I was cut off by a driver on the way to work this morning. He just pulled his car across the trail and blocked it. It really made me mad. I stayed mad. Then I came across this. And I was not mad any more. Too bad they can’t put these on the Beltway.
Month: June 2014
Greetings from the Swamp
I once went to Baton Rouge on business in April. The air was so thick with humidity that I thought I was going to die. DC in the summer is like Baton Rouge in April. How the hell people live down there in August is beyond me.
I walked out the front door before 7 a.m. and the thickness of the air hit me with a thud. Dang. Repeat after me: It’s better than February.
Little Nellie got the call. She didn’t complain. We took the long way which adds about 2 miles to my round trip commute. I wonder how many DC-area car commuters added miles for the fun of it today. I was in the zone for the entire ride. Except when I spotted Nancy “Two Sheds” Duley waving like a lunatic as she approached from the north.
The humidity was so thick that all the wooden bridges on the Mount Vernon Trail were slippery. Falling can ruin your whole day so I was extra careful.
I passed through the intersection of doom unscathed despite the fact for the third day in a row a car ran a red light in front of me. Why doesn’t Arlington County put a red light camera at this intersection? They could put up a sign like McDonalds: $1,000,000 collected this month. Or, a sign like you see at a factory: 1 minute since last red light runner.
The ride home was a uneventful.
No snapping turtles.
Nobody cut me off.
No crazy ivans.
No ninjas.
No frostbite.
Nobody called me “Sir”. (In my mind I’m not old, until some young whippersnapper says, “Passing on your left, sir.”) Good thing I wasn’t wearing my AARP t-shirt.
It didn’t rain.
I was soaking wet when I got home.
Like Baton Rouge in April.
Touché
The Great Alaskan Fritter caper was a rousing success. I should have known that Rachel would respond in kind. Today, I received a postcard from her. I didn’t see it coming so it was a pleasant surprise. Here’s the front showing the interior of the Hammer Museum.
I have to admit it’s a pretty cool place.
And the back shows some scenes from life in the frozen north.
If you look closely, you can see that she cut and pasted the pictures and text on the card. She obviously put a lot of thought and effort into this which is what you do when you have 20 hours of daylight and practically nothing to do except cook rhubarb. Oh, and you’re exceptionally creative and a good soul.
Thanks, Rachel.
Frogs and Peeps in Rock Creek
A couple of weeks ago, I installed some Speedplay Frog pedals on Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent. I like them a lot, mostly because they feel like they aren’t there. So I decided to try them on Little Nellie, my Bike Friday New World Tourist. I needed a short-ish, easy ride to test them out.
Kristen was looking for folks tor ride with. She was doing a ride to add some miles to her office’s National Bike Challenge team total. She put out the call to meet at Pierce Mill in Rock Creek Park. Despite the fact that I have spent the last two Sunday’s in Rock Creek Park I decided to join the ride. Unlike the prior two weekends, I drove to the park instead of riding,
The original plan was to ride a big loop up the park to the Georgetown Branch Trail. We’d take the GBT to the Capital Crescent Trail. The CCT would take us to the Georgetown riverfront. From there we’d ride on the dilapidated trail back up to the start. We eventually decided to ride up the park to Woodbine Road. Then we’d make our way on the streets of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Then we’d take the new-ish Bethesda Trolley Trail. As it turned out, the BTT led us to a coffee stop in North Bethesda. From there we took side paths and streets back down to Rock Creek Park at Garrett Park.
The weather was incrementally muggier than last Sunday but we were spinning at an easy pace. Our group consisted of Ted and Jean, Kristen, her co-worker Chris, Ryan, and me. Twas a loquacious posse. We chattered and pedalled up the windy road, shaded by the canopy of green. As we spun our way through Chevy Chase, I admired the tastefully modest million-dollar homes. Ryan pointed out one house that deviated from the modesty theme; it looked like a white castle (not the restaurant, an actual castle with towers and ramparts and a moat).
We wiggled and waggled until we found ourselves at Bethesda Row. Ryan led us to the Trolley Trail and we followed it through parks, down sidewalks, and between housing developments. I was thoroughly lost. We stopped as luck would have it about a block from White Flint Mall. We checked our phone maps and saw that instead of turning around and heading back to Bethesda we could ride around the mall and take a small park trail to Garrett Park. During our search for the trail, my compadres found a cafe. After some coffee and a bite to eat, we headed over to Garrett Park, a neighborhood that takes traffic calming concepts to the max. Over the railroad tracks and down another park trail and we were back in Rock Creek Park.
