It was Friday the 13th. A full moon would be risin’. First, we had to get the workday out of the way.
I left early for Friday Coffee Club. In the spirit of SharrowsDC, I fiddled with the cleats on my shoes. I moved them forward. I instantly became amazingly fast. NOT.
Even a child knows you can’t fake it.
The only way I can become fast on a bike is to be airlifted to the top of a ski jump and released.
The ride in was peaceful except for when the supermodels lined up and cheered me near the stone bridge. I awoke soon after. Sometimes on Friday’s I ride in a dream state for a while.
Don’t dream it’s over.
I had an eye out for snapping turtles but all I saw were my first three bunnies of the year. Yay bunnies.
I rode through flood waters at the base of King Street in Old Town Alexandria. And again on the trail near Daingerfield Island. There must be a hole in the river. Little Nellie didn’t mind.
Rats. I forgot my snorkel.
Once I was on the 14th Street Bridge I could see the high waters of the Potomac. Muddy, fast moving, filled with debris. It must have rained like a bitch upstream.
Into the city, i managed to hit green lights all the way to Friday Coffee Club. That’s a first. As SharrowsDC might say, it was a perfect.
Friday Coffee Club was crowded again. I didn’t know about 1/3rd of the attendees. I got to play with my favorite soon-to-be two-year old, Hugo. Once he wakes up and gets a muffin in him, he’s a pretty happy camper. He was a hug machine this morning.
SharrowsDC: The Ogremeister
After coffee club I headed down G Street with SharrowsDC on my flank. Well, not literally ON my flank but kind of off to the side. He was riding his backup bike since he had his 223rd flat of 2014 on his new Ogre bike. I’ve never met anyone who gets so many flats as SharrowsDC. It’s absolutely uncanny.
He feels possessed.
The ride back over the river on the TR Bridge gave me another opportunity to see the big muddy.
Work pretty much sucked.
During the day it rained like a bitch. So the saving grace was the fact that I could have been out riding my bike in a deluge instead of pushing ideas around and around.
Then I got to ride home. The air was heavy like the bayou. This shoud have given me a zydeco ear worm but instead my head was stuck on Neil Finn.
They’ll Soon Take Wing
My possessions are causing me suspicion but there’s no proof.
I stopped under the 14th Street bridge to take some pix of some gosslings. These were about a month older than the ones I saw earlier this week. I imagine they’d be fledging any day now.
As I neared home a light rain began to fall.
I always take the weather with me.
The work week is over. 155 miles of bike commuting in the bag.
I didn’t check the thermometer but at 7 a.m. it was 10 degrees at the airport. I think it is safe to assume that I was dealing with single digits when I left home. To add to the festivities I had a nice little headwind.
You’d think I’d complain about freezing my noo-noos off. You’d think I’d bitch and moan. I won’t do either. It was actually a pretty nice ride in. Granted, I’d much prefer not wearing so much clothing but I was pretty comfortable.
I took a couple of short cuts to avoid ice in Old Town, but otherwise it was a normal ride to Friday Coffee Club. Even my back seemed to be holding up. Until I dismounted at the end, that is. Oil me, Scarecrow. I reached down to take a drink of water and both my bottles were solid ice.
Inside Swings House of Joe, the joint was jumping. I didn’t really expect many people but there were ten or so. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. So take that winter!
Brian rolled in. He seemed to be bundled up but he looked like he’d ridden by way of Nome. Then Dave showed up. Ditto. Finally, just before I left Kirstin appeared. Except I didn’t recognize her at first for all the stuff she had on. She looked like a whole bunch of clothing with a smile near the top. As I left I gave her a hug and it was like holding a human-sized Popsicle. Lordy!
I was expecting my back to be all sore when I got to work but it felt almost normal.
I was out in the sub-freezing temperatures for about 90 minutes. My finger tips were cold at the start of the ride. I alternated putting my hands in my pockets for a few miles and the discomfort went away. My toes started to get cold for the last mile or two before Swings. The rest of me was toasty.
It was 30 degrees when I left the office. On the way home it dropped down to 26. Again I was pleasantly surprised that I was comfortable the entire way.
