Ride Home 2/21: Allah mowed

Cold opens are hard. I guess I could use some sort of tired schema, like imposing a chronological narrative whereby I start at the beginning of my ride, at work, and end at the end of my ride, at home, and tell the story of the journey in the order by which the events of the journey happened, only stepping out of the narrative to add pithy, semi-related comments stoked by tangential remembrances. Or, since that's what I do every day, I could do something different, like muse upon the construction of a blog post, stepping back one degree or perhaps two degrees by musing upon my own musing. Or, and this would be really crazy, I could just instead adopt the same formal outlook as I normally do, but subvert that formalism by indicating my own rejection of it. Or I could just link to Simpsons clips, which is the vastly superior option. There's a reason I left graduate school and it has nothing to do with those bounty hunters and that missing Aztec treasure.

I like that immediately upon leaving work I have a gentle decline followed by a gentle incline. The incline gives me an idea of how I'm feeling, whether I have any energons (the constituent parts of energy, according to physics maybe), and to see how the bike itself feels. I'm mostly convinced that my bike has opinions about how it plans to handle the ride. Maybe I should ask the bike to guest blog so I can better gauge how it feels about our collective enterprise of riding to and from work. (Note: save this artifice for a time when I'm really desperate for ideas.) Anyway, the collective result of this gentle "testing" was realizing that my energon supply was mostly depleted and that it'd be best if maybe I just took it easy. So I did that. 

Trouble in River City, if by trouble I mean some flashing lights on cop cars in front of the Turkish Embassy and by River City, I mean Turkish Embassy. More like Mustafa Come on. Am I right? Am I right? Actually, nothing much seemed going on and I'm glad for it. I ended up riding on the sidewalk because it seemed more prudent to do so. Nothing distracts drivings like lights on cop cars. Which, I guess, is the point. 

Can I yellow jacket be bright enough to glint? Because I think the one on the guy behind me did. That's a bright jacket. I don't know where he went, but he was gone before I was separated from the bike messenger in front of me, who counted down the pedestrian counter aloud with a "5-4-3-2-1" before he pushed through the yellow light and I stopped for it. 

Same salmon on Q as from last week (maybe), riding his CaBi in the bike lane. I didn't make eye contact and instead looked through him and he got the point, leaving the bike lane to ride in the travel lane (in the wrong direction), which is both unsafe and sort of dumb. Don't ride the wrong way in the bike lane. Don't ride the wrong way down a one-way street. 

I meant to not take 11th, but I took it anyway. Take that, subconscience. Maybe tomorrow. I thought about riding down to the Met Branch and taking that a little and then heading over to 4th NE and then down thataway. That would have been a good ride. Let's pretend I did that. That blog post would be so awesome. 

I liked to count the number of bike commuters I see at 11th and New York. Today was 6. This seems like as good a spot as any to make some perfunctory, unscientific count. A few heading uptown and a few heading downtown. I think there'd be more if there were bikes lanes on 11th along that stretch. Oh, if anyone ever wants to visit Washington (assuming you live somewhere else, like Kosovo or Loudon Country) and would like an official Tales From The Sharrows' "From my house to work and back" experience, just let me know. If that's how you want to spend your vacation, I'm around and also maybe I could give you some pamphlets about your brain disease and where to seek help. 

Tucked in behind a dude on Penn. By tucked in, I mean followed about 10 feet behind, so as not to seem like I was too close. Everyone needs their space. 

Near Lincoln Park, I saw a woman with a bike trailer and I'm certain I've seen her before. She was almost, kind of right-hooked by a turning driver and I kinda wanted to ask her what it feels like to be dragging a kid trailer and almost getting hit by a turning driver. But there's no real delicate way to ask that. Or one that doesn't sound sort of crazy. Anyway, I imagine that biking with precious cargo (like children or expensive tequila) must be tough, though I don't think it's unsafe in any real way. Probably have to just keep a cool head. 

Stopped at the store and then home. It was dark by then, but soon it won't be dark (as much, and then not at all) during the evening commute and to get my night biking fix, I'm going to need to set up some midnight rides, perhaps to a 24 hour restaurant. I should actually do this. This might actually happen. I'll let you know.