Rides 7/10: is it dead yet?

And I guess Rides 7/11 too, but there are no rides today (or at least, no commutes) because I'm taking the day off work. I was going to take the opportunity to use the time off work to go on a longer bike ride, but I never quite got going with that plan and fell into the normal Friday morning routine.

Yesterday's commute started late and with a trip to the bike shop, where I swapped out a screw for a slightly larger screw. This larger screw fit into my fenders better and has since served to eliminate the clatter that's been true of my fenders since I installed them. Adios, clatter. I can't say that I'll miss you. From the shop, it was 7th and M and Wisconsin and Massachusetts and the usual route up the hill and to work. I was slow and it was uneventful.

On the ride home, I watched a man on Brompton (a Brompton with eggbeaters!) ride between a few cars and quite wrongly through an obviously red light and into the path of a turning driver coming from the other direction. The driver, cut off, stopped and the man rode the intersection through and the driver stuck his head out the window and called the man on the Bromtpon with the eggbeaters an asshole. I couldn't hear him but I could see the word form by the shape of his mouth. And then life went on.

I can't remember what happened to Brompton man, but he was gone before I ended up at the bottom of the hill on Massachusetts and I can't recall seeing any other bicyclists, at least going the same way I was going, until I got to L Street. There were a few bicyclists there and car traffic was backed up for blocks and blocks and blocks because I think a lane was closed somewhere around Vermont or 12th or a few blocks east of where I would eventually turn on 15th. I didn't call any of the drivers blocking the intersection of 15h and I any bad names, but I thought that it was unfortunate that many bicyclists and pedestrians had to uncofmrtably squeeze themselves through the small gap between the cars just in order to get from one sidewalk to the other. I bet people wish they didn't have to that, but I also bet that drivers wish they didn't have to sit in traffic and block the intersection. Of course, they didn't have to drive into the intersection and block the crosswalk, but they did. And then life went on.