24 February 2005

The Everyday of a bicycle commute.

Start with the best thing about a bicycle commute: you aren't stuck in jams. Now the worst: automobiles don't really acknowledge you. Autos rolling blissfully unaware through red lights in Dupont Circle are so commonplace, I'm not sure why the District doesn't set up a few red light cameras there.

At seven a.m. there really aren't any jams to speak of, and the light snow isn't even making the ground slick. When there's a nice snow, Dupont Circle looks ghostly beautiful as you round it, but now it just looks wet. I can make the ride from Adams Morgan to Foggy Bottom in ten minutes, even with a child seat thumping empty on the back. Since late November there have been fewer bicyclists out here, but the spring will bring them back.

My son is almost too big for the child seat that's carried him around for nearly four years. The seat itself is worse for wear: what little foam padding it had has long since rubbed thin and the leg straps, which were always useless, disappeared into the street some time ago. I don't know what I'll do when he gets too big for the seat: trail-a-bike attachments seem too bulky for the way we store our bikes and he's not big enough to ride his own along the street behind me.

Anyway, he's home because DCPS cancelled school. It's positively unreal that school could be cancelled with absolutely no accumulation on the streets, but that's life south of the Mason-Dixon.

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