Today I got all the way to work w/o getting a flat tire or crashing into anything. It was a great first (well second) day for my bike-to-work season. It is true that you never forget how to ride a bike. The old muscle memories jump back into line – just not as efficiently as the end of last season. I expect to be a little stiff tomorrow because I am already a little stiff today.
Below is the almost done building at Waterfront Mall.
There have been suggestions at State Department that we should subsidize bike riding. It is a silly idea. Frankly, I don’t want to share my bike path with anybody who has to be paid to be there. It is a joy to bike. You just need bike friendly facilities. My building is very good. We have a locker room with showers. You really don’t want to sit all day at work after riding an hour on a bike w/o a shower, nor do you want to sit next to anybody else who has done it. Modern technology has made looking neat easy. I bring along a wrinkle free shirt. These things are great. 100% cotton, comfortable and always pressed. Even if you stuff it into a bag, and I literally stuff it into a Ziploc freezer bag, all you need do to make them look a pressed as the best iron could made them is to put them on while you are still damp.
I cut through Fort Meyer and Arlington Cemetery. I also ride past the Lincoln Memorial, in sight of the Washington Memorial and the Capitol. It is a very patriotic bike ride.
Our operation at work is in stand down mode. President Obama has postponed his trip to Indonesia, originally scheduled for March 19, then March 21 and now sometime in June. (He has to stick around for the heath care final act.) There were lots of plans and preparations and people had cleared their calendars for the visit. Now, for a brief time, there will be … nothing. It is like the scene in the movie “Cool Hand Luke” where everybody works at top speed and then they get to the end of the road and there is nothing left to do. I wasn’t much involved with it, actually, but my colleagues were working full-out. They deserve the rest.
Our business is like that. We spend a lot of our time in frenetic activity that is overtaken by later events. I guess life is like that sometimes in general, a tale, told by an idiot, fully of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But who cares if you can bike to work in the pleasant warm air and sunshine, preferably with a little tail wind. This is going to be a glorious spring. Spring is always nice around there, but usually we get a few flowers at a time. They kind of ration their beauty. But atypical cold and snowy winter has held back the flowers, which will now burst forth at once in a rare display of unity.