You may honk, sir, but it will fall on deaf ears. I simply do not care, especially if you're honking it me for having left the bike lane on account of a car being parked within it. Like many people on the political left, I know just enough about Marxism to badly misstate and fumblingly misuse its precepts for the purpose of overwrough polemics and I so state that the history of all hitherto existing commutes is a history of mode struggle and class solidarity sometimes means that you're just going to have to deal with my riding in front of you for like 3 seconds to get around your fellow motorists. Or something like that. It's in the back of Capital, like in one of the later chapters. Maybe in a footnote. Definitely something in there about bikes and cars. Almost certain.
Penn to 11th and I rode around some construction equipment between H Street (not that H Street) and New York Avenue and then past Massachusetts and Rhode Island and later on in the ride across Vermont on R and then eventually across Connecticut before regaining Massachusetts and up the hill. That's a goodly amount of states.
Ever try to compose a sonnet while riding your bike? It's hard! My pentameter per kilometer ratio is very low. Is that something I can track on Strava?
For the ride home, I thought about taking the Capital Crescent Trail, but left work closer to the usual closing time than I thought I would and I opted for the more direct route home via the streets. Were the streets mean? I'd say they were about average and I managed to keep my mode, a bicycle, out of the median.
Usual route home and the L Street Cycle Track proved lovely and somewhat crowded and I rode later on to 15th where I encountered the first two of many runners who found themselves running in the bike lane. I call these people zombie joggers because they have glassy eyes and there's nothing going on behind them. BRAINS, they turn off instead of eating. And they refuse to acknowledge my glower in any real way and I find this infuriating. I yield the remainder of my time, like a Senator or something, to this screed about running in the bike lane:
It is simply unacceptable in any circumstance. More than unacceptable, it imperils the runner and it imperils the bicyclist. It is selfish and anti-social and in poor taste. There is simply no excuse that I will abide for it. It is also illegal, if you care about that sort of stuff. Sure, it may be more convenient than running on the sidewalk, but maybe it's more convenient for me to bike on the highway and yet I don't think that convenience is the appropriate means by which to make this judgment. Plenty of things are convenient and still quite wrong. For example, Hot Pockets.Also, since that wasn't very super screedy or especially long, I unyield the remainder of my time back to myself (SOMEONE CHECK ROBERT'S RULES TO SEE IF I CAN DO THIS) to tell you some other stuff:
- My cycling cap was in my work bag and I spilled coffee in that work bag (stupid putting mug in bag without checking to see if it's closed) and it soaked into the cap, but I wrung the cap out of the sink and wore the cap anyway. From now on, schoolyard bullies will call me "java hair" in a taunting way.
- On Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw a woman hunched over in the process of having just done some adjustments to her bike. I asked if she was ok and she responded "yeah" and that her "chain fell off." She had the dirty hands to prove that she got it back on. Been there, done that.
- A little later on Penn, I saw another rider with her bike's kickstand fully extended in the downward position. I yelled "Your kickstand is done!" but I don't think she heard me. Never forget your kickstand.
Now I've reached the end. After arriving home, I changed and biked back to dinner, where I met the Official Wife and we biked home together. Huzzah for more biking.
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