Ride In 10/22: It's not the size of your Hadron Collider...

Everyone already knows that bike commuting is the best kind of commuting, but is it also the best kind of biking? I think yes. For example, you don't have to ride through mud or over treacherous rocks. Or across obscenely long distances or on some kind of death trap half pipe thing or in an oval because ovals are the worst. And you don't have to rush or hurry or both because it's a not timed. But even if it were and if you took a little extra Sudafed in the morning, you can't be stripped of your 7 best commute times. In conclusion, bike commuting is almost as good as cake and puppies.

This commute was especially pleasant. It's still the GLORY DAYS of October and it's a joy to be outside. Basically, it's like there's a guy with a boombox following me around blasting Beethoven's Ninth. It's that nice. In my mind, the guy who's doing that is on a skateboard, which is sort of weird because he's also (imagined) in the bike lane and you'd think that even in my own fantastical delusions I'd reserve the bike lane for bicyclists and yet it's not the case. There were a few other bicyclists in the bike lanes this morning and it was a diverse lot of law followers and lawbreakers (no jawbreakers though), split into no discernible demographic pattern. Young men on road bikes who stop at red lights? Old women on cruisers who roll right through them? Young women on bikeshare bikes who pass without warning? Guys in jeans who lurk behind you too closely and then race you once the light turn green? Yeah, the morning commute takes all sorts. It's a cornucopia of people just making up norms. A normucopia, if you will (which you shouldn't). It keeps things interesting, but sometimes I wish that bicyclist behavior was a bit more standardized. I wonder if it's that way in the more civilized parts of the bike world.

NO U TURNS

THRU BIKE LANES

This is new (and newly moved). It's at 7th and Pennsylvania. Apparently, there another sign by 13th, but I somehow missed it. I appreciate the effort to inform drivers to not do the obviously illegal thing that they were doing previously while completely aware of its illegality. It's a step in the right direction and I hope it's paired with a nice chianti aggressive police enforcement against drivers who do ignore the signs (or get on Pennsylvania Avenue in the 6 block gap between them). Unfortunately, and I'm not trying to be cynical, the I don't think we can "flashing sign" our way out of the persistent problem of illegal u-turns. Give us bollards the length of the cycle track. Please. Certainly if a flashing yellow road sign isn't offensive to the delicate aesthetic sensibilities of the Commission on Fine Arts, then stately, doric* bollards wouldn't be.
*By pretentiously referring to the plastic stanchions are doric, I'm hoping to curry favor with the aforementioned Commission of Fine Arts and their delicate aesthetic sensibilities. Given Washington's preponderance of ponderous Neoclassicism, the bollards by comparison are quite graceful. Note: I am talking out of my ass, in case that wasn't abundantly obvious.

Closed sidewalk at 15th by the Treasury. No accommodation for pedestrians. That sucks.

Literal government red tape. 

Sure, that meant that bunches of them were walking in the bike lane, but I hardly begrudge them for it. If they aren't given anywhere else to go and no clear instructions, they're of course going to walk in the cycle track. As a modus operandi, I encourage patience with those walking in the lanes and impatience with those who've forced them to do so.

So much bike traffic on 15th. It might be time to double-deck it. CaBis on the upper level, express traffic on the lower level.

There should be a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant called Clandestino's. This is apropos of nothing.

L Street cycle track construction starts tonight. I don't know if this is going to be a "game-changer" for DC bicycling, but I do know that there will be at least one newspaper article that cites "confusion" from drivers and include at least one suggestion that "nobody told us" this was going to happen. If this doesn't happen, I'll eat my hat. Or some pizza. I'm going to eat pizza in either case, but probably not tonight, though they idea of watching bike lane construction while nomming a pie sounds pretty sweet.

R Street through Dupont and up Massachusetts, which felt really good. I even got up out of seat and rode faster than was strictly necessary in order to maintain my forward momentum. It must be Monday. Not sure I'll be blogging tonight- going to see a movie (not Atlas Shrugged Part II, strangely enough) and the other movie patrons probably wouldn't like it if I had my typewriter out the whole time (I type by smashing my typewriter into my iPhone keyboard. It's inefficient, but I'm old school like that). Hasta tomorrow.