Month: July 2019

July 2019 in the books

Ever since the tour ended I’ve had no energy. I can ride a bike all day but I have to overcome the urge to take a nap. I managed to bang out 889 miles this month. The end of the tour accounted for 328 miles. I twice took three days off in a row, which rarely happens. My longest ride was 93 1/2 miles from about 8,000 feet to near sea level from Caples Lake to Sacramento. (There were three climbs each ending above 7,000 feet during the descent.)

Since I came home my longest ride has been 86 miles to see some sunflowers.

My left knee and hip and shoulder are aching again. All are worse than they were before the tour. I may have to shut things down when the weather gets cold. Aging sucks.

My total mileage for the year is 6,445 1/2. Only 853 of that was on Big and Little Nellie. I am considering selling one or both.

I have only signed up for one fall ride, the 50 State Ride on September 7. I may do the Tour of Mount Vernon again (since I won a free pass in a raffle at last year’s ride). Or the Great Pumpkin Ride in Warrenton. I hope to do a few hikes, too. Time will tell.

On to August and my Sgt. Pepper birthday.

 

No Name Tour: Highlights

Even before I finished my ride this summer, people were asking me, “What was the best part?” It may seem strange to say this but until I reviewed my blog posts last week, I had forgotten much of the ride! I suppose this was because I was so focused on the present that the past was of little importance.

And now that I have reviewed the posts, I still don’t have an answer. There were plenty of highlights.

  • Lincoln’s tomb (and the comic graves nearby) in Springfield, Illinois.
  • The Burma Shave signs on the Route 66 bike path in Illinois.
  • The many trail angels that showed me kindness, especially Jesse, the retired chef in a white pickup truck in Saint Louis. I am not exaggerating when I say that he saved my life. (I’ll never forget how he vacillated between saying “I love you” and cussing like Samuel L. Jackson.)
  • The Buddhist monk in the cowboy hat walking on the side of the road in Missouri. I am still kicking myself that I didn’t take his picture but he seemed completely at peace, gliding down the shoulder of the road with a serene smile across his face.
  • Taking a dive in the pool at the city park in Ash Grove, Missouri at the end of a hot and frustrating day. Fifteen minutes of bliss.
  • Meeting and riding with Mark and Corey from Ash Grove to Pueblo, Colorado.
  • The Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. I could have spent hours and hours in that place.
  • The epic flooding in eastern Kansas.
  • The medicinal effects of marijuana edibles, an order of magnitude more effective and long lasting than ibuprofen for the pain in my left knee and hip.
  • Mo at the Courtyard Country Inn in Westcliffe, Colorado for getting me a room after one of my most exhausting days on a bike.
  • Making it to the top of Monarch Pass. And flying down the other side for ten miles.
  • San Miguel Canyon in Colorado. I went off route to avoid Lizard Head Pass and rode through a breathtaking canyon. Pure serendipity.
  • The Hogback in Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument.
  • All the bike tourists I met on the side of the road. The French sisters and Dan Hurwitz are still riding. The sisters are on Instagram and Dan has a blog.
  • Bryce Canyon. Egads, it’s amazing.
  • Red Canyon, the little known canyon to the west of Bryce.
  • The ride from Cedar Breaks National Monument to Cedar City, Utah, a loss of 5,000 feet in 20 miles.
  • My Warmshowers hosts in Hutchinson, Carson City, and Sacramento. And Jesse and Mike in San Francisco.
  • Mushroom Swiss burgers in Nevada. Everybody I met was raving about them for good reason.
  • The sign guys who helped me find a place (and drove me to dinner) after I climbed Carson Pass in California.
  • The bike mechanics in Pueblo, Salida, Ridgeway, and Carson City who dropped everything to help me.
  • Most of my days seemed to be in survival mode on this tour. Still I had hours and hours of meditative solitude.

