Arrivals

It’s been a very mild winter here in DC. We haven’t had any snow in two years. This is about to change,

The last couple have days the temperatures have been in the low 30s with gale force winds.

According to the app on my phone it feels like it’s in the teens out there.

Of course, the App people don’t bother to factor in that when you’re riding a bike into the wind it feels even colder.

For some reason my body tolerated the cold yesterday. I managed to ride 30 miles comfortably. Today was a different story. I began by riding about a mile to check out Bernie. He looked a whole lot warmer than I felt. Note the double decker Buff I have on. It thick on the bottom to protect my neck. On top, it’s thin for breathability. I doubled the top over to avoid infecting the Bern.

After my Bernie moment, I decided to ride up a side street. “Up” being the operative word here. It was a steep climb then a chilly descent then another climb to the top of Mason Hill. Under my blue wind jacket I had on a short sleeve base layer, a long sleeve base layer and a holey wool sweater. Somehow the sweat from the climb didn’t wick very well. The descent from the Mason Hill was frigid. Ugh.

I kept plodding along. I passed through New Alexandria, a cute neighborhood just outside the DC Beltway. One of the residents puts up a road sign now and then. Mrs. Rootchopper appreciated this snarky one.

I never did warm up so I decided to pack it in after 21 miles. One more day of riding before we get hit with our first snowstorm in ages. Before I went inside, I made sure the Wovel was ready for action.

Today I learned that my local hardware store has closed because an employee has Covid. The people in the store have been very sloppy about wearing masks. When I shop there, I go in and out as fast as I can to limit my exposure. In any case, I haven’t been in there for a week so I hope I am virus free.

Covid appears to have an interesting side effect. I recently heard that there is a nationwide decline in the birth rate during the pandemic. My circle of friends are bucking the trend. Claire (whom I have known since infancy – hers, not mine) welcomed Della few weeks ago. I met Megan at the pit stop on the first Cider Ride outside DC. She, a self-described Florida girl, was freezing her ass off. A little over a week ago Megan gave birth to Wesley (her first). About that time, my friend Jacques announced that his wife Liz was due any day and, well, she delivered Lucille a few days later. And Melina, who we met as a three-year-old at our son’s preschool, posted a picture from the delivery room earlier today. The baby will be her first. Congrats to all. Maybe I should put together a tour du diapers.

Time Off for Good Behavior

I haven’t blogged in nearly four weeks. It was not for lack of trying. It’s been a rather emotional month.

Insurrection, Impeachment, and Inauguration

First, I was in a rage about the attack on the Capitol. I wrote several posts about it only to scrap them. I suppose I should consider the writing therapeutic.

What I can’t get my head around is why over 70 million people twice voted for a scumbag charlatan. What part of bankrupting casinos, stiffing contractors and others who worked for him, and tanking an entire football league didn’t these people understand? And all that was before he ran for president giving speeches that were hate fests. Then add his contempt for the rule of law, people of color, and the Constitution. Hel-lo!

Next there was the impeachment. At least we now know who in Congress deserves to be sent home in two years. What part about inciting a mob that kills a police officer, infects dozens more with a deadly virus, kills and injures many more, and trashes our Capitol building was hard to understand? What part about hunting down the Vice President and the Speaker of the House to kidnap or kill them seemed okay? Oh and lets not forget that the president deservedly got his ass kicked in the election and convinced millions that he was a victim of fraud. Poor Donald.

The inauguration was such a relief. What a change from “American carnage”. Gaga, JLo, and Garth getting upstaged by Amanda Gorman’s magnificent poem. “I’m walking to work.” The best damned fireworks display I’ve ever seen. (Too bad I wasn’t there in person but it was the lack of people on the Mall that allowed the fireworks people to go completely bananas.) I thought the whole day was such a relief. Everyone involved should be given an award. As for the 25,000 National Guard troops and miles of fences and barricades in DC? What an embarrassment. Hats off to the guard not to mention the Metropolitan Police (DC’s police department) who came to the rescue at the Capitol and worked 12-hour shifts for weeks.

For me, the biggest symbol of change was the removal of the white wall that was put up around the White House. It was a national disgrace. At least Mexico paid for it.

Jab Me

I had hopes to get vaccinated soon as the age for getting on the priority list dropped to 65. Yesterday Virginia announced it has a shortage of vaccine. It looks like I won’t get jabbed for many weeks. So much for baseball games and bike tours in the Spring. I’ll be keeping my distance. I have had very few interactions with people outside my immediate family this winter. I stopped doing Zoom get togethers months ago when I found them to be frustrating and annoying. Don’t even think about coming near me without a mask on. Inside or out. And as for my anti-vaxing friend: it was nice knowing you.

