame relatives over the holidays so you can go for a long ride? Trickiest of all. 

It isn’t just romantic relationships where the cycling lifestyle proves to be fraught. Professional relationships are likewise strained by bike-based conflicts. Whether it’s a smelly co-worker, a colleague who takes a favorite bike parking spot, or the extremely unfortunate mistake of flipping off the CEO, biking highlights and sometimes heightens these squabbles. 

There is nothing unique about bicycling that makes it especially fertile ground for awkward situations. A bike isn’t a prerequisite for befuddling or strained personal interactions (though, I admit, it seems to help). But there is something about biking that causes people who fall for it to fall hard. Maybe it’s the endorphins, maybe it’s the very visceral connection between person and machine. There’s a kind of pervasive enthusiasm that some people feel about bicycling that seeps into their lives and inflects all subsequent interactions, for better or worse. 

4. Bicyclists and drivers: It’s even more complicated.

You can’t write about bikes without writing about cars. OK, you could, but you’d miss all the frisson. The tension. The drama. As much as people on bikes confuse everyone else, riding a bicycle unlocks a new way of thinking about cars and their drivers. For many, it unleashes an obsession. Ride a bike for long enough and really muse on car culture, and you become like Carrie Mathison on Homeland or Charlie on It’s Always Sunny: You start connecting the dots. You start to feel your synapses light up. You start to lose your mind. 

City streets are vibrant and mixed places. Cyclists and pedestrians and UPS drivers and workers from Fort Myer Construction digging and repaving even though they just dug and repaved—they’re all there. But our overall transportation culture is one that conceives of streets as places primarily for the movement and storage of cars. (In D.C., around 35 percent of households don’t have cars. This fact is hardly reflected in the allocation of our public right of way.) 

That there is tension between people on bikes and people driving is foreordained considering the way we’ve set up our streets. But what makes it more fraught is the cultural expectation that the automobile is supreme and everything and everyone else on the road is subservient. Tailgaters; drivers blocking the box; Uber drivers passing too closely, damning it all and just taking the lane—these are all sources of anxiety and concern for people on bikes. 

Even most cyclists have internalized a way of thinking where the worst possible outcome is a driver being temporarily inconvenienced. (People who only drive have definitely internalized this—hence the anger at speed cameras, the resentment at predictable and inevitable congestion, and the road rage. As a society, we’ve adopted the idea that what’s not so important is the fast and convenient movement of people; what is important is the fast and convenient movement of people in cars. If you don’t believe me, ask 50 bus passengers stuck in traffic behind 10 singly occupied SUVs.) 

All things considered—and I’ve spent a lot of time considering this—I still believe that most drivers are more apathetic than antipathetic to people on bikes. Yes, there are assholes and bullies. And worse. That they are unavoidable is unfortunate and that they are capable of causing an inordinate amount of harm due to a disparity in vehicle weight and sheer callousness is an indictment of our larger transportation culture. 

But most people driving, like most people on bikes, are less intentionally malicious than simply playing out the crappy hand they’ve been dealt—a road design and transportation culture that makes conflicts inevitable and prioritizes the wrong things. 

5. Advocacy and the future of biking in D.C.

Sometimes the questions about advocacy were explicit—how to get DDOT to install a bike lane or how to convince an ANC commissioner to not hate bikes—but for the most part, how to improve and normalize biking writ large lurked in the background. More people are riding bikes now than ever before. We have more bike lanes, trails, and cycletracks than ever before. But the pace of change is slow and it doesn’t feel like the culture surrounding bicycling has moved very far. The same arguments and bogus tropes—Bicyclists cause congestion! Bike lanes cause gentrification! HELMETS! What about my parking?! Bicyclists don’t follow traffic laws!—live on unabated. 

While D.C. has made some progress in developing its street infrastructure, in my opinion, the city has not yet sufficiently embraced cycling’s ability to cleanly, quietly, and efficiently move people as a solution to its transportation problems. Districtwide disparities in safe bike infrastructure frustratingly persist. Advocates can push, but the days of bold, transformative, enthusiastic vision from politicians seem far off. This is a tragedy. Our streets remain deadly, and the relentless march of irreversible climate change means that clinging to the status quo is both untenable and morally suspect. 

