The last several years have seen an amazing number of road construction projects around these parts.  Today I cobbled together a new route from Mount Vernon to DC that barely used the Mount Vernon Trail.  This is welcome news to those of us who hate the trail on summer weekends when it becomes incredibly congested with volksmarchers, rollerbladers, runners, little kids on bikes, etc. 

The New Road to Crystal City

From home I took Fort Hunt Road (not the most bike friendly road, I’ll admit) to US 1.  Then I took the new bike path from US 1 to South Washington Street.  Instead of crossing the street and picking up the Mount Vernon Trail to DC, I turned left and picked up South Columbus Street. I rode this and South Alfred Street all the way to the north end of Old Town Alexandria where I picked up US 1 again for a half mile.  After using the a new side path to cross over the railroad tracks that Amtrak uses, I picked up a bike trail along a new road that goes straight north all the way to Crystal City.  I picked up Clark Street beyond Crystal City which took me to Boundary Channel Drive.

Then I crossed over into Lady Bird Johnson Park and picked up the Mount Vernon Trail at the Humpback Bridge. 

Big Nellie on the Bridge to LBJ Park

After visiting LBJ’s memorial, I followed some signs to get back to the Mount Vernon Trail.

LBJ Rock. Note the Resemblance to the Man Himself

They Even Put Up Signs

The trail under the bridge emerges directly across from the monuments in DC.  Pretty nifty how that all worked out.

The Jefferson Memorial Is Directly across the River

All in all a pretty cool new route into town.

I always try to stop and chat with the bike tourists I encounter around DC. Like many of these tourists Zach and Nick are riding the East Coast bike route. (You can get maps that guide you from Bar Harbor ME to Key West FL.) A few years back I happened on Nancy Wright, a teacher from Vermont who was riding the perimeter of the lower 48 US states!

From personal experience I know that encounters such as this one are very reassuring and helpful. And if you happen to be near and ice cream shop, buy them a cone. You can get a good miles to the scoop.

The DC area sees more than its share of violent storms.  Unfortunately, the bad weather takes its toll on the beautiful old trees along the Mount Vernon Trail.  Three years ago a storm took out a tree that stood directly alongside the trail just south of Dyke Marsh.  The tree was uprooted and fell away from the trail but its root ball ripped up a big chunk of the trail.  This sort of thing isn’t the end of the world. Most trail users could get around the wreckage without too much trouble most of the time. Little Nellie had no trouble posing for this picture. 

Usually the National Park Service gets this kind of damage cleaned up and repaired in a matter of days. This area of the trail is especially scenic.  (One of the two bald eagle nests is located about a quarter mile south of this point.  It is all but impossible to see in the summer when the trees are full of leaves.)  For some reason the Park Service didn’t bother fixing this.  They put up and orange traffic cone and forgot about it.  Until last week when Big Nellie and I came through the area and were surprised to see the trail repaired.

If you look closely you can see the patch in the trail just in front of Nellie. 

Better late than never, I suppose. Thanks to the folks at the National Park Service for maintaining the trail. Without it, my ride to work wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

I am getting old. Summer is passing me by. Life is for living. And all that stuff…

I took the day off from work because any day on a bike is better than a day at work.  Any day, even that sucky day when my bike self destructed in the rain on the GAP trail near Rockwood PA in 2003.  On top of that I was sick as a dog.  Still beats work.

Now if only I could figure out how to get paid to ride instead of doing economics.  Okay, right there may be the problem. There are very, very few days when doing economics qualifies as exciting.  In fact, if you meet someone who finds economics exciting, you should back away slowly.  Then when he or she is not looking, make your escape. Don’t look back.

The only thing worse than an intellectually stimulated economist is an accountant pondering contingent liabilities. You can only imagine the dread I feel when I encounter this phenomenon at work.  Yes, it is that kind of workplace that drove me to take today off.

So I rode from my house down to Occoquan Va on the aptly named Occoquan River.  The local folk down there are mighty clever, aren’t they.  The town is only a few blocks long and qualifies as quaint.  Not seeing any food or drink to my liking I decided to follow US Bike Route 1 south in search of food.  The hill out of Occoquan is a real beast.  I was riding Nellie, my recumbent, and spinning my fanny off just to stay upright and maintain my speed which was wavering between 3 and 4 miles per hour. 

Well, I didn’t find any decent food.  The Mickey Ds I stopped out did have air conditioning and free refills on drinks. (They definitely lost money on me.)

Did I mention the ride was hilly. Yessir, I think I broke 30 miles per hour a dozen times.  And on one rather terrifying decent near the Lorton landfill I looked down and saw my odometer passing through 40 miles per hour. It was fascinating and I would have kept watching it except I didn’t much want to die today.  When  I got home I checked the maximum speed recorded on the bike computer. Here it is:

This is the third time in two days that I’ve broken the 40 mile per hour barrier.  Even on my long wheel base recumbent, 40 miles per hour is pushing the limits of sanity.  Lord knows, if I ever get Nellie over 50 I may shave to wear Depends.  Like I said, I’m getting old.

