Ride In and Ride Home 1/10: Alpo Chino

Morning: A Street, 15th Stree SE t, East Capitol, Pennsylvania Avenue, 15th Street NW (symmetry), Pennsylvania Avenue (symmetry?), H Street NW and 23rd Street NW. There I met the Official Wife and we talked together to Whole Foods, where we shopped for fancy pasta (worth it), fancy canned tomatoes (not worth it) and fancy tomato paste (not totally sure) and we didn't get fancy bread. Afterwords, I rode across New Hampshire Avenue to 24th Street and followed 24th to M and M to 28th and I rode up the hill on 28th through the eastern end of Georgetown, where the car traffic was thick and the pedestrian smiling was wry and I'm not sure where there was wry pedestrian smiling. At the corner of 28th and P is Stachowski's, which is a place I want to go because I have never been and by all accounts is a great place with a great sandwich, though it was open when I rode by this morning, but I saw some people in the back, preparing for a day of making great sandwiches. I stayed on 28th and kept riding up the hill until both the hill and 28th Street stop at Oak Hill Cemetery and there's a right angle for a left turn and I turned left and kept going on R Street, where I waved the driver behind me in front of me, because I could and there was room and I passed Dumbarton Oaks where there are rooms full of antiquities. Wisconsin Avenue was next and there was more hill and a bus and another bus and it was busy and bus-y, but there was still room for me, mostly because I took it, much as Mr. Dumbarton took his antiquities. Pilfering cultural heritage was Bliss, as was finding myself with plenty of room and fresh enough legs to climb the hill and make it to work, where there was work to be done (some of it not at work, but in Tysons, where I did not bike) and then the day was over and I rode home.

Evening: Some advice for President Obama, courtesy of some very clever liberal PAC with deep connections in DDOT, I bet.

21st and New Hampshire

I rode behind a guy on a CaBi on L Street and he was one of those angry bicyclists, mad at the word for reasons that seemed utterly baffling. He yelled at drivers. He yelled at pedestrians. He probably would've yelled at me, had he known I was behind him. I think that bicyclists, in many cases, can have some legitimate grievances, but I certainly didn't see them. Angry yelling, angry honking, angry birds. There's just too much anger. Maybe we should wage a "war on anger," but with equanimity.

11th Street to E Street and around the freshly paved Columbus Circle. Smooth like butter, though I've never biked through butter.

I stopped at Schneider's and I had to lock my bike to a chain that connected two poles of a sort of crappy fence. There was no bike parking. I mean, why would a group that's portrayed as rich, effete europhilic snobs ever want to do something as humdrum and lowbrow as shop for fancy and expensive imported wines? When it comes to bike parking, I'm a "see something, say something" sort of person. When I bought my wine, I asked the woman behind the counter if they had bike parking. She said they used to and then something happened and now most people lock their bikes to the fence-like place where I locked mine. I told her that they should really get some bike parking and if they did "I would come here, like, all of the time. I promise." She said that she would tell "them," but I'm not sure that's going to happen. Doesn't she know that I'm the 37th most popular wine lush bike blogger in all of Washington and my requests are not to be ignored? I should organize a boycott of wine shops with no bike parking. Oenophiles shall overcome.

After the wine, came bread (Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone also suggests you KEEP LEFT) and this was at the Spring Mill Bakery on Barracks Row and I rode there from Massachusetts to 7th Street to Pennsylvania to 8th Street. I bought two loaves and bread and zero loaves of anything else. Then it was G Street SE to 11th and I saw Adam, whom you might remember from the other times I've mentioned seeing him, and then it was back around Lincoln Park and to A Street SE and home.