Decent commute despite some fatigue and being up waaaay too late watching the Tour and commiserating over the, ah...carnage. I took a slightly different route today -- biking in Boston is like driving in Boston but with a slightly different (and generally greater) set of options; you balance straight-line directness with pain-in-the-butt factors such as construction, constriction and idiocy magnets. Today I bagged the itsy-bitsy streets of the South End in favor of a straight(er) shot on Huntingdon to Stuart Street, and it was great. The traffic coming off the Mass Pike exit adds to the excitement. Oh, and last night going home, I was going down St. James as usual, at the end of a pack of cars, crossing Dartmouth Street with the light, so there was a bunch of cars and then a little gap and then me. Well, the peds all saw the gap and started to march across the crosswalk -- I mean a swarm of them, converging from either side. What did I do? Succumbed to temptation. Screamed, "No brakes! No brakes! Hahahahaha!" Halted 'em in their tracks, and half of 'em were laughing with me. Great moment.