Category: #bikedc

All this and tornadoes too

First came the virus of doom. Lord knows when we’ll be able to go back to a normal life. Overnight a massive storm came into the DC area. It provided a delightful 4 a.m. thunder clap that shook our house. Rainfall has been biblical. The worst of the storm has passed but lines of smaller, nasty storms are passing through every hour. We just had a tornado warning to the south of my house. If the virus doesn’t get you, the funnel cloud will.

In between these bands of harshness is some really nice riding weather, warm with some summertime humidity. I’ve been tempted to get out on the bike but I don’t want to find myself cowering on some stranger’s front porch as a funnel cloud descends.

The last few days have had decent riding weather. Either the virus or the social distancing is starting to get to me though. The other day I saw a man walking his barbell down the street. I wonder what other indoor exercise equipment he takes for a stroll. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, I saw a big white Easter bunny riding through Old Town Alexandria on the back of a motorcycle. If it was an hallucination it was a good one because the bunny waved at me.

You’ll have to take my word on these things. I don’t have a fancy pants camera mounted on my helmet.

While I was paying attention to life threatening things, I almost forgot about my knee and hip woes. I know I am jinxing things by saying this but they are all but gone. My stenosis is also pretty much under control but my new normal means I can’t walk long distances or carry heavy things. Also, I have to do my physical therapy exercises every day.

All of which reminds me that under normal circumstances, this is the time of year when I get serious about planning a bike tour. It may seem like this would be a good time for a solo bike tour but even riding solo requires frequent interactions with people in stores, restaurants, and motels. It’s just not feasible

It would be fun to be out there, somewhere far away….

Rolling Psychotherapy in the Time of the Coronavirus

As the weather warms, I am grateful to have my two-wheeled psycotherapist to turn to each day that we spend social distancing. On Sunday, I broke free and did my first 40-mile ride in a couple of months. All it takes is a day off the bike and a switch to my CrossCheck and I’m all rambunctious. I think wearing shorts helps too.

The best part about Sunday’s jaunt was the fact that I could ride on roads that normally would be filled with cars piloted by maniacs. One segment of the ride involved taking Washington Boulevard from the Pentagon to the Memorial Bridge, counterclockwise around the Lincoln Memorial, down Constitution Avenue past the Capitol then back along Independence Avenue to the Memorial Bridge. If I had done this during any normal time period, I’d be posting this from a morgue.

I had so much fun on that ride that I rode another 40 miler on Monday. This one took me south to beautiful Lorton, Virginia. Once home to DC’s prison, Lorton now is filled with townhouses and strip malls. I am uncertain if the new Lorton is an improvement over the old one. The ride was filled with hills but my legs somehow didn’t care. Along the way I spotted this interesting bit of timely lawn adornment.

On Tuesday, I made myself useful by mowing the lawn. I followed that up with a 20-mile ride which involved some shopping along the way in Old Town, Alexandria. I ordered a book for “contactless pickup” from a new independent book seller called Old Town Books. (Ironically, it is across a alley from the site of one of my favorite book sellers (Ollson’s) which is now a saloon.

On the way home I passed under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on South Royal Street in Alexandria. I wish I had my phone out to take a picture of the weight lifter walking his barbell. I kid you not. The thing had two massive weight plates on either side. He was pushing the bar with his foot. It rolled along like he was walking his dog.

Today was a weather masterpiece. Just perfect riding. Off I went to DC this time via Rosslyn, Virginia. Instead of taking the Mount Vernon Trail I opted for Route 110, a four-lane divided highway that is normally filled with speeding traffic. The very wide paved shoulder gave out just before the turn off to the Iwo Jima Memorial. Piece of cake.

A block after passing my old office building in Rosslyn, I was stunned to see the months-long reworking of Lynn Street at the Intersection of Doom. The renovations include restricted parking in the block preceding the intersection. At the intersection itself there is a new bike lane (alas unprotected) and a much wider side walk.

I took the picture above from a protected bump out. It used to be a through lane mostly filled with taxis and ubers. The travel lanes are normally stuffed with cars and buses.

