Ride Home 6/15: Sweater Vest

This ride was a frustrating ride. I don't know if it was anyone's fault or if it was more frustrating than any other ride, but the way I remember it, and chose to covey it, is as a frustrating ride with lots of Audis and honking and unpleasantness. So, I thought, instead, perhaps, I could take a diversion through the lens of nostalgia and check back on the Ride Home 6/15 from the previous year and find out if that was any better, but it didn't seem to be much better and, whatever it's worth, didn't even seem to be that interesting. That conceit foiled, I'm now floundering for some other means by which I can frame this ride so as to make it seem moderately interesting, though I think my floundering will eventually come to naught. Far be it from me, however, to let "nothing happened" get in the way of a good blog post and I'd much rather take a left turn from "what did happen a year ago" through "what happened on this ride" to "what could've happened on this ride, but didn't," because the world of the hypothetical is vastly more interesting. Here's what didn't happen: I didn't ride in a bike lane down Massachusetts, even though there appears to be ample room to house one. Furthermore, I didn't ride over some nice paved patches of roadway because I was much too busy bouncing over the ruddy, messy, hazardous, cleaved and battered stretches of pavement that were brought to me through an overabundance of two-ton vehicles and an under-reliance on high quality paving materials. I didn't not have squeaky brakes. Another thing that didn't occur was my easy passage onto Q Street, since I was blocked by a number of drivers who had no choice but to pull their cars into the intersection. And that's all that didn't occur between the time I left work and the time I got to the bottom of the hill, except for maybe the thing where the driver of an Audi almost didn't not avoid hitting me with his car as he pulled far too aggressively forward towards a red light at Idaho Ave. Too be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure if I screwed up the negation thing there or if I'm still cool, but in any case, I'm totally fine and I didn't get four rings imprinted on my behind.

When you're not on a bicycle and you see a bicyclist jaywheeling through a red light, what do you think? And when you're on a bicycle and you jaywheel, what do you think people think? And does any of this matter?

I'd like it if bike lanes extended for my entire commute. I wonder what percentage of bike commuters have bike infrastructure for their entire route. I bet it's small.

11th slopes down, towards downtown. Every time that I think I'm capable of riding "fast," I'm pretty sure that I'm just riding downhill. I wish I rode downhill both ways.

I think DC has enough buses to deserve dedicated busways, especially through the downtown core and then out to the "why do we even have these?" urban highways. If DC unilaterally declared "bus only" lanes, could any of the drivers of the surrounding districts actually do anything about it? I sort of don't think so. Speaking of drivers, We're still about two weeks away from the arrival of the first round of the next round of speed camera tickets. I'm curious to see what will happen. Other than a lot of tv news stories about how horrible speed cameras are. For what it's worth, in my experience, I can't say that they've improved driving in any noticeable way.

U-turns across the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track have to stop. I don't know why midblock u-turns over a bike lane are so hard to avoid. Someone is really going to get hurt, if not worse. It's unconscionable. I'm going to try to think of a way to pressure our political/faceless bureaucrat leaders to address this and when I do, I'm going to lean on you all heavily to try to help me. Just an FYI.

My bike commute would be vastly superior if George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant determined that hills were overrated and that the Capitol and it's surroundings ought to be on a level plane. I blame the Romans.

Not much else exciting for the rest of the way. Nice to be home on a Friday. Good weekend thus far. Hasta lunes.