3/27/15

Rides 3/27: Tip Time

It's possible I've written about this before, but even if I have, it's worth repeating, because repeating is pretty much what I'm writing about. There are only so many different kinds of bad weather you can bike in and once you've biked in that bad weather more than once, you've pretty much biked in it all that you can and so when you're faced with it once again (in this case, the bad weather is a cold March rain), you just say to yourself that you've already been through this crap before and you shrug it off and you just do it again. Because you've done it before. I think we're two Marches now past the March when I rode everyday in the same exact weather: cold and raining. I don't know if bike commuting inures you to coping with bad weather (I certainly don't like it) but it at least familiarizes you with it to the point where you just put your head down and your hat on and you deal with it, much in the same way that a regular car commuter 'deals' with the perpetual traffic and other ills that beset him. It's just the way it is.

All that said, today was a day that I wished my office was closer. About 5 miles in to the ride, I wished I could Samantha Stevens my situation and with a nose crinkle, find myself at my desk without undergoing the pedaling needed to get me there. But then I'd probably have associated Endora problems and who wants that? DID YOU KNOW that Agnes Moorehead was the mother in Citizen Kane? I learned that in high school! Why yes, I was exorbitantly popular and well-adjusted back then, why do you ask?

Mostly the same way home as normal, except more time on L Street than usual to 11th and then from there on K Street, illegally until the Carnegie Library (it's one way and not the way I went. P.S.- DDOT, if you're reading, add a contraflow bike lane on K from 9th to 10th NW. The road is sufficiently wide and untrafficked to handle it) and then around the square and down K Street NW across town into NoMa, which is a place. I don't think there's a more incongruous street that K Street NW from 7th eastward, as it's been home to a significant amount of dense, tall-for-DC development and it's still treated like a 4-lane get-the-fuck-outta-town-ASAP arterial when it really could be something else entirely. My three favorite (and by favorite, I mean worst) streets that no longer come anywhere close to matching the kinds of streets they could be are K, NJ Avenue and Florida Avenue NE. Reality has yet to impinge upon these overbuilt roads and they remain host to far too many speeding cars at the expense of the many other ways that people might choose to use them. On K, though not today, I've had more than my fair share of close calls. Even if we don't rip out a lane (which we should), we could at least narrow them some. No one needs to drive that fast so close to that many people. But, you know, #waroncars and all that.

From there I took the contraflow bike lane on G NE over to the Argonaut, where I spent some time refreshing twitter and drinking a beer, then it was home down 14th Street. Both G and 14th were so full of potholes that perhaps it was instead the potholes that were full of 14th and G Street. Wear and tear. Where and tear? Everywhere.

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