You can choose to ride a bike, but you can’t choose what the streets looks like. The people in charge—from the ANCs to the Council to the Mayor—hold sway over public space. Five percent of people biking to work is a lot for America, but not a lot in terms of electoral impact. Even in bike heaven Copenhagen, nowhere close to the majority of trips are taken by bicycle. (It was 24 percent as of 2017, which is still a ton.) While D.C. is nominally committed to Vision Zero—ending death and grievous injury on our roads by 2024—reaching that goal feels no more likely, to me at least, than it did five years ago. In 2018, 36 people died on DC’s roads. In 2017, it was 30. In 2012, it was 19. 

The Council’s newly introduced bills could contribute to turning the trend around. Changing the way our streets look, but more importantly, the way people use them, requires a considerable and sustained commitment from those in charge. Advocates need to do a better job presenting a vision of why better streets and safer streets matter, and people in charge need to do a better job translating the promises they make in fancy PowerPoints into reality on the streets themselves. It is not inevitable that this will happen. While D.C. and its bicyclists have made great strides, they still have very far to go. —Gear Prudence 

This is it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone who submitted a question over the last five years, and everyone who made the mistake of nattering on about bicyclists in my company. Your queries, your opinions, and your incredibly wrong hot takes about biking have made writing this column a joy. 

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Gear Prudence: In what my wife has called an early onset midlife crisis, I’ve gone all in on cycling and I’m watching the Tour de France this summer for the first time. I’ve done some cursory Googling and think it will be a showdown between Nairo Quintana and Egan Bernal. (They’re good, right?) You don’t normally write about pro cycling, but do you have tips on how best to watch a bike race on TV? —Live, Entertaining Television Of Unique Race

Dear LETOUR: There are two registers upon which you can enjoy the Tour: 1) as a premier cycling event in which some of the best athletes in the world undergo a grueling contest of mind-boggling rigor, and 2) as a kind of rolling Rick Steves program full of swooping helicopter shots of lush landscapes and villages of minor import during the Albigensian Crusade. (“Honey, it’s that village of minor import from the Albigensian Crusade!” you’ll say excitedly to your wife, who hopefully ignores you.) While the scenery is gorgeous and your Francophilia will become unbearable, the point of watching a bike race is to watch a bike race and you’re in for a treat. 

The best part about a stage race is that each day is a mini race within the larger race with its own terrain, tactics, and drama. You can track the overall leaders and enmesh yourself in whatever excitement, tragedy, and/or wackiness unfolds that day. While some stages are more exciting than others (time trials and mountain stages being paramount, generally), you’ll derive maximum enjoyment by embracing each day as its own self-contained episode. —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence: On nearly every bike commute, the same rider says, “Hi [my name]!” I always greet him back, but I have no clue who it is or how I know him. With his helmet and sunglasses, he looks pretty generic. How do I figure out his identity without admitting that I didn’t recognize him? —With Helmet On, I’m Stumped. He’s Exasperating 

Dear WHOISHE : Is it really that embarrassing? Helmets and sunglasses do obscure faces (Lois Lane couldn’t even overcome a pair of regular spectacles) and if you’re riding one way and he’s riding the other, a cursory hello doesn’t give you a ton of time to suss out much detail. Sure, no one wants to overlook a friend, but there is a certain degree of difficulty here. 

