1/14/13

Ride In 1/14: Minestrone Poem

You ever get to work to realize that the soup you brought with you for lunch had managed to find a way out of its container and on to your work shirt? Until this morning, I hadn't either. Frankly, I'm pretty surprised that it had taken this long to happen. I still don't accept this is a valid argument to bike to work in work clothes, like I saw a woman doing in front of me on Pennsylvania Avenue. I don't know if she was new to bike commuter or new to bike commuting on wet roads or whether she was just new to not giving a shit on dirty street water spraying from her rear wheel to form a speckled pattern on the back of her off-white blouse. In any case, except for that last case, she might have been in for an unfortunate surprise. But then again, I'm the guy who's wearing a hoodie atop a white undershirt because of spilled soup, so I'm hardly in any position to critique or judge.

Speaking of soupy, the weather was soupy. Like being through tepid liquid that results from an underpowered office microwave. It has since gotten colder, like a bowl of soup tasted and then ignored, left on the other side of your desk as you descend back into an unending succession of increasingly less captivating work emails. There were thick clouds and as I approached the Capitol, domed in front of the dark background, I whistled Orff, as is obligated in these kinds of situations.

Did I burn Rob on the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track? Aye. The only time I ever try to ride faster than absolutely necessary is when I'm late and had I known that I would arrive to the office with a be-souped dress shirt, I would never have hastened. Next time, because there's always a next time because the winter bike commuter types in DC are stalwarts and not too numerous, I will be more talky and less rushy.

Up Penn on the west side of the White House and I took 22nd north through the West End towards Massachusetts. I think I've taken 22nd maybe one other time and there's a reason it's only ever been one other time and that reason is because 22nd is a street that houses hotels and hotels draw to them tour buses and taxis and both of those categories of vehicles are, generally speaking, not the best for bike traffic. Buses more than taxis, mostly because they'll just stop in the right travel lane to load or unload and then that thing happens when you get stuck behind a stopped bus and no driver wants to let you move over and you daren't move over without permission lest you find yourself struck.

I rode on the sidewalk past the Shevchenko statue. Not that Shevchenko. Turned out that it wasn't a sidewalk so much as a median and it stopped prior to the intersection with Massachusetts. I got back in the road and made a left on a yellowish red light.

Have I mentioned yet that my soup spilled on the shirt I was going to wear at work today? And that I washed it in the sink and now it's hanging up to dry in the locker room? Because that happened.


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