Just ahead in the picture is Key Bridge, the Potomac River crossing into Georgetown. I rode in the street and exited onto Whitehurst Freeway. Weee!. Unbothered by the eight cars that passed me, I continued into downtown on K Street. This would be suicide on any normal day but today it was fun. I even rode the tunnel under Washington Circle.

Eventually I turned off K and headed home. I took 11th Street to the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes. Backtracking to 15th Street, I came upon a DC city work truck cutting across the bike lanes. It turned, stopped atop the park-it barriers that protect the bike lanes, then rumbled across. The driver had to know it was illegal. Light traffic means bad driving: illegal turns, speeding, weaving across lanes. Riding in light traffic is fun but you have to have your head on a swivel.

While riding home I passed the economy lot at National Airport. The lot holds something over 2,600 cars. Today I think there were ten or fifteen using it. It was eerie looking.

A mile or so from home, I stopped at the drug store to get my asthma medicine refill. I bought some odds and ends (the store had two other customers so no worries about distancing) along with the medicine. When I got home, I noticed that the store clerk had left some shaving cream I bought out of my bag. I was pretty gassed after another 40-mile day but I rode back to the pharmacy to get the missing item. I arrived home knackered after a 42 1/2 mile psycotherapy session.

I am getting a rebate on my car insurance thanks to the shut down. I wonder if my health insurer will cut me a break for reduced therapy claims. No. That’s crazy talk.

Blowin’ in the Wind

I had acquired a gallon of exterior white paint for my little paint project. I bought it at my local hardware store. It was appallingly expensive but pandemics have a way of making our demand for things rather price inelastic. This hardware store thrives on people like me who will do almost anything to avoid driving through the US 1 traffic sewer to shop at a soulless big box store.

Once I returned home, I started to set up. A rowdy wind gust blasted me. Then another. And again. I checked my phone. The forecast called for more bluster all through the day and well into tomorrow. Not wanting to make a mess of things, I postponed the painting project until Saturday.

In a few minutes I had changed out of my scuzzy painting togs and into bicycling gear. After admiring some tulips near my front step, I rolled on down the street.

I managed to get about 100 yards from home when another blast hit my from the side, nearly knocking me off my saddle. It occurred to me that I might still manage to make a mess of things! Things being me.

Undaunted, I pedaled away. The Park Service had closed all the parking lots near the Mount Vernon Trail so the prospects for using the trail and maintaining proper social distance were greatly improved.

I managed to ride 25 miles. The first half of the ride was north through Old Town Alexandria into a very frustrating headwind. At one point a wind-aided rider came toward me down a slight decline with a curve at the bottom. He overshot the turn, careened into my lane and nearly went flying off the trail. I anticipated his ineptitude and slowed to watch his crash. He recovered control and quickly returned to his side of the trail. “Sorry.” Dude, now is not the time for a visit to the ER.

I was quite zonked after struggling along for 12 miles and was happy to turn back toward home. This was much more like it. Zipping along. No effort, wind at my back, sun shining in the sky.

As I pulled into my yard, The Mule turned a milestone.

One Long March

We (most of us anyway) made it through March in one piece. It’s been a nerve wracking month, especially for friends who know or live with people who are sick.

I’ve been social distancing as much as possible. Yesterday was my first day in a store or office in two weeks. I went to the hardware store to but birdseed. We need goldfinches and cardinals at the feeder. They help keep us sane. While at the store, I bought primer and painter’s tape so that I can make myself useful by repainting a wall on the back of the house. I’ll go back once the priming is done for a couple of gallons of paint.

As for bike riding, I gradually have begun avoiding trails. It’s just too crowded with people who are thoughtless. The roads are empty but that, too, can be a problem. As we in DC know, about a year ago our friend Dave was killed by a driver going over 70 miles per hour in the city. One reason he could attain this speed was the fact that traffic levels were very low because it was Good Friday. So keep you head on a swivel.

