It was a nearly perfect autumn day to be riding a bike to and from work.  Maybe the near perfection had to do with the traffic jam I witnessed on the way home on the GW Parkway. At one point, cars were bottled up by a broken down ambulance. A half mile later a nasty rear end collision had left a couple of cars all smashed up. I didn’t bother to take pictures since I see these sorts of ties ups with disturbing regularity.  A mile farther on I spotted a guy riding toward me with what looked like a sculpture. It was a shiny new bike frame that he had slung around his head and neck.  I didn’t get a picture of that either.  It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a guy riding with a frame on his head and neck.  You get used to unusual things when riding your bike to work on the Mount Vernon Trail.

Big Nellie gets color coordinated

Since I try to take a picture each day that I ride to work, I decided to pull out my camera and get busy.  Nothing interesting caught my eye.  There seemed to be an unusual amount of orange on my bike so I took a picture of that.  The bottle came from the Backroads Century.  The bell was provided by New Belgium Brewery at the 50 States Ride. Two mementos of 2 great rides. The bell replaces my little black bell which made a dainty “ding”. This one goes “Ka-Ching!”  It will take some getting used to.  Having completed my daily picture chore, I enjoyed the ride through Old Town.  As I was making my way into Fairfax County on the trail I did a triple take. It looked like, no it couldn’t be, yes it is. An orange poodle! Bizarre.  The woman who was holding his leash said he was dyed pink a month ago. Go figure.

Don’t feed you dog cheetos.

I got home late last night, the result of taking a friend out to his hotel in Sterling Va. This morning I rode Little Nellie (my Bike Friday New World Tourist to work). It rained making me tired and wet. After work I rode across the Key Bridge into Georgetown to attend Maret’s homecoming football game. The Frogs were down 14-0 when I arrived and it never got closer.

After the game I rode to Maret to watch a volleyball game. Maret won and, as usual, it was very fun to watch. One of the players’ parents tried to get me to put on a red wig and lead the cheering in the stands. Um, no.

After the game. I rode home. I got here at 10 p.m. It was a perfect night for a ride. I passed through Dupont Cicle where I heard a tuba playing “Lean on Me”. the old Bill Withers song. The crowd was very enthusiastic. It was a nice surprise.

Okay, I admit it. I screwed up this shot of a mother and son who are riding bikes from Fredericksburg VA to Long Island. Mom appears to have boundless energy. Son seems without a care in the world. Of course, they gave me their names but I forgot them. Sometimers disease strikes again. If you care to, you can follow their adventure here.

It was one of those perfect fall days here in DC.  Not a cloud in the sky.  A light breeze. Temperatures in the low 70s with not even a trace of mugginess.  In short, the perfect day for a two-wheeled meander to “The City”.

On Thursday the rear tire on Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent, blew out. The sidewall failed and that was that. Yesterday, I put a new tire on and when for a ten mile test drive.  All was once again right with the world.

So it was with cheerful anticipation that I opened the door of the Rootchopper Institute to roll out Big Nellie for a spin. That’s when I knew the gods had it in for me. The rear tire was flat.  As I changed it, I inspected the tube and it appeared to have a defect in it.  It looked like a big black patch had been put on.  The leak was around the edge of the patch.  I have no idea where I acquired this tire so I chalked it up to the emptors of caveat and installed another tube.  And off I rode.

My first mistake was taking the Mount Vernon Trail.  It’s beautiful almost any time of year, but on a perfect fall day it really is a treat. Apparently, about 10,000 other folks thought so too. And all 10,000 of them wandered left and right across the trail at 5 miles per hour, all part of an evil conspiracy to make my ride suck.  For about 10 miles they succeeded.  At one point I stopped to check out the river. The tide was out and the river was low.  A couple of anglers in a boat didn’t get the memo and they were stuck in the mud about 100 yards from the river bank.  “Don’t drink that last beer, Darryl.”  “You mean this one, Fred. GULP”

I thought you brought the tide charts.

Nothing to reflect on here.

