Rides 7/14

We makes strange bike commute decisions sometimes and by we, I mean me, but I'm implicating both of us (us, being me and you, the reader) so as to make myself not seem like the only strange one. My decision today was to ride to work (this is the not strange part) and then to ride home (also, not that strange. At this point you might be wondering what strange thing happened? Was I wearing a hat made of banana peels? Did I ride while singing selected arias from La Traviata? No, neither of those) but the strange part (thank you for your patience. We're so close!) was to do the riding home within about an after of the riding in. Faced with a much more open work day than expected and the onerous task of having to (still) keep emptying the house and moving boxes of stuff a few miles across town, I declared an impromptu post-arrival vacation day and set off for home after having barely arrived at work. I have few regrets as far as that decision goes (except for not wearing a banana hat, which sounds quite...appealing) and it was another productive day of schlepping boxes and I'm nearly done with the entire enterprise, like at the end of a Star Trek movie.

The ride in was, what I can now say after four of them, pretty standard and the ride home saw me taking Mass Ave down the hill. That was the old standard and I wondered how it would compare to the new route and it was fine and familiar, but felt longer. I think I won't do that anymore, which is great, because the intersection of Mass and the entrance to Rock Creek remains one of the places I fear most. It's just one of those stretches of road where you feel so *exposed* and where the margin dwindles and one bad twitch from you or someone else can see you very quickly into a spot of bother. It can also see you into the back of a minivan, which was my fate at the intersection a few years back (thankfully with very little harm to me or the bike.) Anyway, five years of harrow is plenty (don't most graduate in four?) and I look forward to the coming years of trepidation and vulnerability at Connecitcut and Calvert, my new favorite least favorite intersection. Huzzah.