Ride Home 6/18: Cheese, Petrol

Let's talk yesterday, when all my troubles seemed so- well, about equidistant to where they are now. I had this crazy idea that maybe I'd write this post before riding into work this morning and perhaps "sleeping on it" would provide me some much need introspection, but then I slept on it a little too much. Given that it takes me enough time just to make and drink coffee and get the dog out of and then back into the house, I failed my mission. But, I did realize that perhaps yesterday morning's grumpiness was brought on by my watching the rather affecting documentary Transformers 2 Senna, which I recommend to you all in spite of it being about race cars and race car driving. It's very good.

About halfway down the first hill on Massachusetts, I saw an abandoned wheelchair. Is the wooded area by the Avalon at Foxhall the new Lourdes? Probably not. Unrelated to any of this, if you like books about pre-modern French religiosity, you might want to read The Holy Greyhound. It's about French villagers and this dog that was unjustly killed but then the villagers were sorry so they made it a "saint" and they dropped off their sick children in the middle of the woods and left them there to seal if the Holy Greyhound would heal them or whatnot. Good times, pre-modern rural France.

Counter-intuitively, it sometimes make more sense to ride closer to cars in the lane over rather than ride farther away. By riding closer, you make it less likely that the driver will decide to change lanes and smack into you.

I saw an abandoned cat scratching post on 11th, outside one of the apartment buildings. I do not know if it has anything to do with a sainted cat and the local sick children. I'm guessing it's more that someone didn't want it any more and left it by the curb.

Unlike some people in DC, I love tourists. I'm glad they come here. Otherwise the only people who would be in town are the people who live here and have you met the people who live here? Assholes, every one of them. Just kidding- you're all perfectly nice. My inclination is to "like" the foreign tourists more than the domestic ones, mostly because I've spent more time as a foreign tourist abroad than a domestic tourist in these United States and maybe feel a greater degree of sympathy towards both their wonder and their feeling out of place. They also tend to buy cooler souvenirs. I saw a young family (parents, two daughters) and the youngest girl, thanks to feminism, bought a kickass action figure and she was carrying it around in her transparent backpack. It was an Air Force One...Flight Attendant.

Tax driver made a u-turn in front of me on Penn and I summoned the outrage to plead "Don't do that, man" and if he heard me, he didn't acknowledge. Nothing quite like desperation to win friends and influence people.

These bollards gave their lives so that bicyclists might be somewhat protected. This is at the intersection where Constitution runs into Pennsylvania. I wonder why more people don't feel safe while biking.

CLEMENS NOT GUILTY! CLEMENS NOT GUILTY! I'll always remember where I was when I didn't care about hearing that.

Watched a guy fly down Capitol Hill and narrowly avoid the security poles at the base of the Hill. You have much more courage than I do, sir.

I think that Lincoln Park could support another Bikeshare station, but on the SE corner at 11th. I don't know  if you could actually fit one there, but I think it'd be nice.