If you absolutely have to know who it is, just wave him down. A closer look from a stationary position and a conversation longer than “Hi [your name]” should do the trick. If you still get nothing, do what any reasonable person would do: Pretend that you’re your own twin, introduce yourself with a different name, tell him that he’s been mistaking you for your sister, and ask his name. Simple. —GP

Gear Prudence: Twice within the past two weeks, I’ve been scolded by people walking on the trail for dinging my bell to let them know I’m passing. Come on! One guy called it “downright rude.” Wouldn’t it be even ruder if I didn’t ring my bell and passed silently? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Some people just don’t want to share the trail with bikers. —Kindly Notified, Erroneous Loper Lectures

Dear KNELL: All right, let’s get the standard stuff out of the way first: 

• Most trails are shared between bicyclists, runners, walkers, amblers, tourists, scooterists, and everyone in between. 
• Each individual is responsible for behaving conscientiously around others.
• Speed disparities will always exist.
• Sometimes people should slow down.
• Sometimes people should move over.
• Giving a polite and timely warning before passing is preferable.
• And lastly, even if you do everything right and you’re conscientious, signal your pass, slow down, give ample room, and mail a hand-written embossed thank you note afterward, some people will criticize your behavior because that’s just what people do. Suck it up and keep doing your best. But if the criticism happens repeatedly perhaps your best could be better, so think on that. 

What a bell ring actually means and why bell-based communication is so often problematic is a topic worth exploring. For the most part, a bicyclist ringing a bell hopes to convey: “I am behind you” and “I plan to pass to you since I am moving faster.” Often what people who are not on bicycles hear is: “Get out of my way!” This latter interpretation of the ding makes it a rude message (though in a broad sense, an accurate one.) Turns out, sonic vibrations might not be the best way to facilitate human interaction in a shared space. However, it’s not the bell ring itself that’s the problem, but what happens next. Does the cyclist whiz by too closely? Does the other person not acknowledge the bell at all? Or get flustered and move in the wrong direction? Does the cyclist ding repeatedly? (Please don’t over-ding.) Does the non-cyclist jump and get startled? Each fraught or unexpected post-ding interaction retroactively ascribes a negative connotation to the ding itself. Thereafter, each subsequent ding carries with it the vestiges of past dings gone wrong. 

GP proposes a reset. From this point forward, after each ring, whether you’re the ringer or the one hearing it, mentally insert a question mark. “Do you know I’m here?” “Is now an OK time to pass?” “Could you please move over?” Transposing dings from imperatives to interrogatives can help establish a much more cooperative form of communication, one that recognizes that coexistence on the trails requires cutting through misunderstandings and being more charitable with one other. And if you don’t like it, ride on the road, where no one can hear your bell anyway. —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence: I work at a pretty stodgy place and we’re required to wear suits every day, even Friday. I still bike commute, and 90 percent of the time I can ride in my work clothes. But other bike commuters think I’m going to be slow just because of what I’m wearing. At every red light, they ride in front of me, only to have me immediately blow past them once the light turns green (I ride fast). How do I get them to stop to stop making assumptions about my speed based on what I’m wearing? —Speed Unrecognized, I Throttle Ultimately Past

Dear SUITUP: It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that people use clothes as a visual shorthand for a whole host of assumptions, and bike commuters are not exempt from this kind of judgement. But lycra no more equals a guarantee of swiftness than a suit does sluggishness. The relationship between clothes and bike speed isn’t causal, and even if the assumption proves right more often than it proves wrong, it’s still just a guess. Conveying information about your intended pace is no easy task, and you’ll have to overcome the sartorial clues that suggest slowness. Perhaps your tailor can embroider your latest Strava KOM onto the back of your jacket, or sew some appliqué lightning bolts onto the sides of your trousers. You could switch to a time trial helmet. Or mutter, “I’m fast, actually,” when they roll by. If you confound their expectations enough, GP is sure other bicyclists will be more than happy to keep their distance —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence: Like most people, I have keys and I’m used to keeping them in my pocket. But when I bike this is really uncomfortable. I’m thinking about getting a carabiner and clipping my keys to my belt. But can I really? That’s a very particular look and I’m not sure I can pull it off. —Could Latching Items Pantwise Prove Yucky? 