Bike Diet

I have continued to ride nearly every day, 600 miles for the month. A few weeks ago I decided to put the CrossCheck on a diet. During event rides in and near DC, people IDed me by the huge Carradice bag hanging from my saddle. It expands to double its normal size, but I had grown tired of the leather straps and metal buckles. They are a pain to open and close. I took it off and replaced it with a lighter Arkel TailRider rack bag. The TailRider uses zippers and a velcro flap so access is much easier. It has a less capacity but if I need to carry more I can slap on a pannier easily because the rack has two tiers of horizontal bars at the top (the upper bar is obscured by the TailRider).

Old and New

I have had a habit of putting old tires from The Mule on the CrossCheck. These are Schwable Marathon Plus tires. They last forever and have taken me on over 10,000 miles of bike tours without a flat. The protection comes at a cost: they are very heavy and don’t roll particularly well. Also, they are stiff and very hard to mount. The rear tire on the CrossCheck must have had over 6.000 miles on it. It’s tread was worn away, I swapped out the Marathon Pluses for a pair of Schwalbe Mondials. They have decent flat protection but weigh half a pound less each. And they go on and off easily.

I am not in the habit of weighing myself but I am pretty sure that I’ve dropped a few pounds since Christmas. I haven’t had a beer in over a month. (I drank one Corona and was cured. Skunk beer.) And we are nearly all out of Christmas goodies. (Mrs. Rootchopper makes shortbread cookies with Hershey Kisses in the middle. Resistance was futile.)

I also took the CrossCheck to a bike shop and for a new chain and cassette. I was lucky they had the parts. I was even luckier that they could do the work while I waited. Thanks Conte’s of Old Town Alexandria

My last few rides on the CrossCheck have been fantastic. I can tell just by gliding that the new tires are a vast improvement. Going up hills is also much less of a chore. I can’t wait to get it out on the road for a long ride in the country.

Hurry Spring!!!!

2020 – One Last Recap

It was such a fun year!

Okay, let’s start again. 2020 sucked but at least I salvaged some decent bicycling. I managed to go 10,240.5 miles this year. My Cross Check edged out The Mule for most miles: 4,179.5 to 4002.5. The other 20 percent of riding was split between Big Nellie (my Tour Easy recumbent) at 1,458.5 miles and Little Nellie (my New World Tourist) at 600 miles.

My bikes now have a total of 145,082 miles on them. Either one of them break or I do.

End of YearOdometer MilesMiles Ridden
Specialized Sequoia60,0204,003
Tour Easy44,2431,459
New World Tourist22,598600
Cross Check18,2214,180
Total145,08210,241

The monthly distribution was kind of Bell curvy. (I took stats, can’t you tell?)

As a prize for finishing in first place, the Cross Check got a new look. People used to pick me out during events by my humongous Carradice saddle bag. No longer. I switched to an Arkel Tailrider. It kind of wrecks the all black look, but it weights a bit less than the Carradice. The bike still weighs a ton but that will be addressed when I replace the tires with something lighter.

Pictures of the Year 2020

It was one hell of a year. It felt like a decade.

Early in the year we heard word of a virus spreading from China. It was creeping around the world like an invisible Pac Man and would soon gobble up Italy and Spain and the UK and on and on. Friday Coffee Club continued undaunted until March, when it was no more. Snuffed out by the ‘rona. I suppose it was a good thing. They say if you hang out with people long enough you begin to look like them.

Judd and Ed showing off the new dress code at Friday Coffee Club

Then some people look just a little different.

Andrea at Friday Coffee Club in January.

Nothing says frustration quite like biking with brake pads rubbing against the rim. (I rode most of the way across the country last year this way.) No matter how many times I adjusted them the problem came back. Until I discovered the secret. The tensioning wire needs to be oriented so that the tail of the wire is in line with the adjustment screw. (If this doesn’t tell you what a zero 2020 was, I don’t know what does.)

The screw pushes on the tail of the spring, dummy!

In the Spring I toured the Congressional Cemetery on the east side of Capitol Hill. A burial marker seemed rather ominous.

Best epitaph

George and Martha became off limits.

People stayed at home. Cars stayed parked. Planes too. The long term parking lot at National Airport was all but empty. I wonder whose cars these are. Note also the clear blue skies.

I did an awful lot of local bike riding. Once I could depend on access to certain necessities, I drove to places a few hours away and did day rides. One day I rode from Frederick Maryland to Gettysburg Pennsylvania.

