What better way to celebrate a hot muggy July 1 Saturday then to do my winter neighborhood ride in reverse.
Big Nellie and I rode toward US 1 and took the lane at a traffic light. We turned left onto the 3 lane concrete mess and a driver a couple of cars back laid on her horn. As she rolled by she yelled “Get on the sidewalk!” through her open passenger window. Not having time to explain that her inadequacies are her own business I responded with a mindfully deliberate F bomb.
I could easily have caught up to her at the next traffic light but escalation is not my cup of Kona.
Within a minute I was off US 1 and riding flat, nearly car free side streets. At Fort Belvoir I turned left and headed for the Woodlawn neighborhoods on the north side of US 1. There are lots of new bike trails under construction along US 1 in this area so three cheers for my county for finally getting with the program. (Too bad US 1 is still a hideous monstrosity, though.)
A few years ago while riding Big Nellie when it had a fairing (a big Lexan windshield) a man in a Tesla rolled silently by. He stopped and waved me over. He said he was an engineer and wanted to inquire about the provenance of my bike. Ultimately he told me that he was working on a zero energy house near Mount Vernon. (It may have been a negative energy house, one that uses less energy than it produces, but my memory fails me.) I never asked him where his house was specifically but I think I found it today.
Check out those two big wind turbines on the roof. I could see that the one on the left was moving but it was silent. This is a south facing exposure. The eaves cast shade on the windows to avoid heat gain in the house. There is no lawn, just rather elaborate and tasteful landscaping.
I meandered around at about 12 miles per hour. I was getting hotter and I was in no hurry to get anywhere. Near the Mount Vernon Country Club, I passed a house with a ready to market peach tree. You see they put bags over the produce on the tree so you don’t have to put the peaches in a bag later. Or something like that. There are a few peaches that are outside the bags. I think these may be free range peaches. Clearly I need to do more research.
The remainder of my ride involved avoiding collisions with tourists on rental bikes on the Mount Vernon Trail. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
That peach tree is probably glad the ready to market peaches aren’t packed in wooden boxes lol, I did some tourist avoidance yesterday on a short ride on the Alki trail, its like playing the 80’s arcade classic “Paper boy”. Tomorrow I’ll get in a short ride to the local farmers market – for some reason I am jonesing for peaches…
Those short wind turbines probably don’t generate enough to charge a bike light with the trees and other houses around. It’s too bad the surroundings spoil the wind for generation. I know temptation, though– every time I look at the pinwheels in my own neighbor’s yard, I daydream of hooking the things to some wire coils to start my own private wind farm.