Ride In 1/18: Thanks a Latte

It's Friday and for the past 52 Fridays, that has meant the gathering of various bike types at M.E. Swing Coffee shop on G Street. This gathering has subsequently been named Friday Coffee Club and subseuqentlier been hashtagged #fridaycoffeeclub (though the origin of the name and the hashtag might have been concurrent) and it has been the venue through which many of us who had only theretofore known each other digitally (through our various bike blogs and bike tweets and bike Etsys and bike slashfic) have come to know each other non-digitally (like "No Fingers" Bill!), or at least in person. And as enjoyable as it is to interact with bike people in virtual space, sharing coffee with them while standing around a marble high top (Ancient Greek sneakers?) isn't bad either. In fact, it's downright good. And it's made even better when there is anniversary cake, as there was today.

Ed, who along with Mary, had the crazy idea that #bikeDC people might like coffee and want to meet each other, baked this cake himself and out of humility put a Firehook bakery medallion on it. FUN FACT: After they rode Paris-Brest-Paris last year, Ed and Mary stayed in France to enroll in six-week intensive pastry study at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Unfortunately, they missed the first control. Their tandem stand mixer malfunctioned. And, maybe even better than cake, all attendees were given these cool pewter coffee buttons!:

FUN FACT: After Ed and Mary were kicked out of Le Cordon Bleu, they enrolled in an six-week intensive pewtersmithing program which they successfully completed! Not only do they have a dining room bike shop, their kitchen has been retrofitted for the smelting of various precious and non-precious metals!

Anyway, the cake was delicious and it was great to see everyone and if there's no cake at future meet-ups, I'm not coming. Friday Coffee and Cake Club or nothing. But in a slightly more serious note, I just want to say it's a pleasure for having gotten to meet so many of you in "real" life. I'll miss you all very much when I stop coming because Ed doesn't bring cake. #bikeDC is the best. It really is.

The route was there was pretty standard. Inaugural preparations have not yet closed all of the roads, but soon they will and it's a good thing that I'm a reclusive hermit who barely ever leaves his house because those closures will prove massively inconvenient. After coffee, which I had to leave slightly earlier than I wanted, I rode G Street to 24th, 24th to Penn, Penn to M and turned right on 29th. I thought I was on 28th. I was not on 28th. (There's a really bad Abbott and Costello Bit called "Who's on 29th?" and it's terrible, even with the appropriate context). I followed to the top of the hill, which was R Street and on R Street, I tried to wave a driver around me while I slowed at the intersection and this was hilariously ill-advised because he was trying to make a right turn and my slowing to wave him around, while well-intentioned, only succeeded to delaying him further. As they say, the bike commute to hell is paved with good intentions.

It was slow going up Wisconsin Avenue, but fast going down Massachusetts and I arrived at work by the time I wanted to be there and this kind of consistent arrival timing, in my experience, can best be achieved on bicycle rather than by taking public transportation or private car or pogo stick (you might pogo into quicksand). So, add predictable to cheap on the lists of reasons why it's good to bike to work. On the list of reasons why it's less good, add cold and wind, both of which were very much a factor today. But I'm only mentioning them now and not earlier because I sort of forgot how bad it was, so you can add "ephemeral" to the list of good reasons. I think ephemeral was one of the drugs that Lance used, as well.