Thursday’s bike rides went all different directions–first to Hampden for a therapy appointment and then up to the Rotunda for some routine blood work, back home for lunch, and then down to Fells Point for some shopping and back up the hill to Mount Vernon for a drink with N. before almost beating the rain on my ride back home. When you do your errands by bike you get to ride a bike all over pretty much all day long, and oh my, I needed that.
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When you ride a bicycle or walk you have to pay really close attention to the surfaces you are traveling on, especially in places like Baltimore where the infrastructure is aging and, in many places, in serious disrepair. When you’re driving you have to do this too–you don’t want to break an axle or whatever dropping into a giant pothole–but cars can handle a lot more than bike wheels and feet. I know my regular surfaces really well–the sinking manhole cover just across 25th Street, the ever-present piles of horse shit on that one curve of Fallsway cycletrack, the rough asphalt where they buzzed out some paint lines on Biddle just west of Broadway.
I was still feeling pretty terrible on Thursday, but I wasn’t about to miss class after all the snow days we had last month, so I went ahead and suited up (i.e. put on clothes that weren’t pajamas) for the morning ride down the hill to the shuttle to work. It felt amazing, even if a bit chilly, to ride without leggings on, the morning breeze on bare legs. Yep, I’m still dressing aspirationally–for the weather I want, not the weather I have, though I don’t think weather has anything to do with health, so whatever. I locked up to the now almost full bike racks at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and then walked up the few blocks to meet N. for the ride to work. Continue reading
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 