Ride Home 10/12: Priceless Piers

Justin Bieber said it best when he said- who am I kidding? I don't know any Justin Bieber quotes. I'm not some scholar of the modern pop culture vernacular. I'm just some bike blogger, untethered in a sea of pointlessness, awash in a foam of unmoored nothingness and aghast at an ocean of needless wherewithal. I also am some guy who saw some other guys who were wearing pink tutus and this was by my house and I think it might have been related to a Race for a Cure, a Susan Komen joint. I don't know for sure, for I did not ask them, as I make it a point to avoid asking men in tutus many questions because each question would lead to the inevitable question- why are you wearing a tutu?

There's a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, between Idaho Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue, in which there are two lanes, but one of those lanes sometimes turns from a "go go" lane to a "park park" lane and every day I watch drivers pull into the "park park" lane expecting it to be a "go go" lane only to find themselves thwarted and, presumably, disappointed when they realize that they won't be able to "go go" and will have to merge back into the lane from whence they came. Drivers, unlike cyclists, are the most optimistic people on earth. They always think "ah, this is it. this is the time I BEAT THE WORLD" and act as if the same thing they saw the other day, the fact that people are always parked where they are always parked, won't in fact be the case and that this day will be the day will be the one when they will be able to do it, when they will be able to WIN THE COMMUTE. Of the many delusions that the joys of internal combustion have given man, this is perhaps the most pernicious.

Massachusetts Avenue to Q Street. We might as well call it Queue Street as it's nothing but a line of cars that impedes the progress of all others, even thought some of the others find themselves in what should be an unfettered bike lane. And yet, unless one suffers the delusion that he can, in fact, pass through a minivan as if it was just a figment of his imagination, this is not so because minivans are assuredly not figments, just as they are assuredly within the bike lanes and this is assuredly annoying.

I thought that I could keep pace with a Capital Bikeshare bicycle while astride my Brompton and yet I found myself in some difficulty when attempting this task. Maybe the CaBi rider was super fit. Maybe I am a sloth.

I saw some gentlemen pushing a hatchback at the intersection of Q and 9th. First, they pushed it fore and then they pushed it aft and then one jumped in and the other left and I don't know what happened after that because the light turned green and I rode away and I would have gladly assisted the effort in pushing the hatchback had they asked or had they had a more clearer vision about where they wanted to push the car. I'm willing to embark on silly tasks, but not if they're pointless. I have standards, you know.

This is 7th Street NW.

As you can see, the concrete barrier is on the wrong side of the bike lane. For a moment, I thought that maybe we weren't doing it wrong. I was wrong. The barrier is there to protect the construction, I guess. Or maybe prevent parking. Whatever it's there for, it's not the protect bicyclists.

I stopped at BicycleSpace, the best bike shop in DC per everyone, for a quick Brompton checkup. The bike checked up well (No copay. Thanks, Obamacare!) and I managed not to buy everything in the store as I waited. Thanks to some excellent timing, I got the chance to ride with Erik, co-owner of BicycleSpace, on the way home. Erik had recently just completed L'Eroica, which is not a Beethoven symphony, but a ride through sterner parts Tuscany undertaken on vintage bicycles. It sounded absolutely amazing and of a quality far superior to all rides that I have ever taken and that even includes the time I rode my bike to get beer from the second-closest corner store. We talked about the ride as we rode down 7th and Pennsylvania and around Grant Circle past the Capitol. It sounded all sorts of challenging and all sorts of amazing and I'm really glad that someone who loves bicycles, and I mean really, really loves them, as much as Erik does got to partake in it. We said goodbye near the Capitol and I rode up the hill and he rode home.

And near the end of the ride, that's where I saw the guys with the tutus and that means we're near the end of the post, as the posts tend to mirror the order in which the rides themselves happen. Otherwise, what kind of narrative structure would I employ? These are the things that keep me up at night. Ok, not really. Have a bon weekend and, as always, remember, dance with the one that brung ya. (I haven't quite finalized my sign-off. Suggestions are welcome.)