Ride In 1/4: Arnolfini Wedding Crashers

This was a difficult bike commute to start because the alternative to starting it involved sleeping, flannel sheets, a space heater and two snuggling dogs. The first three days after a long break have proven especially rough. I'm relying on the weekend to help reset my normalcy clock and I hope that by Monday I'll be ready once again to approach work and the bike commute with my usual level of vigor, a vigor that's ever slightly more energetic than my stupor of this week. Stupid stupor.

Like bikes? Like maps? You'll like this. Like bikes? Like lazy tv journalism? You'll like this. Like bikes? Like Mallomars? I think they're just ok. I was surprised to learn that you can purchase Mallomars through amazon.com and I was pleased to see that they did not garner even one one-star review. They, a box of cookies mind you, did receive this two-star review:

Although this item did taste okay, the real fact is one 8 ounce package is only 18 cookies. I thought this was overpriced and not a good value. I will not be purchasing this again.


Currently, a pack of 3 8 oz. boxes retails for $23 (!). Thus concludes the first-ever edition of Tales From the Mallomarrows. (When said in the voice of the priest from Princess Bride, "mallomarrows" sounds like the name of a county in historical Hungary)

Well, this post seems to have gone off the rails earlier than usual.

I followed East Capitol to the Capitol than Pennsylvania Avenue to Pennsylvania 15th Street before following the cycle track for a little. I don't know when they'll close off the area in front of the White House but it's becoming increasingly cramped and soon with be unsafe for the swift passage of bicyclists. I'd recommend a detour but there aren't any that won't take you many blocks out of your way. I might just be better to be less swift.

After coffee, which a jolly gathering as usual, I rode G to 18th and then picked my way past commuter buses up the little hill from Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street and down the little hill to L Street, where I crossed the cycle track. This is a very small sample size, but I can't say for sure that I've ever seen another bike commuter using the cycle track when I've ridden uptown  across it. Maybe in springtime. Maybe when #mstreetcycletrack is done and people know that they'll be able to get back west.

I screwed up getting around Dupont Circle and rode counterclockwise on the sidewalk and just made a mess of the whole thing. I was unwilling to wait to cross into the circle and I should've just been more patient because the sidewalk around Dupont Circle, with it's many curb cuts and slip lanes, is not conducive in any way to bicycling.

Got a nice nasty glare from a driver who was mad that she had to pass me within a foot. I'm also sorry that there was a slow dump truck in the left lane, "forcing" you to squeeze between it and me. I wasn't overly perturbed, but as a result, I did start thinking abut cars in the city (a movie in which a computer-animated Sarah Jessica Parker finds the true means of friendship, family and expensive shoes?) and whether, if policymakers so chose (which they won't because this isn't really plausible or fair), driving could be made so painful and agonizingly awful that people would switch to another way of getting around. Basically, where's the pain threshold for car commuters?  It's apparently not the high cost of gas or the current level of traffic, which is an abysmal timesuck. I concluded, during the rest of my time biking up Massachusetts at least, that I couldn't think of a "stick-only" approach to getting people out of their cars and they'd need to be won over over with carrots. Maybe I will buy a bag of baby carrots and bike out to the suburbs to see how that goes.