bike-to-work day
Beautiful weather for B2W Day, but the turnout from my neighborhood was surprisingly light. My work commute has never been in towards the city, so the B2W routes have never been practical for me, but I try to go every year anyway because numbers matter (and there's a free T-shirt ). The last few years I've been going only as far as Rosslyn (one of the rally sites), but this year I decided to go all the way downtown to the main rally. There was a good turnout there, and the usual officials and dignitaries speaking. I got a couple of T-shirts, a water bottle (those have been scarce lately), a little "ding" bell (as opposed to a "RRRRing" bell) that would be good on a trail, reflective strips, maps, fliers, and a bagel and a couple of bananas.
Since I was going past it, I stopped at Cherrydale Hardware on the way back and picked up a few odd little electrical things we've been needing. It's a store we've driven by many times and have always wondered about. Turns out it's your typical old neighborhood hardware store, still surviving against the tide of Home Despots and the like. (Ayer's Hardware is still going to win the prize for being a fun place to browse as well as usually having those weird bits you need to replace.)
Further up the hill there was street repaving that was going on that effectively blocked off all the (motorized) traffic on one of the streets I take, so I got a surprise bit of car-free road.