Ride Home 4/25: Before his promotion, Cpl. Pepper only had a lonely hearts club solo act

I had a different title for this post, one that I thought of on the ride home, but as soon as I finally nailed the wording on whatever pun I cobbled together, the words simply vanished immediately, floating off forever to the heaven where bad puns go. Oh well. It's probably not a "best practice" to try to think of blog titles while riding home and a better idea to "pay attention" to things that are going on "around you," but I felt relatively confident that I could keep track of all of the drivers not pulling over to let an ambulance pass. Though I did have some concern for whatever victim of whatever tragedy to which the ambulance was rushing as I was able make my way most of the way down Massachusetts before the ambulance finally pulled past me. I'm on a bike and I'm about as aerodynamic as a wet potato, so I'm fairly certain that I was going that fast. I blame Obamacare.
The ambulance eventually did make its way past me and it made its way past the stopped car traffic and I made my way past the stopped car traffic, mostly by switching to the sidewalk and then switching back to the road in front of the open top tour bus that followed the orange and green tour trolley. I'm not like an expert on Washington, DC tourism or anything, but if you're paying good money to be driven in traffic on "Embassy Row," you're pretty much wasting your money. Take a city bus and you'll see the same thing. Or, ride a bicycle, maybe behind me, as I narrate "fun facts" that I'll spontaneously make up about the various buildings you'll see. For example, did you know that the Brazilian embassy is constructed entirely out of Brazil nuts? What? That's crazy. But true. Maybe. And did you know that the ambassador from Mali is actually a robot? And that the Bolivia's embassy houses the only extent VHS copy of The Matrix? Because you'd totally have bought that on DVD if you were going to buy it at all? Right? Or, maybe you could take the tourist trolley.
It was a two-part trip and the first part saw me stopping at St. Arnold's on Jefferson between 19th and Connecticut. I had to salmon half a block on Jefferson. Before that I had to ride through Dupont Circle and there was another ambulance that drivers ignored.
And then after my stop, it was the PRESIDENT'S MOTORCADE and OMG and SRSLY and WHY ARE YOU SCREWING UP EVENING RUSH HOUR? I mean, whatever. Dude's gotta drive (and by Dude, I mean President Dude and by that I mean President Obama). Mostly because they haven't bullet-proofed the CaBis yet (these are the quality ideas you can expect from me as VO's rep on the DC BAC), but a motorcade trip during the evening rush really has the potential for screwing up bicycle trips and maybe even trips by other vehicles, but I'm mostly concerned with the bicycle ones. It didn't really screw up the bicycle trips of those heading in the other direction and I watched many of them skirt their way through the cars that blocked the intersection from drivers who would have wished to do the same. Once I picked my way through the stopped cars, which I did mostly by riding through a concrete-covered triangle park that I don't know the name of, and ended up the other side behind a few other bicyclists at about the exact same time as the police officers were lifting the traffic restrictions and then it was go go go for everyone, except for the guy in front of me who wanted to pedal at two miles per hour.
17th and then in front of the White House. It looks like this:

How many of these people are wearing jorts?

And then it was down Pennsylvania and I passed some people who were riding in the other direction and this one guy was really breathing hard and he looked like he was pushing himself, but in at athletic sort of way, and I thought, good thing you're wearing that bandana. And then I rode behind a guy who I wanted to accuse of being French.
Look everyone! It's the Old Post Office.

Why is it called the Old Post Office? Because it's made of old posts, obviously. In case you were curious, I really enjoy neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic archtitecture and I really wish that DC were covered in maudlin dark stone with towers and turrets rather than all this classical-inspired marble nonsense. George Washington is basically Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And by basically, I mean not at all.
If you get to a red light and there's more than a few seconds for you to wait, you probably pedaled too fast.
A lot of people have dogs. A lot of people walk those dogs during my ride home and I get to see a lot of different kids of dogs. To those of you walking those dogs, I salute you. I like seeing your dogs.
Paving update: they paved from 2nd to 4th, but now it's milled until 8th (7th?). Anyway, it's fine. Also, I'm talking about East Capitol. I wonder if they'll pave the whole way to the park. You might want to take it slow when you're riding over the unpaved parts. It's bumpy. (You read this blog for the sophisticated analysis, I bet)
That's all I got. Have a nice night.