Ride In 11/17

Another gloomy morning. Cloudy and lightly raining, but not dark enough for lights. Colder, but still not wintry. The roads were wet as were the leaves that sat atop them. I'd say that it's hard to stay motivated to ride my bike into work, but I've long ago "forgotten" that there any other viable means of getting here, though that's patently untrue. It's just how I get here and it's how a lot of people get around, even when it's colder and lightly raining. Like the guy in front of me on East Capitol who had an I WABA pant strap and MKS Lambda pedals. I think he was also wearing breakaway pants, which must add some dramatic flare flair to changing for work. I was wearing my new ear flap cap (flaps up, both to reduce (increase?) drag and because my ears didn't need the extra warmth) and my usual ensemble of yellow jacket, socks, pulled over tights, and evasive scowl. I try to go entire rides without ever making eye contact with anyone or anything. Fun times. 
I think that it is good practice to pull into the opposite direction bike lane when passing someone Pennsylvania Avenue. For a while, I rode behind a woman riding some kind of road bike with clipless pedals, but she was wearing sneakers and having a hard time keeping her rubber soles from slipping off them at each start and stop.Riding clipless pedals in regular shoes, while the act of a bike renegade, doesn't always make for the most pleasant ride.
Lately, I've really come to enjoy how balanced I feel on my bike. I attribute this to the trigonometry geometry of the bicycle and not to my own vestibular system. It's an especially nice feeling, that of not worrying about falling down, when the powers that be and their formerly leafy allies have conspired to make every bike lane a terrifying mess of brown, mushy, rotting hazard. I think I'm going to stop taking 15th. Someone tell me when they clean it up and I'll come back.
Maybe I should start a tumblr called "I can haz fenders" and post pictures of people with stripes of dirty wetness running up the backs of their shirts and jackets. I derive no joy from seeing this.
Precipitation seems to have a dramatic impact on the number of bicyclists riding east to west, or at least on R street around the same time that I ride it. There wasn't a single other bicyclist. Same diehards on Massachusetts though. Curious.
Boy Scouts should really be out helping old ladies cross the street because in my view, old ladies are really in need of this service. The extent to which the safe movement of the elderly is inhibited by society built around the rapid movement of automobiles will only be revealed further in the coming decades. It's troubling, to say the least. Yet another group of under-served, vulnerable road users.
But let's end on a happier note, a note involving beer and WABA. To summarize, beer and WABA is happening to tonight. The end. PS: what's the bike parking situation there?