12/11/14

Rides 12/11: Helicopter Droppings

Some victories from today's commute brought to you by social media and responsive local government:

First this:
And tonight, this:

Now, granted, I'm not just some average bike commuter. I'm a bike commuter with the 37th most popular local bike blog, so I've got huge pull. Basically, I tweet and the government is like 'whoa, that guy? Well, check the work orders and make sure that bike commute bloggers one through thirty six haven't asked us to do anything and then, like if you have time after lunch, maybe just, you know, indulge him? Clearly he has issues if he's interrupting his bike ride to tweet pictures of leaves." Anyway, once again, much thanks to the DC Department of Public Works. Thank you.

And another good thing from this morning:

What is this even a picture of? I'll tell you if you keep reading
This is a picture of a temporary walkway under construction along M Street just west of 20th Street. For the past few months (since summer at least, but probably even before then), the sidewalk has been closed and pedestrians have been instructed to cross the street rather than walk in the adjacent cycletrack. Pedestrians, being normal people who aren't total morons, rightly reject these instructions and walk in the cycletrack because that's much more expedient and a more obvious solution that crossing the street to only have to walk back half a block later. But, hopefully, with the construction of this covered walkway, the sidewalk will be reopened and the cycletrack will once again be free of pedestrians, allowing it to return to its natural state, blocked by idling delivery vans.

And a weird thing:

Baby on a gator
I'm not sure I'd want to advertise that I let my precious gator get climbed on by some dangerous baby, but I'm not a parent, so I don't know how these things work.

It is illegal to ride on a sidewalk in the downtown DC business district, wherever that is. There are places in the downtown DC business district where the sidewalk is 30 feet wide. Popular mixed-use trails in the DC area, shared by bicyclists and pedestrians by the thousands without (much) incident are not 30 feet wide. I present these statements with no intention of drawing any conclusions.

L Street to 15th and then down to Pennsylvania. I think there was a big event at the White House, but otherwise not that much traffic on 15th or Pennsylvania. There were no marchers today. I don't think I saw anyone protesting outside of any buildings either. Maybe later. Maybe not.

I try not to think too much about how I ride past the Capitol twice everyday and there's maybe only a handful of people inside who think I'm worth treating like nearly all other American citizens and solely because of my zipcode. I don't think the Founding Fathers even imagined a society with postal codes, much less postal-code based discrimination. When they wanted to send letters, they were probably just like 'hey, guy on horse. Take this to Tim. He lives like, I don't know, in some town in Maryland. Just ask along the way. No, there's no five digit numerical code associated with this 18th century market town. Why would there be? And how would that even help? Just go, ok."

As a rule, I won't pass a bicyclist in front of me if he or she is waiting for a red light. I'll just wait behind him or her and then I'll go when they go. It's a pretty simple maxim- 'defer to the judgment of the person in front of you because they got there first.' However, there is more room on the scroll and there's an important codicil that says that this rule can be completed ignored if the person in front of you has a phone out.

It's Friday tomorrow. One more day until weekend. And then weekend stuff, like _______. I just love underlining stuff on weekends.

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