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Monday, March 24, 2008

Why Bike to Work #1 -- Side Trips

Time to kick off a recurring feature, in the run-up to Bike to Work Day (registration is open, BTW). We're going to reel off some reasons to bike to work. And we'll try to keep the self-righteousness ("you're loving the earth!") and obviousness ("it's better exercise!") to a minimum.

Anyway, while serving my five year sentence on the Red Line, I very rarely deviated from my well-worn route to stop by the Tidal Basin or Asylum or wherever. But on a bike, it's so easy to find great reasons to wander, and so easy to act.

For convenient example, I was on my way in today, and decided to head east on the E St. bikelane in search of a cup of coffee. I got to 6th St. NW, and the intersection was blocked off by police.

Normally, this is either just a motorcade or a suspicious package, but today, a crowd was gathered around (crowds are normally disinterested in motorcades, and not encouraged to hang around Homeland Security gigs). I asked a nearby kid, who looked up from his hot dog, and barely containing his contempt for my ignorance, scoffed, "The circus elephants, duh." Duh indeed. What?Yeah, apparently Ringling Bros Blah & Blah Blah Circus is at the Verizon Provides My Home Internet That Still Doesn't Work But Continues to Bill Me Center this weekend. And they block off the roads to parade the elephants into the arena. You know what? Forget the bike thing. Imagine the streets flowing with the clean locomotion of elephant transport. Oh wait....... forget the 'clean' bit. They had a street sweeper (fossil fuel powered) following the elephants. Us bike clowns had the right idea all along. Patches needs a helmet, though.

2 comments:

Rudy Swanson said...

Seeing elephants marching on the road and a street sweeper truck behind them is a nice thing to see. Hehe. While elephants are majestic creatures, they leave a lot of mess in the wake. It’s only proper to have these sweepers around to make sure that the road remains clean. :p

Unknown said...

The street sweeper really has an important role when it comes to such events. It was a wonderful show as elephants are the kind of animals that you'll surely lay your eyes on. But try to imagine the mess afterwards. It's displeasing, right? That truck just made sure to sweep up everything the elephants left behind.

German Zollinger @ Total Clean Equipment