Now that I have mastered winter bike commuting for another year, we can begin springtime.
I woke up with very little stiffness. I hopped on The Mule and headed for Friday Coffee Club. When I dismounted outside Swings House of Caffeine, my back was really stiff. Ow.
I straightened up after a few seconds. Inside Swings, the joint was jumpin’, I got to tell my tale of back woe several times. Sympathy is good medicine. @ultrarunnergirl urged me to try Bikram yoga. She says it saved her back. Lawyer Mike told us about visiting a senator with a client while he (Mike) had a ruptured disc. (“Help my client for god’s sake so I can get the hell out of here!!!)
Jacques held Hugo, who is now an inquisitive toddler, as he talked with @bobbieshaftoe looking very stylish in her waterproof Gore jacket. Good thing she was properly attired. With no warning, Hugo let rip an impressive sneeze. He nailed her. She laughed it off because she is Ubermom. I’m sure she’s encountered worse with her kids. I sure have with mine.
I enjoyed riding part way to my office along side Jacques and Hugo. Hugo’s not nearly as talkative as his dad. This probably has something to do with the fact that he is just now learning to talk. He got a rise out of a school bus parked on the side of the street. “SkooBus” was my son’s first word. (He said it over and over and over again. Good thing he was impossibly cute.)
The ride to work was uneventful but the dismount in the garage hurt quite a bit. I gingerly made it to the locker room and eventually to my office.
A co-worker had spilled something on his shirt and needed an emergency replacement. Fortunately, he’s about the same size as me and I, like all experienced bike commuters and boy scouts, keep a spare change of clothes in a filing cabinet in my office. Yet another reason why employees should be encouraged to ride to work.
The ride home was a bit of a slog despite the warm (50!) temperature. Between staying up until midnight to watch the Olympics and fighting back pain for days on end, I was pooped. I could barely maintain an 11 mile per hour pace. I made it home in one piece but the dismount at home was bad news. Owie. Once I went inside, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was listing to starboard. My spasm was back.
It’s going to be 70 degrees outside tomorrow. Normally I’d go for a long ride but I think I will do the smart thing and take it easy. There will be plenty more nice days soon.
For the second anniversary of Friday Coffee Club, King Espresso and Coffeenuer ordered a cake. (Thanks guys) Combine caffeine, cake, and bike commuters and what do you get: a mob!!! Parking was a bit tight.
As usual, it was great to see so many folks. A few regulars were AWOL but @bobbieshaftoe gets a pass since she was riding a bike in Antarctica. This kind of takes the whole complaining about the cold thing off the table for the rest of winter, don’t you think.
Friday Coffee Club is open to everyone. It runs from roughly 7:30 to 9:00 at M. E. Swing’s at 17th and G Streets, Northwest. The coffee is superb. They also have tea, of course. And pastries including sugar encrusted pastry bombs, which Rachel insists on calling fritters.
Today was Friday which normally means Friday Coffee Club for me. Friday Coffee Club (yes, it’s capitalized) is a gathering of D.C. area bicycle commuters at M.E.Swing’s House of Caffeine. For coffee drinkers, Swing’s is a more important landmark than that big white house located a block away. It is ground zero for my weekly case of caffeine jitters.
Alas, I didn’t go to Friday Coffee Club this week. It was raining and the rain was freezing as it does when temperatures fall below 32. So I didn’t ride to work. Normally this would piss me off but my family and I have tickets to see comedian Jim Gaffigan tonight so I wouldn’t have ridden anyway. The intersection of family event and bad biking weather is usually a null set so today was a sort of harmonic convergence for me. (Make a Venn diagram out of that mess!)
As you might imagine, I was pretty pleased by this turn of events until, that is, I started getting tweets from Friday Coffee Clubbers. Today was the return of the Mary and Rhoda show. No, Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper didn’t make a celebrity appearance but Rachel and Kate did. Rachel and Kate were once roommates until Kate went to grad school on the lone prairie. Whilst living under the same roof, they put forth a constant stream of conversation that fell somewhere between witty repartee and inane banter. Hence, the comparison to Mary and Rhoda. (Truth be told, we still can’t figure out who is Mary and who is Rhoda.) Regardless of what you call it, it always cracks me up and I miss their verbal goofiness.
