Ride Home 10/24

It was too nice out to change into bike clothes. I just untucked my shirt, switched shoes (I leave work shoes at work, which I normally do with work belt as well, but I accidentally wore work belt home on Friday and found that out this morning, much to pants' dismay. Unfortunately, no hilarious old gray mare antics), bedecked my dome helmet-wise and left. It felt good not to change clothes and ride a bike in normal people attire, though slightly unkempt.
The slow down sign said that I hit 34 heading downhill on Massachusetts. Or maybe that was the speed of the car behind me. Just imagine how fast I'd go if I didn't wear parachute pants for work (I work as a backup dancer in an all-white MC Hammer revue) and actually had any ability/willingness to adopt an aerodynamic posture.
There's a slight rise on Massachusetts between California Street and Decatur Place. I only noticed it for the first time today, after wondering for weeks why it is that I always seem to slow down between the bottom of the hill and Stanton Circle. It's because of that. Along that stretch, I also realized that my right quad kind of hurts. Time for Bicycle Space yoga nights? Or maybe I'll skip the yoga and take part in THE CUPCAKE CAPER! The chance to ride around the city, solve a real-life fake mystery and win a Brooks saddle and matching handlebar grips sounds pretty awesome. (Unfortunately, I've got theatre tickets. Theatre spelled this way means that the tickets are expensive) But you should go. Yes, you.
Here's some random building near Dupont Circle. It's the home of the Cosmos Club. I'm pretty sure it was built by Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia in the late 70s.

What happens why I get bored at stop lights: Contextless pictures. 

Slow going down Q and I turned right onto 15th, where it was even slower on account of hitting every single light from Q to K street. But maybe that's a good thing since the pavement on 15th is absolutely terrible and needs to be repaved immediately. It's a ruddy, bumpy mess and a real disservice to bicyclists. There's only so much bicycle-only infrastructure in this town and when the hallmark piece of it is basically impassable southbound, that's not good. So, not only southbound afternoon riding slow on account of the lights, it's highly uncomfortable.
All the stopping gave me ample time to think about my "stopping style" which isn't a thing (yet). I put my left foot down, rest my bike diagonally on the left leg and put my leg hand on my hip, slouch, and I drum away mindlessly on my handlebar with my right hand, looking off nowhere in particular, maybe at the cyclists stopped across the way. What's your (entirely made up thing) "stopping style"?
I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm fairly certain that this bike blog is the favorite local bicycle commuter blog of the President of the United States of America. I mean, what else could explain this afternoon's absence of caution tape at the security gate at Madison Place, NW? Invariably, President Obama was outraged at the minor inconvenience caused to me (and other maybe) and order someone who order someone who ordered someone who order someone to remove it. What else could explain it? The fact that they had to temporarily lower the barriers to allow a car to pass an in so doing damaged the tape and they didn't have any tape to reapply the barrier or maybe just didn't care? Ockham's razror. In any case, when I saw that the tape was down, I headed right down the to the barriers, slowing to a stop and I looked to the guard inside, asking grammatically (syntactically?) incorrectly "Can I ride through?" to which I received a big thumbs up. Well, I don't know how big, relatively or objective, the guard's thumb was. I'm glad I stopped to ask instead of just blowing through because that seemed like the right thing to do. We'll see if it's back up tomorrow or if, through the power or a barely read blog, I became the change I wished to see in the world. (There's no way this is anything more than sheer coincidence. I'm not delusional. It'll be back tomorrow)
Behind sweat pants guy on Penn again. Bike commuters are still a rather small community.