I am still recovering from the back spasms that knocked me for a loop last week so I decided to go on a ride with my Tour Easy recumbent.  This bike is incredibly fast downhill.  When I first got it, I would freak out at how fast the decents could be.  I found myself yelling “Whoa, Nellie!” whenever things seemed to be getting a bit too speedy.  The name stuck and the bike is now Nellie;  Of course, I also had a habit of yelling “Holy Shit!” just before “Whoa, Nellie!” but I decided that Shit just didn’t work well as a bike name.

Today Nellie and I went for a ride to Fort Washington MD.  This ride is made possible by the nifty bike lane that runs along the north side of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.  If you live or visit DC, you’d be doing yourself a favor by riding across the bridge.  There are bump outs with tourist trappy binoculars for checking out the sights.  Most people ride over to National Harbor. The biggest building in National Harbor is the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center.  Not surprisingly National Harbor is teeming with tourists who often where “HELLO” name tags.  It’s a bit of a work in progress.  There are two things worth doing there. One is drinking a milk shake at Elevation Burger and the other is getting a shot of yourself sitting in Prometheus’s mouth at the Awakening Statue.  This used to be in East Potomac Park before the National Park Service decided to have it removed apparently because it was more popular with tourists than the FDR memorial.  FDR would be a lot more popular if his statue was 30 feet high and you could climb on his head.

If you don’t ride to National Harbor your only choice is to ride up a long hill to Oxon Hill Road.  Once you get to the top you can take a left into traffic hell or hand a right and head down to Fort Washington.  Fort Washington is an early 19th century fort that guards the capital from invaders along the Potomac River. It’s basically a well preserved mess o’ red bricks but for the little kid in you it’s hard to beat.  Also, in Fort Washington is the Fort Washington Marina.  Since I had already toured the fort, I headed for the Marina.  It’s pretty easy navigating: Oxon Hill Road to a right on Livingston Road to a right on Fort Washington Road.

Oxon Hill Road is a busy two-lane suburban street that has a paved shoulder that comes and goes. The pavement is a bit rough so it’s not exactly a pleasant ride.  Just before the Livingston Road turn, there is a big down hill run.  Nellie hit 42 miles per hour on that sucker today and I wasn’t even pushing the pace.  Nellie is really long so she’s quite stable at high speed. Unlike conventional bike, recumbents keep you low to the ground which lends a street luge vibe to these little escapades.

There are quite a few rollers on the route so I broke 30 miles per hour several times.  The ride down to the marina being one of them. The marina seemed pretty dead so I stopped to take Nellie’s picture next to a colorful boat parked in the lot. 

The downside to riding a recumbent is that uphills take a long time. Nellie has beaucoup little gears so she is up to the task.  Once again, we managed to hit 40 miles per hour on the return which is only fair since I had to grind up a couple of hills at 3 to 4 miles per hour. After one of these uphill fun fests it dawned on me that it was getting hot.  How hot was it?

Plenty.

I decided to be sensible and head for home.  I stopped for fluids and a snack twice on the way back and am happy to report that I am all set to do a nice long ride tomorrow. I’m taking the day off from work. I’m thinking of taking Nellie out for lunch in Occoquan.

Most of the riding on my bike commutes is uneventful. Fun, to be sure, but mundane. Still I try to keep my eye open for the unusual and, more often than not, I am rewarded for my vigilance. Today was one of those “rewarding” days.

On the way into work, about a mile from home, I stopped for a red light and spotted this notice attached to a telephone pole next to the road. Missing.  A cognitively disabled girl had walked out of her group home and vanished. All the way in I thought of stories behind the poster. Did she leave with someone? To find someone? To get away from someone? Is she alive? Did she stick her thumb out and catch a random ride to some faraway place? Or is she just wandering around the neighborhood?

There is another odd thing about the picture. Look at how many staples and tacks are in the telephone pile.  This pole is the poor man’s Craigslist of our neighborhood!

Despite the fact that it was a Friday in the summer in DC, I lingered at work until 5:30.  I check weather.com at 4 and it was 104 degrees outside. I figured it was best to wait the heat out.  Good thing I waited; it was a brisk 99 degrees when I left.  After 9 miles of riding I was soaked in sweat and about to cross the line from Alexandria City and Fairfax County on the Mount Vernon Trail.  At just about this time, two Alexandria City fire trucks went screaming past on the adjacent Parkway headed toward Mount Vernon in Fairfax County.  For the next 10 minutes I wondered what was so serious that Fairfax had to borrow equipment from Alexandria. When I was two miles from home I found out why.

A two-story house on Ridgecrest Drive about a block west of the Mount Vernon Trail had caught fire.  Fire trucks and ambulances were all over the place. A hose filled with water snaked down the street. The house was set back from the road and sat on its lot at an angle to the street. I could see smoke coming from the house and a ladder leading to an upstairs window. 