As all viewers of the show know, Mary and Rhoda are often joined by Phyllis (played hereabouits by Katie Ann – under protest). Today, however, they were joined by Lou as played by Katie (upper left in the picture). Katie lacks the paunch, bald head, and other physical characteristics of Ed Asner but apparently has a bottle in her desk drawer and, despite the fact that she herself is infinitely spunky, hates spunk.
Tweets and pictures came over the interwebs making me sad I missed today’s assembly. One picture showed Kate and Katie eating biopsies off an apple fritter. Ladies, this is just not done. If you are going to eat of the fruit of the tree of carbness, you must go all in. Then at least you’ll have hips like Lou Grant.
In the past, I may have given readers the impression that I go to Friday Coffee Club for the coffee. While the coffee is indeed top notch, the real reason I go is my name is Ted Baxter.
It was cold. It was Friday. Warming up would require a bike ride and hot coffee. Fortunately, Friday Coffee Club was on the agenda. I rode Big Nellie to Swings and found that the cold had not stopped the fearless bike commuters of DC from attending. They, however, did move the proceedings inside for the first time since late winter. It was good to see Adam (a.k.a. Froggie) back on dry land after spending months at sea in his job as Tweeter First Class aboard the USS iPad. Kate, who had just completed the graveyard shift as an underpaid public servant, was also in attendance. She had ridden Kermit, the bike I would be most likely to steal but for its pink handlebar tape. Welcome back, you two.
Friday’s workday came and went. During the ride home I was going over a checklist of things to do in preparation for Saturday’s Great Pumpkin Ride in Warrenton VA. Thing number one was raise the seat on The Mule. This went really well until I tried to tightened the seat post bolt that would keep the seat where I done raised it to. The bolt wouldn’t tighten. I jumped in the car and drove to Spokes Etc. to get a replacement. It turns out the bicycle industry no longer uses this seat post retention system. Spokes didn’t have a bolt. I drove home and decided to ride Little Nellie, my Bike Friday New World Tourist instead.
Saturday morning was so cold that I didn’t bother to look at the thermometer. The drive to Warrenton involved a 15 mile detour caused by VDOT’s brilliant decision to close one of the exits on I-66. I lucked out and found a parking space only a couple of blocks from the start.
As I was getting ready to leave the car, the guy in the car next to me says, “Are you Rootchopper?” It turns out he is known online as Consularrider and he works in the building next to me in Rosslyn. Small world. After a brief chat, I took off to pick up my t-shirt and cue sheet. I decided to ride the 43 mile ride instead of the 71 miler. After doing the check in, I headed out for a brief tour of Warrenton. Old Town Warrenton is quaint and small, but I managed to get lost anyway. After about 3 miles or riding I pulled into Red Truck Bakery. I had a coffee and an orange cranberry walnut muffin. The coffee was okay but the muffin was mouthwatering. Readers of the blog may find this familiar since I had the very same thing last year. It is still the best damned muffin in the universe.
Little Nellie at Red Truck Bakery
After muffinpaloosa, I headed back to the start of the ride where I was hoping to find John Roche, creator of the Hoppy 100 bike rides. I learned from the check-in desk that John was long gone. Bob Cannon and his son Jeremy soon appeared and in short order the three of us were underway. Bob and Jeremy set a very brisk pace. After about five miles I slowed to my normal slog and took in the scenery. Last year the foliage was post peak; this year most of the trees were green. It didn’t much matter because this is the Virginia Piedmont, the kind of countryside you see in coffee table books: split rail fences, rolls of hay drying in the fields, Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance.
I reached the first rest stop. It was Cannon-less. It was also foodless so I topped off my water bottle. Before leaving, I raised my seat a couple of millimeters to get more extension out of my legs. The bolt didn’t break. Yay. Back on the road I was alone with swirling winds and rolling hills. The hills are just the right size to hill hop, zoom down one hill then use the momentum to ride all the way up the next.
