Tales From The Sharrows: Rides 3/6: mixed bag of mixed nuts

There was a 2 hour delay. This allowed for the clearing of ice and snow from some roads (and some parts of roads), but didn't lead to the clearing of ice from all roads. It's March and we're promised warmer temperatures soon and I think the prevailing attitude towards this snowstorm was 'fuck it. why bother?' We have the snow equivalent of Senioritis. When is graduation again? Parts of my route were somewhat bikeable, other parts, including Pennsylvania Avenue, were very bikeable, being completely cleared, and other parts barely bikeable, but not so unbikeable that I would be dissuaded from trying.

Also complicating this bike commute, though really not by much, was my finding my handlebars no longer square, but instead jilted off to one side. This undoubtedly occurred when I wiped out biking home from the ballyhooed illegal sledding on Capitol Hill extravaganza the day before. I didn't noticed that there was anything wrong with the bike then since I managed to fall down only a block or two from home, but I did notice how off the bars were about 5 minutes into my Friday commute. It's a curious sensation to have your handlebars and wheels not align, but not an altogether unpleasant one. Did I necessarily need the extra degree of difficulty when already trying to cope with the snow and ice? Well, no. Did I get the bars adjusted back to square before getting into work? Yes and thank you Bicycle Pro Shop. I guess I could've done it myself, but bike mechanics have a much more precise view of angles than I do and I'm fairly confident that had I tried to relatively minor adjustment, not only would have I failed at righting my bars, but also would have inadvertently set them aflame. I don't know how that would've happened, but it probably would've happened.

There was a three person contingent at a rump Friday Coffee Club at Swings. With school's closed and workplaces starting at varied schedules and the roads remaining an icy mess, that we even achieved a triad was an achievement. After coffee was the usual trip through FoBo and up to Georgetown by making the terrible choice of riding along the unplowed Rock Creek Trail to M Street to the bike shop and then up the mostly incompletely plowed streets to work. Funnily enough, the parts of the street that had been exposed from underneath the ice from the tire tracks of passing cars and trucks included a the outer stripe of the bike lane and the foot right inside that outer stripe. This meant that I was riding in the bike lane and also riding where drivers most wanted to be.

If you can't take 5 minutes to brush all the snow off your car, you are a bad person. I'm pretty ok asserting this way over-generalized bold and judgy assertion. It's just wildly unacceptable.

Ride home down Massachusetts Avenue and it's not so nice to to see so many potholes in bloom. 21st to Pennsylvania Avenue again and then Pennsylvania Avenue again and then up the House side of the Capitol, where kids sledded for a second day in a row. Luckily these children will be saved from a life of crime by the snow melting and once again the grassy hill in front of the Capitol will return to its natural state, a wasted expanse of nothingness made inhospitable to people from a lack of programming and over-securitization to guard against threats wholly unlikely to manifest.

Some pictures and captions: