Friday morning rides are notable because I stop for coffee in the middle of them. Standard route on the standard bike lanes, bike lanes that I've come to take for granted. However, nothing rouses me from this complacency like problems with them. On 15th:
I shall refrain from comment. I won't refrain from sarcastic hyperlinks.
After coffee, I rode up 17th accompanied by Jacques until he turned at M Street. I continued to and through Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont Circle (RASFDuP is the hot new acronym for a place that doesn't need one) and rode on Massachusetts behind an SUV with a license plate that hailed from New Jersey. I don't know from where the driver hailed, but he failed to notice that a garbage truck had blocked the right lane and failed the merge to the left and he stopped. I stopped behind him and my brakes made a terrible noise. I didn't stop short, but it was abrupt. From the bus stop to my right, the kind of young woman who talks to strangers at bus stops told the stranger next to her "And that's why I stopped biking to work." I said "It's ok." I wanted to say more. I didn't.
I followed the sidewalk up the hill after riding on the road for a while but construction on the sidewalk put me back into the road and I found myself stopped behind a truck that had stopped to unload the same construction materials that were blocking the sidewalk.
After an early dismissal from work, I rode in reverse direction from my morning commute, but turned right at 23rd instead of keeping on until Connecticut. I took 23rd to L and rode took the L Street Cycle Track across town. I did not make way for the ignorant, mostly because the ignorant somehow manage to avoid driving or parking in the bike lane. I'm sure that wasn't their intention, but just a happy circumstance of my riding in the lane early enough in the day. It was nice to have my last commute in the L Street Cycle Track of 2012 go well. I hope for equally good commutes in 2013 and maybe even ones westbound in an M Street Cycle Track.
You vote in the Washington Post 2012 DC Tweeps contest yet? You could. You don't even need to show ID. If you do plan to vote for local transit expert and you'd like to abandon good sense, you could even vote for me, @SharrowsDC. Unfortunately, unlike the other nominees, I lack actual expertise (@beyondDC, @StreetsblogDC, @transportgooru) or the platform from which to criticize the massive systemic failure that ruins the commutes of hundreds of thousands of people (@unsuckDCmetro), but every once in a while, I'll post a picture of a poodle, so that's gotta be good for something, right?
The rest of the ride was also fine or at least I don't remember it not being so (one of the hazards of writing two days later. Or maybe one of the benefits). I'm off work this week, so it's unlikely I'll ride to work just so I can write about it, but you never know. Ok, in this instance you do know: I'm not going to do that. But the blog might not remain fallow on the off-chance that someone submits a guest post or I'm otherwise overwhelmed by the desire to write something Very Important About Bike Commuting. Assuming neither of those things happen, I'll see you in the new year. Thank you so much for reading.
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