Rides 1/29 and 1/30 and Four Years of Something Called Tales from the Sharrows

There are no bad bike commutes, just good bike commutes that you're not having at the moment. I don't know. I think about this a lot. When things are shit, when drivers are WTF-ing every which way, where it's cold and you inhale salty smog and there's rain and you ride through mud and muck and when your legs disagree with you and when you leave the house without lunch or your lunch container isn't closed and you get soup on your work shirt and when a bus driver honks at you for no reason at all and when there's yet still more driver WTFs and another bicyclist cuts you off for no reason and you say 'dick' and he turns around and you avert his glance because you don't want to deal with the repercussions of calling someone a dick and thankfully he lets it go, maybe because you mumbled it quietly enough and he heard you say something but didn't know what, or when you're cut off by some driver trying to change lanes only to realize halfway through that the lane ahead is blocked by a parked car and there's no way to get by that car and yet he's still blocking your way and you put your left foot down and tilt your heard to the right and give a quizzical look that only barely masks the exasperated 'come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn' you're thinking and when things are like this all at once and all in the period of fifty something minutes and eight something miles, just remember that there are no bad bike commutes, just a good bike commute that you're not having at the moment. Yeah, that works. Sure.

Yesterday was one of those good bike commutes I wasn't having, but this was today. Today was better. Today was great, actually. It was a little cold and the afternoon was a little gusty, but those are hardly things to complain about. It was Friday and there's a lot to like about that.  One of the top few days of the week. There was coffee and I shared the ride most of the way from coffee to work with Rudi (thanks Rudi! Sorry for dropping you with my blinding speed! After all, I was riding a Brompton) and on the way home, I saw not a single person throw any rotten vegetables at me so that's some good news. Truth be told, I'm not sure anyone has every thrown rotting foodstuffs at me during a bike commute and for that I'm immensely grateful. I just hate to see food wasted, you know? (As someone in a 1980s sitcom might have said 'there are kids in Africa who would just love to throw that food at bike commuters, so eat your dinner." 1980s sitcoms were, and are, to a large extent, deeply problematic. As are 70s and 90s sitcoms. And ones from both before and after those decades. It's just a troubling format.)

So that's that.

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Tomorrow marks four years since the beginning of this blog in this format. Prior to 1/31/11, it wasn't called Tales From The Sharrows and it wasn't about bike commuting. It was a blog about tea cups, in which I would rank tea cups on a scale of daintiness. It was a very popular blog and remunerative, but after a while, I just had to do something different. It was just too much pressure and the daily struggle of finding new ways to qualify the daintiness of tea cups ("very dainty," "rather dainty," "exorbitantly dainty," "suspiciously dainty"- I'm not even through a week and I'm nearly out of adverbs) was simply to much to bear, so I shucked it off and tried something new. And that was four years ago and while I've on more than one occasion heard the siren song of once more assessing the daintiness of tea cups and writing about my justification for that assessment at some length, I've yet to manage to shuck off the bike commuter blog thing and I don't plan to shuck it off for a little while yet.

For anyone who has been around since the beginning, I'm sorry. I should've intervened a long time ago. If you're new here, please look for the scratching from former inmates on the prison walls. Check behind the movie posters- there might be an escape tunnel. No promises though.

I sincerely thank everyone and anyone who has ever read Tales From The Sharrows. I've been fortunate to meet many of you and even more fortunate to avoid the lot of you. I will reply to your angry letters in the order received. Yours first, Mom. I promise.

Rides 1/26, 1/27, 1/28: ketchup

I'm behind. Let's truncate. 

Monday- I was expecting snow (wrongly) and there wasn't any. There might have been rain or ice rain. I took the Ogre, which is a perfect bike, for commuting and presumably other things that I don't ever do with it. What would only make it more perfect is a SON dynamo hub up front and a Rohloff in the back, but then I'd need to drop out of life for two years and ride around the world like the people sometimes featured on the Brooks (saddlery of Birmingham) blog. And who has the time to take two years to ride around the world? I have tv to catch up on! 

Tuesday- I rode Bikeshare. I had to report to jury duty. I was not selected to serve on a jury (I wasn't even asked. I was called into a room, say there, sent away, returned, sat again, was sent to lunch, returned and then was sent home. Others, presumably less partial than me [or at least with less fortunate seating arrangements], were chose and they'll have the opportunity to take Bikeshare back to the courthouse for the next few weeks. This was my first jury service in DC (or anywhere) and for what it was, I quite enjoyed it. 