No Name Tour – The Mule Is Back

A bike tour doesn’t officially end until your trusty steed is back and home and in working order. When it arrived from San Francisco, I re-assembled The Mule then took it to the bike shop for some TLC. It now has new fenders (long overdue), new bar tape, a new water bottle cage (one of the old ones died of metal fatique), and a new front derailleur that actually shifts properly.

I brought The Mule home and put on the handlebar bag, the bike computer, the frame pump and the saddle bag. Everything old is new again. I left the lizard on the stem.

Every bike tour needs a mascot but my last few haven’t had one. I was given this little plastic lizard by the owner of Lizard Lips, a pretty decent cafe inside a convenience store in Toronto, Kansas. The lizard needed a name so I decided to call it Dave in memory of Dave Salovesh. Dave wasn’t the slightest bit reptilian but what are you going to do? (Ironically, I was riding with Mark and Corey at the time. Mark bought a pool noodle and used pieces of it to make cushions on his handlebars. My favorite picture of Dave has him holding pool noodles after a protest in DC.) Dave was the kind of person who seemed to look forward to flat tires because it gave him an opportunity to talk to his cycling friends while he fixed it. So, whenever I was facing a godawful climb or a soul-sucking headwind (which was WAY too often) or a terrifying descent in a swirling, gusty wind, I’d talk to Dave. Dave the Lizard wasn’t particularly loquacious, but he took my mind off the struggle for a few seconds.

I also like the fact that this lizard is pink. I think it would look nice with Dave’s jersey with the rainbow-puking unicorn on it or his fabulously loud bicycling tights.

No Name Tour: It’s Not Rocket Science

After a week and a half, I welcomed a knock on the door this morning. Christmas in July. The Mule is home.

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I took it out of the box and started putting it together. Some of the hardware, the screws for the water bottle cages and the front rack, as well as a proprietary part for mounting the front fender, was missing. I reassembled the bike and took it to my local bike store to have them finish it off.

I was planning on taking it to the shop anyway. In addition to the final touches for the reassembly, they are putting on a new front derailler (the old one has had shifting issues for over a year), new fenders, new bar tape, and a new water bottle cage (one of the old ones broke in Nevada). They will also tweak my brakes and true my rear wheel. By this time next week, I should be back in the saddle.

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Last night I rode into DC to attend my second happy hour this week with Jessica who is back in town for a few months. We used to work together. She’s been travelling in South America for the last year. Many of her wanderings have been unplanned. Maybe I should do a bike tour like that.

While I was at the happy hour, some people in DC held a protest/vigil in a small park on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few blocks from the White House. After the happy hour, I headed over to the park to see the site of a crash that killed two men who were sitting on a park bench. It took me a while to figure out how the car managed to hit them. Suffice it to say that the driver either had murderous intent or he was impaired beyond human comprehension. High speed fatal crashes are happening in DC with sickening frequency.

Next I headed to the national Mall to check out a very cool event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. For the last few nights the image of a Saturn 5 rocket has been projected on the Washington Monument. It’s actually a video (you can see the vapor venting from the rocket). I waited until 9:30 for the image to appear. I was one of perhaps 10 or 20,000 people on the Mall. I found being in a crowd like that very unsettling. Tonight and tomorrow night the image will lift off. Too bad I’ll miss it. Then again, I saw the real thing on TV live back in 1969.

I rode home in the dark, something I really enjoy, except for the spider webs and the ninjas on the Mount Vernon Trail. (I nearly hit one.) Passing through a neighborhood closer to home I had a close encounter with a fawn standing across the middle of the narrow road.

 

 

 

They Don’t Call It Killermonjaro for Nothing

While I was away, my friend Chelli decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro this summer. To get in climbing shape she’d been taking Mrs. Rootchopper and other friends on hikes in the Catoctin Mountains and on Sugarloaf Mountain. Yesterday, a day that will live in humidity, I joined the fun as the gang returned to Sugarloaf.

Sugarloaf has been the scene of two of my past misadventures. Five years ago I hiked the yellow trail with a ninja and a golden retriever. The experience left me cripple for days, and oddly marked the beginning of the end of an eight-year friendship. Another time I rode bikes around the base of the mountain with Science Mom. She somehow managed to end up falling ungracefully into a mud puddle. Our friendship survived even with her temporary loss of face.

