Tomorrow is the sign up day for the 50 States ride from the Washington Area Bicyclists Association. As far as I am concerned, if you ride in DC and you haven’t done this ride, you are a maroon.

I’ve done this ride seven times: 2007 – 2008, 2010 – 2014. (If you’ve ridden it more, please let me know.) Here are some fun facts you should do know before doing it:

• Sign up immediately. The 500 slots will fill by tomorrow.
• To ride, you need to be a WABA member. It’s a good organization and it costs next to nothing. (Members get discounts at local bike shops. You’ll get some of your money back every time you buy some bike stuff.)
• You will get to see nearly every nook and cranny of DC. It’s an amazingly diverse place. If you do it more than once you will see a city transformed.
• You will get a cue sheet that is 9 pages long. This is a clue that this ride is a different animal.
• You will think that a 60+ mile ride can be done in 4 or 5 hours. You will learn that this is no ordinary 60+ mile ride. Plan on riding all stinkin’ day. It ain’t easy.
• You will have fun, even if you thought the ride was much shorter than it is.
• You will get lost. Probably multiple times. It’s even money that you will miss Texas altogether.
• You will stop at approximately 2,306 red lights. Same for stop signs.This is where you meet people. Even if you are an introvert. It is also where you learn that clipless pedals are overrated.
• You will go to rest stops run where you will also meet people. The rest stops are staffed by incredibly kind volunteers. Hug them. (Okay, maybe not. You’ll be all sweaty.)
• You will see people in the neighborhoods all around the city and they will wave at you and cheer you on.(This is a big change from the early years when they cussed you out for clogging up their streets. I kid you not.) They will tell you where to make that tricky left and right turn on Alabama Avenue SE. They will take your picture, even in the rain. They might even stick a banner on their house with your twitter handle on it.
• Try to remember that you are riding through places where people live. Don’t run them over. Wave. Smile. Say “Hi.” The next time they see a bicyclist while they are driving they might just wave, smile, and say “Hi.” You get what you give.
• You will discover that WABA employs a sadist. You can ride downhill but there is always a stop sign or stop light to steal your roll. All the whil,, the WABA sadist sits in a bar in Adams Morgan drinking an ice cold beer and laughing at you.
• The WABA sadist is also a cartographic and planning genius. How the route avoids conflicts with other events in the city is some kind of miracle.
• You will despise Cathedral Heights and Fort Totten. You will LUUV Minnesota Ave.
• Some of your new friends will abandon you. If you do the ride multiple times, they may abandon you more than once.
• It will rain. If not, it will be hotter than Venus. You would not be the first person to jump in Rock Creek to cool off.
• You could do the entire ride eating nothing but almonds if you don’t mind having your face all puckered up. I recommend buying the lunch. It just makes things easier and you get to spend your time comparing notes and meeting people at the half way point at Eastern Market.
• Any bike with lots of gears and brakes will do. Feel free to ride a single speed bike because you don’t really need that meniscus in your knees anyway.
• Go to the after party and get your free beer and t-shirt. You earned it.

As for me, I am not doing the ride this year. I will be out of town. You can have my slot.

Did you know that hiking is a contact sport? I am getting ahead of myself.

I wanted to do something physical but the idea of driving for 90 minutes or more to get away from the city wasn’t appealing. So I decided to do a loop hike on the Potomac Heritage Trail. This trail begins at the Theodore Roosevelt Island parking lot and goes ten miles up river to the beltway at the American Legion Bridge. My route would take me from Rosslyn down to the parking lot (which was full) then on the trail frorfour miles up river to Chain Bridge, then across the bridge to the C&O Canal in Maryland, back on the canal towpath to Georgetown then across the river on Key Bridge.

The trail runs between the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Potomac River. Occasionally the trail is right next to the Parkway. This is not exactly idyllic but you take what you can get when you are so close to town.

The trail surface switches back and forth between smooth dirt and rocks. Until the approach to Chain Bridge it is generally flat. I found myself jogging from time to time on the smooth parts then I’d slow to a crawl, sometimes literally, to get over some rocks or under a downed tree.  The trail is also quite narrow. Some of the trail users had dogs. Mostly the dogs were unleashed but remarkably well behaved. One dog owner had his dog on a leash. The dog was lunging to get at me which I didn’t appreciate since I had to step into the brush alongside the trial to avoid getting bitten or jumped on. Note to dog owners: if you have an aggressive dog, don’t take him on a narrow hiking trail. It’s rude. It’s obnoxious. And there are an infinite number of more appropriate places to take him/her. You might also get a clue and get the animal trained.

From time to time, the trail was obstructed by kudzu. This exotic vine covers millions of trees throughout the southern states. It’s basically impossible to get rid off.

About 1/2 mile from Chain Bridge there is a major rock scramble straight uphill. By this point I was sick of the rocks and just wanted to get over the the towpath so I wasn’t having much fun.  Of course, once you go up you immediately must come straight down to get under the Parkway. I became confused thinking the under pass was beneath Chain Bridge. Just as I was about to clear the far side of the underpass, I whacked my head on one of the steel beams supporting the roadbead above. Ow!

A few minutes later I realized that I was off course (there were no blazes anywhere to be found). Finally, i figured things out and headed down to the river and under Chain Bridge.

The sidewalk across Chain Bridge was a nice break for the rocky trail. And it has a great view of the gorge through which the Potomac RIver flows.

