all from the cherry blossom festival and a brief trip to the shenandoahs

Last Monday I was riding to Alexandria, trying to remedy a piercing mishap, when the chain popped off of my motorcycle. Nothing terrible happened, but I was right in the middle of 14th and Pennsylvania – L’Enfant’s Grand Avenue, a block from the White House.

I pushed the bike onto the sidewalk, pulled the tools out of their container and thrust my hands into its blackened innards. In twenty minutes of trying to coax that damn thing back onto the sprocket I must have been passed by half the population of the Midwest – it is tourist season, after all – and nobody said a thing. I was briefly hassled by the police, but I think they understood.