Ride Home 3/27: Like a limestone cowboy

So, I was stopped at a light behind a red pickup truck. He had a novelty license plate in the rear window of the cab that had written on it "Beach Boy's SURFS UP" and his real license plate holder read "I'd rather be fishin' with Opie and Andy," an allusion to Leave it to Beaver, which I believe was a television show in olden times, like the 80s when Nick at Nite aired it. Anyway, this guy loves stuff from a half century ago and he loves water-based activities, I thought, and I wondered what I would talk to him about, like if he ever had to talk. I never quite did come up with an answer.
I wanted to stage a "race" of  a sort to see if I would make it down from the top of a hill to the bottom of a hill at the same down as a driver, but it didn't quite fruit (fru-it) for reasons that I don't wholly remember. Maybe I just didn't make it down to the bottom first and subsequently decided that I would be a sore loser about the whole thing. I don't think that's it, since I'm normally not like that, but who knows? Memory, as we've all learned from reading the postmoderns, is a foreign country, or something, and that's why we need a past-port to visit there. I might have even beaten the car down the hill but that doesn't really prove anything either. Sometimes cars go faster than bikes, other times bikes go faster than cars and other times cars and bikes go faster than ocelots and other times ocelots steal your bike, throw it in the back of their car and leave you stranded on the side of the road. I wouldn't be surprised if I beat the car downhill, or at least arrived there at the same time, since stop lights do a fairly good job regulating the flow of traffic.
I've ridden my bike while dressed in all kinds of attire (regular people clothes, bike clothes, specialized pogo-specific "tech" wear) and I believe that with a certain degree of certitude I can conclude that some drivers give you room and some drivers don't and it has nothing to do with me. Bicyclists, as a class (they fall somewhere between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, I think), tend to give themselves a little bit too much credit/blame for the things that happen around them. Today I rode in a green sweater (which people at work found remarkable for some reason and remarked upon it, as if one is only permitted to wear green on St. Patrick's Day) and an untucked white shirt and some unremarkable black pants and I'm fairly certain that I looked like a normal people and I'm fairly certain that nothing different would have happened to me or around me had I been dressed a different way.
After Sheriden Circle, there was a line of cars and buses stopped at the red light at 23rd (UPDATE: I mean 22nd. See comment below). I started to filter past the buses on the right side, but then the light turned green and one of the buses started pulling forward. I stopped, picked my bike up and lifted it onto the sidewalk. Don't pass on the right if you're not going to get to the front of the queue before the light changes. At least, I don't.
Traffic (car traffic) seemed rather terrible from Dupont Circle to about 13th street and that slowed me down considerably, in no small part due to the number of drivers who couldn't quite keep their cars out of the bike lane. I tweeted something facetious about this, but upon further reflection, I think that any kind of bike infrastructure that is so meek and ineffectual as to allow drivers to transgress against it is the kind of bike infrastructure that forces drivers to drive in it. Basically, that's a case for separated bike facilities (maybe on the other side of the parked cars), like they have in real counties. Then drivers wouldn't actually be able to drive in it and I think that everyone, cyclists and snarky cyclists alike, would be much better off for it.
I saw a car from Georgia transporting a Jazzy Power Chair on 11th, the Jazzy placed on some rear-mounted Jazzy holder. There appear to be many models of Jazzy, but I don't know if this was a road one or a mountain one.
Can everyone, bicyclists and drivers and pogoists alike, please learn to stop at red lights before turning right? Like, please? I worry about drivers right hooking me and I worry about bicyclists cutting me off and I wouldn't appreciate either of those activities. I also got frontended (is this a term?) by the taxi driver turning right from New York Avenue and almost ran into the back of a bicyclist doing the same thing. In either case, their stopping would've been cool.
There was a large sign outside the Capitol that was something about foreskin. I kid you not. I think it said "my foreskin is not a birth defect." Ladies and gentleman, Washington, DC.
I rode up the Capitol for a little while behind a woman on a CaBi, but she turned rather mysteriously to, I think, accommodate my passing her. Totally unnecessary. My advice to other bicyclists is never do anything to accommodate the cyclist behind you. Maybe that's wrong, but that's how I feel. If people wants to ride faster than you, let them. But also make them.
Supreme Court was still there. In case you were wondering.
I really enjoy the last mile of my bike commute. Sometimes I wish it was the only mile. A one mile bike commute would be pretty nifty. The blog might suffer ("Ride In 4/3: Rode East Capitol. It was fine.") but, overall, it'd be great. Anyone out there commute a mile by bike? Is it awesome?