Today- Cross Check on the canal towpath. I was hoping to shred some snow, but was gifted intermittent ice patches instead. I avoided some and cracked others and skidded but once. It was a good time, about which my enthusiasm was only tempered when realizing upon taking a sip from the thermos that sat in my bottle cage during the ride, that sand from the path had formed a nice patina about the rim and was transferred, along with coffee, to my lips upon first sip. 

Lots on mansions in the woodsier hollows behind Loughboro Road. Grand houses make for great distractions on bike commutes and in some ways make the trip seem faster. "Only 3 houses to the top of the hill!" whereas in paltrier neighborhoods, where the millionaires are only petit millionaires, there would be 8.

The ride home was through Georgetown. A clickbait-y headline would tell you about this one weird trick to pass 50 cars stuck in traffic, but then the article would just be a picture of a guy on a bike. The traffic remained nutso (a technical term) on Pennsylvania through Washington Circle and then until 17. Each intersection was blocked by other drivers who had failed to get through on account of other drivers who couldn't get through the following intersection on account of other drivers blocked by other drivers blocked by other drivers all the way to Chantilly or wherever these unfortunate people who choose to engage in this daily madness live. I regularly make bad decisions, but I'm glad that trying to commute by car through DC isn't one of them. 

Rides 1/23: The First Few Friday Coffee Clubs

Yesterday was the third birthday (anniversary?) of Friday Coffee Club, the informal weekly gathering of #bikeDC types at M.E. Swing Coffee Company, a shop and roastery in the parlance of terrible newswriting everywhere 'just blocks from the White House.' (It actually is just a block from the White House, so unlike most of the times when this geographical construction is deployed, this description is actually accurate). It's to remember the beginnings of Friday Coffee Club, but a past version of me happened to have been around during those beginnings and that past version of me happened to be writing the 19th best local bike commuter blog at the time (it's slipped 18 places since in a much more competitive marketplace) and so here are some links to those first few meetings, including the first time I met in person MG, the coffeneur.

Proto-coffee club

"I really like the idea of a bicycle commuter morning coffee club. It seems so civilized."

FCC 1 (which I actually didn't write about, but here's the official 'it happened' tweet by Felkerino)  

FCC 2. And this explanation

Friday has come to mean one thing recently. Well, one thing other than riding to work in jeans. It's #bikeDCcommutercofeemeetupfuntimebreakfastifyouwantbecausetheyalsoservesomepastriesbutivenevergottenoneohyeahforgottomentionthatthisisatswingscoffeeandyoushouldcomenextweektoo (we're still working on the official hashtag). Anyway, I was alerted to this Friday "tradition" by friends of the blog and #bikeDC stalwarts Ed and Mary. Here's how it works: bike (or walk or take the bus or drive, but definitely don't pogo) to Swing's Coffee around 8. Go inside, order coffee, drink coffee and talk other people who have biked (or walked) there. It's not very complicated. Today's very special guest was none other than local businessman and bike shop owner, Erik from Bicycle Space (There's not like an actual guest list or a booker or anything. It's just kinda who shows up, but still, cool people show up). Also, it was very nice to meet Zoe this morning and previously Lisa and previously-er Eric and Lane, in case I haven't mentioned that I had met them through Friday morning coffee club or whatever we want to call this.

FCC 3, by which the gathering already had 'usuals'

And so on and so on for three years. I could sing the praises of bikes and coffee all day- that's pretty easy. But I tend to be kind of a introvert and a bit of homebody and not especially social, so for me Friday Coffee Club has become so much more than just about bikes and coffee. It's about friendship. And yes, that's hokey as all get out but I don't care. Also, every year on the anniversary, there's cake, so it's about friendship and yearly cake. And that's nothing to hold your nose up at. Not at all.

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Rides were fine. Frozen rain on the way home. It stings your face, but otherwise, it didn't mess up the roads and you can deal with a slightly stinging face better than you can impassable roads. That's pretty much all I've got. Have a great weekend.

Rides 1/22: Thursday All Day

Pretty standard day. This is default winter. This is baseline winter.  It's fine now, with the memory of far worse days barely faded, but come March, when these kinds of days linger, I'll be quite sick of default winter and desperately craving default spring. Default spring is the best. Default spring is also the name of a generic Slinky you can buy at the dollar store. This is not a good investment. It will break the first time you send it down the stairs. You will cry. You shouldn't cry because you should've known that this is what you were getting when you bought a generic Slinky at the dollar store. Do not send your generic slinky from the dollar store down the stairs. I repeat: do not do this. It will not work out well. Also, there's no equivalent of the Slinky song for default spring. I'm also realizing now that a slinky isn't really a spring but I'm not deleting anything I've written so far. I'm going to own it.

As you might've gleaned from the opening paragraph, not too much special in this bike commute. I took the Mall route and it was fine. Fineness is the default state of commutes on default winter days. Nothing wrong with fineness.