Dear CLIPPY: Before taking such a momentous step as [checks notes] clipping your keys to your belt and displaying them to the whole world (or to the people who happen to see you during your bike ride), pause to consider the implications. No longer will your keys be tucked away in your pocket digging into your thigh, or maybe scratching your phone, but instead will be dangling freely, exposed to the whooshing air, and jingling with each bump. Sure, you’ll be more comfortable, but what will people say? Will they say something like “huh, I have no opinion about how this person carries their keys since it is of absolutely no consequence to me”? Or will they say something like “huh, this seems like a fairly utilitarian solution to key portaging”? The mind reels. —GP

Gear Prudence: I don’t bike, but my best friend does. She’s ridden to work for a few years now, but I haven’t noticed until recently how much it has affected her. Here’s what I mean: The other day we were walking together (not even biking) and she kept interrupting to point out a driver doing something bad. “Uber in the bike lane!” She said. “Turned without signaling,” she followed, then “blocking the crosswalk,” and just on and on. She was like “ban cars,” and I was like, “you have a Kia.” I get that cars in D.C. suck, but how do I politely tell her that I don’t need to constantly hear about it and that her pointing it out all of the time makes hanging out with her way less fun? —Walking Hampered. I Need Effective Remedies. 

Dear WHINER: Does bike commuting radicalize formerly normal people? Does it make them hell-bent on the destruction of car culture and consumed constantly and everywhere by the misdeeds of drivers? Does it ruin lives and friendships? Maybe! Or might your best friend act the same way when she’s driving her Kia? Does she always point out the asshole on the highway who cut her off or the guy in the parking lot zooming way too fast? This might be less about biking and more about your friend’s volubility and her inability to not share every picayune annoyance while traveling. Either way, you’re stuck listening to a friend prattle on well past your capacity to care. It’s a bummer. 

Before we address how to get her to knock it off, GP thinks it’s worth pondering how and why bike commuting might turn the most loquacious of us into constant complainers. First off, there’s just a lot to complain about. As you so eloquently say, “cars in D.C. suck,” and even a brief observation of the roads will reveal a heaping helping of driver shenanigans. Bike commuters become hyper-attuned to this for two reasons: 1) Their safety and well-being depend on noticing it, and 2) the outgroup is always more aware of the foibles and follies of the ingroup than its own members are. Bicyclists are among drivers, but not of them. They move with them, but never as them. A bike lets you go fast enough to be inconvenienced by cars and yet still slow enough to not miss any little infraction. It’s great for transportation, but can be horrible for your sanity. 

Getting your friend to hush up shouldn’t be more complicated than telling her that you understand and share her concerns, but nicely (and firmly) asking her to refrain from commenting on them. Your time together is limited and surely there are other topics that can fill the void. Perhaps a mutual annoyance, like kids these days or celebrities who are at it again. That’s bound to work, right? —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who tweets @sharrowsdc. Got a question about bicycling? Email gearprudence@washcp.com 

Gear Prudence: After riding a hand-me-down, I’m about to buy my first brand-new bike. I’m going to go to a bike shop, see what they’ve got, ask a bunch of questions, and then do a test ride. But what exactly should I test? Any new bike is going to be better than the old one I have, so how can I tell if it’s the right one for me? —Test Riding, Yet I’m Trepidatious

Dear TRYIT: The most crucial thing to determine when test riding a new bike is how good you look on it. Take your test ride somewhere you can see your reflection, like past downtown storefronts, by a serene lake, or through the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. Ideally, at some point during the ride, someone you pass will lower their sunglasses like in an ’80s movie and then you’ll know for sure. 

Vanity aside, you should test how the bike actually feels. For fit, think about your limbs: Do your legs and arms feel overstretched or bunched up? Assess the bike’s weight by gauging how much effort it takes to get moving. On the ride, think about how much road vibration you feel. Do your teeth chatter at each bump? The bike’s geometry will make it react with greater or lesser sensitivity to the way your body moves. Does changing direction feel twitchy or sluggish? Don’t forget to test the gearing and the shifting system, too. 