I managed to ride 793 miles in March which is not bad by my standards. The Mule did most of the heavy lifting, 751 miles. Somewhere during the month I broke 2,000 miles on the way to 2,124 miles, almost 2,000 out of doors. Warm weather beckons and I will begin packing on the miles soon, perhaps bringing Big Nellie out of the basement a week or two early.

The lock down on the DC area allows exercise. Make use of it for your health and sanity. Stay safe.

Fixed it at last

I am mechanically inept. In fact, when it comes to anything handy involving my hands, I am not only useless but a danger to myself. A few months ago while chopping a small piece of a tree trunk, I ended up in the ER with blood running down my face. The tree trunk objected to the axe and attacked me. Rude!

I woke up today with sore legs, the result of riding every day for a week. A few weeks ago I noted that riding daily was making me stronger. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling very fatigued from my rides. Yesterday I found out why.

One of the pads on my rear rim brakes was not releasing from the rim. This is the exact problem I had more than once on my bike tour last summer. In order to go my usual pace I was putting out much more effort than normal. In a way, it’s the opposite of a tailwind. Just as a tailwind convinces you that you are Greg LeMond, a rubbing brake pad makes you feel like Uncle Fester.

Thankfully, the interwebs have beaucoup bike repair videos. I watched four and decided I should be able to fix the brakes with plenty of patience. I also needed a day off the saddle so I figured my foray into brake mechanics would chew up an hour or so.

I put the bike up on my repair stand. Then I checked to make sure the brake cable had proper tension. I did this by squeezing the brake lever. It didn’t bottom out against the handlebar. All was good

Then I spun the rear wheel and saw that, like yesterday, the left pad wasn’t releasing from the rim. I decided to try releasing the tension on the spring on that side of the brakes. The spring makes the pad retract. The adjustment mechanism is a teeny screw. From one of the videos I learned how this works. You tighten the screw, the screw presses harder against the end of the tensioning spring, and this pulls the pad away from the rim. I tried this yesterday and nothing much happened. It was very frustrating to do this on the side of the road.

When I looked really closely at the spring, Both the tensioning spring and the adjusting screw are black and they sit in the shadow of my rear bag. It’s easy to miss where the two come in contact. In this case, when I looked very closely I could see that the end of the spring had moved away from the adjusting screw. When I turned the screw it was missing the spring entirely. AHA!

I backed the screw out and used a flat head screw driver to re-position the end of the spring. Then I re-tighted the adjusting screw. It pushed on the spring and the pad retracted from the rim.

The end of the spring is the little black wire pointing down.

Normally fixing bikes follows the same rule as writing computer programs. Whatever time you think it will take is an order of magnitude shorter than it actually does. If you think it will take a day to write a program, it ends up taking a week. A week means a month, and so on.

Rather than take the hour that I expected,this bike repair took all of one minute. It took far longer to set up and take down the work stand than it did to fix the bike.

This brake issue drove me nuts all last summer. I had my brakes adjusted four times between Pueblo Colorado and Carson City Nevada. Now I know what the problem was.

Tomorrow, I hit the road like an April fool. Maybe I even get a tailwind.

Socially distant along US 1 in the soulless exurbs

After day riding in the basement yesterday, my soul couldn’t take it anymore. I hit the roads on The Mule. People on the Interwebs have been complaining about inappropriate crowding on the trails around here so I eschewed the trails and stayed on streets. I made my way across US 1 past WalMart and Cosco and the car wash and the trailer park and through the table flat streets of lower Hybla Valley. After five miles I was once again back to Route 1 where it passes through Fort Belvoir.

Fort Belvoir is an absolutely wonderful place to ride a bike but it has been closed off to civilians for many years. It seems our military can’t distinguish between a harmless old dude on a bike and a maniac intent on mass slaughter. (Hint: my frame pump does not have a bump stock attachment.)

Route 1 is a six-lane death trap that the geniuses at VDOT decided to put unprotected bike lanes on. They were so confident in their work that they put a wide multiuse path alongside the same roadway. Being a bear of very little brain I chose the bike lane. (You knew I’d do that, didn’t you.)