My day wasn’t going very well, but, by comparison, I was doing okay.

On I rode to DC, dodging bikes and walkers and dogs every 100 feet.  I made it and did a celebratory lap around Hains Point.  I decided to visit Abe so I rode up to the Lincoln Memorial. It was mobbed.  The reflecting pool was all torn up, ruining what is one of the great vistas in DC.

I came to Constitution Avenue which is under construction for the next decade or so.  I took a right turn around a parked tour bus and moved into the right lane.  In the blink of an eye, I was on my side with my legs pinned under Big Nellie. The first thought was OWWW! The second was I hope that bus isn’t moving. 

To my surprise, I heard, “That just happened to us.” A couple was standing next to bikes on the grass along side of the bus. The driver and the tour guide from the bus were offering them bandages from the bus’s first aid kid. A passerby had given the woman rider an ice pack for her leg.  Thank you lord, I’ve crashed in a MASH unit. 

I disentangled myself from my bike.  The bike still works. I still work. I’m going to live. I sure wish my hand and elbow would stop bleeding.  And my outer right thigh burns and my upper right arm burns. The MASH unit gives me a sterile wipe and some band aids.  I do what I can to clean myself up, get the bike out of the street, and go commiserate with my fellow patients.  They look to be in pretty good shape. “I’m glad I had this helmet on. I landed on my head,” she says.  It occurs to me that today was one of those very rare days when I didn’t wear mine.  Luckily I didn’t hit my head.

Helmeted patients tending their wounds.

One of the benefits to riding a recumbent is that you have a shorter distance to fall.  As long as you keep your feet on the pedals, your have a decent chance of riding away from your misfortune.  (If you take your feet off the pedals, they can be drawn under the bike and you can break a leg. This phenomenon is known, cleverly, as leg suck.)  Broken collarbones, which are common among conventional bicyclists who crash, are rare for recumbent riders but smashed up elbows aren’t. (When I first started riding this bike, I crashed so often that I started wearing elbow pads. I was running out of meat on my arm.)

‘Bent elbow

I wear bicycling gloves almost as often as I wear a helmet.  Gloves are of little use while riding a bike and are essentially superfluous on a recumbent.  Except for one thing: gloves save your hands in the event of a crash.  Wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t wear my gloves today.

Yup, shoulda worn my gloves.

One thing I was surprised about is the fact that my clothes didn’t get torn up when I slid on the pavement.  I was wearing a loose fitting t-shit and conventional (i.e. non-bike) shorts.  Ah, but they don’t do squat for you in an accident. 

My right thigh was already starting to swell up when I got home.

My upper arm just under the sleeve of my t-shirt.

So what caused this lovely accident. The District Department of Transportation (DDOT).  The new construction had replaced sections of the curb lane. In most other parts of Constitution Avenue the transition from the second-from-right lane to the curb lane had an asphalt patch and could be ridden without trouble.  This particular stretch of the street did not have a patch. In the sun and shade the fact that the lanes were at different heights was impossible to detect.  I never had a chance. I hope DDOT puts some asphalt down before somebody gets killed.

Right lane one inch or so higher than middle lane. How about a sign DDOT?

See how the shade obscures the transition?

I continued on with my journey.  I rode to the Ellipse on the south side of the White House but was informed by a police officer that bikes were not allowed in the street and that I had to ride on the sidewalk, the sidewalk crammed with tourists all gawking at the White House hoping to spot Barry or Michelle or watch some lunatic fence jumper get taken down by the Secret Service.  I made my way very slowly to Pennsylvania Avenue to ride down the bike lanes.  I made it one block.  I ran into The Taste of DC which is a block party for DC restaurants.  There were thousands of people.  Add to that the fact that Freedom Plaza to my immediate left was filled with Occupy Wall Street protesters and all I could say was “Get me out of here.”

Pennsylvania Avenue

I escaped to Constitution Avenue where I saw a tourist running to catch a tour bus. She tripped, stumbled twice a couple of times and did a face plant on the sidewalk. Down goes Frazier. Down goes Frazier. She was quickly assisted by several food vendors who helped her to her feet and gave her an impossibly dry soft pretzel from the Cretacious Period.  I hope she lives.

