Christmas Eve Sunrise over Hunting Creek

I took an unusual route to work today. Not a bit of my ride in was on the Mount Vernon Trail. I was still treated to a pretty darn nice sunrise as I made my way from US 1 to Washington Street.

The ride in was uneventful but for a red light runner who almost hit me in Old Town.

I rode past Arlington Cemetery. Each tombstone had a Christmas wreath leaning against it.

We were let out of work early so my early Christmas present was a ride home in the daylight, with a nice tail wind to boot.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas.

Cheers.

Big Nellie and Me

Big Nellie and Me by Rootchopper
Big Nellie and Me, a photo by Rootchopper on Flickr.

I found out that I need to take Monday off from work. Normally, I’d just email my boss and do the paperwork later, but this might be a problem since the admin staff is short this week. As it turns out it was 70 degrees outside on the winter solstice so I couldn’t pass up the chance to do a bike commute on the weekend. Big Nellie and i enjoyed a steady tailwind all the way to Rosslyn. This meant that the ride home would be a struggle. And it was. A little over 2 miles from home I was passed by Charmaine going the other way on the Mount Vernon Trail. We used to ride together all the time until she moved a few years ago. We stopped and chatted for a good 1/2 hour. Then she took this picture of Big Nellie and me and we rode off in opposite directions, racing the fast approaching dusk.

Was Hitchcock Canadian?

Was Hitchcock Canadian? by Rootchopper
Was Hitchcock Canadian?, a photo by Rootchopper on Flickr.

When I left the house just before sunrise it was 28 degrees. It warmed, in a manner of speaking, to 35 by the time I made it to work. I left work at 2:30. It was 62 degrees. It felt like heaven. Apparently, the Canada geese agreed. There were several hundred of them grazing in the grass along the Mount Vernon Trail just down river from the Memorial Bridge. There was not a single goose in the water. This picture captures about half of them. I defy anyone to ride through this many geese without saying “Honk’ at least once.

Sunrise Potomac River 12/18/2013

It’s nearly the solstice. The sunrises are downriver from my route to work. I stop and look over my shoulder. After a mile of riding, the sun peeks over the horizon and I stop to appreciate it. It may be cold and the trail may be icy, but the sunrise makes the ride to work worthwhile. Less than a minute after taking this picture I spotted a bald eagle in the Belle Haven tree. He was checking out the sunrise too.

Potomac River Sunrise 12/16/2013

My first bike commute in a week was a cold affair. The trail was ice free though and Little Nellie and I made slow progress into a headwind. Then I caught the sunrise over my right shoulder and had to stop to take a picture. Never. Gets. Old.

At night, about a half mile from home, two eyes illuminated by my headlight peaked at me from beneath a guard rail. It was a mature fox. He didn’t say anything, just turned and ran into the woods.

Shutout

It rained. It sleeted. It snowed. True to its policy, the National Park Service refused to sand, salt or plow the Mount Vernon Trail, leaving all of its bridges an icy mess for the week.

Lovely.

I fell on icy roads last winter and noticed that it was painful, so I decided to forgo orthopedic chaos this week and either drove to work or worked from home. I haven’t looked at my records but this may be my first weeklong shutout since Snowmaggedon.

The week wasn’t a complete loss. Since I had my car at work, I drove up to the fabulous WABA World Headquarters to pick up my prize for winning their membership drive. During the drive, I chose to sign people up for WABA memberships on the Mount Vernon Trail at the 14th Street bridge. It was my good fortune to pick the spot that several hundred bike commuters passed that evening.

My prize was a Chrome bike messenger bag filled with bicycling goodies: socks, a U-lock, a water bottle and cage, a refrigerator magnet, EPO, and a jersey.  (Just kidding about the EPO.) II was really kind of excited about the jersey. I don’t own a single bicycle jersey. The one I won is a large. I suspected that it was probably a little small for me. So I tried it on. Apparently, they acquired this jersey from.the new City Bikes store in Lilliput.  I looked like Will Ferrell in the cowbell sketch. I’m sure I can find some svelte person to give it to.

On Thursday night I drove to the WABA holiday party at the Bier Baron, which is located in the west end of DC, between Dupont Circle and Georgetown. Car traffic was gridlocked so after 15 frustrating minutes I kind of gave up on the party and turned toward Georgetown. Within a block I found free on-street parking. It was sign from God that I should not give up. I parked my car and walked a mile to the venue in the cold.

Inside there were a flabbergasting number of WABA people, so many that it was impossible to get a drink. I followed Alex and Chris to the basement bar. We hung out with other thirsty refugees including Dave, Brian, Chris B, and Lolly. The beer was pretty good except for a habanero laced pint that fearless Lolly ordered. It was muy picante. I sipped it and my mouth burned for 20 minutes. I can’t comprehend how anyone could ingest more than an ounce or two of the stuff.