Ever think you're going to catch up to another bike commuter, but instead he just pulls further and further away and you look down at your legs and then again up at him and then down at your legs again and then back up at him and he's just a dot on the horizon and then you don't even bother looking down at your legs again because what's even the point? This happened on the hill up Massachusetts between Wisco and Ward Circle. Goodbye, dot on the horizon. I barely knew thee.

[This is the part of the blog post where I've run out of thing to write and am now checking my phone for pictures I might've taken. Hey look, here's one. Oh yeah, I remember this. Funny. Well, sort of]

Hey look at this guy's license plate:

the official porshe of the canadian ambassador to the united states? 

I spent much of the ride uphill trying to think of a dumb joke and this is the dumbest one I could muster: Those who can, uck. That's who can't... don't uck?

Hill's not long enough, I guess.

I saw this on the ride home:

It's the bike rack out front of the Bike Rack. It's actually a bike corral. A bike corral reef? Anyway, this is a big deal because they removed two (2!) whole car parking spaces to accommodate a bunch of bike parking spaces and basically, how dare they! This is worse than ______________________ [insert worst thing ever]. Expect massive disinvestment from the 14th Street/Logan Circle area. Neighborhood's ruined. Game's over.

I did ride down 14th Street, which was a pleasure. Haven't wanted to ride it lately, but now that I've got stupid big (41) tires on the Cross Check, I finally feel equipped for extreme riding on difficult terrain. This difficult terrain includes mud, sand, rocks, gravel and 14th Street.

L to 11th and the traffic was mighty bad. June level tour buses in July. There was a march today and a crucial element of marching in DC is getting back on your bus afterwards because walking places without political purposes is just the worst.

I'll probably blog about the litter (the trash kind, not the kitten kind) tomorrow, so I'll spare you of that tonight. Quick up the hill and then I ran into Dave at Lincoln Park and we shared a few blocks as I "rudolph-ed" him (whose front light burnt out). We talked. It was nice to catch up.

Rides 1/21: some way, but then a different way

I thought that maybe I'd be working from home today, but that didn't happen and I found myself riding to work maybe an hour later than normal and I took the long way by Union Station and up First Street and the Met Branch Trail. First Street, a work in progress, but with much promise upon completion, hasn't quite progressed to the part where it's noticeably different from bicyclists. There are some no parking signs and that kinda makes the road more passable, or would, were not the lane in the opposite direction blocked by construction equipment. Anyway, I shouldn't be surprised (or even bummed about this) because it's a 6 month project and we're maybe even barely over with month one.

Another promising work in progress (since 1970 something, I think) is the Metropolitan Branch Trail and the infill along the trail continues with the construction of more buildings, most of which are housing. This one, by New York Avenue, was finished recently.

And this building has next to it some kind of semi-private-but-maybe-public dog park!

What I like about this is that dogs have a place to play and also dogs can provide vital 'eyes on the street' that Jane Jacobs wrote about, though maybe not in reference to dogs. I can't remember. Any more activity along the trail front is better and while I'm not sure that it will ever be a really active and dynamic area ('Hey Fido, let's hang out by the railroad tracks!'), this is a massive improvement. What I also really, really, really liked is that access to the trail (or access to the dog park from the trail) was unimpeded by any gate, latch or door. There was just a gap in the fence and a walkway through it. So much of the tension in the city is over what's public and what's private and making things private that should be public (or insisting that they are, when they aren't) and it's nice to see the dismantling of any #CONFUSION that could arise from a gate blocking the walkway to the dog park from the trail.

I took R Street across town to Dupont and rode Massachusetts up the hill to work. Here's a picture of a statue of Nelson Mandela that someone saw fit to adorn with a scarf.

you can't spell scarf without r.s.a. 

I like the gesture. There was no scarf on the Winston Churchill statue across the way, nor any kind of neck wear, perhaps on account of his lack of neck, on the Khalil Gibran 'bust?' in the park next to the South African embassy.

 During the day, this happened:

some snow, but not a lot

But it was all gone from the roads by the time I rode home. They were wet, but there wasn't any ice or even slush. Just wet roads and there was very little issue in managing them, aside from the usual inattentive driver and bus driver without good spatial reasoning. I followed a driver who's pickup truck had at least 6 (that I saw) Carolina Panthers decals on its rear. You don't expect to see a lot of amazing things on your bike commute, but encountering the world's most virulent Carolina Panthers fan is something I'll remember for a really long time. You don't put 6 Carolina Panthers stickers on the back of your pickup truck in order to be forgotten.

I feel like I've been riding with a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders lately. Really have to cut back on the shrugging.