Too bad it’s not supposed to rain tomorrow.  If I think about it, I’ll try my best to fall on my left side, the one with some intact flesh. 

I decided to start riding my Tour Easy recumbent bike to work I call the bike Big Nellie.  Big Nellie is fast an comfortable. I hadn’t ridden it in a while so the tires needed some air. I pulled out my floor pump and it wouldn’t work.  Arggg!  Fuss, fuss, fiddle and I finally got it to work right.  Yesterday went fine. Today was payback.
 
It started off as a pretty good day.  I left home a bit early and timed it just right.  As I arrived at the Potomac River, the sun was just beginning to peek above the tree line as I looked to the east.  Sunrise pictures are hard to take but I think these came out okay.  I was a little surprised how much more of the sun appeared by the time I took the second shot. 

First Shot

Second Shot Just a Few Second Later

So, having enjoyed a bit of natures beauty on the way to work, I was looking forward to a productive day.  And. as it turned out, it was productive.Then came the ride home.

Big Nellie’s tires have to be a couple of years old. Maybe three.  Let’s just say that I have been thinking about replacing them for months but that chore just didn’t make it to my to do list.  I did manage to destroy a pair of pedals on this bike a few weeks ago. The left pedal was making an annoying click with each rotation of my foot.  By the time I got home, the pedal had nearly fallen off.  Kaput.  I replaced them with a pair of pedals I had from an experiment with PowerGrips a few months ago.  I was feeling like Joe Bike Mechanic.  I had reached the limits of my mechanical expertise.

On the ride home from work, the replacement left pedal began clicking. Very annoying. It didn’t seem to be falling apart but the sound was bringing back bad memories. About 4 miles from home I heard another sound that was even worse. BANG! from my rear wheel. The sidewall of my rear tire had failed.  This is a known problem with Panaracer Pasella tires, of which this was one. The upside of these tires is that they are relatively inexpensive and do a good job resisting run-of-the-mill flats. The downside is, well,….BANG!

Umm…That’s Not Good

I began changing the tire, pulled my pump from my tool bag, only to find that it had fallen to pieces. I found several pieces in the bag, cobbled them together, and hoped for the best.  I got the tire up to 20 pounds per square inch of pressure before the pump gave out.  (It normally takes 95.)  It was getting dark so I decided to make do with what little air I had.

Long story short, I made it home, but not without having my camera fall out of my pocket on the way.  It seems to have survived the fall.

I think it’s time to back away slowly and go to bed before something else breaks.

This weekend I’ll be playing Joe Bike Mechanic in the driveway.

It was unseasonably and unreasonably cold this morning. The Sequoia was unfazed. On the way home, my proud steed passed 29,000 miles. It’s time to switch over to another bike and give this one a rest.

There has been a series of construction projects on the Mount Vernon Trail this year.  Usually the construction crews do a decent job of giving trail users safe passage through their work zones.  Usually.  This year on two occasions, construction crews put in detours that were downright dangerous to bicyclists.  If you think I am just whining, keep in mind that I nearly crashed in both of these detours and I have been ridden bikes for well over 60,000 miles.  Less experienced riders are goners.

So trail users complained. The detours were fixed.  Now comes detour number 3, brought to you by the same folks who screwed up detour number 2 in August.  Back then, the Jones Point Park rehabilitation project required construction crews to tear up the pavement on the trail under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.  They put down packed dirt and stone in its place.  This patch was in the shade so that riders had little warning of the change in surface until they were on top of it. After much bitching and moaning, the dirt patch was replaced by a bumpy paved patch. For the life of me I cannot understand why this patch wasn’t smoothed out. Nevertheless it was an improvement.