I read a whole bunch. First there were the Christmas Books. Then I went on a Bill Bryson kick, followed by a let’s-re-read-John-McPhee jag. My wife and daughter loaded me up on Fathers Day and my birthday. With all this social down time, I wasn’t about to throw away my shot.

WABA put on the 50 States Ride. It was my 12th time. I normally ride with a posse of several people but this time Kevin (left) was my only companion. WABA’s Garrett (center) checked us in and none of us got infected. YAY. We ran into sidekick Michael B. and friend (right) at a pit stop in Anacostia Park. A couple of months later I did WABA’s Cider Ride for the sixth time. This one was solo. They were my only two event rides of the year. Fun, but no substitute for a tour.

The virus killed over a quarter of a million Americans. Near RFK Stadium in DC, an artist from Bethesda planted a white flag for each victim.

My daughter’s pal (she met him at the Irish embassy last year) was elected president.

The news of the liberation, I mean election, was met with huge celebratory crowds at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the barricaded White House.

Sometimes it felt as if the year had sucked the blood right out of me. Then it did when I donated blood for the first time.

One of my favorite people in BikeDC, Rachel (Don’t Call Me “Bob”) Cannon, left town for Oregon just after Christmas. We met at Friday Coffee Club years ago. Our paths crossed again and again. She sent me fritters when I was sick. She rode the 50 States Ride with me. She even sold me a bike. She has so many talents but her number one talent is kindness. As her dog Annie would say, she’s a good hoomun. I’m going to miss her. So will many others.

Rachel in the ride marshal’s vest with my 2018 50 States Crew.

And, to end on a sour note because, after all, this is 2020, Whites Ferry closed after more than 235 years of operation. I think I did the Whites Ferry loop, over 100 miles, every year. The closing followed a decades long legal dispute. It turns out that ferry reaches the Virginia shore onto private property. Imagine closing a bridge for the same reason.

Top Ten of 2020

I do a list every year but this one is rather challenging. But here goes…

  1. Knock wood. My family and I managed to avoid contracting covid-19. This includes my son who chose to stay in Thailand. Because of the strict shutdown procedures there, he was probably safer than if he had come home.
  2. Healing up. I was grounded from bike touring this year. This turned out to be a good thing because I destroyed my body doing a tour from Indiana to San Francisco in 2019.
  3. A Gimpy Old Man. Hiking has also been off the table this year as I have developed spinal stenosis. When I walk (and sometimes when I so much as stand) my lower left leg hurts. It’s caused by a pinching of my spinal cord. I received some cortisone shots in my back. They provided temporary relief but were incredibly painful. Oddly, stenosis does not affect my biking at all. In fact, one of the telltale signs of the condition is being able to bike and walk pushing something like a lawn mower without pain.
  4. Popping. Once I realized I had stenosis, I modified my stretching routine. I tried yoga that didn’t work. Then Feldenkrais which was intriguing but not for the impatient, A search of the interwebs yielded several gentle physical therapy exercises. I do them at a very deliberate pace. As my spine loosens, it pops. Not audibly but I can feel it. Not only do they help with the stenosis in my lower back, they also free up my upper back which gets tight from reading and riding. As of this writing, my stenosis pain has greatly diminished. Fingers crossed.
  5. Will He Go Round in Circles. Despite all this physical nonsense, I managed to ride 10,000 miles. Mostly I rode out and back rides from my home. A couple of these were over 100 miles. Once convenience stores (and public bathrooms) re-opened I drove an hour or two away from home to do day rides. Winners included several rides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a trip between Fredericksburg, Maryland and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, two rides in and around Williamsburg, Virginia, and a handful of rides in Virginia hunt and wine country. One oddity so typical of 2020 in general is that I had more flat tires this year than in the previous four years combined.
  6. Reading the Pandemic Away. I read way more than I have in recent memory. In the process I discovered authors Amor Towles and Madeline Miller. Notable books include Circe (Miller), A Gentleman in Moscow (Towles), One Day (Gene Weingarten), Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow), This Is Going to Hurt (Adam Kay), Labyrinth of Ice (Buddy Levy), The Body (Bill Bryson), and Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier).
  7. 50 States and a Couple of Mugs of Cider. In September, I rode my 12th 50 States Ride with Kevin W. as my lone companion. The Washington Area Bicyclists Association had to get creative to keep everyone Covid safe. They did a terrific job. I rode the WABA Cider Ride for the sixth time in November. This one was solo and a bit cold. Big thanks to the WABA staff and volunteers for pulling these two events off.
  8. Take Me in to the Ballgame. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is to ride my bike to Nationals Park to watch baseball games. This year in a bizarre twist the season was shortened from 162 to 60 games, with no spectators allowed. I watched 59 of 60 Washington Nationals games on TV. They were all in the eastern time zone and limits to extra innings made this relatively easy. I listened to the end of the 60th game in the car on the way back from 50 States Ride. Sadly, the Nats were not particularly competitive this year. Opening day is April 1, 2021. Maybe.
  9. Social Distancing to the Max: In March indoor gatherings all but ceased. This meant no Friday Coffee Club and no happy hours. Sad face. I quickly tired of Zoom get togethers, aided by a wonky mic on my laptop. Except for Kevin and the event volunteers and WABA staff, I saw only a handful of people all year. I avoided a social shut out thanks to Rocky, Chelli, Matt, Jessica, Leslie, and Charmaine.
  10. The Year of the Child. With the assistance of my wife and daughter, I became a bona fide couch potato. Gaslight, 7500, Rebecca, a couple of Mission Impossible movies, Luther, The Crown, and Fleabag provided entertainment on shut-in nights. The Mandalorian brought us the Child. And because ten is not enough,
  11. Tear Down That Wall! I avoided all the protests in DC. I was surprised to see that the massive crowds did not result in a huge increase in Covid cases. After the election I rode to DC to see people celebrating the Biden/Harris win. I look forward to the day in January when the disgraceful wall and fencing around the White House neighborhood comes down. How ironic that Trump wanted a wall and then put himself behind one.