I made it all the way to beautiful Lorton, Virginia. According to one of my favorite DJs, Lorton rhymes with how Ralph Kramden pronounced “Norton!” (NAW-un, I think.) What a coincidence that it has all the style of a Brooklyn sewer worker.

Lorton is nothing but four lane roads and eyesores. It could be anywhere and feels like nowhere. Pharmacy. Car Wash. Bank. Strip Mall. Fake town square. Highway ramps. Endless traffic lights.

Once in Lorton I made my way further south on a road that follows the right of way of the main rail line to Miami and a buried natural gas line. These scenic parts are obscured by trash, scrub brush, and sumac.

After a couple of hills, I was back at Route 1 for a five minute wait to cross the highway at another forever traffic light. I rode past a gas station and a Seven Eleven, up yet another hill, and finally came to a stop at an unsignalled intersection. I was going to make a left but decided that it would be wise to yield to the endless stream of jacked up pick ups and SUVs that were clearly in a hurry to get someplace.

Funeral delayed, I took a left onto two-lane Old Colchester Road (Note to VDOT: no need for the “h”) and began a mile-long, shaded, winding downhill on brand new pavement. After 14 miles I was due for some decent cycling. There were modest homes on big, treed lots. One had horses in the yard.

After about four minutes I crossed a creek. There to my left was the one thing that can make an ugly sewage treatment plant uglier: construction of an even bigger sewage treatment plant. And, of course, it was back up a hill until I hit Route 1 again. At a light. A very long light.

Green! Off I went down hill on Telegraph Road through scenic small business parks. Table tops. Pest control. Landscape contracting. Pet food outlet. So much ugly to see. You could sell tickets.

Onward past Fort Belvior’s wee landing strip, up another hill, down a hill, up a hill, down a hill. Each hill was helpfully interrupted by traffic lights, strategically placed to steal your momentum. What made the traffic lights more annoying was that there was very little traffic to be controlled.

Down another long hill. My lovely little bike lane disappeared as I sped at 25 miles per hour into an ever narrowing roadway. Then I got a lane again to get through a new six lane intersection with two sets of traffic lights. Joy.

Once past all this it was up yet another hill. Red light at top, of course. Down again. Roadway narrows again until it expands into six lanes. Fortunately, all the drivers were home infecting each other. I cruised for a mile to Huntington Avenue, a four-lane road with no paved shoulders that goes past a Metro station. Empty.

Finally, I re-crossed Route 1 one last time, because what could be more fun. Yes, another traffic light. I made my way toward home, up two more hills on Fort Hunt Road.

Did I mention it was windy?

Did I mention that pollen levels were through the roof?

I arrived home after 30 miles, a couple of dozen hills, 212 red lights, and countless epic vistas of sub- and exurban ugliness.

The exurbs tried and tried to steal my soul but The Mule would not let them. The Mule abides.

I’m just sittin’ here doin’ time

After a couple of weeks, even introverts get a bit stir crazy. I am out of new books. Each day I browse the bookshelves looking for something to re-read. It’s really the perfect time to revisit a tome from long ago like Richard Adams’s Shardik or John McPhee’s Coming into the Country.

Yesterday I got back on the bike but it wasn’t as warm as last week and my effort was halfhearted. A friend drove down from DC and he and my wife walked the 1 1/4 mile circuit at Fort Hunt Park maintaining proper distance as they went, while I rode laps. They did three. I did ten or eleven. It wasn’t at all crowded and people, with one annoying exception, were keeping their distance. The exception was a chatty woman in a group. She had zero situational awareness. We all did our best to give her a wide berth.

I am still doing a couple of sessions of stenosis physical therapy each day. I put on my headphones and play some meditative woo woo music so that I focus on what I am doing and take it slow. Each session lasts between ten and fourteen minutes depending on how closely I am paying attention. And I do 20 to 30 minutes of meditation while lying on the couch. Occasionally, this morphs into a nap. My mind doesn’t much mind.

I am also a fan of crossword puzzles. I do the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the New York Times mini, the New Yorker, and the New York magazine puzzles regularly. I only pay for the Post so access is limited. The Times also has something called the Spelling Bee that I find amusing.