On the Maryland side of the river, I picked up the C&O Canal towpath. The hike back to the start went much more quickly as the towpath is flat. I played leapfrog with a jogger all the way back to Georgetown. She kept stopping to adjust her tunes. What a shame she wasn’t listening to the music of the canal.

Near Georgertown, a great blue heron crossed directly in front of me. I slowed and pullled out my camera. He posed very calmly. Just as I approached her took to the air, flying over the waterfilled canal.

I took the stairs up to Key Park in Georgetown. There three women, obviously tourists were getting their bearings. I gave them some advice on where to find restaurants (basically anywhere on or near the main drags of M and Wisconsin), as well as advice as to where they could go to see lovely old homes (basically anywhere off of M or Wisconsin.

The walk across Key Bridge came with a surprisingly strong cross winds. I made it back to the car without getting blown away like a tumbleweed.

It’s been a few weeks since my last hike so today’s nine miles was plenty of exercise for me.

There are a bunch of pictures from today’s festivities on my Flickr page.

I tend to go into meditative trances when riding to work. You would too if you took the same route day after day for 160 times a year for years on end.  Here’s are some hairballs by brain has cough up along the way:

• If your quest for spiritual fulfillment and happiness is stressing you out, you’re probably doing it the wrong way. You should just say “fuggetaboudit” and go for a bike ride. Or a beer. Or a baseball game. Better yet, go for all three. There you will find a breeze, a buzz, and a frozen rope to the gap. Works for me.
• Doesn’t it piss you off when you ask someone a straight question and you get back an answer to a question you didn’t ask? Its like trying to have a conversation and a press conference breaks out.
• If I perceive that you are treating me with rudeness and disrespect, are you an asshole or is it just my imagination? I suppose it doesn’t much matter, because you won’t be hearing from me anymore.
• There is nothing more irritating than dissembling wrapped up in a tidy package of spiritual philosophy or religious bafflegab.
• Can there be a worse feeling than watching a crash slowly develop before your eyes and you can do nothing to stop it? Neil Finn got two songs out of watching his dog nearly get “bowled by a bus.”
• Some friendships are like big novels. It takes a long time to get into the story at first. Over time the story has unexpected twists and turns that draw you in. Then you are completely into the story as it reaches its resolution. The author, apparently unwilling to stop writing, drags the damned book out for an unnecessary 100 pages, making you wish you hadn’t started reading it in the first place. When you’re done, however, you look back at the book with satisfaction and gratitude.
• Other friendships are like a Bond movie. They start with a rousing and riveting beginning then settle down into a fun but less intense story line that you hope goes on for a long time and you get popcorn, too. You just hope there aren’t any people in the front row having a laugh at your expense.
• True story from a soccer mom: High school girl is unattractive and dumpy. Envies the quarterback for all his cool. He doesn’t know she’s alive. Ten years later, the girl is an educated, successful, attractive single woman. Walks into a bar and sees the QB sitting at the bar. He’s a burned out, drunken shell of himself. He looks at her with lust in his eyes. She walks by and thinks to herself. “People should never peak in high school.”
•  I’m pretty sure if I refrained from eating all the things I am told are bad for me, I’d be dead from acute arugula intoxification. Not a pretty sight.
• You will never hear me utter the words “Can I have some corned beef and cabbage?” Had to eat it every so often as part of parental Irish ritual dinner sacrifice. Ack!
• I may be wrong but it seems to me that using your Facebook friends list to generate your primary source of income is a sure way to end up with neither friends nor income.
• I will never understand how sports teams let good players leave then spend billions for other teams’ expensive, disgruntled stars.
• Flip side: holding onto old stars is great for sentimentality but lousy for winning games.
• I liked Nationals Park when I first went. Now it has about as much appeal as a WalMart. Makes me nostalgic for the urine troughs in the men’s rooms at Fenway Park.
• Genderless (genderfree? neuter?) bathrooms are starting to happen. It’s a long overdue development.
• Note to the attractive young woman who passed me leisurely this morning: Did you know that the black tights you were wearing were transparent? You might want to go up one size on the panties because yours were seriously riding up. Then again, continue to dress in this fashion. I won’t need to drink as much coffee when I get to work.
• Mocking a spiritual philosophy or religion on Twitter always brings out true believers who want to convert or enlighten me. Y’all need to chill.

And with that I will take my own advice and ride to the ball game.

July featured a pretty awesome hike, a century bike ride, a couple of rides to baseball games and some test rides of new bikes.

I rode 716 miles in total, 491.5 just getting to and from work. Because of the century Big Nellie led the way with 342.5 miles. The Mule came in a strong second with 337 miles. Little Nellie was ridden for 2 commutes for a total of 36.5 miles. (One of the commutes was to and from the car mechanic.)  I rode to work 16 times.

It was a month of odd rides. In addition to the century, I rode to a Nationals game from home during the week on a day that I was telecommuting. I also rode to a game from work.  I rode to and attended a protest about protecting cyclists who use the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes in DC.

So far this year I have ridden 4,500 miles. 3,025 miles were accomplished just getting to and from work 99 times.  Even though it’s my oldest bike, I’ve commuted on The Mule 58 times.

Both The Mule and Big Nellie have over 38,000 miles on their odometers. I am thinking of acquiring a bike that has a little less heft to it than the three I already own. I am also looking into a new touring bike. Both bikes will have slightly bigger frames. Stay tuned.