Test ride multiple bikes to see how they compare and don’t hesitate to test the same bike a few times. Inquire about whether the shop will let you borrow a bike for a longer time period before you buy. Take your time. —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence: About six months ago, I moved from D.C. to the suburbs. As far as biking is concerned, I feel like I moved 30 years back in time. That I commute by bike to work raises eyebrows, and when I suggest that we should install more bike lanes, I get laughs. Everyone has a bike, but no one uses it. Is convincing my suburban neighbors that they should ride more a lost cause? —Some Unwelcoming Byways Undermine Robust Biking

Dear SUBURB: Not at all! While cycling can be an easier lift in urban environments where distances between places are shorter and streets weren’t specifically designed around the car, there’s plenty of room for both biking and bike advocacy in the suburbs. It might just look a little different from what you’re used to. Focus on shorter trips within the community—to schools, parks, Metro stations, etc.—rather than on long commutes into the city. Trails can be vital connectors in car-oriented places, so push hard for those and cherish any you have. Mostly, just don’t give up. Change takes time, and just because your suburb isn’t a bike paradise now, it’s not condemned to stay that way forever. Even Amsterdam didn’t always look like Amsterdam now. —GP

Half a lifetime ago, before he lived in D.C. and before any of us knew him, Dave Salovesh lived in Chicago and worked in the theater. He built sets. He put up and took down scenery—scenery that changed as the plays demanded. A good play condenses reality and heightens emotions to teach us something about the human condition. It helps expose a certain kind of moral clarity. Actors unearth universal truths as they read lines written by someone else and move about a stage put up and taken down by someone like Dave.

He left Chicago and the theater and worked in IT. Dave was Very Online before being Very Online was our ubiquitous state. Many people came to know him online. And some of those people, plus a whole lot more, came to know him from riding bikes. I don’t remember when I met Dave. I ride bikes and I am Very Online, but Dave isn’t anymore. Dave was murdered by a negligent driver on Friday while riding his bike on Florida Avenue NE.

Dave and I fundamentally agreed on almost everything about getting more people on bikes—that it was a worthwhile goal, that it would solve so many problems both for individuals and the community, that other people would catch on to the joy that we ourselves found when we rode. But we disagreed on tactics. I am indirect and hate confrontation. I am comfortable with the slow pace of bureaucracies—too comfortable. I accept incrementalism.

Dave, the former backstage hand, was cantankerous and unyielding. Better bike infrastructure could be built quickly. Just put it up! Want to stop u-turns on Pennsylvania Avenue? Before DDOT installed the barriers there now, he and other bike safety advocates put a bunch of pool noodles on the street, where a barrier protecting the cycle track should have been. Here, now you have a barrier. Now it is fixed. It was set dressing.

Dave was comfortable with heightened emotions. He escalated, quickly and often. With drivers. With DDOT. With anyone else who came into his mentions on Twitter. He did it because he felt comfortable in the world of condensed and heightened emotions, the ones in the theater and the ones you express when you’re Very Online. Dave knew when he was right, and he let others know it, too. He was right.

Years ago, before I got divorced, I lived in a house in Hill East, a long stone’s throw away from RFK. Dave and I were out at some bike event, I don’t know where, but I was drunk and Dave was less drunk and we biked home along East Capitol. We knew the street because Dave lived on the Hill, too, and I would see him some mornings biking to school with his daughter. Dave told me he knew he wanted to move to D.C. because of a bike ride he took toward RFK years before, sometime in the ’90s. It was that perfect kind of a ride—one that makes you think you should move halfway across the country. He was in the middle of a bad breakup back then. The day we biked home together along East Capitol was before my own bad breakup, one that Dave helped me through in innumerable ways. Dave was a listener. He was a big guy, but he had gentle eyes and an unending capacity to share in his friends’ pain. He would ride you home safely.