I mowed the lawn for the first time the other day. The grass isn’t doing much these days but the weeds and wild onion grass were going gangbusters. I bagged the clippings which didn’t do my back much good.

I am also listening to music online. There’s so much good content. My fave are the daily “broadcasts” of Neil Finn and his sons Liam and Elroy live from their homes in Los Angeles. (For the uninitiated, Neil Finn’s most well known song is Don’t Dream It’s Over but he’s written scores or maybe even hundreds of others.) These mini-concerts happen every night at around 6 p.m. east coast time on Fangradio on an app called Mixlr. Unfortunately, this has become so popular that the connection gets overwhelmed. This leads to buffering and loss of connection sometimes. Luckily, the Finns archive the performances daily at the link above.

Mr. Fangradio

One thing I like most about these online versions of the songs is that they are stripped down if not quite unplugged. In many cases I prefer these to the recorded versions. Liam and Neil did an album last year that I really didn’t much like called Lightsleeper. When performed on Fangradio, however, the songs take on new life and I really enjoy them.

Not to beat a dead horse, a few years ago Neil recorded an album live online over the course of four weeks. It’s called Out of Silence and can be found on You Tube.

Another place for performances is NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts. Many radio stations, often NPR affiliated, have similar content. And there’s the You Tube time sink. You can blow entire days wandering around there.

Well, it’s time to hit the floor for more fun with back exercises. Stay safe, you all. Eat your vegetables. Go easy on the TP. Call your mama. Make good choices.

Prapanca stay away from me

Today was my first day off the bike in a week. My legs were really tired yesterday. Oddly, after about 15 miles they seemed to come to life. I found myself cruising along at 18 miles per hour. This is the sort of thing happens on long bike tours. (It’s a good thing because, otherwise, you’d never get where you’re going.) If this crisis hadn’t come along, I’d be ready to tour in a couple of weeks.

I learned today that two people have tested positive in the building where I worked for 25 years in DC. I don’t know them but I still know quite a lot of people who work there. A description from one of the victims who is currently in the hospital in Maryland describes truly awful illness and extensive lung damage. That’s what worries me most; my lungs are already damaged from illnesses in 2016 and 2018.

Generally speaking, descriptions of the disease vary wildly. Some people get no symptoms at all, others get what feels like a bad cold, still others, like the victim above, have high fevers, coughs, and escalating pulmonary distress. The randomness of all this is enough to drive you insane. And, since it takes days for the symptoms to arise you or just about anyone you interact with could be infected and not even know it. One truly odd thing about the disease is that all the physical distress is caused by your body’s defense mechanisms going haywire as they fight off the invading pathogen.

I have a strong fear of suffocating. When I was a kid, I hated it when other kids held my head underwater. When I was in the hospital with a collapsed lung in 2018, I rolled over onto my good lung. It compressed my good lung and left me without the ability to draw a breath. Climbing my first big climb in Colorado last summer, I found myself leaning across the top tube of my bike on the side of the road in the Rockies unable to catch my breath.

Stress is sometimes useful. When it’s under control, stress can help you concentrate on an exam or get your adrenaline going for a burst of effort. It’s not useful when it just wears you down mentally and emotionally. What we all especially need to avoid is that runaway narrative in our heads that builds bad scenarios on top of each other. It doesn’t matter what your personal situation is; your brain can hijack your stress defenses and carry you away to a place of despair. Buddhists call this prapanca. Prapanca stay the fuck away from me.

Today did have a few de-stressing moments. Instead of riding, I mowed the lawn. Fresh air. Mindless. Repetitive. Not a bad combination. And no interaction with potentially infected, two-legged disease vectors.

Late in the day my wife did a yoga class online. Just as it was about to start a woman came to our door. It was one of her yoga class friends, a psychiatrist, bearing a gift in a black bag. It turned out to be a bottle of gin and and one of tonic.

Gin and tonic, the doctor recommended cure for prapanca.

