2/3/12

Ride Home 2/3: Castro Bistro

Glad everyone had their crazy juice before they embarked on their Friday commutes. Awesome. Some Fridays my exorbitantly good mood supersedes the craziness around me and other Fridays, like today, I'm basically Frodo in a world of Winged Nazgul, where drivers are the Winged Nazgul, except instead of trying to destroy a Ring of Power and save Middle Earth from Sauron's evil, I'm just trying to get my bike home. I guess the analogy isn't that spot on. Anyway, it just sucks to get passed too closely, especially when I thought I was riding in the middle of the lane and was preventing as much from happening. The sad part, and there's always a sad part, though I don't know if "sad" is the right word, is that the driver who passed me too closely ended up stopped in a long line of cars waiting at a red light and endangering me made absolutely no difference to the speed of her commute. I think that, in general, people are pretty bad at making rational judgments in their self-interest and I'm more or less reminded of this every afternoon as I watch drivers accelerate toward red lights or make midblock u-turns rather than wait in some congestion. Later on Mass, I almost got it from an SUV with a Tibetan flag sticker and the license plate 1WURLD. Namaste, hombre.
But all things aren't bad and when you're biking far more things are good than not. Like, you get fresh air and shit. So, that's cool.
I've been reminded that I had a Pop Tart for breakfast this morning. It slipped my mind. I retract everything I wrote about not eating breakfast this morning and I apologize for anyone whom I misled. Retractions are hard, but I think that together we can work to rebuild our trust. Also, I'm not ashamed of my Pop Tart eating ways, so if that's a deal-breaker, so be it. (Please don't leave me!)
Some advice for gentlemen perched on bicycles who wish to leer at the ladies: don't leer at the ladies.
Caught some greens I don't normally catch and it threw me off. Didn't get back on track until Pennsylvania where I thankfully hit a couple of red lights in a row. Phew. It was almost as if I had an uninterrupted ride through the city and was making my way home faster than usual. God forbid.
I decided to stop at the bike shop on the way home, so I rode the House side up past the Capitol and then down Independence for a block (spotted!) and then down Pennsylvania, but the part with no bike lane. Instead, I tried to ride in the right-most lane, but car parking happened every so often, and I had to leave my lane, which no doubt antagonized drivers trying to speed their way home. The bike shop, the Barracks Row establishment named for urban environments in general rather than one particular part of town, sold me my replacement brake pads and I plan to do the thing what I put the news ones where the old ones were (replace, I think mechanics call it) this weekend and maybe even tomorrow. I might use record it and submit it to America's Funniest Home Videos because any of my attempts at bike maintenance are hilarious in their ineptitude.
What about bicycling to the grocery store after I left the bike shop? Yeah, I did that, but the Harris Teeter and not my normal Safeway. Than 15th Street (no, the other one) past the Crepe place (now open, but with no real bike parking. I will be following up with them about that because that's exactly the kind of "advocacy" one can expect from a myopic little twit), past the Bikeshare station at Independence and then a right turn and home. Lots of police in the neighborhood lately and many of them on bicycles. I think it's working, too, since my precious collection of Assyrian low relief sculptures have yet to be stolen.
And now for Ellie the Poodle's Super Bowl picks:
"Giants 27, Patriots 14"
But she's just a poodle, so I wouldn't run to the bookie or anything. Have a good weekend.

4 comments:

  1. I have such mixed feelings about the two shops on Barracks Row..bought my current bike at one, but just ordered my new bike from the other. I guess that doesn't mean I now have to use first one over the second...especially considering the first shop has a better set of parts and accessories. I'm curious to see how the product support is for my new bike, since I've been somewhat disappointed by my current service.

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  2. You may be my "mental doppelganger" easy reading, to the point and honest without a touch of ego, rare in the world of cycling. I have a lot of catching up to do.

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  3. Yep, wish I had a nickel for every occurence of "I'm way more important than you so I'm gonna sideswipe you and race up to the red light and sit".

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  4. @MM- Neither of them is my favorite, but they're both on the way home and both accept commuter checks, the free money I get from my employer every month for biking to work. I'd use either of them for stuff like brake pads, simple green or things like that.
    @Screaming Monkey Bike- Thanks! I'm the most honest person in the world. Uh oh, there goes my massive ego again. Whoops.
    @Chris L- Why settle for a nickel? That'd be inconvenient and difficult to carry around. It's probably one of more frustrating things I encounter daily, but it only really bothers me when I'm passed to closely. Want to speed around but give me plenty of room? Go nuts.

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