Tag: bikedc

Ride for Your Life 2023

This year for the first time I participated in the Ride for Your Life, an event that is tied to World Remembrance Day for Traffic Victims. The purpose of the ride is to remember those who have been killed in our area while using our roads. The motivating force behind the event is Dan Langenkamp. Last year Dan’s wife Sarah was run over by a flatbed truck and killed in Bethesda, Maryland while riding home from a daytime event at her sons’ school.

The 17-mile ride connected the dots between five ghost bikes. Traffic safety advocates place these bikes painted white at the sites where people have been killed. They are grim reminders that road users need to be mindful of vulnerable road users.

After Dan and others gave some speeches, several hundred riders headed down Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda. Within a half mile we passed the ghost bike of Enzo Alvarenga who was 19 when her was killed in 2022. His family stood around the bike and his grieving mother said “Thank you” through her tears as we rode past.

We crossed the road and soon passed another ghost bike, that of 17-year-old Jake Cassell who was killed three years ago. (The four-lane highway now has protected bike lanes on either side, evidence that our civic leaders often wait until it’s too late to make simple safety modifications.)

After a meander through some neighborhood streets, we took the Capital Crescent Trail to Georgetown. Along the way we rode on a bridge over River Road. Down below was Sarah’s ghost bike.

The group proceeded cautiously, mostly in single file, as they passed dozens of weekend trail users enjoying the sunny 50-degree weather. We stopped at Georgetown Waterfront Park to regroup then proceeded across downtown DC past the fourth ghost bike, that of Nijad Huseynov, a 23-year-old graduate student from Azebaijan. After crossing into the Northeast quadrant of the city, we ended up in the seemingly serene residential neighborhood of Brookland. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear you were in a small town. Lovely little single-family houses along two-lane streets with sidewalks. Each intersection seemed to have four stop signs and crosswalks. It was in a crosswalk at 14th and Irving Streets Northeast where five-year-old Allie Hart was killed by the driver of a passenger van . The van, like so many others in the area, drove through a stop sign. The intersection is next to Allie’s school where she had been attending kindergarten.

Allie Hart’s ghost bike.

There were more speeches. Allie’s mother told us of her dashed dreams for her daughter. I looked around and saw tears in the eyes of the people in the crowd. Christy Kwan of DC Families for Safe Streets spoke about how her organization, here and with chapters all over the country, works to advocate for the cause.

Dan and one of his sons stood near the bike. His son, perhaps ten years old, had ridden the entire route. He sported a red motocross helmet and cool reflective son glasses. He reminded me of my own son who, at about the same age, proudly rode his bike in an event through the streets of Baltimore so many years ago.

I left the ride and headed back up to North Bethesda to get my car. (The start was over 30-miles from home so riding there would have been quite a slog on a cold morning.) My route took me across DC to Rock Creek Park. Once on Beach Drive I traveled about ten miles, nearly car-free. The cool breeze and the low-angled sunlight made for a meditative ride.

We all know someone who has been hit by a car. The lucky ones, we (my wife, Charmaine, Rachel, Jeff, Nelle, Kate, and me, to name but a few) survive. Others like Dave and Lorena aren’t so fortunate.

Thanks to the organizers and ride leader Peter Gray of the Washington Area Bicyclists Association and Montgomery Country Families for Safe Streets for staging this event. Thanks also to Jeanne, Shira, Monica, and Leslie for their company throughout the day. Special thanks to Annette who rode with me and whose online message nudged me into participating.

Any road in a pandemic

Wandering through DC

I am out of clever ideas for riding in this pandemic. On Monday I left home thinking I’d ride out the C & O Canal to Great Falls. When I got to the turnoff to pick up the towpath I decided not to turn. Instead I rode up Rock Creek Park for a mile and then exited up the short hill onto P Street.

From P Street I headed east until I spotted a statue. Must be someone important, I thought. It was the Bard of Ukraine. Yeah, well.

After checking out the bard, I moseyed over to Q Street where I found a statue of the man who united the Czachs and the Slovaks to create Czechoslovakia. He died a couple of years before the Nazis invaded. Timing is everything.

Next I started riding across town on Q Street. A cyclist rolled past. His bike was adorned with touring items, a set of front panniers, a rack bag, a tin cup hanging off the bag, etc. At the next stop light he turned and realized he knew me. It was Joe, a #bikedc friend. We had bonded over tails our our separate cross-country bike tours and the post-tour afterglow we both experienced.

Joe guided me across town through a chicane at Florida Avenue. He pointed out the gun sensor (used to notify policy of gunfire) and noted that we were in the neighborhood where the notorious drug kingpin, Rayful Edmond, ran his operation back in the days when crack was king. (Mr. Edmond was sent to the big house years ago.)

A mural at a Q Street restaurant

We made it through unscathed then took on the intersection of New York and New Jersey Avenues, the infamous Dave Thomas Circle. It’s actually not a traffic circle. It’s just one of dozens of places where avenues and streets intersect to form a traffic triangle. It gets its name (albeit unofficial) from the fact that there’s a Wendy’s in the middle of the triangle. City planners have promised to fix this mess for decades. I suggest a well placed explosive device would be a good start.