Bridges and Blood

After completing my bicycling goals for the year, I decided to do some volunteering things. I haven’t done much volunteering mostly because my last several volunteering gigs were not a lot of fun. For example, there was the time I volunteered to staff a Bike-to-Work Day pit stop 1.5 miles from my house. It ended up involving 90+ miles of bicycling over three days to fetch and return handouts from an advocacy organization.

My volunteering gig this month was to help scrub the gunk off a wooden bridge on the Mount Vernon Trail. This effort is being spearheaded by the Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail. The National Park Service of the U. S. Department of Interior owns and is supposed to maintain the trail but they have been grossly underfunded for many years. One needs only visit East and West Potomac Parks in DC to see evidence of this. There’s the collapsing sea wall that lines the Tidal Basin and Hains Point for a start. Then there is the Jefferson Memorial jersey barrier farm. A security perimeter was put in after 9/11 but they ran out of money to put in proper, permanent protection (as they did with the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument) so the Jefferson Memorial is surrounded by jersey barriers. America, if you want nice things, you have to pay for them.

End of rant.

The Friends have been working on removing kudzu that was obstructing sightlines on a bridge in Alexandria. Other efforts, more like the one that I volunteered for, involved clearing the gunk from wooden bridges on the trial in Alexandria and Arlington in preparation for the application of grip paint. (That appears to be what it is actually called.) The paint hopefully will keep bicyclists on the trail and out of the emergency room.

My first MVT bridge crash was on what is now called Bridge Number 1. This is the bridge closest to the Mount Vernon terminus of the trail. (There used to be a bridge even closer but it was so dangerous, the Congress ponied up money to re-route the bridge after the wife of a senator crashed on it. That same bridge also claimed Mrs. Rootchopper as a victim.)

Bridge Number 1 took me out in 1989. I suffered a smashed bike, a dislocated left knee cap, and a cut on my left forearm that went to the bone. Gross.

So volunteering for this effort was a no brainer. Plus it was only three miles from home. I think we did about 2 hours of work and one hour of portaging the tools and water in large heavy bladders to the bridge which was 1/2 mile from the nearest parking lot. Thankfully, the younger volunteers carried the water.

I applied oxygen bleach and scrubbed it in. A power washer was used to finish things off. The power washing was a bit of a Rube Goldberg affair. Water was poured into a multi-gallon bladder. Gravity pulled the water through a hose to the power washer. Somebody had to hold the bladder up. Somebody else had to constantly refill the bladder to allow for continuous operation of the power washer. Water is heavy. There was spillage. Long story short, several of us had wet pants by the end of the event.

Sam with bladder, Judd with washer, Josephine with jug for filling bladder

We did about half the bridge before we ran out of battery power. Good enough.

After three days of low mileage cycling, I took today off. Today was also the day our housecleaning service came so my wife and I cleared out. Normally, we go to a diner for breakfast but lately we haven’t been all that interested in biscuits and Covid so we both went over to the Bloodmobile at the hospital down the street and donated blood. My wife has donated gallons over the years but today was my first time. Other than some annoying administrative glitches the donation went smoothly.

