Ride Home 1/12

Ok, here's the thing. I'm not going to write posts about my ride in yesterday and my ride home yesterday (rain) or my ride in this morning (after my I BLOG YOUR RIDE with Grant and Sydney). Why? Because I call the shots around here. And because I sort of don't remember anything significant that happened, except for yesterday's nighttime rain, which I would prefer to forget. And maybe because there's other stuff you should read, like this guest post from a scofflaw ninja (actual ninjutsu abilities remain unconfirmed) or this rather copious rundown on bicycle parking at Arlington grocery stores (written by me and Tales From The Sharrows frequent when-I-lived-somewhere-else-guest-appearer Tim Kelley of Bike Arlington) or this book review by frequently wrong Katie Roiphe about also frequently wrong Caitlin Flanagan in frequently wrong (and counterintuitive) Slate. Or, I suppose, you can continue to keep reading this post, which putatively will be about my ride home this evening, but could really be about so much more (but won't be).
More of the same stuff on the ride home, except for the differences, one of which was the closed lane on Massachusetts where road crews were engaged in some sort of excavation (probably not related to dinosaur bones) that moved me into the left lane ever so briefly. I get pretty particular about my routes and I don't like to change things. This is partly because I'm ornery and it's partly because I'm lazy. When something is well hewn (pronounced by me as "yoon"), such as the exact path I take downhill on Mass, I don't like to divert from it. And then I rode up on the sidewalk because a cab driver stopped to pick up fares by the Naval Observatory and I preferred the keep riding rather than stop and wait behind the line of gathered cars. The sidewalk is fine, but I really don't prefer it. It's bumpier and there are hedge rows and embassy driveways.
Curious traffic backup at Sheridan Circle. First time I've ever encountered that.
My exasperated/annoyed look for jaywalking pedestrians who get in my way is this: mouth slightly agape, tongue pressing to the back off my two front upper teeth, eyes directed upward and leftward, head gently shaking, but no more than a couple of degrees and in the patten right-left-right-left-center. Disco Stu doesn't advertise, but I can't seem to stop myself from doing this. Being self-aware doesn't help. It probably looks snotty.
As soon as I notice a red light in front of me, I check to see if the light for perpendicular traffic is yellow. If it's not, I stop pedaling. If you'd like to pass me then, that's fine.
This. Every day on Q Street.
Sometimes when I'm riding, I think of titles for fake graduate school papers. The one I thought of today was "The Anarchist Cookbook: Sacco, Vanzetti and the "Radicalized" Italian-American Cuisine of 1910s Boston." I'd totally read that paper.
The intersection of L Street NW and Massachusetts NW is weird. At once, L is in front of you and behind you. More L'Enfant trickery.

Dead legs up Cap Hill. Oh well. Less dead for the rest of the way home. I think my tires might need air.