After a while Chris B and I went back upstairs to mingle. I said hello to Megan and Colin along the way. We hung out with Katie (I’m pretty sure there’s a Kate Bicycle Cult in this town)  and her sister Liz. The hour was getting late-ish so I bid my farewells and braved the frigid temps to walk back to my car. Beer is good antifreeze. It felt great to walk with my jacket open. Take that winter!

Powerless

For a week in December, last week was pretty hardcore. It started with a gentle 12-mile ride on Sunday. Then five days of bike commuting and a side trip to Friday Coffee Club added 152 miles. On Saturday, I rode the inaugural Cider Ride. I parked for free in East Potomac Park and rode 2 1/2 miles to and from the start. My total mileage for the day was 65. So my seven-day total was 229 miles, every bit of it on Little Nellie, my Bike Friday New World Tourist.

Dang did I need some rest. Little Nellie’s 20-inch wheels can really beat me up. Thankfully, the weather gods gave us a nasty bit of wintry weather in the form of an ice storm on Sunday. All was going as planned. I was getting plenty of rest. Reading. Drinking tea. And feeling rather chipper. After a long day of idling, I went to bed. During the night, big chunks of ice landing on the deck and patio beneath our bedroom window kept waking Mrs. Rootchopper and me up. One of these landed around 2:55 a.m. We tried to spot its remnants outside but we couldn’t see them from the window and there was no way we were going out in the storm to check things out. So we went back to bed. Then at 3:00, BAM, an explosion, followed by quiet and dark.

Apparently an electrical transformer blew. It knocked out the power on our side of the street, and nowhere else nearby. We’d been through this before when the derecho hit in the summer of 2012. That time, our power was out for ten days. The temperature in our living room rose to 94 very muggy degrees. This time would difference.

We called the outage in to Dominion Electric Power, went back to bed, and hoped for the best. By morning, the temperature in the house was 63 and falling. I had planned to work from home on Monday. With ice on the roads and trails, I decided not to put my faith in Dominion or any of my bikes, hopped in the car, and headed for the office. If you think I’m riding 30 miles round trip on ice to arrive home to a freezing house, you’ve got another thing coming.

After a day of working with fingers crossed, I drove home and found my house to be DARK.

It was 55 inside. Mrs. Rootchopper showed up and we went to dinner. A big burrito and margarita later were back in the cold house. Rather than sit there and shiver, we went to the movies. We saw Philomena, which struck this Irish American, erstwhile altar boy, and long lapsed Catholic as all too close to the bone for a variety of reasons. In any event, it was a relief to see a movie without CGI monsters and superheroes.

We arrived home at 11:30. DARK and COLD. We pulled out the sleeping bags, put on our warmest sleeping duds and went to bed.

It was 51 when we woke up.

I drove to work again. During the day, an Associated Press reporter (oddly, from Pittsburgh) contacted me to ask about the outage. I told him my tale. Maybe I’ll be in the papers again. (This interview thing is getting kind of surreal.)

I spent the day refreshing the outage information from the Dominion website. Fewer than two percent of houses in Fairfax County where I live were without power. The number dropped to one percent over the day, then increased!  At 3 o’clock some 36 hours after the outage began the blue dot on the map near my house disappeared. I called home and my voice mail had a message from Dominion. It didn’t say my power was restored, it said something to the effect that if I was still having problems to call them.

I drove home to investigate and saw the porch light on. Yay. The temperature inside was 63 and rising.

While I appreciate the efforts of the people who got our power restored, I fail to understand why our spot on the electrical grid seems to be particularly prone to outages. You’d think Dominion would identify weak spots in its distribution network and fix them. You’d apparently think wrong.

I’m working from home tomorrow. I expect that ice will keep me off the bike (outdoors, at least) for another couple of days before riding to work and Coffee Club on Friday. It looks like this will be, at most, a 32 mile week.

I suppose I needed the rest.

Sixty Miles for Some Cider

Today was the inaugural Cider Ride put on by the Washington Area Bicyclists Association (WABA). In the tradition of the Vasa ride held in early March, this ride was all about riding in the cold in order to partake of a warm, sweet beverage. Despite the fact that December in DC is not exactly or even remotely warm, the event sold out. There were three rides named after apples. I rode on the Honeycrisp ride which was 60 miles long. Another ride was 47 miles. The third ride was 15 miles. (They didn’t get any cider on the 15-miler. They were first in line for quiche though.)

The ride departed from Canal Park in Near Southeast DC. This park which also has a tavern, site of the after-party and an outdoor ice rink, is on M Street near Nationals Park and the Navy Yard.  We headed out for a farm somewhere near Bowie MD to the east northeast of the start at 8:30. There was a fair contingent of people from Friday Coffee Club including new-ish Dad Justin, Ryan, and Ed and Mary on their scary big tandem (which does not yet appear to have a name. Dave, a veteran of this year’s version of the Hoppy 100, was working the registration desk. Nelle from WABA was also there working. (One of the ironic things about working for WABA is that you rarely get to do the rides!)

