3/17/15

Rides 3/27: slanted

I don't have much to offer. It was St. Patrick's Day, but nothing especially eventful happened. You know when eventful stuff with saints did happen? Late antiquity! So, if you want eventful saintly happenings don't waste your time reading bike blogs and go read some Peter Brown. Some assorted thoughts about Peter Brown:

1. His biography of Augustine of Hippo is amazing, even though it fails to mention how hungry, hungry he was. If Octavian found Rome brick and left it marble, Augustine gobbled up those marbles and that's pretty much how the classical period ended. Though really a lot of kid's games could be used to describe the fall of the western Roman empire. There's Sorry. There's Trouble. There's Chutes and Visigoths. Anyway. 

2. Cult of the Saints is better and smarter and more right about things than nearly all of the other things I've ever read. And so writerly. And pretty challenging. (I recommend reading the article first, then the book if you're inclined). It is deeply unlikely that you will be inclined. 

3. "Late Anitquity" isn't really a time period, but everyone says it is because Peter Brown said it is. That's influence! 

4. I heard Peter Brown speak once and he has a really delightful Irish accent. And today is St. Patrick's Day. So this whole digression makes sense and wasn't just a random flight of fancy. Sure. 

Regular way along the Mall and the river in and the 8 man sculls were out on the river, getting yelled at from motorboats by men with megaphones. The rowers were also being yelled at by someone in the boat, who like the man with the megaphone, also wasn't rowing. Basically, the takeaway is this: the yellers have a way better deal. 

Could there be a parking protected bike lane on Thomas Jefferson from K Street to the Canal? If DDOT still did these kinds of things, maybe! It'd only be halfway up to M, so I don't know if it'd really be 'worth' it. But, like RFK says, some people see the world of bike infrastructure as it is and ask why, but I see the world of bike infrastructure as it could be and sob gently realizing that it's still so far away. 

On the way home, I stopped at the fancy Safeway in Georgetown. It's a vastly better Safeway than my local Safeway. It has some kind of gourmet nut bar and not a gourmet nut bat like a Pay Day, but I gourmet nut bar where a professional nut monger can select for you, presumably with specialty legume tongs, from an assortment of gourmets nuts. It's truly a wonderful and I should stop there more often. 

Then it was East Georgetown to Pennsylvania to L to 15th and the regular way home, past lots of bicyclists out enjoying the mild March weather, the kind of mild March weather that's about to be subsumed into the crappy March weather that makes March the worst. I guess everyone will be out on bikes again in April. 

1 comment:

  1. Yup, March is the month for crap weather and people shouting at each other, apparently. I was waiting for a car to pass the other way so I could turn left and the driver shouted "*sshole!" out the window at me. I guess he doesn't like cyclists yielding the right-of-way to him or something. I didn't feel too bad b/c lots of times I have been an *sshole and haven't been yelled at, so for me it balances out; I'm not sure what it does for him.

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