Ride In 10/7

Oof. Some days the legs have it and some days they don't and the days they don't tend to be at the end of the week after the miles, while really not that many, start to accumulate. This isn't always the case and there are plenty of Mondays when I'm beat and lots of Fridays when I'm relatively spry, but today wasn't one of them. By the time I got to 11th and Massachusetts, I was sort of put out and felt like I was ridden twice as many miles as I actually had. This might have also been a function of low to moderate boredom, beset by the lack of anything noteworthy on the Hill and Penn Ave. I took this picture, though, because the nice weather suggested it and I know how much people like looking at domes. (My other blog is all about domes and written under the pseudonym BrunelleschiSnobDC.)

Not instagrammed. Just a bad picture.

I suppose I should take more pleasure in the man-made built scenery of my ride, which takes me past, amongst other places, the Capitol, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, Old Post Office, sometimes the White House, and along the stately mansions qua embassies of Embassy Row. But it's hard to appreciate these things when you're constantly looking over your shoulder worrying about a numbskull driver. And, of course, the "magic" of it all is a little bit swept away when you pass these things every day. But I'll try to be more appreciative.
Did you know that there's a youth hostel at the corner of 11th and K? Yeah, I didn't.
Quiet morning across town. Passed by a messenger on a Pista, which, in my opinion, won whatever battle for fixed gear bike brand supremacy was waged amongst those looking to branded fix gear bikes in DC. Which is to say that I see a lot of them.
On Massachusetts, at the base of the hill, I was passed by an early 90s red BMW M6 with the license plate M PATHY. Immediately thereafter, a cop on a motorcycle let blare his siren and passed me as well, turning right to follow M PATHY down Rock Creek Drive. I don't recall M PATHY speeding, nor did I think he passed too closely, but if the police officer was making some sort of traffic enforcement decision on my behalf, I'd like to extend a thank you, more for the general sentiment than in this specific instance. Perhaps it had nothing to do with me and M PATHY has an outstanding warrant (probably for assisting a fugitive?) or maybe it was total coincidence and M PATHY didn't get pulled over at all.
Strangely, as tired as I was in the middle of my ride, I felt pretty fresh by the end of it. I guess you can bike your way out of these things or maybe it just took that long for the strawberry rhubarb pie (thanks Gen and Jon!) breakfast to kick in. There's not much to be gained from feeling bad about yourself when you're riding a bicycle uphill and I think that's one of the things I've found most beneficial from commuting. On a weekend ride, you can beg off from things you don't want to do and elect for easier routes if you don't feel like it. But I don't think my employer would appreciate my turning around and riding home because Massachusetts was just too hard today. Just a question of getting through it. Or stopping to wait for the bus, which thanks to WMATA, comes so infrequently that you'd rather bike than wait for another half hour.
I think (and let's not get our hopes up too much) that I'll be detouring through A-Town tonight. Very exciting.