Off we went to the east, over the new 11 Street bridge into Anacostia where we took the first left and started climbing away from the Anacostia River. The Coffeeneurs were in a pack until gravity grabbed Little Nellie and me. Bye, everybody. I was fell in with a back of young women who were kind enough to suppress their snickers at the sight of a big guy on a clown bike. After about a mile we were on roads that I’ve never ridden on before. We were soon in Prince Georges County MD. Inside the beltway PG County is not exactly Shangrila, but it does have paved roads which were useful for this sort of ride.

We rode by the federal complex in Suitland MD. I pity the weather service and Census workers that work in that place. It looks like a maximum security prison.

On we rode, turning this way and that. I became separated from the ladies and fell in with a couple of ride marshals (volunteers who help the riders fix flats, find their way, etc.). My ride marshals soon missed a turn. I think we all thought someone else was paying attention to the directions. We got sorted out and back on course. The course itself had lots of rolling hills which kept us honest. Not having a map with me, I was utterly lost.

We crossed over the beltway and suddenly some of the roads started to look familiar. I think I rode on these on the way to Annapolis about ten years ago. We popped into subdivisions then back out onto mostly two-lane roads. Then we crossed the busy Crane Highway (US 301) and, as if by a snap of the fingers, we were are two-lane country roads. We passed fallow farmers’ fields, creeks, woods, and the occasional misplaced McMansion  and soon found ourselves at the rest stop at the halfway point. Here I enjoyed some warm cider, some junky snacks (tasted great), and a brief conversation with Megan from WABA. I think the last time I saw her at an event like this was at the halfway rest stop at the Vasa ride in March. Megan is from Florida so cold is not her thing but she had four layers on today. As for me, the only part of my body that was cold was my toes. Before leaving, I slipped some toe warmers into my shoes. Ahhh.

We took a mostly different route back. It seemed to have few turns so the navigation was a lot easier. One road was a rutted mess. My back, already beaten up by the morning’s ride not to mention 150 miles of bike commuting this week was really unhappy. I survived. Somehow I was now in a group with three course marshals. How nice of WABA to provide such personal service. After a while a couple of the marshals peeled off to assist other rides and Chris one of the marshals that had been with me for the last 40 miles and I soldiered on. We made pretty respectable time too. Chris knows how to ride in traffic so we really didn’t have to worry about each other.

Somewhere around 45 miles we saw a lone rider about 1/4 mile ahead of us. We caught up to Katie, an American University student, and rode the rest of the way in. The return route included a ride-by of FedEx field (what a monstrosity!) and an unexpected climb up Southern Avenue on DC’s border. When we got to the top, we were treated with a long downhill back toward the Anacostia on Massachusetts Avenue. This downhill is part of the 50 States Ride so I knew it was coming but Katie and Chris didn’t. I’m sure they had a gas flying down the hill.

We made our way back over the 11th Street bridge and went to the after party at the Park Tavern in Canal Park. Pizza and hot spiked cider. Perfecto.

For a brand new ride, I thought this one went pretty well. It’s always fun to explore new territory on a bike, even if it is right next store. The downsides to the ride were few. It was cold and a bit windy but not nearly as cold as the Vasa ride or most of my winter commutes. A few drivers came very close to Chris and me. I think these close passes were intentional. PG County probably doesn’t see this many cyclists in one day very often. A couple of the roads could have used some re-paving some time ago, like maybe, 1974. These nasty parts were only about a mile in total length.

My thanks to Chris for riding most of the ride with me. And with Katie who lifted our spirits for the last ten miles. And special thanks to all the WABA people and volunteers who helped out.

I only took a few pix. They’re on my Flickr page. And some from others are on the WABA Flickr page, too.

 

November by the Numbers

Somewhere along the way, November confused itself with February. Despite the cold weather, the Rootchopper express rolled on. I managed to roll 530 miles during the month, mostly on the back of 16 commutes and a short trip to the doctor’s office. The Mule did most of the work, taking me to work 8 times and racking up 297 1/2  miles. Big Nellie took me to work 6 times and covered 187 1/2 miles. Little Nellie took me to work twice and we covered 45 miles. The highlights of the month were seeing 35,000 miles come up on Big Nellie’s odometer and 34,000 miles appear on The Mule’s.  Little Nellie is way behind but should reach a mileage milestone in a week or so.

Oh and I coffeeneured, too (which explains my lingering jitters).

By the end of November I’d ridden 6,821 1/2 miles in 2012 including a personal record of 163 bike commutes.

It’s all downhill from here.