Suburbs – self isolation made easy

For the last several years I have envied my friends in DC and other urban areas for their ability to walk out their doors and go to restaurants, bars, plays, the movies, and all sorts of other interesting places without having to drive for 30 minutes and deal with parking. Now that we are in a pandemic, I am not so envious.

It turns out that suburban single family homes are isolation pods. We have space in the house and plenty of buffer space outside. And we don’t even have to mow the grass. Yet. (That’s for tomorrow.)

I do escape the pod daily to go for a bike ride. Today I had dead legs, the result of riding for five days in a row. I decided to only ride 25 miles. A week ago I washed and put away the holey wool sweaters that I use for warmth during the winter. As a result, I was underdressed. I managed to get through 21 1/2 miles before running back inside and eating a bowl of hot soup.

I rode to Fort Hunt Park. The Mule posed for a photo in front of some of the ruins of the fort, which dates back to the early 19th century.

I rode the 1.25 mile circuit road in the park four times. I only saw one group that was not social distancing. They were talking to a park volunteer. Derp.

After riding in the park, I made my way over to Collingwood Road. There’s a double loop that goes from Collingwood to Alexandria Avenue and back and then back again. C to A to C. One leg of this is on East Boulevard Drive. Another is on the Mount Vernon Trail. The third is on West Boulevard Drive. The entire course is a little over three miles. I did it twice, once in each direction. I seriously needed a holey sweater so I came home and called it quits after 21 1/2 miles.

Finally, I reported yesterday that my niece and her boyfriend were ill with the virus. Her father, my brother, texted this morning that the two of them had a “miraculous recovery.” I suspect that these two northerners were struck down by DC’s nearly lethal levels of springtime pollen. Having been very sick from sinus afflictions on more occasions than I can remember, I gave up and started taking a 24-hour antihistamine daily, year round. And I still get runny eyes, a sore throat, headaches, and a sour tummy from time to time. The biggest culprit is shredded bark mulch. I used to spread this all over the flower beds in our yard until I got so sick I missed two days of work. No more.

Even with a Buff covering my nose and mouth I received a big dose of mulch dust during my ride today. People spread it this time of year. Ick.

Time for a nap.

Cherry blossoms and social distancing

Since it’s cherry blossom time and today is peak bloom, I decided to ride to DC to see the show. I did my best to stay as far from people as possible. If someone on the trail stopped, I stopped ten feet behind them. If I passed someone (or someone passed me), I held my breath until I was beyond them. (I even adjusted this for wind speed and direction.)

When I got to National Airport I was amazed at how empty the economy parking lot was. There were fewer cars than yesterday.

Out of frame to the right was yet more empty parking spots.

Rather than take the 14th Street Bridge directly to the Tidal Basin and the crowds, I decided to ride another mile to the Memorial Bridge and skip the Tidal Basin entirely. I did a big loop, thanks in part to very like vehicular traffic, and ended up in East Potomac Park where the main road, Ohio Drive is lined with cherry trees.

I rode to Hains Point along Ohio Drive. The road had very light traffic.

There’s a golf course to the right of this picture. I spotted a ball in the grass and passed it by. After a minute of thought, I decided to ride to Hains Point a second time and retrieve the ball. I know it’s been there for a few days and its been rained on so the odds of it carrying the virus were small. Still, I touched it like it might explode and placed it in the side pocket of my saddle bag. I rinsed my fingertips off with my water bottle. (And washed my hands with degreaser and with soap and water when I got home. Paranoia strikes deep.)

During the second trip to the point, rain began falling. Temperatures and the humidity felt more like mid May than mid March so the rain felt good. An added benefit was that it cleared out most of the tourists near the Tidal Basin. This allowed me to take the 14th Street Bridge back to Virginia.

I must say that people seem to be doing a great job of social distancing. I only saw one cluster of people with more than three or four people in it.

Finally, I learned just before leaving for my ride that one of my nieces and her boyfriend are sick. They live locally and are in their twenties. He interacted with someone who tested positive when he was at a party out of town. So presumably they are both infected with the coronavirus.

I