The National Park Service is (finally) replacing some old, damaged bridges on the Mount Vernon Trail near my home. The infamous Bridge 12 between Fort Hunt Park and Collingwood Road was replaced last year. The old bridge was dilapidated. The trail dropped down through a nasty curve on either end to reach the bridge. It was a flawed design from the get go, one that the Park Service incorporated into several other sections of the trail presumably to make the trail a fun meander. Fail. The approach to the new Bridge 12 is straighter and, the bridge deck is considerably wider. Like nearly all bridges on the trail it is made entirely (as far as I can see) from wood. This is not the best choice of decking material for shaded areas but it’s what we got.

This month the Park Service began replacing Bridge 23. This bridge, one of the longest on the trail, pases through Dyke Marsh Nature Preserve. It is where I take sunrise pictures on my early morning excursions to DC. The bridge was heavily damaged twenty years ago by epic storm surge from Hurricane Isabel. The Park Service did a few emergency repairs but it was clear that the decking, once level, was now slanted this way and that in several spots. Over the years, the wood decking has been replaced board-by-board, usually by volunteers.

I, and many others, submitted comments on the replacement bridge last spring. My comments came down to (1) don’t use wood for the decking (it becomes very slick when wet or icy) and (2) raise the decking and the adjacent trail by at least a foot to allow for high water events which have increased in frequency in the last ten years (you ain’t seen nothing yet).

Work began in earnest last week. A detour was set up that uses a lane of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. (This section of the Parkway is also scheduled for replacement. Riding the detour one can see why. There are a couple of nasty potholes and sections of the concrete have lifted at the joints.) As soon as the detour was open, contractors started ripping up some of the bridge decking. Then they started bringing in materials.

The pictures above show some of what’s going on. On the north side of the bridge, there are some pretty serious looking I-beams as shown in the picture on the left,. They have flat metal panels on one side. It’ll be interesting to see where these pieces will fit in the puzzle. Next to the I-beams and not pictured where some beefy looking dark brown wooden posts with holes drilled in the side.

The middle picture shows how some of the deck boards have been ripped up. This work was started last week then stopped. I suspect the contractor saw something it wasn’t expecting. The gizmo in the center looks like a tamper used on the asphalt section of the detour. The rolls on the right (under the plastic) are used to control drainage during construction.

The picture on the right is taken from the south end of the crossing. There are some wooden boards. Boo. Behind them are some mystery materials under wraps. To me the most interesting part is the metal tubing. Hmm.

I am guessing that some sort of temporary structure is going to be built so that the workers don’t have to stand in the marsh. In any case, I am looking forward to how the pieces fit together.

There is an access point to the trail at the southern end of the span where Tulane Drive intersects the Parkway. Originally, the contractors had blocked access to the trail with the jersey barriers that separate the detour lane from Parkway traffic. Last week the contractor put a gap in the barriers to facilitate access to the trial from the Tulane neighborhood.

Many years ago when I began riding to work in cold weather, I noticed that The Mule had developed an annoying ticking sound. The sound seemed to begin whenever I was pedaling hard. Did the bike have a bad ball bearing? Was some part of the bike too tightly or too loosely attached? Seeking the source of this annoyance, I checked my pedals and cranks and seat post and saddle and all sorts of things to no avail.

I let a couple of bike shop mechanics look the bike over. They were just as stumped as I was. One cold day as I was climbing up the final hill to the office I happened to look down and there was the culprit. My winter jacket had a draw cord around the waist. The ends of this cord had aglets, the little plastic thingies that go over the tips of shoelaces. When I pedaled hard, the ends of the draw cord would swing and the aglets would hit the top tube of my bike making that ticking sound.

The other day I came upon another mystery. I had The Mule on a workstand. The shifting on the rear cassette was sloppy. I had to constantly tweak the shifter to get the chain to settle on a cog. (One solution to this is to take the shifter out or index mode and revert to old fashioned friction shifting, but I digress.) The bike was angled down about 30 degrees so that I could fiddle with the dial adjuster that changes the tension on the shifter cable.

About two weeks ago, I had a Minimoto v-brake installed on my rear wheel. I was fed up with my old v-brake what simply would not stay in proper adjustment, causing one or both brake pads to rub on the rim of the rear wheel. Let me tell you, riding across Kansas with a rubbing brake as I did in 2019 and 2022 will ruin your whole week. When I picked the bike up at the bike shop, I spun the rear wheel. No rub! Finally.