Dave loved bikes. He loved riding them, tinkering with them, and talking about them. Maybe you rode with him on a Washington Area Bicyclist Association ride, or on the Downtown Breakaway, or in the woods of Fort Dupont. Or maybe you saw him on the tandem with his partner Jean at the Back Roads Century, a Potomac Pedalers’ yearly event, or on his goofy Colnago single speed after a Friday morning rollout from Swing’s Coffee downtown. Or maybe you read his tweets or met him at a happy hour, a public meeting, or a Bike-to-Work Day, or saw him riding to work, or in the shop. Or maybe you didn’t know him from bikes at all and he was just another dad at the ice rink or someone you worked with—but even then, the people who knew him from non-bike things probably knew he was a Bike Guy because he was such a Bike Guy, through and through.

Even though I’m a bike columnist and I write under the name Gear Prudence about biking in D.C., I don’t have a call to action. Emotions are still far too raw to offer banal policy prescriptions or 30,000-foot views about how to fix our deadly streets. There will be a ghost bike where he died, and there will be a memorial ride, and countless calls to finally create the safer streets that Dave demanded. Bike advocacy will march on. It will succeed sometimes, but its success, for me at least, will be far less meaningful without Dave.

Gear Prudence: The cool people on Instagram have been telling me for years now that bikepacking (going camping, but by bike) is very trendy. I’m finally ready to take the plunge. The thing is that I haven’t been camping since that one year I was in the Boy Scouts, and to be honest, I don’t remember it all that fondly. But the lure of nature is strong and I love biking, so how do you suggest I make this inaugural trip a success? —Cycling Amid Mighty Pines Enraptures Rider

Dear CAMPER: By lowering your expectations! GP’s philosophy on all things bike is that you shouldn’t expect things to be anywhere close to ideal when you try something new. Aim for the middle. Try it, learn some things, and see if you feel like trying it again. Jumping in the deep end with an 18-day self-supported bike trip through the Atacama won’t be the best way to reacquaint yourself with the scouting skills you may or may not have learned in your youth. Setting a reasonable goal—both in terms of the length of your trip and the level of remoteness of your destination—will more likely see your first bikepacking experience lead to a second. 

You’ll need to sort out a few things right from the start. Are you traveling solo, with a buddy, or with a group? Having others around will preclude things getting too Waldenesque, but could help stave off boredom. Moreover, embarking on your first journey with friends who know how to do things like pitch a tent, identify poison ivy, bellow campfire songs, swig brown liquor from flasks, etc., will compensate for your lack of pertinent experience. Even if your friends aren’t bikey, select a route and destination where they could travel by other means to meet you. You’ll be able to get your ride in, and also be greeted by bonhomie (and maybe an already cooked meal) at the end of the day. 

Then there’s the matter of stuff—how much of it you already have and how much of it you plan to procure for this expedition. The recent explosion in popularity of bikepacking means that you can buy all sorts of bike-specific camping equipment. If money is no object, extremely light sleeping bags and tents can be nestled inside of durable waterproof framebags to kit out your bike with the latest and greatest gram-saving gear. If money is an object (and money is always an object), borrow whatever gear you can, jury-rig together a carrying system that works well enough, and if it’s heavier and jankier than you’d like, shave some miles off your expected total. The first trip is about proof of concept. If it goes well, then invest in the good stuff. —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who tweets @sharrowsdc. Got a question about bicycling? Email gearprudence@washchp.com.

Gear Prudence: I want more people to ride bikes. Amongst my friends, I’ve tried a bunch of arguments: It’ll save you money, it’s good exercise, it’s fun, etc. But I’ve never tried “global warming!” It seems like during the last year the reality of climate change is sinking in for more people. Do you think touting the environmental benefits will be persuasive to get more people to bike? —Will Anyone Ride More If Nagged Gently? 

