2/27/15

Rides 2/27: inches and feet

Goodbye, February. You're like the Columbus of months and I am the Roth of local bike bloggers, except not in any way whatsoever. Next commute is March and March is, after April (though before, April, really), one of the cruelest months for bike commuting, so looking back on February, including this morning's ride, I think we can say at least it was consistent. Consistently awful. But at least the month was short. Short like a Roth short story.

Let us record today: Short ride to coffee and from coffee down through FoBo and up through Georgetown and whatever alleged neighborhoods are north of Georgetown. In the most basic typology of DC, everything west of the park (the park being Rock Creek, as if you didn't know) is Georgetown, either Georgetown proper or some variant of Georgetown with a cardinal direction and if it's not Georgetown, it's either Arlington or Maryland as you've found yourself no longer in the District. Factually, this is not a true assertion, but it's much easier to explain DC this way. I think also that Georgetonians would like this, as it's aggrandizing. This morning, riding up Wisco, a street in Georgetown Georgetown (which is what we call the core part of Georgetown) I noticed that opposite the block with the CVS and maybe the half a block before and the half a block after, there are a lot of stores that sell men's suits and I couldn't help but wonder how they fare, given how men don't wear suits as much anymore. It amazes me that so many distinct suit shoppes can remain in business, but perhaps I misunderstand the market for suits and really, it's quite thriving and there's nothing dandies and fops and Beau Brummell-types enjoy more than traipsing up Wisco during business hours frequenting the various suiteries there along. But again, I could be mistaken and it might be just a soon-to-be barren retail strip that valiantly rages against the dying of the light. Beats me. I'm just a bike commuter.

We're nearly in the post-snow phase of winter and it really couldn't come sooner.

Sometimes on 21st Street on the way home, and for reasons I can't explain, a driver will just stop in the middle of the block. It's not at a stop sign or a red light or anything. It's driver catatonia and it's strange. And as a bicyclist, I just ride around him and then I count one Mississippi and two Mississippi but before I get to three Mississippi or maybe just right afterwards is the first honk of the driver stuck behind him, he of the catatonia. It's happened more than once, so I suspect there's some kind of anti-driver nefariousness going on or maybe the people along the block just like calling for Ubers and so the Ubers arrive and so the Ubers wait, blocking as much of the lane as a car can block, but not blocking so much that a bicyclist can't pass.

L to 15th to Penn and there are faster ways home and I should take them, but I don't. I think I like riding past the outskirts of the White House complex and then past the JAWB and tonight, at least, past a wide variety of passive police presence (I suspect some protest was planned for this evening?) and along the few blocks in putative cycletrack instead of along 11th and it's not-so-fun bike lane. The roads were salty.

I didn't go home right away, but to the Argonaut, a restaurant, which is where Benning Road meets H and Maryland Avenue meets 14th Street and I rode up Maryland Avenue, which is a lovely fin-de-siecle century grand boulevard that has been bastardized to meet mid- and late- 20th century LOS, or at least that's how drivers see it and so I saw drivers, more than one, pass me within a foot because WE MUST DRIVE OUR CARS HOME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE and with little regard to the people on the road not attempting to do the same. At least only one of the few drivers that passed me within a foot was on the phone. Progress, I guess.

Then, after Argo, it was 14th home and then I was home. Bon weekend, everybody. See you in March.

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