So there I was tweaking the barrel adjuster on my gears when I noticed a sound from the rear wheel. It sure sounded like a rubbing brake pad. Sure enough, after only a week or so, my new, expensive rear brake was out of adjustment. Damn.

I was about to adjust the brakes when I decided to get the big rear saddle bag, a Caradice Nelson Longflap, out of my way. I took the bag off. Just before putting wrench to brake, I spun the rear wheel again. No rub!

I looked at the bag. I looked at the brake. Then it dawned on me. The wide, heavy bag was contacting the brake cable and causing it to actuate slightly which pushed one of the pads just barely onto the rim. Rather than adjust the brake, I swapped the Nelson Longflap with the smaller Carradice bag on Little Nellie. The smaller bag clears the brake cable. Problem solved. (Little Nellie’s smaller wheels mean its brake cable is much lower, allowing for plenty of clearance with the Longflap.)

I don’t use a big saddlebag on tours but I do put my tent and assorted other goodies on my rear rack. I suspect these may have been contacting the brake cable. In any case, the adjustment mechanism on the old brake was so beat up that I needed a new one anyway so I am not regretting the Minimoto purchase.

Sometimes it really is not about the bike.

Butt Bills

About a week ago I received a bill from an anesthesiologist. It said I owed a $55 co-pay for services rendered. Hmmm. I looked at the date of service. It was from my colonoscopy last December. This was my fourth separate bill for this procedure. One for the doctor who did the deed. One for the lab that processed my biopsy. One for a mysterious facilities fee. And this one.

I thought maybe this was a hoax because so much time had passed. I checked my insurance company website and, sure enough, there was the explanation of benefits. I paid it without complaint. It seems kind of ironic that a procedure that involves getting something shoved up my ass would result in bills that felt the same way.

Vaccines

Yesterday, I was signing up for a flu shot appointment online. The webpage asked me if I wanted to get the new RSV vaccine. I had seen articles online that said the shot can cost as between $150 and $300. I said yes but before scheduling the appointment I decided to check to see if my health insurance would cover it. The last thing I wanted to have happen would be to get a big bill months from now for the shot. I called my insurance company and asked what my financial responsibility would be. The agent had no clue. So I checked the website. Nothing. (Even a basic search of RSV came up empty.) Then I used the insurance app on my phone. Nothing. An hour of my life down the drain.

So as a last resort I went to my pharmacy, waited in line another 20 minutes, and asked the pharmacy clerk. This particular clerk never has impressed me with her knowledge. She looked up my information and told me that my flu shot was covered. I asked her when that was since I had had a Covid booster in August. Perhaps I had a forgotten about a flu shot at that time. She was referring to my 2022 flu shot.

Now what does my 2022 flu shot have to do with anything? She told me it was paid by Medicare. I informed her that I only have Medicare Part A, which covers hospitalization expenses. She said, “That’s who we billed.” Flu shots are covered by private insurance under the Affordable Care Act. She clearly had no idea what she was talking about. I thanked her for her time and left.

It turns out that there is some question about the safety and efficacy of having the flu and RSV shots at the same time. I think I’ll go get my flu shot somewhere else and ask about RSV there.

Competent IRS Help

Today, I needed to check with the Internal Revenue Service to see if I had an estimated tax payment scheduled. I went to the IRS website and tried to log in but the system didn’t recognize my userid and password. Hmmm.

The website told me that I had to use a new system to create a new, more secure access to my account. This system involved me uploading photos of my drivers license, front and back, as well as providing the usual personal information. I went through the process and the system told me it could not verify my identity. So I tried again. Same result. I tried a third time, this time orienting my license photo in landscape mode. No dice. (My guess is that one of two things tripped up the system. The Department of Motor Vehicles of Virginia has listed my first and middle names as my first name. So my license doesn’t match my tax records. Another possibility is that the phone service I was using was under my wife’s name.)

The IRS website has an option of doing a video conference with a human. So I selected that option. After 15 or 20 minutes of waiting, an agent came on the screen and told me to turn on my computer camera and microphone. Alas, my microphone doesn’t work. She figured out that I was struggling and told me to switch to my cellphone.

This worked. I could see and hear each other.

What she needed to do was to verify my first and middle name (she corrected my records) and to see me hold up my license and passport. This allowed her to verify my identity. She was efficient and pleasant. Once we switched to my phone, the whole process took less than five minutes. All that money spent on new IRS personnel apparently has its benefits.