Ride In 7/14: I think it's over

Mice and elephants are both animals, so in that they're the same. It's annoying to have a mouse in your house and having a mouse in your house might startle you. It would be much more problematic to have an elephant in your house. In fact, you might not have much of a house left. The appearance of a mouse might also startle an elephant, but I don't think that means that a mouse is just as powerful as an elephant or as capable of causing as much destruction. Anyway, I bring these things up for absolutely no reason whatsoever and I thoroughly encourage you to never think about them ever again. But if you were to ignore my advice and were to continue to think about this whole mouse-elephant thing, maybe you'd think that it'd be crazy to react to a mouse scurrying across your kitchen floor and an elephant stampeding through your living room in the same way. Because these seem like different things. It's not to say that a mouse scurrying across your kitchen floor is great- and a mouse eating through your wires would also be pretty uncool- but I'm pretty sure if there was a mouse in my kitchen and an elephant in my living room, I probably wouldn't say my bigger problem was the mouse. But, whatever, they're both animals and they're both in your house, so that's pretty much a lot that they've got in common and it's your call because you're the one in the house with these animals and I'm just a guy who finds cumbersome and unwieldy metaphors more beautiful than the plumage of a budgerigar, which is an entirely different kind of animal.

Oppressive weather during the Monday morning commute is worse than oppressive weather on any other day or time. Oppressive weather is always more palatable in the afternoons rather than in the mornings and tends to be more bearable later in the week than at its head. I felt like a hot dog being cooked in a microwave. Nothing about it was natural. Glad I poked a few fork holes in myself before setting off.

My bike has been making an interesting noise lately. It's a high-pitched squeal and it's coming from the front brake. I think I'll be able to fix the problem later and I'll miss the high-pitched squeal if I'm able to rid myself of it. I really grow attached to the weird and unpleasant noises my bike makes and I'm sentimental enough to miss them when they go away. Maybe I should get a budgerigar. Speaking of mysterious things, I finally solved the mystery of the schmutz that would appear on the outside of my bike bag and it's from the security bollards from by the White House. They're greased (or something) or maybe it's just gunk that they accumulate when they go up and down and my bike handling being what it is, I frequently bang my bag against one of these bollards as I ride through and there's schmutz transference. For weeks, I could figure out where the dirtiness was coming from, but I noticed the grimy bollard the other day and finally put it together. Anyway, the security guards were putting up gates there after I rode through today and I'd like to believe it's because they're really looking out for the cleanliness of my bike bag. I heard that the class that WABA offers after City Cycling is called Securitized City Cycling and it teaches you how to navigate through the many obstacles and barriers associated with Protecting Our Freedom. I should maybe sign up.

M to Wisconsin to Volta and through Georgtown and Glover Park. Seemed like a lot fewer cars on the road today, so maybe all of the people who normally drive to work are still on vacation. The amount of car traffic doesn't normally affect me very much, but it's noticeable when it's not there. Like deafening silence.