Ride Home 10/8: Buoys Don't Cry

Let's say you're an eccentric billionaire and you want to build a zoo for your two favorite animals, rhinoceroses and bunnies. What you wouldn't do, probably, is just build one kind of habitat, the kind that's designed to accommodate the needs of the rhinoceroses and then just mix the rhinos and bunnies together, maybe even suggesting to the bunnies that they behave "rhinocerosly" to, you know, because they have to live together and rhinos are big and powerful and it's really in the bunnies best interest to pay extra attention. And would you really be shocked if in this horribly designed zoo every so often a rhinoceros squished a bunny and outside observers would probably be all like "well, this is just what's gonna happen when you put bunnies and rhinoceroses together"." So if we don't do this with zoos, where each animal has its own distinct needs and own distinct habitats, why do we do this with our streets?

Probably time to replace the brake pads. Lots of squeaking and squealing and I'm pretty sure that they're plenty worn down. They still work, so that's good. Though they sputter and skip a little, which isn't great. I think I have one replacement pair, but I'll need to pick up another one because I've previously gotten into the habit of alternately swapping out front and back pairs and this has resulted into my brakes working halfway well most of the time instead of all the way well some of the time.

19th to Pennsylvania. Still a lot of cars on 19th. I wouldn't necessarily say that I feel sympathy for drivers who has to continuously drive in heavy traffic (I mean, what did you expect? It's not like they didn't know that cities + driving = unfun), but it must really be crummy to do day after day after day. Unlike riding a bike in the kind of cold, which is just a barrel of monkeys (zookeepers that put monkeys in barrels should be arrested).

Taste of DC closed five blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue to through traffic- bus, car and bike. And yet, that wasn't enough.

Because people just get to park wherever, right?

Did it really make that much difference that the bike lane that was about to be interrupted one block later was interrupted three car lengths earlier? Practically speaking, no. But am I mad as hell that some jackasses treated the bike lane as overflow car parking? You betcha. It's obscene.

E Street makes for an adequate alternative to Penn and while it was somewhat crowded, it was mostly fine. I rode behind a guy who wore a sweater that was the same color as his socks, both burgundy and I don't know if this kind of coordination is laudable or laughable. I can barely manage two socks that are the same color.

Columbus Circle again. Is my talking about riding through Columbus Circle just an example of my nouveau Columbusing it? I don't know. Uh oh. "Did I just swagger-jack nouveau Columbusing?"- Shit Self-Conscious Gentrifiers Say

Down Mass, around one park, and then around another and then down Kentucky to the grocery store. One Kentucky, I saw a guy who looked like late 90s Mel Gibson. Store was easy and then it was D to 15th. At 15th and Independence, a old guy rolled down his window and asked me how to get to New York... New York Avenue. I told him to make a right and get on 295 and that's where he said he wanted to go anyway, so I'm glad I could help. Though drivers asking bicyclists for directions always strikes me as odd. I know how to get a lot of places, but my driving directions tend to be terrible, mostly because I just give biking directions and those tend to be the opposite of fast for drivers.