Now that patch has been torn up again. Instead of going straight under the bridge, a detour takes riders in a U, along the bridge for 100 yards then under the bridge and back along the opposite side.  Easy to do, right?  Wrong. They screwed it up again. As you approach the bottom of the U, the contractors paved a narrow, 90-degree turn.  Apparently realizing that this was inadequate for all but the slowest cyclist, the contractor laid down packed dirt and stone on the inside of the turn.  Didn’t they get the message the first time!!!????  I guarantee that someone will crash on this turn. 

Once you cross under the bridge you make your way back along the far side of the bridge.  This is paved, with what must be the most pathetic pavement job in the developed world. In the middle of this picture you may be able to make out how the pavement is giving way.  My front and rear tires sunk into the trail here almost bringing my bike and me to the ground.  

So let’s make a new rule. If you going to put in a detour on the Mount Vernon Trail, you have to rollerblade on it every day.  Maybe then the contractors and the city will get their act together.

I like to ride non stop to work, but sometimes you just have to pull over and take it all in. This morning was one of those times. Puffy clouds and a rising sun over the river. Almost makes me itching to ride to work on Monday. Almost.

The Fifty States Ride takes place each year in Washington, D.C.  The idea is to ride on each of the streets named for the fifty states.  The 65-mile course is designed to cover the entire city.  If you want to know what DC really looks like, this ride is for you. The streets are open to auto traffic so it is just you, your wits and a cue sheet against the topography of our nation’s capital.  Did I mention DC is hilly?  Yeah buddy!  Is it ever! What makes the ride especially challenging is the fact that at the bottom of nearly every hill is a stop sign or a traffic light.  No hill hopping here.  This is why I call this ride the Hell of the Mid Atlantic.  Originally, the ride was held in August which meant 90+ degree temperatures. Apparently this was too much fun so they moved it to September when the humidity is only slightly uncomfortable.

Spending so much time at a standstill makes this an incredibly social ride. Riders strike up friendships throughout the course.  The residents of DC, often accused of hostility toward cyclists, offer encouragement, course corrections, and sometimes food and water to the riders.  Who says this city has no heart?

After last year’s ride, I decided to retire from the Hell of the Mid Atlantic.  Three times is plenty. It’s too hard. I’m too old. Then came Florencia. I met Flor on my first ride five years ago.  She seemed to float up the hills and, despite truly  oppressive heat and humidity, she didn’t seem to break a sweat.  It was so gross out that at least one rider decided to take a dip in Rock Creek, which can’t be the cleanest urban waterway in the world.

Florencia, our social director

Using Facebook, Flor put out the call to her 2,642 personal friends for riders to join her for this year’s ride.  Jeff, who I met through Shane who rode with Flor and me way back in 2007, signed up first.  Then another Jeff who I didn’t know. Then Richard. And Veronica. Finally, my friend Paul, who also rode with us in 2006 joined in. Veronica’s friend Amy came too. The Florbook Seven was formed. Our social director was pleased with herself.

Wipe that smile off your face, Paul.

Richard, Florencia, Jeff, Amy, Paul and Veronica with my Sequoia in the foreground

At the start I saw Lisa, a rider from work. And Mary whom I met last year. And her husband Ed.  (Two nights earlier I attended an Elbow concert at the 930 Club in DC only to find myself standing next to Mary and Ed. Small world.)  Mary also blogs and we both post pictures on Flickr.  You can check out her blog entry on the Fifty States Ride here.

Mary and Ed went off with some of their friends. And Lisa with hers. The Florbook Seven set out together alone.

Lining up for the start

The ride corkscrews its way around downtown and Capitol Hill for what seems like forever.  The riders pick off a dozen or so states as they follow their cue sheets, hoping not to make a wrong turn.  Speeds are slow and talk flows.  At this point I took lots of pictures knowing full well that the hills are not too far away.

Florencia and Veronica, with Paul, in yellow, behind

This guy hauled a music wagon with his massive bicycle.

On Corcoran Street

Florencia and Jeff

Downtown

Richard and Jeff at a stop light

And so we rode, and stopped, and rode, and stopped.  Eventually we passed the White House along a car-free section of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Paul near the White House

Richard near the White House

Florencia and her cue sheet – all 9 pages of it

Florencia and Jeff

Occasionally, we fanned out on the route. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, I opened up a sizable gap so I waited for the crew to catch up near the Archives.

