Ride Home 6/26: UN Goodwill Ambassador for Goodwill Ambassadorship

It sucks when you decide to stop your bike in order to let a pedestrian cross the street (in the crosswalk) and the Cadillac driven behind you is stopped only inches behind your rear wheel when the driver (shouldn't she have been stopping to let the person cross in the first place?) only realized rather late that you were fulfilling your legal and social obligation. Shit like this is why people don't do the right thing.

Maybe it's the air in the tires, but I'm just crushing the uphill parts of my trip. It's like a totally different commute. I've never felt this strong riding the hills on my bike. It's like there's a secret motor or something. I sincerely doubt that I'm "fast," so it's not the speed that I'm appreciating but rather the effortlessness. Unless of course the weight of the constant car driving has somehow flattened the hills of Ward 3, which might also be a possibility since many of those cars seem quite heavy and large and. SUVs are good for something! In any case, I'll take ease to speed any day of the bike commuting week. Also, I would take E's in Scrabble since I am not a very good Scrabble player and would probably benefit from the extra vowels.

[Usual complaining about the same stuff]

This thing happened when the first bicyclist rolled through the stop sign and then the first car at the perpendicular intersection rolled through the stop sign and then the second bicyclists rolled through the stop sign and the second car started rolling through the stop sign, but the driver decided to take umbrage at the fact that the second cyclist rolled through the stop sign instead of deferring to her, so the driver decided to roll down her window and yell at the cyclist. This prompted me to think (and later tweet) "Let he who follows all traffic laws honk the first horn," which is similar to a phrase I once heard somewhere said by this guy who's old and Jewish so it might have been Milton Berle or another comedian from the 50s. It's amazing to me that someone in the process of doing something illegal has the temerity to call out someone else for doing this same. This is why I never confront arsonists while I'm jaywalking! The hypocrisy!

Like legos? Like scofflaw comeuppance? Well, I've got a video for you.

I haven't been in The Bike Rack in a really long time, even though I pass it every day. From what I remember, it's a pretty good shop.

haha reckless drivers and I don't want to get injured so smug lol

My never-ending quest to have knocked-over bollars replaced continued today. Some back up, another one down:

I've decided that this issue is important to me so I'm probably going to be writing about it a lot. You can skip ahead if you're not interested, but you're the one reading about some random dude's bike commute every day, so who I am to judge what kind of stuff you'll be into? Anyway, I get a lot of weird looks from other cyclists when I walk the bollards back to the posts of the middle of the intersection. Maybe it has something to do with my humming Taps and saluting. Ok, I don't actually do that. But while we're talking bollards, they're conspicuously absent from the intersection of Pennsylvania and Constitution, on the Constitution side of the intersection. Has that always been the case? I don't think so, but I can't recall.

Some taxi drivers suck. I encourage you to take pictures and/or tweet about any of them who makes a u-turn across Penn. Or throw a stray bollard.  It's illegal and dangerous and it needs to stop before someone dies. Enough people, including people I know, have been hit and it is absolutely unconscionable that this continues. Maybe a GGW post?

Let's make this a bitching trifecta (bitching about three things, not just a trifecta that is 'bitchin') but pointing out how hard it is to not accidentally talk on your cell phone while driving. Super difficult. I could close DC's budget gap with driver fines with one week of traffic law enforcement on Penn. Piece of cake.

The hill climb turned out not to be a slog. Again, I blame magical bike improvements. Lots of people with CaBis by the Capitol. I'm going to take the other side of the helmet argument and say that maybe it's says something good about our bike infrastructure and culture that tourists don't feel like they need to be afraid of biking in the city...? Though, this might be too #slatepitches.

UPS truck blocking the bike lane and I pull around then I find an old VW bug being driven next to me, straddling the yellow lane. Neat. I probably would've just slowed down a little and let the bicyclist get back into the bike lane, but I don't drive a kitschy car. It was orange.

Not much makes me happier than the nightly dog parties in Lincoln Park. I'm pretty sure every golden retriever and lab in the 5 mile radius comes by to romp and play. We'd bring Ellie the Poodle, but romping isn't exactly her forte. I mean, maybe with smaller dogs, but even then, it's not her favorite kind of play unless it involves ripping up some paper and/or eating my breakfast. And to the best of my knowledge, that's not the kind of dog play available. Dog play. Now I'm thinking about Shakespeare in the park, but with dogs as actors. It'd be called Shakespeare in the Bark. Merry Whippets of Windsor, anyone?

Kentucky Ave to the store, then D Street to 15th to A to home. I think I've driven to this grocery store under five times. The parking lot is small and it's under a mile away, so, yeah. And the bike parking is adequate! So hurray for lowish standards.