Rides 4/14: Undisclosed Vocation

It rained. I went to the trees. Again. The trees are over.

over

I mean, the trees are still there, but PEAK BLOOM is over, so what's the point really? Is this a time to contemplate the ephemeral nature of life? No, not really. It was raining and I had to get to work.

Before I went to the trees (on my way there, really) I rode along the Washington Navy Yard Riverwalk, having arrived there via 11th Street, having ridden that underneath the highway bridges and past the highway on-ramp and past the Washington Navy Yard itself, or at least the outer buildings of it and past a coach bus parked in the bike lane. The Riverwalk prohibits bicycles or at least that's what the sign there says. Along the way I passed the Barry, a ship, that they will soon tug away from the yard. Did I stop to contemplate the ephemeral nature of ships? I did not. It was raining.

After you ride past the baseball park, you can take Potomac Avenue into the industrial parts of DC between the now baseball stadium and the still Fort McNair, at least so long as these industrial parts of still there, which likely won't be for much longer. This part of town is called Buzzard Point, presumably named after Apollo XI in honor of Edwin "Buzzard Point" Aldrin, but maybe not. Where they're planning to build the soccer stadium (and then, presumably other things) right now there's an empty lot and there's also a salvage yard where scrap comes to die and be reborn or at least crushed into cubes. Did I stop to contemplate the ephemeral nature of scrap metal? I did.

Ok, not really.

After the trees, it was the usual way, as it usually is.

On the way home, I found myself distracted by big thoughts about cities and free will and responsibility and trying to remember Third Eye Blind lyrics. "Mommy, who is that bike man mumble singing kind of popular songs from the late 90s and is he ok?" might have asked astute small children. When I wasn't incorrectly misremembering song lyrics I was thinking a question that went something like this: would downtown DC be better or worse if it had fewer people driving through it at rush hour? And if the answer is "much better" are we actually going to do something about it? I'm not one for self-improvement (see: my inability to make proper grownup food choices when left to my own devices), but I'd like to think that given the pretty straightforward "better or worse?" choice and having arrived at the verdict of "better," you could at least start making decisions that move you (or in this case, downtown DC) in the "better" direction. No need to complicate it. Do what makes it better.

It rained on the way home too.