My peeps pass the Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue

Somewhere along this section Veronica confessed a misconception.  When she signed up, she thought it was a 50-mile ride.  Her longest previous ride had been 40 miles. She didn’t look too pleased, but I assured her that we’d get her through to the end. She seemed like a pretty determined rider, the weather was good, and we were riding at a pretty casual pace so she seemed confident that she’d make it.

We made our way out of downtown and across the Anacostia River to scenic Anacostia. That’s sarcasm, folks.  Anacostia is poverty stricken and the riding here is hilly.  Up Martin Luther King Boulevard. Down Alabama Avenue. Up Stanton Road, Mississippi Avenue, and more of Alabama.  The crew stopped for a breather but I pedaled on slowly not wanting to stiffen up.  They caught up to me at a light about a mile later, all remarking on that last monster hill. Payback came on Massachusetts Avenue as we all glided at thirty miles per hour back toward the river.

We cruised through Capitol Hill and stopped at Eastern Market, near the half way point.  Here Flor and Paul re-enacted some pictures I took five years ago. Somehow the only pictures I have of Flor from that ride are of her eating.  She offered Paul some tasty looking chocolate, which was actually soap. Paul was tempted.

Florencia eating – Are Powerbars food?

Florencia tries to poison Paul

After eating at Eastern Market, Florencia and Amy decided to head home. This is not entirely surprising since we had already been riding for four hours. The rest of us, devoid of real lives, decided to continue on. We were joined by Tito who had been riding alone.  Poor Tito was lonely. Now we were Veronica and Her Boys.

Tito

Richard

After Eastern Market the course opens up quite a bit and the pace improves. We took turns leading the group. Richard the Young rode like a colt.  He was such a strong rider that he seemed to be constantly riding past turns. He came back to us time and again. No worries.

Since I was a three-time veteran, I led during some of the more confusing sections.  Mostly I hoped the group would follow when I surged ahead to get some momentum for a hill coming up.  Lucky for me, my legs seemed to get stronger as the ride went on.

Veronica and Paul watch Jeff checking his tube.

Jeff had our second flat of the ride (Amy had one in the morning).  He tried to find the cause but gave up and re-installed the suspect tube. Fearing that he’d flat again and delay us, he rode on ahead alone. Jeff, the noble one.

Paul, Tito and Richard contemplate the universe.

Well past the forty mile mark, Veronica seemed to have no problem with the hills.  I took a shot of her over my shoulder. For somebody who expected to be miserable, she sure looks like she was having a good time.  Maybe it was the fact that the cue sheets were running out.

We escorted our fair lady through the far northern section of the city and down into Rock Creek Park.  In Chevy Chase, Richard stopped to ask a woman on her front lawn for some water.  Without hesitation they agreed.  Then they asked the rest of us if we wanted some too.  Nice people.

The last rest stop was at American University.  After that would come the dreaded Arizona Avenue hill, steep, bumpy, and long.  Veronica steeled herself for the challenge while Tito called his next of kin.

Veronica with Jeff at AU.  No worries.

Tito on his smart phone.

I am proud to report that Veronica and her boys passed the Arizona Avenue challenge unscathed. I managed to make a wrong turn a few miles later but corrected my error so that we might enjoy the thrill of riding on Idaho Avenue.

About 15 minutes later we arrived back where we started at Kalorama Park. We crowded into The Grill from Ipanema across the street and commenced celebrating. The boys were proud of their Lady.  Richard seemed utterly unphased.  We toasted our triumph with cold beer and ate some pretty darn awesome Brazilian food.

Cheers!

Rookies no more!

Brazilian munchies

Good food. Great ride. New friends.

It’s nearly October now. That means we’ll be getting some interesting sun rises and sun sets. This shot was taken after sunrise from Gravelly Point near National Airport. It being my first day in the office at my new job, the beams of sunlight made me feel optimistic.