I overheard some neighbors talking. They said no one was hurt. Off to the side EMTs were getting a woman ready for transport.  She was sitting up on the gurney and didn’t seem to be in discomfort. I felt for the firefighters who were just melting in the heat. I suppose it’s better than fighting fires when it is so cold they end up covered in ice.

I continued on to home wondering what happened here.  A fire in the middle of the day is rare. Was the fire upstairs?  Short of falling asleep with a lit cigarette, I can’t think of many things on the second floor of my house that could cause a fire. 

It’s good to be home in my group house.  No fires. No lost loved ones.

About a week ago my lower back went into a muscle spasm that has left me leaning to my right from my waist up.  It looks weird and is very painful.  The cure for these back episodes is similar to the cure for the common cold: rest for 7 to 10 days. Medicine doesn’t much help. Stretching is futile. Doctors usually prescribe muscle relaxants and painkillers.  These are as effective as shooting Superman with a bb gun. 

Before she left for the office on Thursday last, Mrs.Rootchopper’s suggested I use some of her major league medications. She had these as a reward for being run over by an SUV.  The painkiller is dilaudid.  It is seven times more powerful than morphine. I know this because her doctors told us that several times. (How the heck did they come up with that number anyway.  Do they have a pain-o-meter someplace?)  She also suggested I try an anti-inflamatory called Mobic.  These little suckers are powerful.  They helped reduce the swelling in her legs overnight. My back is apparently from Krypton because neither of these medicines had the slightest effect whatsoever on me.  Except for the fact that the dilaudid gave me a colossal headache. And one, or both, made me nauseous.  My sister-in-law suggested that I eat some ice cream to calm my stomach.  Comfort food seemed like a good idea at the time.  Not so much. About an hour later, however, I was bowing to the porcelain god.  Many offerings later, I fell fast asleep in a painful ball on the floor of the family room..

While all this was going on we were experiencing a record heat wave here in DC.  It was something like 105 degrees outside. I’m pretty sure that was Farenheit, but I could be mistaken.  In any case, when I awoke it became pretty clear to me that the air conditioner had met its match and shut down.  By the time Mrs. Rootchopper came home it was 90 degrees in the house. We’re havin’ fun now!

Day two came and so did the AC repairman (T J Fannon & Sons rocks!).  I was still hobbling around like Igor in search of a brain for the monster. By day three the house was back to its normal frigid state and I was still in pain, and brainless.  (Master! Master!) On day four I ever so carefully left the house for some social interaction at a cook out for the Bike Friday Club of DC.  I drove my New World Accord. It doesn’t fold.  They let me in anyway. Along the way I bought a bicycle trainer from my friend Chelli. Carrying it into the house when I got home was big fun. Not.

I went back to work on day five taking a mighty long time to get to and from the car.  Fast forward to day eight, which would be today. I was feeling okay when the alarm went off. Still sore to be sure.  I decided to ride to work.  I rode my Tour Easy recumbent and I am happy to report I made it to and from work without incident.  I don’t think the riding made things any worse so I am riding in tomorrow as well.

If you’ve never ridden a recumbent, you should give it a go.  Coming down a big hill on mine is more like street luge than biking.  It takes a little getting used to.  The view from the seat is very different from a conventional bike.  Especially when the fairing is a scratched up mess.  Check it out.

Without the Tour Easy I would not have been able to ride.  To ride this bike properly without messy your knees up, you have to spin at a high rate against a low gear. The spinning motion was kind to my back.  As was the big foam cushion of a seat. It’s good to be back on a bike. Tomorrow may hit 100 degrees again. This time I’ll be off the floor and on the bike.

Anybody got a brain they want to sell?

We’re in for a real, honest to god heat wave this week.  Somebody at work said to me, “You’re not riding to work in this heat, are you?”  My answer: “It sure beats January.”   

So let’s not bitch too much about this week’s inferno. After all, you could be dealing with this:

I’d Rather Be Biking

Hey, My Bikes Are in There!

My new saddle bag is more bigger and more better. It can hold about twice as much stuff as the old bag it replaces. The Sequoia is happy.

In their quest to rid the city of its Bicycle Friendly City designation, the Alexandria City Police have apparently stepped up their efforts to piss cyclists off.  Today on a beautiful summer evening, I was riding home along the Mount Vernon Trail. It was an uneventful ride until I found the trail blocked by not one but two police cruisers from the Alexandria Police Department.  After I took a picture of the situation,

I slowed down and looked around for crime stopping in action.  All I could see was a nice gathering of happy people under a temporary canopy in the adjacent park.  No fleeing perps, no safe crackers, no terrorists in sight.  After I passed the police cars, I checked to see if their was no parking in the street just 30 yards ahead. That would explain it, thought I.  Well, there were 3 spaces right next to the trail. 

So I am thinking maybe these police cars were transporting coolers of refreshing police juice to the revelers at the party.,  Maybe they had offered to drive some physically impaired party-goers to the big do.  Maybe they had just finished solving a cold case involving a serial killer and a frisbee. 

Or maybe the people of Alexandria don’t much respect trail users.