That's pretty much all I've got. It was a nice morning and my ride was easy. I wish every day was like this. I don't know if more people would bicycle (probably), but it'd be nicer for those who did and as far as self-interest goes, that works for me. It might even work for the guy who passed me at a light and then sort of tried to pass the people riding in front of him on the next block, but didn't have the "giddy-up" (so to speak) to quite make it around them. And they weren't riding especially fast. I think that his ambition towards speedliness (which is next to cleanliness and catty-corner from godliness) either outstripped his abilities to make his bike go fast or perhaps his estimation skills were less than estimable and he couldn't quite determine how fast he needed to pedal to make it around in a reasonable amount of time. So, I watched him sort of ride parallel to the people (on CaBis) that he was trying to pass, before eventually summoning the effort to get in front of them. In their defense, they, correctly in my opinion, didn't slow down (nor did they speed up) because as usual, the onus (Wagner, but cockney?) is on the passer, not the passee (nor on the passe).
A blind man in the bike lane. By the Supreme Court. Security was trying to help him, but the poor guy didn't even know he was on Capitol Hill. I'm going to give him a pass.
Some guy on a Schwinn that probably came from Target just absolutely decimated me on the Penn Avenue cycle track. I even tried to catch up, but he was gone. I think this is a good sign that I should stop eating french fries for dinner. My legs just weren't having it this morning. I felt the drag on the slight uphill on 11th and was all "uh oh, this isn't going to be good," as I'm sometimes wont to do. It's just massively inconvenient to stop riding and take a bus, so I always slog through and it normally works out fine. Sometimes I wonder to what extent poor and infrequent public transportation serves to bolster the number of bicyclists on the road. In fact, I've probably even wondered about it on this very blog. (I have a total of four ideas and at least half of them involve pogo sticks and corn chips) I also wonder about how much bike modeshare is drawn from people who would otherwise drive. My suspicion is that, in the city, it's very few, making those "if I didn't bike, there'd be so much more traffic" arguments ring hollow tom. More like "if I didn't bike, I'd be paying more money to support public transportation," which is certainly true in my case. I don't think that my daily metro fare (or lack thereof) would be the difference between WMATA's solvency and bankruptcy, but by choosing to bike to work, I am sort of taking myself out of their system. I wonder how much money Bikeshare has "cost" them, especially on weekends.
There seems to be no greater invitation to getting shoaled than my drinking from my coffee mug. Apparently leisurely sipping a hot beverage is some kind of indication of non-seriousness or perhaps slowness. Maybe I need to put my coffee in a flask. That doesn't make any sense. But if you need a flask holder for your bike, here's one. And just a reminder: don't bike drunk. Or hopped up on goofballs, whatever that means.
So many cyclists on 11th. Only a few on Q. Maybe because of this:
Initially, I suspected that this barriers were for some kind of urban show jumping equestrian event, but I guess they're part of the construction site. Try not to bike into them. I don't know what purpose they serve, other than to block the bike lane.
The rest of the stuff that I'm remembering I'm pretty sure happened on other days, so I'm not going to bother writing it out since this blog needs to preserve an accurate record for some reason. I think the ride home should be a good one, especially if the weather stays like this. And if those rocket boosters I've ordered finally get here. One small pedal for man, one giant catastrophe involving rocket boosters for mankind.
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