The gentle downhill made for a fun easy ride. Traffic was light. One deer, then another cross the street in front of us. Big animal, small brain. (I’m refering to the deer not myself.)
Windy, gently rollling Beach Drive took us all the way back to the start.
At the end of the ride, I drove Kristen home so she didn’t have to ride up the imposing hill on Tilden Street. I lifted her bike to place it in the rack on my car. Dang. It’s a Mule!!! I have been impressed with her ability to ride up hills but now I am doubly so.
The verdict on the Frogs is thumbs up. Way up. I climb much better with them and I never once came close to falling over from not clipping out.
Some pix from the ride are on my Flickr page.
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Faster than a Speeding Turtle, or Dead Fish
The day started like any other. I walked outside to get my bike out of the shed. The combination on the lock didn’t open the lock. So I tried it again. And again. And again. I checked the combination that I carry in my wallet. I was using the right one. I went inside to get me a hammer. In my military high school we popped locks using the butt end of a rifle. So I smacked it several times with the hammer. I did some minor damage to the shed door but the lock held.
I waited until 8 and went to the hardware store. They sold me a bolt cutter that went through the lock like bud-dah.
Off I went on Big Nellie. I took the long way since i was already 90 minutes late for work, Coming down the Mount Vernon Trail north of the stone bridge I came upon a big snapping turtle. They are pretty common around here. This one was just moseying along the trial. I took a couple of pictures and rode on.
A short distance up the trail I spotted an orange traffic cone with a sign on it. It marked the site where a snapping turtle had laid her eggs.
Under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge what looked to be an entire elementary school was out doing physical fitness adtivities. Must have been a school field day.
North of Old Town I spotted the remains of a large prehistoric fish. Something had eviscerated it. Ewww.
For the next two miles I passed clusters of running/jogging/walking people wearing similar shirts. As I made my way north of the Humpback Bridge, three motorcycles approached me on the trail with their blue lights flashing. Behind them was a group of army people jogging with a flag and a torch. It was the Special Olympics torch run.
At lunchtime i went for a two-mile walk. I didn’t seen any turtles or dead fish or school kids or torches. It was pretty disappointing.
The ride home featured the always loathed dead legs. I’ve ridden about 180 miles since Saturday and my legs are not happy. I kept pedalling along, mostly because it would suck to tip over and spend the night on my side along the trail. Just south of the Morningside bald eagle nest, I spotted yet another turtle on the side of the trail. This one was actively digging into the dirt with its hind legs. It was laying its eggs! Pretty cool.
When I got home I decided to put some new pedals, Speedplay Frogs, on Little Nellie so that I could ride it to work tomorrow. My thinking was that riding an upright bike as opposed to a recumbent would give my legs a breather. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the pedals off. And the headset was loose. So I guess I’ll ride Big Nellie to Friday Coffee Club and take LIttle Nellie to the bike shop on Saturday.
Some more pix can be found on my Flickr page.
May by the Numbers
It was a difficult month. My back woes came back with a vengence. And I had a stomach bug on top of that. By the second half of the month, my body finally got back toward normal.
I managed to crank out 746 1/2 miles in May. 419.5 of that was just riding to and from work 14 times. The rest was a hodgepodge of rides mostly for the heck of it. The longest ride of the month was last weekend when I rode to a get together in Meridian Hill Park in DC by way of a northern suburb. That ride was 64 1/2 miles.
Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent, logged the most mileage with 576. The Mule, my Specialized Sequoia, and Little Nellie, my Bike Friday New World Tourist, had 170 1/2 miles bewteen them.
I attribute my back recovery to new medications (I am off of all meds as of today) and riding Big Nellie.
I also started to experiment with clipless pedals. I like them a lot but I have come to understand that switching back and forth between clipless and clips-and-straps pedals is a bad idea.
For the year I have logged 2,788 miles. About 40 percent on Big Nellie and the Mule and the rest on LIttle Nellie. I’ve ridden to work 55 times.
Sunday in the Park with Flor
Last Sunday I rode to Meridian HIll Park to hang out with my friend Florencia. Flor and I met on the Fifty States Ride on a day that was epically hot and humid. She rode like she had a tailwind the entire way. She was particularly strong on hills and I had absolutely no hope of keeping up with her.
These days, Flor spends much more time working than riding. So last Sunday she asked me to go for a not-too-hard ride to get her biking legs back. BIke ride? Moi?
