3/13/12

Ride Home 3/13: Defibrillators, mount up!

Shirt, shorts, sunglasses, sunscreen, sayonara spring and say "szia!" (hungarian for hello, but this parenthetical is totally ruining the sibilance I worked so hard to establish) to summer.  Spring was fun while it lasted. Thanks for the memories. I would totally write that in spring's yearbook, had spring a yearbook, but I'm pretty sure spring never got around to ordering one on account of it only being here for a day. At least it wasn't too humid, this, today's fake summer. It was pollenic, which reminded me of spring, which was also pollenic. (The Pollenic Wars was fought between Rome and Flora in roughly the third century BC, the second of which saw Hannibal cross the Alps with an army of bees. Scipio Africanus, and his lieutenant, Nasonex, eventually defeated him.)
I was permitted to leave work on the early end of the evening rush and so I did. It was barely rush-y, even and I was mostly fine with that, except that it doesn't take too many drivers to drive wonkily to drive me crazy. There's something magical about a windshield, apparently, that makes it impossible for a driver to see that his travel lane is about to turn into a parking lane. Oh well.
There are two kinds of Cat 6 commuter racers. One is wearing bike gear and wants to establish his supremacy over all others and especially those not bikerly attired. The other is wearing regular clothes and wants to prove that he, even in his lack of bicycle clothing, is in fact the supreme bicyclist. Typology ftw.
I rolled through a bunch of red lights in Dupont Circle. I hope WUSA wasn't there. I did this because it was more convenient for me to do as much. You may judge me accordingly. I would've turned on Q but I sort of didn't make it over in time. To the best of my knowledge, my scofflaw ways didn't cause anything to explode, but with all the things catching on fire these days, it's kind of hard to tell. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure my lawbreaking didn't affect anyone else, but nonetheless, if anything bad every happened anywhere, blame bicyclists. Especially in comment form.
Massachusetts on the other side was mostly fine. I didn't realize that DC had legalized mid-block u-turns for drivers, but I guess there's no other reason that it'd happen otherwise. Anyway, mid-block u-turns, as we all know, are called Idaho U-turns and I'm glad that progressive DC has finally caught up.
I rode 15th and it was fine. At one stop light, I took out my phone to check the Everton-Liverpool score (I don't want to talk about it) and I was promptly shoaled and passed on the right by a guy on a bike that had a rear rack kid carrier. Good hustle, dude. On a totally unrelated note, once I saw a guy with a foiled burrito bungeed to his rear rack. Precious cargo.
I don't know what happened, but the tourists are here. Like, as of today. Someone forgot to pull up the drawbridges. Also, someone forgot to build the drawbridges. Also, welcome to the District of Columbia! Please spend freely at local businesses and restaurants and please remember to tack on "DC voting rights" to your diatribe at your next rage-filled Tea Party-laden congressional town hall.
Segways in the bike lane. Legal. Segway rental company named "Segs in the City." Legal, but really, really terrible. The guy in the back of the group who swerves around? What a Miranda, right? (???)
The British came, maybe to give us voting rights or all of their extra flags?
I'd settle for representation in Parliament. MPs accept money orders, right?
Jaywalkers = hilarious. Sarcastic jaywalkers that are all like "Okaaaaay" when you ring your bell so as to alert them that they're about to walk into you are even more hilarious. I think I said something like "Look at the light," but what I really wanted to say to our out-of-town high school group visitor was something along the lines of- well, it's not very nice. It's better to let these things go. Jeremiads against injustice don't make for great blogging, or at least not here.
I made it home to watch some soccer, saw the second Liverpool goal and went back out to the store. But, the Ride Home post is really only for the ride home and if I told you about my bike trip to the store, I'd really be violating both the spirit and letter of this self-imposed rule. So, no mention of the polar bear, smoke monster, and the incoherent time travel sequences that were mostly a macguffin. "Not Penny's bike!" Next time, then.

3 comments:

  1. I think you need a vacation. You're getting ahead of yourself.

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  2. "Not Penny's Bike" and time traveling in general goes well with the mystical Tuesday, 3/14 nature of the post!

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  3. @Jacques- If only I were being so deliberate. That would have been genius. Instead, I just sort of screwed up the dates. Wait, maybe I shouldn't confess that. I totally wrote the wrong date on purpose. For cleverness and such.

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