john k harrison

Bicycle Commuting - Baltimore to D.C.

During the autumn of 2008, I made a decision that I would figure out a different way to commute to work. I was spending so much money on driving and parking, resulting in stress while in the car and anxiety while on the train. On a good day I was spending two and a half hours traveling by car or by train, walking from the train station to bus and doing it all over again. After a promotion at work to a new role, I wanted to figure out some way to manage the commute anxiety and see if there was a way to perhaps get some health benefit out of it. Listening to the news at the time and watching gas prices, there was a pervasive sense of dread about the economic situation in the world. Although it seemed catastrophe was looming, I had saved up some cash with the intent of buying a bike. My rationale: cut out gas and metro costs from my routine, sell some stuff and splurge on a folding bike.

I purchased a Dahon MU-XL at College Park Bikes in Maryland and had fenders and a rack installed. The cost was about the equivalent of a year at the gym.

The MU-xl was Dahon’s lightest production bike. I think this is what enticed me the most to purchase it.

How would I get to work on a folding bike? I had to get to the train in X amount of time.. Questions simmering in my head:

~ How long might X be if I don’t want to take a shower when I get to work?

~ What if I do need to take a shower, how quickly can I ride across the city to the train station?

~ What if the sky opens up in the middle of the commute, drenching me from head to toe. What about snow?

~ What if I get so sweaty I need to take a shower and I don’t have what I need in my bag?

I did a test run on a Saturday getting from my house to the Camden Yards MARC train station - chosen strictly for its proximity to my house and for the relatively flat terrain from door to train. Several tries and I had it down. 

At this time, Baltimore had not made great strides in becoming the increasingly bike-friendly city it’s progressing towards. I dodged broken beer bottles, potholes large enough to take out a road bike wheel, a dead rat, a squashed pigeon and more glass. The condition of most of the urban road surfaces in Baltimore to this day still are a bit jarring. 

Typically, the most difficult part of a Baltimore downtown commute involves navigating around the Inner Harbor. Although there is a bike and pedestrian lane running on the south side of Pratt Street, taxicabs, buses and trucks aren’t looking out for cyclists. Since I had to be at the train by 7:20 AM each morning (on most days) I was able to avoid the Inner Harbor bike commute nightmare that most 9am to 5pm folks endure. At 7am the only people walking around are prepping the Inner Harbor for tourists and businesses to arrive en masse. On days where I got a later start, it ended up being easier to just ride on the sidewalk or brick surfaces close to the water than try and play roulette with the Pratt Street bike lane.

Here’s a recent pic of a valet parking depot - right where the bike lane runs through!

On my first few tries, it took me 23 minutes from front door to train.  It was very difficult given how out of shape I was. The train ride into D.C. took about an hour. Add in 5 minutes for unloading off the train, folding and/or unfolding the bike and that means about an hour and a half to get from my door to DC’s Union Station ready to take the last leg of my commute - which was a mystery at that point.

I enlisted the help of a friend and co-worker who was riding a similar folding bike from Union Station to the office in Georgetown. He graciously allowed me to tag along one day on the ride from Georgetown to Union Station. 

I quickly learned that there were two pretty good routes. One went through traffic in a “standard” D.C. bike like - E St. to be specific, then across the White House lawn (basically), finishing the ride off with a little climb up Virginia Avenue and then a descent down into Georgetown. This would turn out to be the faster route - although it was much less interesting and serene.

The second route I figured out on my own - with a little help from Googlemaps and the “Walking” feature. I would ride on the wide sidewalks towards the Mall, then cutting across the north to south numbered streets riding down the almost empty street in front of the Smithsonian museums towards the Washington monument. Lovely!

After two months of doing this four days a week, I had dropped ten pounds. After one summer, I had dropped nearly twenty. My stress levels were decreased significantly. When I went on weekend road bike group rides with the Baltimore Bike Club, I was much stronger. It was a win!

Microsoft kills IE6. FINALLY. Here’s a little business case I wrote over a year ago…

Gizmodo has the story..

Here was my official recommendation to drop all support for Internet Explorer 6 provided to a client at my previous marketing agency:

John Harrison - December 2010

Summary:

IE6 is an outdated, last-generation web browser. IE 6 is unable to provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience on the websites, emails and web properties that we build for you. Continued support of IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of your site visitors, recipients of your emails and users of your applications. Continuing to support IE 6 holds you (and us) back.

• IE6 is a ten-year old web browser. Microsoft strongly urged customers to upgrade to IE8 immediately. (source: http://ie6countdown.com/ )

• IE6ʼs remaining market share comes from office-hour surfing in the corporate workplace overseas (India for example). Customers are using different, more modern products at home such as Mozillaʼs Firefox version 3 and higher. ( http://www.s-anand.net/blog/ie6-in-corporates/ )

• Google no longer supports IE6 compatibility with their apps and new features (as of Jan 2010).

• IE6 still has security holes that have allowed hackers to breach sites and steal PII data from big corporations, such as Google. (source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10435232-245.html?tag=mncol;txt )

• IE6 does not support web standards updated after 2005. This means that modern interactive features that web developers can incorporate in sites using Javascript, Jquery and CSS simply do not work. Certain kinds of Javascript actions that function in IE6 do not work in IE8 and other modern browsers, and vice-versa.

Specific technical examples:

1. IE6 does not support PNG file transparency.

2. IE6 cannot handle CSS “Float” and “Margin”. This causes line breaks and other

undesirable front end issues such as floating text over other web elements.

3. Lack of CSS “Class and Element” support

4. IE6 crashes very easily: http://seo2.0.onreact.com/top-7-ways-to-crash-internet-explorer

 5. CSS Anchor Backgrounds cause “flicker” appearance to IE6 users.

6. HTML version 5 will not work with IE6.

It is costly and time consuming to code and debug web sites, emails and applications so that they function across a wide swath of browsers and operating systems. Coding to IE6 means coding to the lowest common denominator. It often means UX, designers and developers are forced to “dumb-down” design and functionality- making a customerʼs experience on a modern OS/browser unexciting and compromised.