Ride In 5/2: I Love Lucy, but I'm Not In Love with Lucy

It boggles my mind that we can live in a society in which I have immediate access to the entirety of the world's knowledge with a device that easily fits in my pocket, but one in which traffic lights are so stupid as to hold vehicles at intersections when there is clearly no one coming the other way. We need a Steve Jobs for basic traffic management. Our current system is mindbogglingly inefficient and retrograde.
Shoal me once, shame on you. Shoal me twice, shame on you a second time. Shoal me three times and seriously, why do you keep doing that?
I cleaned my bike last night. Brakes are really squeaky. I'm once again drawn back to the idea of getting a commuter bike with disc brakes. I go through brake pads like crazy and I also don't like squeaky nosies, so those are two points working in favor of discs. Does anyone have a good recommendation for a commuter? Anyone ride one? Any perils related to disc brakes that I should be aware of? I defer to the cognoscenti. Relatedly, would anyone want to buy the Cross Check if I get a new bike? Email me.
Are people lemmings? I watch drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians all follow the people in front of them without even looking to see if that's an advisable or legal thing to do and then I ask that question. I guess I'm just too skeptical to trust other people's decisions when it comes to my conveying myself safely through traffic. It's why I berate crossing guards. Nobody tells me when to cross, vest or not. Just kidding. I've never actually berated a crossing guard. Might make him cross.
I think the preferred way to pass another cyclist along Penn Ave is to cross to the other side of the cycletrack, rather than ride out into the travel lane and pass them on the right. Just a suggestion for a guy I'd like to call "Board Shorts."
Uphill on 11th and I was out of the saddle for most of it. A little bit zealous for me. Before O, maybe, there's some construction stuff blocking the bike lane. This is annoying, but not insurmountable. What I do, and this is very controversial, is leave the bike lane to ride around it. I'd make a diagram, but I'd hate for that to be used as evidence against me at my future trial for crimes against bike infrastructure. It's really not that big of a deal. Sometimes I pedal faster to make sure I don't get pinched by a car coming up on me and sometimes I slow down to let a driver pass. In my experience, drivers tend to be pretty understanding when they can clearly see obstructions in the bike lane. And if they don't clearly the see obstruction, I just text them because that's probably the reason they're not looking.
I think it'd be kind of cool if my pannier was full of burritos. But it never is, no matter how many times I leave out inducements/bribes for the Burrito Fairy. Why did no one ever tell me the Burrito Fairy isn't real? I've been trying to do a better job eating breakfast before my ride in because I really think it makes a difference. Not so much in speed or power, but just in terms of overall good-feeling-ness (this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don't put ads on this site. No one should be subjected to both terrible writing and advertisements). I don't like arriving at work hungry. Then I'm tempted to buy a pastry and then I buy a pastry and then I eat a pastry and that's not nearly as responsible as having a proper grown-up breakfast before leaving the house. Sure, my idea of a proper grown-up breakfast, is Cheerios made soggy by tequila, but still. FUN FACT: I like eating my cereal dry (both in the desiccated sense and the teetotal sense).
Almost fell off my bike right by the office, during the couple of feet when I ride on the sidewalk. I don't want to blame the guy walking, who veered to his left rather than his right, but I'll assume he's not reading, so I will blame him. This caused me to cut back and my front wheel left the sidewalk and went into some dirt and as I tried to pull the bike back onto the sidewalk, the tire hit the side of the sidewalk (if you're following this description, please do be kind and send me an email so I can find out what actually happened) and I started to tip over. Luckily, I unclipped and crisis was averted. I have an aversion to crisis.