I’ll do anything for a t-shirt

We each received a festive t-shirt that gives ugly Christmas sweaters a run for their money.

If you’d like to help with the Mount Vernon Trail efforts, you can make a donation here or sign up to volunteer here.

My next volunteering effort will involve removal of cookies and fudge from our kitchen. Something has to be done.

Happy holidays.

The Mule Turns 60

Indiana Jones once said. “It’s not the age; it’s the mileage.” Don’t know if I agree with him. I bought my Specialized Sequoia nearly 30 years ago. I almost gave up on it twice but a mechanic named Paul (now at Bicycle Space in DC) fixed a vexing problem with the headset about 20 years ago. When I complained about five years ago that he bike had too many miles on it to be trustworthy on long tours, my rando/touring/mechanic-y friend Mike told me not to worry. The Mule’s old steel frame would last a lot longer.

So here we are. At 60,000 miles. The frame, fork, seat post, rear rack, and wheel skewers are original. I fully expect to one day get on the bike and have it disintegrate beneath me. Until then, The Mule abides, baby.

By the way, if you’re thinking of getting a bicycle computer, don’t get the Cateye Padrone. It has never worked properly but I bought it at the start of the pandemic and returning it was fraught with peril.

Threepeat!

Today was the day.

10,000 Miles

Three years in a row. And very nearly four but for some nasty blood clots in my lungs in December 2017.

It was mentally much harder to do this without a tour or rides with a purpose. From 2017 to 2019 I’ve done 9,000 miles on tours. Riding to Friday Coffee Club is worth about 1,000 miles a year. And Nationals games are another 900 miles or so. In 2017, when I missed 10,000 miles by 89 miles, I did 3,912 miles just riding to and from work.

I’m not done yet. I am chasing one more milestone in this godforsaken year.

Wintry tire fix

With today’s storm in the mid-Atlantic bicycling outside was out of the question. I took advantage of the foul weather to change the rear tire on The Mule. The screw (likely a drywall screw) that caused the flat had a sharp point on one end and was about 1.5 inches long. I am surprised the tube didn’t explode. It had a ragged hole in it a bit smaller than a dime. The screw put a nice precision hole in my tire too. I actually had to use a screwdriver to get it out. It was in pristine condition. My tire not so much.

I tossed the tire and tube in the trash bin and installed a new Schwalbe Mondial tire. I was expecting to spend a half hour getting it on as Schwalbe tires are notorious for mounting difficulty.

To my surprise the Mondial went on without much fuss at all. I did change my technique a bit. I started mounting the tire from the valve end. (I usually start it opposite the valve.) When I got to the frustrating part where the last bit of the tire bead wouldn’t go over the rim, I let air out of the tube and pushed the valve end of the tire against my thighs. This created plenty of slack and the bead popped over the rim.

Of course, once I had it mounted the tire I realized it had a directional tread. And, you guessed it, I put it on backward. So I re-installed it. It took about a minute.

Tomorrow, after allowing for the roads to be safe, I’ll take The Mule out and see how it rolls.

This isn’t what I meant

Yesterday I said that the last 200 miles of my quest for 10,000 in 2020 would be harder.

About 2 1/2 miles into today’s ride, The Mule got screwed in the rear. Tire, that is. (Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. I’ve been watching Fleabag.)

It’s been an odd year for punctures. From 2015 to 2019, I toured with 40 pounds on my bike for 10,000 miles without a single flat thanks to my Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires. This year, despite using the same brand of tires and carrying lighter loads, I’ve had at least four flats.

Today’s flat happened after I rode through some debris in the roadway. I know my rear tire hit something because there was a metallic sound and the back of my bike deflected to the right. A half mile later I started hearing a loud click with every revolution of my wheels. Then the rear end started moving sideways. I hopped off the bike and saw that my rear tire was flat. I initially thought the culprit was a roofing nail. On closer inspection I realized it was a screw of some sort. I’m pretty sure that it gradually worked its way through the tread. I suspect that the tire is kaput. I put it on 3,500 miles ago.

In late summer I bought a Schwalbe Mondial tire. It’s lighter weight but not as puncture resistant as the Marathon Plus. With tomorrow’s storm I’ll have plenty of time to install it.

After getting a lift back home from my wife, I took my CrossCheck out to continue my ride. I rode an additional 32 miles. The only time I felt remotely uncomfortable was when the sun started to set and the temperature dropped.

65 miles to go.