Ride In 1/30: Rupert of Hentzau

Hard to be too upset about a 60 degree day in January. Well, once you put aside your fears and consternation about drastic and catastrophic climate change. But, other than that, I can't say that I terribly minded (mound?) wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt instead of wearing all of my clothes and all of my jackets and all of my hats in a feeble and futile attempt to stay warm. It should rain this afternoon, and quite hard, and that will make things quite interesting and by interesting, I mean wet.

Officials patrolled Pennsylvania Avenue Bike Lanes Wednesday. Starting tomorrow, in the unlikely event that someone is actually caught making an illegal u-turn across Pennsylvania Avenue, that person will be issued a $100 fine. Many, many thanks to all of #bikeDC and especially Dave and Nicole for raising awareness of this issue and Charles and the many others for doing the down-and-dirty (?) political (?) work that helped bring about this clarification, which will hopefully  eventually help play a role in dissuading drivers from engaging in the dangerous practice of u-turns across the bike lanes. I also hope that DDOT et al  continue to investigate the deployment of physical barriers on the lane because you know, plastic sticks are cheaper to pay for than constant police presence.

All this talk of Penn and I didn't even take it today. I rode down Mass to Columbus Circle (bike lane isn't fully striped yet) and then up First and Florida and I moved over to ride into the crosswalk at North Capitol and I found myself stuck in that crosswalk rather than in the road on Florida Avenue. In trying to get out of the way of drivers, I just ended up putting myself out.

Got honked at around 7th and R and Rhode Island. It was my fault, apparently, that a driver found herself at a red light in the lane to my left when she wanted to be in the lane to my right (I was in the bike lane between the go straight lane and the right-turn lane). I moved forward a little, after looking back and blankly staring, (expressionlessness is my favorite facial expression) and she moved across the bike lane and turned right and all was well once again with her commute, I guess. My everlasting advice to all bike commuters is to try to forget the small stuff and forgive the pettiest of the small stuff. If I wanted to let minor annoyances ruin my day, I'd take the bus. And if I wanted to let miner annoyances ruin my day, that'd probably involve dead canaries and that's just terrible.

Oppose Maryland's Proposed Mandatory Helmet Law.

All sorts of cyclists on R Street, but only a few on Massachusetts and even most of them were riding in the other direction. It was a nice steady climb today, though maybe I just liked it more because it's hard to be mad about any part of your bike commute when you get to spend it outside on a day as nice and warm as this one. I guess you could get mad if you were chased by a woodchuck or something, but stuff like that never happens to me. Maybe tomorrow.