Ride Home 8/13: What's the French word for crouton?

Two posts today and two titles with oddly francophilic themes. It's curious. In the battle of francophilia and anglophilia (as most recently brought about by the Olympics), I fall very much on the side of the former and violently oppose the latter. I don't care for royalty (maybe as a historical curiosity, says me, the former PhD focusing my research on royal grave sites [you can't make this crap up]) and I don't care for pretension and while I tend to enjoy British cultural products (Dr. Who primarily), I'm pretty sure that the British people, as a lot, as just inferior New Englanders. Whereas the French are not the English. But just in case a certain Lizzy Windsor is reading, I kindly request that you do not take away my Brooks saddle and Brompton. K Thx Bye.

Didn't think blog used to be about bicycling? Presumably. I took the same route home as normal and I went as fast as normal which is to say slow. But before I went home, I stumbled upon a mystery and it's the mystery of "Who the Hell Keeps Moving My Hat?" To that effect:

It was on the hook before

Why? My cap wasn't bothering anyone. It was just on the hook, but someone moved it to the bookshelf. Why? No one else uses the hooks. In fact, I'm pretty sure no one else even uses the locker room. And furthermore, who even wants to touch a sweaty cycling cap? This is a greater mystery than Roswell and the Shroud of Turin combined, leading my to believe that some kind of alien Jesus-face guy is responsible. Maybe I'll leave a passive-aggressive note, which is the solution to most problems, at least if the goal is to be mocked on the internet.

Oh yeah, the part about bicycle riding. Down Mass and up Mass and down Mass again. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I got a flat tire during a fast descent, but then I decide that it's not worth wondering about because in all likelihood the result wouldn't be awesome. Thus far it hasn't happened and I'm glad for it.

I followed a bus and the bus was labeled OMEGA TOURS. The last tour you'll ever take, I guess. Or this. The OMEGA bus was piloted by an ok driver and he mostly knew not to drive poorly and I passed him when I could and that was all that occurred between me and the OMEGA bus.

And 11th and Massachusetts, I watched a Peapod delivery truck almost crash into a man, the driver of the truck trying to turn right on red and the man trying to cross the street on a red light. They were both wrong, but I know with whom I sympathize more. The back of the truck had a little message written on it: Driver does not carry cash (only cashews). Hardy har har. I hope the driver carries a license and insurance. I'll never quite understand why PEOPLE WHO GET PAID TO OPERATE VEHICLES seem to be the worst at it. There's some sort of Marxist alienation of labor critique in here somewhere, but I'm just going to walk away lest someone shouts "pinko!" at me from the virtual galleries.

At Pennsylvania and 10th, I saw a delightful looking young woman in her grey t-shirt emblazoned with the Stars and Bars. Of all the places to wear that symbol, DC might be the worst. Anyway, freedom or whatever.

I don't know what Polk's Soliloquy is about, but someone had a car magnet on their driver's side door advertising it. I'm not sure how many times I've been stuck in traffic and thought, "hmm, I wonder if any of the cars around me are advertising a self-published novel. Wait, a minute, that guy!" In any case, he got me mentioning it, for what it's worth (very little).

Is there a way in which the scofflaw cyclist can fit into the American 'outlaw' tradition? Because I tried to imagine a hypothetical conversation between me and some cultural conversative-type fellow and I thought that maybe evoking the Tea Party guys (the first one, where they dumped the tea in the harbor. Outlaws and racially insensitive, so that's two solid American traditions, right there) and/or Jesse James (the bandit, not the Sandra Bullock ex) might help me convince this hypothetical guy that maybe my rolling through stop signs is somehow an ennobled part of the American experience.

Stopped at the store. Biked home tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, tortillas and limes. Learned in the checkout line that Harris Teeter employees are not unionized. Learned from the girl sitting on the rail by where the bikes are locked up that she needs to stop getting small shirts and start ordering mediums. I didn't learn anything about pretzels because I didn't stop the the pretzel bakery. I learned the crepe place has "summer hours," which makes me wonder how their business is doing. And then I learned that I was home.