Getting back to yesterday, Chelli parked strategically below the peak of the mountain. We started hiking upward on the blue trail, transitioned to the purple trail, and returned to the blue trail. After forty seven miles, we stopped at the white rock overlook to munch on pita sammies that Chelli had prepared. Paul chipped (sorry) in some Nacho Cheese Doritos. It was a lovely view and even lovelier breeze. 

Somehow the hike managed to seem all uphill. It took three hours and at least five gallons of sweat. Did I mention the humidity was off the charts?

 

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Hiking with sticks on Sugarloaf – photo by sneaky Chelli

A few years ago I did a hike in Shenandoah National Park with Kirstin. She used hiking poles and highly recommended them. On a whim, I bought a pair of poles on sale this spring. I have to say they are a big improvement over pole-less hiking. They kept me from turning my ankles and from putting excess impact stress on my knees and back. It only took about a mile for me to get used to them. When the hike was over, my wonky knee and hip didn’t have their usual crippling pain. I’d been wary of hiking in recent years but now I’m eager to get back out there.

I still can’t get over how hard hiking is. When I was younger I could run and jump and scramble and feel perfectly fine afterward. Yesterday, we were passed by a number of energetic young folk during the hike. I had to resist the urge to bludgeon them with my poles.

It turns out that hiking is deceptively hard work, made all the harder by aging. And it’s probably good for you. All the same, I’m glad Chelli is hiking Mt Kilimanjaro and not me.

 

It’s Not the Heat; It’s the Blossoms

People keep asking me what the best part of my bike tour was. I honestly don’t know. I’m still processing it. I did a quick review of my blog posts and was surprised at all the things I had forgotten. I’ll probably write a postmortem soon.

In the meantime, I am back on my bikes. While The Mule is in transit from San Francisco, I’m re-familiarizing myself with my other steeds. A few days ago I took my CrossCheck out for a twenty mile spin. It missed me.

Yesterday, the CrossCheck and I hit the road to check out the sunflowers at the McKees-Besher Wildlife Management Area in nearly exurban Montgomery County, Maryland.

The ride began with a trip to Friday Coffee Club. It was good to be back among my two-wheeled peeps. At about ten a.m. the last of the worker bees headed off to their respective offices and I made my way to Georgetown and the paved Capital Crescent Trail. After a few miles I cut over to the unpaved C & O Canal towpath. For several miles I dodged mud puddles. The surface was ridable but the CrossCheck was getting mighty grimy.

As I passed under the capital beltway, my sunglasses obscured the view of the towpath in the shadows. A chunk of the right side of the towpath had completely eroded by an epic rainstorm last week. Had I not slid my sunglasses to the tip of my nose, I could easily have crashed.

A few miles later I rode past a rather scary looking section of the towpath at Mather Gorge, where the river runs fast. In this section the towpath runs between the canal and a cliff above the raging boulder-strewn Potomac River. The Park Service had narrowed the path and banned cars (usually just maintenance vehicles). I duck walked part of this section not wanting to fall into a big mud puddle or over the side into the rocks far below.

From Great Falls Park the towpath alternated between perfectly passable to some of the nastiest washboard I’ve ever ridden. The washboard wasn’t like tractor tracks. The rains had carved erratic channels across the path. The CrossCheck became a bucking bronco when I hit them. I am a bit surprised I didn’t damage the bike in the process. I made it across but I may need to see a dentist soon.

The canal itself was in decent shape. I saw dozens of sunbathing turtles including a huge snapper who was splayed across a log. Three great blue herons stood motionless in the canal right next to the towpath. I didn’t bother trying to take a picture because as soon as I stopped they were sure to fly off.

I left the canal at Rileys Lock and headed toward the Poole General Store in Seneca for food and water. It was closed. No bueno.

