Tag: Apollo50

Turning

Nothing makes you feel older than seeing an odometer click over. Because I ride a lot and split my riding among four bicycles, I see several odometer events every year. Today, my Crosscheck clicked 13,000 miles, for instance.

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I think it may be time to get new brake pads, don’t you?

Earlier this summer I went to the National Mall to see a projection of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument. It was pretty cool.

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While I was out of town, the Smithsonian celebrated the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 by having the rocket take off with all kinds of extra audio and video stuff. It was a real crowd pleaser. I didn’t mind missing it though. I was a space junkie when I was a kid. I saw Apollo 11 live.

Another thing I saw live as a kid was the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I wasn’t much into music at the age of eight but my older brothers were. When one of them yelled down the cellar stairs that the Beatles were on, the rest of us scrambled up to see the big event. I had no idea why they were so worked up. I was expecting to see some sort of beetle act, after all Ed Sullivan had novelty acts on all the time.

As I watched the performance, I didn’t get the big deal. They looked strange and sounded even stranger. They sure seemed to be having fun though.

I never saw them live of course. And I have shied away from those Paul McCartney arena shows because hearing him sing now is a bit depressing. But when my friend Paul asked me to join him to see Ringo at Wolf Trap I decided I might as well go.

The show featured about nine or ten Ringo songs and 12 songs by his band which included three members of Toto and one each from Santana, Men at Work, and the Average White Band. In fact, the AWB member was Hamish Stuart who toured with McCartney’s post-Wings band.

Ringo is pushing 80 but seems much younger on stage. He runs around a bit and even did some jumping jacks while clapping his hands to the beat of a song.

The crowd was gray and white.

Lately, for some strange reason, I’ve had the urge to rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight.

No Name Tour: It’s Not Rocket Science

After a week and a half, I welcomed a knock on the door this morning. Christmas in July. The Mule is home.

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I took it out of the box and started putting it together. Some of the hardware, the screws for the water bottle cages and the front rack, as well as a proprietary part for mounting the front fender, was missing. I reassembled the bike and took it to my local bike store to have them finish it off.

I was planning on taking it to the shop anyway. In addition to the final touches for the reassembly, they are putting on a new front derailler (the old one has had shifting issues for over a year), new fenders, new bar tape, and a new water bottle cage (one of the old ones broke in Nevada). They will also tweak my brakes and true my rear wheel. By this time next week, I should be back in the saddle.

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Last night I rode into DC to attend my second happy hour this week with Jessica who is back in town for a few months. We used to work together. She’s been travelling in South America for the last year. Many of her wanderings have been unplanned. Maybe I should do a bike tour like that.

While I was at the happy hour, some people in DC held a protest/vigil in a small park on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few blocks from the White House. After the happy hour, I headed over to the park to see the site of a crash that killed two men who were sitting on a park bench. It took me a while to figure out how the car managed to hit them. Suffice it to say that the driver either had murderous intent or he was impaired beyond human comprehension. High speed fatal crashes are happening in DC with sickening frequency.

Next I headed to the national Mall to check out a very cool event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. For the last few nights the image of a Saturn 5 rocket has been projected on the Washington Monument. It’s actually a video (you can see the vapor venting from the rocket). I waited until 9:30 for the image to appear. I was one of perhaps 10 or 20,000 people on the Mall. I found being in a crowd like that very unsettling. Tonight and tomorrow night the image will lift off. Too bad I’ll miss it. Then again, I saw the real thing on TV live back in 1969.

I rode home in the dark, something I really enjoy, except for the spider webs and the ninjas on the Mount Vernon Trail. (I nearly hit one.) Passing through a neighborhood closer to home I had a close encounter with a fawn standing across the middle of the narrow road.