Rides 8/31

Goodbye August. You're a weird month. You know why.

It's time to ban right turns on red. It's time to ban them because they are bad and it's time to ban them because they encourage infringement into crosswalks and this insults the dignity of the pedestrian at least and imperils their safety at most. It's time to ban them everywhere. And it won't matter given the number of people who think nothing on turning on red when signs tell them not to. 4 drivers in 5 minutes. I don't want to harp on about lawbreaking because I think it's mostly a fruitless discussion that ends in a lot of finger-pointing and a lot of bad comparisons and false equivalence. What I do know about laws and law following is this: there is no one who thinks that the person who drives under the speed limit in the left left of the highway should be exalted as a paragon of virtue and rightness. The 'everyone should follow all the laws all the time' crowd remind me a lot of biblical literalists. It's all true, even the contradictions, until we need to make exceptions.

This was a long day at work, but the bike commutes on both ends were pleasurable in spite of that or because of that (I don't know which). The morning was sweatier than I wanted it to be, but the evening was kind. Both rides saw a pleasant sensation in my legs when riding uphill. It wasn't a burn exactly, but a kind of physiologic feedback that evoked if not pleasure at least contentedness. I wonder to what extent the experience of bicycling opens me to feelings that I wouldn't otherwise arrive at during the course of my regular day and I suspect it's a few. Some of these are frustration, but most of these feelings are quite good ones and I'm grateful for them.

I haven't been wearing a helmet most of the summer. I wonder if I'll put one back on in the fall.

There's a sign painted on someone's garage and it's blue and pink and says "BEST" and "WORST" and there's a bar chart with numbers and I'm sure this has been written about previously and I'm one google search away from knowing more about it, but I pass it everyday on the ride home on 19th Street and I wonder if I should actually finally do that google search and learn more about what I'm looking at or just allow myself to live with the mystery. It's very gnostic, this best and worst sign, and the baby blue and bright pink are the colors of the infant room's of parents of an earlier generation, and the whole thing is quite curious. I don't know what possesses someone to paint blue and pink bar charts on their garage and to label those bar charts best and worst, but I can only assume it's good motives and not craziness.

The light at Florida and 19th is too long. At least the red light. I don't know if the green light is too long because I'm normally the first to go through the intersection.