We planned to meet up at noon. I decided that the least difficult route with the fewest hills and stop lights and cars would be a ride up Rock Creek Park as far as she felt comfortable. I knew from riding this route last week that it was about 15 miles from Garrett Park, Maryland to Flor’s neghborhood so I thought 30 flat-ish miles would be the maximum distance she would want to do.
The trip also allowed me to check out Big Nellie’s new headset. (This is the mechanism that connects the handlebars and stem to the fork. Without a functioning headset a bicycle can’t function. Long story short, the steering felt a little loose at first but I soon adapted to it and had no troubles with it. Thanks to Carl, the mechanic at Spokes Etc, in Belle View Shopping Center for the repair.)
After a stop to buy sunscreen I rode north on the Mount Vernon Trail. As I expected on a perfect weather Sunday, the trail was packed, With some patience I made it into the city without hitting anyone or cussing anyone out. I took the 15th Street cycletrack north past Meridian Hill Park and found Flor’s place after only one wrong turn. Along the way I was twice quizzed about my bike by passers by.
“Is it more comfortable?”
“Did you make it?”
“Does it help your back?”
“Can I buy one online?”
(Answers: Yes, No. Yes. Yes.)
After a brief wait, Flor appeared. She seemed like she was lacking her usual spark. You would be too if you worked on your feet yesterday from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. We decided to ride to the Rock Creek trestle and re-asses my route plans depending on how Flor felt.
Flor led us through a traffic mess at the Zoo. Then we rode on the pitiful Rock Creek trail until we passed Pierce Mill. We then picked up Beach Drive which was closed to car traffic intermittently for the next several miles. The water washed over rocks in the creek. The breeze made a rustling sound in the green, green canopy of leaves above us. Through the canopy above we could see a beautiful blue, blue sky with puffy clouds floating this way and that. Flor and I pedaled the curving road at 12 to 14 miles per hour chatting the whole way through the park. I defy you to find better biking conditions than this.
We stopped at the trestle for a couple of pictures. Flor gave the green light for some more miles and we headed north to Garrett Park. Once in Maryland the traffic restrictions no longer apply. We dealt with quite a bit more cars than I did last week. Flor rides in the city everyday so she didn’t care.
I mentioned a nice little restaurant in Garrett Park in case Flor wanted to stop for a bite to eat but she seemed uninterested. Once we reached Garrett Park Road we turned around and headed back south. I had misplaced my camera prior to the ride. Normally, I take shots of the people I ride with while I am riding. I decided to try taking pictures on the fly with my new iPhone instead. It was impossible to tell if I actually had Flor in the frame so I took a four. They all came out fine. Credit to the subject.
A deer appeared at the side of the road. Another one five miles farther along. We talked on and off. During the “on” we discussed everything under the sun (computer dating, job searching, living near the zoo, Rolfing, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) except cycling. During the “off” we were lost in the stupefying beauty of the park.
We climbed Park Road to get back to Flor’s place. Flor’s legs were pretty tired but she looked pretty happy. I think the ride did her good. I hope she can walk tomorrow.
My ride home involved bombing down 18th Street. It was a bit like a Giant Slalom event. Cars, buses, pedestrians, cyclists all seem to appear out of nowhere. I switched over to 16th Street which ends at Lafayette Park across from the White House. Tourists milled about. I rode straight through a bunch of participants in the Post Hunt, an annual scavenger hunt put on by the Washington Post. I am pretty sure the answer to one of the hunt’s questions was not “Old dude on a recumbent.”
I took the cycle track on 15th Street. It was video game. Pedestrians popped off the sidewalk into my path over and over. Two Mennonite women stood in the track. One spotted me and shoved the other one to the sidewalk. Clearly, she will get bonus points on the day of reckoning when she goes to that great cycletrack in the sky. At Constitution Avenue, an airport shuttle van nearly took me out as its driver rushed to make a left turn across my path. Lucky for the driver I left my bicycle death ray at home.
The Mount Vernon Trail was still packed. It didn’t slow me down. My legs were pretty tired. I hadn’t eated anything in seven hours and I could feel a bonk coming on.
Never let ’em see you bonk.
I didn’t.
Thanks to Flor for another excellent ride. (We’ve never had a bad one.) We have to do some more this summer. 50 States will be here before you know it. (Then she can once again leave me in the dust on Kansas Avenue.)
A few more pix are here.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 