5/2/12

Ride Home 5/2: Domo Arigato, Alfonse D'Amato

Left work early. Got home early. Left again for a meeting then came home again. Made soup. Eating soup now. We had a lot of kale, so I made kale soup. Coincidentally, this soup also called for some chorizo, which we also had. And chick peas and diced tomatoes and potatoes and onions and bay leaves and garlic. I'm realizing now that I forgot to fish out the bay leaves. I hope I don't eat one. I will be vigilant. Thus concludes the first ever "Tales from the Ladle," the 37th most popular DC-based soup blog. I await my award, City Paper.
Funny to think that I'd be making soup on a night that was sort of warm. Well, not like "haha" funny. The temperature was pleasant enough to allow me to ride home in my work clothes without worrying about sweating too much and I appreciated just jumping on the bike and going. Not literally jumping. I'm lowered onto my bike by a crane through an elaborate pulley system. It's my choice to ride in chain mail. This is just one of the side-effects. You can never be too safe. For example, I've never once been felled by a crossbow bolt.
Yesterday (not today) I saw a guy riding a CaBi and he was wearing bike gloves. That's a first for me. Today (not yesterday) I reflected on how weird that is. I have bike gloves, but I've never really worn them. I'm sure they provide positive benefits- I just don't know if those positive benefits outweigh how silly I think they'll look.
I'd like to read some journalism (or its equivalent) about race and class and car ownership and suburbanization and the American dream and the phrase "pulling the rug out from under us." Like, the idea that people worked really hard at achieving a certain kind of lifestyle and then were told that this lifestyle is unsustainable and wrong and now they have to share the road with bicyclists even though no one ever was made to share the road with them. I don't know. I don't know to what extent bikelash reactions are based on resentment and to what extent their just based on status quo bias, but presumably this journalism would tell me. Thanks.
Is it easier to rap in Spanish? Are there more rhyming words? I wanted to accost the man in the plumbing truck about this, but he was just listening to it, so it might be insensitive for me to assume that he knows the answer. Were someone to do the same for my accompanying music and ask me about it, I'd say, yeah, it is pretty tricky to whistle the tune of Usher songs. I really need to stop doing that. It's weird. (FUN ASSUMPTION: I think the word "weird" has appeared in every TFTS post.)
Oh, I should probably mention some things about the bike ride. Um, it was fine. Massachusetts was easy and Q was ok and there were no bicyclists on 11th until downtown and even then they were heading in the other direction. I caught the light at Penn and 7th, but then felt tired by the time I got to the Capitol. There were roughly 248 trillion children there. I wonder what's the right age for a child to be presented the majesty of DC so he can be completely bored by it.
Some old dude shoaled me. Whatevs, old dude.
I'll be happy when they finish repaving East Capitol. Maybe even have a little party. A sad little party. There will be streamers. Sad little streamers. You're all invited. Bring cake.

2 comments:

  1. The only benefit I see from gloves for commuting is in the event of a tumble. Human hands have not evolved to withstand abrasion. (I read that somehwere.) So just stay upright and you have no worries.

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  2. MG has just given away the plot to the next X-Men movie. In it, Magneto is a NIMBY ANC chair who uses his power to knock down cyclists, thus scaring them from supporting a bike lane on his street. But Xavier has a secret weapon, a mutant prodigy who can be knocked from his bike without getting road rash! His name, ironically, is "Road Rash". Other mutants in this explosive blockbuster are "Track Stand", "Meshie", and "Shoalz", who is Magneto's newest apprentice.

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