12/21/11

Ride Home 12/21

Big government liberals are of the opinion that certain motor vehicles need to be "inspected" so an unjust levy can be subjected upon their so-called "emissions." (I used both so-called and scare quotes so as to heighten my claims of their spuriousness). And so, WE THE PEOPLE, need to sometimes drive our motor vehicles to the "inspection" station, so that OBAMACARE can wrench his "carbon tax" against my tertiary mode of transportation. As a former member of the Arlington Bike Commuter Caucus of the freedom wing of the liberty section of the TEA PARTY, I find this sort of government intrusion in my lifestyle and/or job creation to be anti-American. In fact, I even moved to DC so as to experience real life taxation without representation, just like our founding fathers and/or Jeebus faced many moons and many, many, many moons ago respectively. Accordingly, I had to leave work early to face up to this socialist islamofascism (probably) so I could drive the Road to Serfdom to the "inspection station" and such. But first I took one of my twice daily bicycling jaunts, only a few hours after having completed the earlier one and only moments after completing the blog post commemorating that ride.
What about lunch? Good point. I didn't eat lunch. I did have a rather large bear claw and chocolate milk around 10:30, but that's more of a late breakfast/brunch, assuming that brunch for an adult can include chocolate milk, which I suspect it can't.
When I left it was raining and, accordingly, I got wet. This is why I normally have a change of clothes, but I suppose it didn't matter since I was on my way home anyway. Nonetheless, I don't especially like the feeling of wet denim and I was also wholly unprepared with my lack of gloves and hat. The temperature seemed oddly cold for a day advertised as 60 degrees, which itself it quite odd for later December.
Every time I ride past St. Albans, I think of Rushmore. I think that's pretty apt.
I don't like commuting at non-commute times. I don't really trust non-commute drivers. I don't like all of the delivery vans and plumbing trucks and flower delivery trucks (for real- I saw something named something like Ultraviolet Flowers. I don't think they know what ultraviolet means. Spoiler alert: an ultra violet isn't just a really cool kind of flower) and there are likewise very few bicyclists on the road and I think the a (excuse the term) critical mass of bicyclists on the road at any given time provides a sort of awareness buffer that is synergistic. Tales From The Sharrows, LLC can help your organization improve its market-share in Synergistic Awareness Buffers in a paradigm-shifting way. Jargon!
This ride wasn't very much different from any other. I hit the lights at the same time as I normally do and the flow of traffic wasn't much less than that during a normal ride home. I took the same route as usual, which is to say Mass to Q to 11th. On 11th, I rode behind some "hipsters" for a while. Each with a mini u-lock in the back pocket (or looped under a belt), bearded and on single-speed (but not fixed geared bikes). The fixie is over, even in DC, apparently. I didn't know if they were riding anywhere ironically, but they were riding slowly, perhaps on account of the rain. At the intersection of 11th and Mass, they rolled alongside of me, after I hazarded to pass them, and stopped at the light. One gave me the ol' up-n-down and I said "hello," which prompted some sort of salutation in response. I guess I made the cut. Booyah.
Christmas songs are still dominating my internal playlist. Silent Night. Weird. And Silver Bells. Silver bells, silver bells. It's Christmas time in the SIDIs.
Not much doing from Penn to home. It stopped raining by then, so it was only a little soggy and barely miserable at all. What fun is the bike commuting without the preening masochism? Oh wait, it's plenty fun. I've taken to trying to make it more fun by practicing my no-hands riding. I'm, how do you say, not very good at it, but I've gotten better. Some day I'll be able to keep both my hands off the handlebars for at least 10 seconds, which might be long enough to sling bike buttons at unaware passers-by. Booyah.
I'm pretty sure I'll get in two more posts before Winter Break, since I'll be riding in and home tomorrow. Tomorrow's commute will be slightly different and involve either Bikeshare or a magical manticore. Just one of those, though.

No comments:

Post a Comment