Short For a Change

• No, the term "epigram" does not refer to the amount of banned ephedrine needed to put a mediocre rider onto the podium.

• If you are commuting on the Cap Crescent, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD YOU SLOW THE FUCK DOWN AND NOT PASS IN CROWDED SPOTS BY SWERVING INTO THE PATH OF ONCOMING CYCLISTS? I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS IF YOU CRASH ME OUT IN A HEAD ON!

• Going up the Crescent I passed Joel Gwadz and we high fived at considerable speed (~20 + ~17). It occurred to me later that if we'd crashed, it probably would have set a MABRA record for Most Forceful Two Rider Impact. My carbon fiber frame would have been converted to diamonds.

• The tourists are in town for the Cherry Blossom viewing. If you aren't familiar with D.C., this means our normally utopian traffic situation is ever so slightly altered for the worse. Or as I put it to a guy with Jersey plates who curbed me this afternoon, DIE TOURISTS! DIE! DIE! DIE!

• Okay, I only said "DIE" twice.

• Coincident with the cherry blossoms is a particulate level akin to the deepest areas of a coal mine just after a blast. My asthma is now totally on top of my life. If you passed me while I was coughing, don't be too self-impressed. You been warned.

• Did the first more or less serious cycling workout of the year, the first intensity, with a bunch of big ring seated spinups. Sore shins, sore hip flexors, sore arms and back, good feeling in the heart.

• I had a 3:30 PM latte because I was falling asleep at the desk. Coffee is a wonderdrug. If we didn't have it, we'd have to invent it, but probably couldn't duplicate nature's feat and would end up with crystal meth or something. Which would keep you awake at work but Human Resources would totally go apeshit after you bludgeoned somebody for looking at you funny during the weekly staff meeting.
  

• I've been reading an anthology of Samuel Johnson lately. He was a bit of a pill but he said some remarkably witty, observant things. Johnson's friends were interesting, perhaps none moreso than Boswell, the dissolute, venereal disease-ridden jackass and failed lawyer, who nonetheless wrote a biography of Johnson that is unmatched, and which revolutionized the form of biographies generally. But Johnson... asked about whether a friend took exercise:

Exercise! I never heard that he used any: he might, for aught I know, walk to the alehouse, but I believe he was always carried home.

That's a good spot to end.