Today was spent mostly just getting my bike ready for the weekend. I put on my skirt that’s already covered in paint and grease, my painting tank top, and my heels just for the heck of it, and brought all my cleaning and lubing and tube changing supplies to the porch. I spent the next hour or so in the sunshine, slowly and methodically wiping down top tube/down tube/stays/stem and brushing the chain and changing both tires and dropping new lube between each chain and then rubbing all of it off. When I’m working on the bike I’m only thinking about the bike, and it is just terrifically relaxing. And then it was time to clean up the clean up and take the thing for a spin down the hill to meet R. and O. for dinner and schemes. It might be all in my head, but the new tires felt speedier as I sped the short way down the hill to the restaurant just at the corner of Mt. Vernon. I snapped this picture of a high rise on the corner, because it doesn’t look like I imagine Mt. Vernon’s supposed to look, and it was an excellent reminder that I spend all my time looking east of the neighborhood, and there just might be more to check out to the west. Summer, I seeeeee you! And then there was too much food, never enough storytelling, a list of all the monuments we could think of in the city (hint: not enough women or queers), and some plans were hatched (do I want to do a tour of monuments in the city by bike? By golly, yes!). And then it was a ride home in a just slightly cool evening and a little research. Turns out this is Chase House, mixed population public housing. Yeah, I suppose they wouldn’t build private housing in this stack-o-bricks sort of way. It was a short ride today, but it was just what I needed.