Joe guided me off road across the circle using curb cuts. I am impressed that he pulled this off without eliciting a single honk from drivers. We were fish on a reef swimming past the sharks. Back on Florida Avenue, we made our way into a protected bike lane. It had flexposts on the left hand side. This was great. It was filled with debris and park vehicles. This was not great.

To our left were several brand new high rise apartment buildings. Joe said his good byes and veered off to his posh abode. I continued on past Gallaudet University. A few blocks later I passed the ghost bike (a bike painted in white) that marks where my friend Dave was killed by a maniac driving a stolen van.

As depressing as the site is, I am always buoyed by think of Dave. He was a splendid human being.

Florida took me to H Street and Benning Road. I crossed the Anacostia River and took the Anacostia River Trail all the way to the South Capitol Street bridge. I rode on the side walk across the bridge and admired the new bridge being built to my left. They can’t finish it too soon. The sidewalk is falling apart.

New and Old Frederick Douglas (South Capitol Street) Bridges

Back on the west side of the river, I turned near Nationals Park. I managed to ride through a whole mess of construction, around Fort McNair, and down past the Wharf. This area is normally a beehive of activity but the pandemic…well, you know.

I decided to head for home and ended up riding 40 miles. Not bad for someone just wandering around.

Return to Yorktown

Yesterday, my wife, daughter, and I drove to Williamsburg VA so that my daughter could check out the law school at William and Mary University. We stopped in The Cheese Shop for sandwiches. The inside was very crowded. Everyone wore a mask but I still was very uncomfortable. We ate our sandwiches outside in perfect weather. Then I took off on my Cross Check for Yorktown.

The view from The Cheese Shop

It’s pretty easy to find. You get on the Colonial Parkway and in 13 miles you’re there. What’s the fun of that. I used the Google and found an alternate route. The first three miles were fine but for the next five miles I was on a four-lane highway with no shoulder, Not fun.

I complicated matters by missing a turn. Or two.

Thankful for my mirror, I boogied on until I saw a sign for Yorktown. Yay. I followed the sign then kept going and was rewarded with a placid two lane country road that led directly to the southern side of the battlefield.

As luck would have it I came upon the earthworks behind which the good guys had been positioned while starving the Brits in their encampment along the York River near the town.

Earthworks at Yorktown Battlefield

It was near here (according to a road side sign) that Cornwallis surrendered his sword to Washington. (Cornwallis didn’t actually participate. He was sick. He send his second in command with his sword. The second in command didn’t know what Washington looked like so he tried to surrender to French General Rochambeau. Rochambeau set him right. Washington directed him to his second in command because protocol.

After this odd history lesson I rode past the victory monument, which is the eastern terminus to the TransAmerica bicycle route.

Using the Google again, I rode down to the beach along York River where so many cross country tourists have dipped their wheels.

I followed the river past the quaint town and along a bluff. This took me to the Colonial Parkway which made for easy navigation back to Williamsburg.

All of which is to say, if you don’t know where you’re going any road will take your there.

Heat Wave

At this time in each of the last three years, I was riding somewhere far away. In 2017, I was crossing the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In 2018. I was in the Idaho panhandle. In 2019, I had finally left the high mountains and landed in San Francisco. This year I am in hell.

We are in the midst of a heat wave here in the mid-Atlantic. Temperatures have been in the 90s for days on end. Humidity is stifling too. Today, at the end of my bike ride the temperature was 97, but the effect of the high relative humidity made it feel like 108.

Seriously.

I managed to crawl 21 miles on Big Nellie before throwing in the figurative towel. Too bad it wasn’t a literal one; I was dripping wet, as if I had fallen into a pool.

Yesterday, despite the brutal heat, I rode to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. In July, water lilies, lotuses, and a few other types of flowering plants bloom. The Gardens has a series of ponds separated by walking paths. The lotuses were showing off. The water lilies were being shy. Riding there was a 23 mile jaunt. I brought a trekking pole to help my back handle the walk around the ponds. What I really needed was a parasol. I managed about 30 minutes blossomy zen before heading home.

Image may contain: plant, flower, sky, tree, outdoor and nature

On the way home I cut through Capitol Hill. The streets on the eastern part of the hill were littered with piles of spent fireworks and snacks., the detritus of a night of prodigious DIY celebrating. Whoever lives in this area spent thousands on fireworks.

My return route took me to Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill. The park is a square awkwardly bordered by city streets. It’s a beautiful oasis filled with green grass and majestic old trees. The Emancipation Statue in the middle of the park has been the subject of protests; it depicts Lincoln standing tall and a freed slave on his knees looking up at his liberator. Right now it is surrounded by a series of jersey barriers which are surrounded in turn by a chain link fence, to deter protesters from trying to take the statue down. You may have seen all the ruckus about the statue on the news recently. You probably didn’t see what I saw as I rolled past: folks from the neighborhood relaxing on the lawn, hanging out in the shade. DC is an interesting place.