Since there was no alternative I headed west on hilly River Road toward the sunflower fields. The hills here normally wipe me out but all that climbing out west made them seem trivial. Running out of breath was not about to happen either. The warm, humid air felt almost liquid. The residual effects of being at altitude made deeps breathing unnecessary.

I walked around two of the three sunflower fields. The sunflowers seemed to be in a state of morning with their head bowed. Still, from the proper angle, they put on a decent show.

After about an hour I headed back home. This involved a ten mile roller coaster ride on River Road to avoid the towpath and find food. At Potomac Village I went into a grocery store and bought water, a sandwich, and a yoghurt parfait. It didn’t begin to dent my hunger but I decided to ride on and find something else later.

After descending the long, windy hill on MacArthur Boulevard at Great Falls Park I cruised along flat canal road all the way to DC where I stopped at a gas station for a Gatorade. (Gone in 60 seconds.)

All day I had noticed a clicking sound coming from my right pedal. At the gas station I noticed that the platform of the pedal and become disengaged from the pedal axle. I was holding the pedal together with pressure from my foot.

The remainder of the ride took me across Georgetown, down and across the Potomac, and into Crystal City where I attended an outdoor happy hour. Cold beer tasted pretty good at this point.

The ten mile ride home was a wobbly affair. My legs were done, but I was pleased with my day’s work. 86 miles in all.

Today, I rode to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in DC to check out the lotus blossoms and water lilies. Because of the pedal problem on the CrossCheck, I rode Big Nellie, my Tour Easy long wheel base recumbent.

My legs were pretty beat. I stopped after four miles to buy some new pedals. They sold pedals with toe clips and straps already installed for $3 more than naked pedals. Sold.

The ride along the Mount Vernon Trail featured oncoming weekend warriors and tourists who kept passing as I approached. Fortunately for them, I left my bicycle death ray at home.

Into DC, I made my way across Southwest and near Southeast until I crossed the Anacostia River at 11th Street.

I followed the river and the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail upstream for several miles until I found the unpaved path to the Aquatic Gardens. The place was fairly crowded. Music was blaring from a stage. Both aspects didn’t appeal to me. I like quite with my lotus blossoms, thank you very much.

 

After walking around the ponds, I was drenched in sweat. I headed home, retracing my route along the bike trails. People kept tempting me into head on collisions all the way home. “Sorry.” “Oops.” “My bad.”

Head. Table.

I stopped for a quart of Gatorade and an chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich. At home, I fought the urge to go inside and collapse. I spent a half hour swapping out the pedals on the CrossCheck. I also cleaned the towpath dirt off the bike and lubed the chain. Ready for another ride.

Tomorrow I am going hiking. I am hoping that the hiking poles that I bought before my tour, help my wonky hip and knee make it through the day without pain.

 

 

No Name Tour: Feelin’ Like Clyde Barrow

Last night Jessie ordered in India food. It was delish. Today Mike, Jessie, and I decamped. Mike rode his bike to work. Instead of riding her bike to work, Jessie rode the Muni streetcar with me downtown.

She hopped off at her office. I continued on, missing my stop at the Embarcadero Center where I worked for a summer a lifetime ago.

I corrected my error without difficulty other than the fact that the huge duffle was digging into my shoulders.

Back at Embarcadero I switched to BART. I find it amusing that BART hasn’t solved the problem of onboard announcements. “Next stop $&@/;)&&@&& Station.”

I managed not to miss my stop but once I got on the streets, I took some wrong turns before finally setting off toward my hotel.

I’m pretty sure this is an unsafe neighborhood. There’s trash everywhere. Lots of homeless people. Every other vehicle is a heap. Businesses are all protected by tall metal fencing and locked gates. Fortunately the hotel has an airport shuttle. (BART connects to the airport via a spur line that has smaller, shuttle trains.)

I’ve been in so many sketchy motels since I left home that I feel like a bank robber hiding out from the heat. No worries. They’ll never take me alive.

