5/9/11

Ride Home 5/9

There's a woman who rides a motor scooter that has a hawa'i'ia'a'an-style (spelling might not be correct) flower design on the front panel and I see the all the time riding around Glover Park. I think she might work at the Russian embassy. She's one of the many people that I see on a fairly regular basis, along with Georgetown backpack lady, Georgetown briefcase beard guy, walkman headphones woman, Gorton's fisherman bike guy, stand-up on bike guy, and intense hybrid bike guy. I'm in the process of working on making up backstories for each of them for my inevitable Tales from the Sharrows: The Movie. Not really, but it's nice to see the same people everyday. Because you if you screw up typing "bike commuting" into your iPhone it might be auto-corrected to "bike community." Is that a metaphor? Is it happenstance? Is it a contrivance designed to further the point that I'm trying to make, which is riding a bike personalizes your surroundings, including the people you see every day, in a way that driving a car doesn't?
If your car is too wide to go down a normal width street like Tunlaw without having to stop to make sure there's enough room for a car coming in the other direction to pass, well, then you have a very wide car. Some might say too wide. It was very wide. Like as wide as my car is long. Should cars be taxed on width? Then everyone would probably drive bobsleds. And that would not be tenable in warmer climes.
I saw a bumper sticker that said something like "My TERRIFIC KID goes to such and such school." I guess not everyone is an Honor Student in 5th grade. Yikes.
I saw a girl on the Key Bridge who was wearing a blue t-shirt with "You got dysentery and died" above and below a picture of an Oregon Trail wagon. Brava, hipster. You win.
I really wish that I had my growler with me. It would have been nice to stop at Whole Foods for some draft beer. It's not convenient, though, to ride around with a big glass jug in your bag on the off chance you might stop for beer on the way home. Especially when bottles are readily available and require considerably less planning.
Lots of trucks making deliveries and blocking bike lanes this afternoon. It's not especially convenient for bicyclists, but in a lot of cases, the delivery trucks were blocking other travel lanes as well. I don't want to begrudge people just doing their jobs, but is this really the maximally convenient time to be making deliveries? I don't get it.

2 comments:

  1. What brand(s) of draft beer does Whole Foods sell? Do you have to use a WF growler or can you use one from some other brewery? How much does it cost?

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  2. They mix it up weekly. Mostly local stuff. It's $10 for 64 oz. I don't know if you can use non-Whole Foods growlers, but I learned that you can use Whole Foods growlers to fill up at Port City Brewery in Alexandria. Don't know about other places, though.

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