My rides to and from work this week have been very pleasant, but generally uneventful, except for coming home yesterday evening.

Coming through Downtown DC on a busy street that I usually take, there was a guy standing in the street, well past the parked cars and mostly across the right-most traffic lane, with his arm outstretched trying to hail a cab. I normally don't sweat these things; but he was (perhaps unwisely) pretty far out there, and it's really a pretty busy street...

I'm normally not very confrontational, and I'm not sure what got into me, but I just couldn't resist doing something. So, as I passed him, I slowed down and very lightly "high fived" his outstretched hand. He was pretty surprised and said "whaaaa-uuuh-oooh-aaaah," or something like that. I then sped back up, quietly giggled to myself, and kept riding.

Maybe it's not really very funny and I shouldn't have done that (I mean, I did startle him...), and maybe I wasn't really advancing the cause of cyclist-pedestrian goodwill (and I normally give peds a lot of leeway, especially during tourist season); but I did get a strange satisfaction out of it. Oh well, anyway, I just thought I'd share that with everyone.