I’m not very far from where the interstate pancaked on itself during the World Series earthquake. And just a half mile from the ugliest stadium in Major League Baseball. I’d go to a game anyway but it’s the All Star break.

Walking around has re-awakened my wonky left knee and hip. During the tour, I pushed The Mule up some mighty big hills and my hip and leg never complained. I just walked a half mile and it feels like my left side has become unhinged. This will make for an interesting hike next Saturday.

Speaking of when I get home, I have a fairly busy schedule: refill my asthma prescription, repair my laptop, have diner breakfast with my wife, deal with 7 1/2 weeks of mail, try to go to two happy hours at the same time, go to Friday Coffee Club, do the hike, ride to the botanical garden to see the lotus blossoms, ride to the sunflowers fields in Montgomery County, Maryland, put The Mule back together, and take The Mule to the bike shop to replace worn out parts.

That’s too much. Maybe I should just stay here and rob a few banks.

Very big thanks to Jessie and Mike for being such terrific hosts these past few days.

No Name Tour: Aftermath In SF

Friday night Jessie and Mike took me to the neighborhood Puerto Rican restaurant In Haight Ashbury and we stuffed ourselves. How do you say gut bomb in Spanish?

Yesterday we took The Mule to Bespoke, a bike shop across town. The owner used to work at my local bike shop in Mt. Vernon. He’ll ship my baby home later this week.

I rode a Jump bike back from the bike shop. It was my first time on an electric assist bike. It’s two-wheeled crack.

We had breakfast al fresco at a restaurant on the Wiggle, a bike route that weaves through the streets of this section of the city, avoiding big hills. It’s painted green and includes a counterflow section.

I bought a massive duffle bag Friday. It had straps on it so I can wear it like a backpack. I could wipe out every passenger on a BART train with this baby. Bwa ha ha.

Last night we had phenomenal tacos at a Mexican place before imbibing a huge bowl of punch at a bar. Not much of an improvement on my bike touring diet I must say but it felt considerably less painful.

I’m staying with Jessie and Mike until Monday morning when the duffle and I will relocate to a hotel near the Oakland airport for Tuesday’s flight home. I’ve already scheduled two happy hours for next week. Unfortunately they are for the same evening.

I looked up some descriptive statistics on the Western Express yesterday. Between Pueblo CO and San Francisco I did more than 98,000 feet of climbing.

And today to prove that this tour has traumatized me, I signed up for my 11th 50 States Ride on Sept 7. Nigel Tufnel would be pleased.

Team Rootchopper assemble!

No Name Tour: Day 51 – You Have to Earn It

I hand washed my clothes in the hotel last night. It must not be as dry here because it was all slightly damp this morning.

After breakfast I improvised a route back to the Western Express at Rockville. The wind was howling in my face. The American flags still flying from Independence Day we’re flying horizontally. Don’t go back to Rockville and waste another gear.

Then it got seriously hilly. I couldn’t believe I was using my granny gear. The map said I had a bike trail ahead. When I got there I saw that it had an 8% grade.

It’s a good thing I threw some stuff out at the hotel.

I arrived at the ferry terminal just as the 10:30 boat was leaving for San Francisco. Killing time I had Friday Coffee Club solo with a pretty awesome chocolate chip cookie.

I sat in the sun with my back to the pier. When I turned around after 20 minutes I saw that a line had formed with well over 100 people in it. No worries; it’s a big boat. The Mule went in a bike rack in the rear and I took a seat inside. The ride was as smooth as a bus until we approached San Francisco. Thankfully the swells were short lived.

Jessie and Mike were waiting for me. After a short chat we followed a trolley bus up Market Street, dodged a dozen misbehaving pedestrians, rode the Wiggle to The Panhandle, and ended at their place in the Haight.

After Mike moved The Mule and all my stuff upstairs to the apartment, we walked around the block so I could buy a duffle bag for the trip home.

Later they treated me to dinner at a Puerto Rican restaurant, beers at home, and ice cream at a shop up the street.

Tomorrow I’ll ship The Mule home.

Miles today: 28

Tour miles: 2,976