Dear WARMING: Sure, for a certain segment of people. That biking is zero emission will be compelling to people who are looking to reduce their personal carbon footprint, but it’s unlikely that you will be the first to break this news to your friends. In GP’s experience, the reason people are or aren’t biking has a lot more to do with their lived experience—and the difficulty of fitting bicycling into it—than it does with environmental commitment. Reminding them that the icecaps are melting doesn’t make their office any closer or the roads any less hostile. Don’t shy from mentioning the environmental benefits of biking—every bit helps and decarbonizing transportation is imperative in fighting climate change—but also don’t be surprised if this doesn’t persuade. Advocate for biking with the “kitchen sink” approach. Each benefit resonates differently with different folks. —Gear Prudence

Gear Prudence: I was biking and stopped at a red light behind another cyclist. She was really attractive, but that’s not the point. She dropped something and got off her bike and bent over to pick it up. At exactly that time, I accidentally dinged my bell. She shot my the dirtiest look I’ve ever gotten in my life. I was mortified and mumbled “sorry,” but I think that she thinks I was objectifying her when it was a total accident. What should I have done after I unfortunately dinged? —Worrisome Happenstance! Open Ogling? Please! Suggestions?

Dear WHOOPS: What an inconvenient time to “accidentally” ring your bell! For this response, GP will take you at your word that your ill-timed dinging was coincidental and that you’re not a total creep. If upon reflection you determine that the dinging was shy of completely accidental, GP would kindly suggest that you stop being gross. 

Accidental or not, you shouldn’t have been surprised to have received a withering glance. Sexism is real, and it’s unlikely that this is the first time this woman has felt demeaned by it. She doesn’t know you, and your mumbled “sorry” was just as likely to have been your response to being called out as it was for accidentally dinging. In the case that you ever errantly ding again, be more forthright with your apology. Make eye contact and be sincere. Faux pas or not, own it, accept that she might not believe you, and be more careful in the future to keep your hands away from your bell. —GP

Gear Prudence: It seems like scooters aren’t going away and we’re probably going to get even more of them. Come springtime, the bike lanes will be flooded and it doesn’t seem like I’ll have much choice but to peacefully coexist before bike lanes are rebranded as scooter lanes. How do I learn to stop griping and come to terms that it’s a scooter world and we’re just biking in it? —Guess Everybody Traveling Around Loves Only New Gadgets

Dear GETALONG: RIP bicycles: 18??–this question. They had a good run, but their time has passed. Electric scooters are the tiny mammals and bicycles are the dinosaurs. Venture capitalism is the meteor. GP’s basement is the Museum of Natural History, where these relics of a bygone area are stored, no longer fearsome, potent, and menacing the earth. Perhaps e-bikes are some of those dinosaurs with feathers. But the regular old pedal bicycle is the sad brontosaurus, baying forlornly in an uninhabitable new world, overrun by the next new thing. 

Strained metaphors aside, let’s suppose that bicyclists have a few more trips around the sun before complete extinction, and that we’re trying to be conscientious sharers of limited street space. Generally speaking, one should act around a scooterist the same way one would behave near a bicyclist. Signal passes, give ample room, be nice, etc. The distinctions between the two conveyances are fairly minimal. Whether you like it or not, bikes and scooters are far more like each other than either is like a car. And if you’re the kind of person who cares about safe streets or the planet not dying (There are dozens of us! Dozens!), you can take solace in the fact that the scooterist is choosing a way to get around the city that’s both space-efficient and resource-light. 

Nevertheless, there are differences and acknowledging these can lead to better coexistence. Shared scooters in D.C. are capped at 10 mph, so don’t expect any extra oomph once the top speed is reached. If you’re inclined to go faster than that, you’ll need to pass (which almost invariably means leaving a bike lane). And with any shared vehicle, it’s best to not assume that the person operating it is intricately acquainted with its controls, such as steering and braking. (Though if you’ve been biking in D.C. for any amount of time, it’s likely you’ve long given up assuming that anyone doing anything has any idea of what they’re doing.) 

Like every other novelty, after time you’ll adapt. It’s best not to be too stodgy about these things, both because stodginess wears poorly and because the next few years are poised to see all kinds of on-street “innovations.” No, it’s not fair, in a cosmic sense or otherwise, that more vehicle types are being shoved into the same limited street space (and the people in charge should do something about this), but being patient is probably better than being mad all the time. —Gear Prudence