The next stop was at the Elk Run Anglican Church. Oh. My. God. Cookies, brownies, hot pretzel sticks, nuts, M&Ms, and more. To wash it down they were serving hot apple cider. I hate cold apple cider, but this sweet, hot drink totally hit the spot. The Cannons were here. So was Consularrider. And John Roche. Chat ensued. I split off to talk to a guy with a faired Gold Rush, a lighter weight aluminum version of Big Nellie. I did my best not to drool on it.
By the time I rejoined the posse, Consularrider (who was doing the 71 mile ride) and the Cannons were gone. John Roche and I headed out as a duo. Before leaving the rest stop, I nearly flipped my bike over backwards when I caught the rear wheel in a roadside drainage ditch. A cop sitting in his nearby car had a good laugh. He said I wasn’t the only one.
John and I gave the ride an honest effort. We had a steady tailwind for what seemed like two or three miles (yay!) then it was in our face again (boo!). John’s better at hills so he would speed ahead on the rises and I would catch up a mile or two later. On one of the downhills, the Gold Rush went by us in a blur. Dang, that bike can fly.
Our next stop came at Poplar Springs, a vineyard up a windy hill from the main road. On the climb up, we caught and passed Gold Rush. Recumbents can’t climb for beans. As the famous cyclists Milton Friedman once said, “There ain’t no such thing as a free downhill.”
This rest stop had tables of food, hot cider, and pumpkin soup. It looked like many of the riders were preparing for an overnight stay. Nom. Nom.
As we were preparing to leave, my grad school roommate Paul and Amy, his significant other, appeared. They were doing the 23 mile ride. Given the food at this rest stop, I think they might have gained a pound for their efforts. They were last seen falling into a food coma near the pumpkin soup.
The Cannons blasted down the road and John and I made rather pathetic chase. We found out that Jeremy, a high school hockey player dressed in street clothes, was chasing down lycra-clad triathletes on their fancy carbon fiber bikes. I’d have loved to have seen the look on their faces when this kid in jeans got on their back wheels.
The Cannons were out of sight in no time. No worries. This stretch of the route had some honest to god foliage. Pedal, pedal. Pretty, pretty.
After passing a couple of women wearing capes, we rolled into the finish. There was more food! And massages. And antique bikes. We hung out in the hopes that the sun would warm us. No dice. We went our separate ways. Back at the car, Consullarrider was preparing to go out for another ride – to get his 100 miles in for the day. I would have joined him but I am sane and there was heat in the car!
On the way home, I visited several bike shops to find a new seat bolt. No luck. The Mule now sits at home looking sad, off in the corner of the shed, its seat pushed all the way down to the top of the frame. No worries. One of the shops is getting some bolts in this week. The Mule will ride again.
For pix of the ride (beware: Food porn ahead) check out my set on Flickr.
Last Friday, I slept in and missed the most heavily attended Friday Coffee Club. This Friday I would not be denied, even if it meant riding in the rain. So I was up and out of the house by 6:30 and headed to DC. It was DARK. Middle of the night DARK. I pedaled The Mule toward the circle of light cast by my Stella headlight. The mist made me regret wearing my rain pants but when it gave way to steady rain, my choice was vindicated.
It was good to see plenty of runners out on the Mount Vernon Trail. The marathon season is here and those last long training runs must be done. As every runner knows, there are not bad days for running. They sure looked soggy though.
The ride north was into an occasionally stiff headwind which really got my attention as I crossed the Potomac River on the 14 Street bridge. The rain was so steady that there was little need to reach down for my water bottle. From the bladder of the gods.
I took 17 Street to Friday Coffee Club because I did not know if White House Plaza which connects the 15th Street cycletrack to 17th was open. When I arrived at Swings a handful of folks were sitting at the outside tables which are protected from the rain.
It took a while but a decent number of people, ten or fifteen, gathered to chat. Jacques showed up with Hugo, the cutest one-year old boy on the planet. We (excepting Hugo who was busy eating Jacques’ muffin and some Cheerios) solved all the world’s problems in short order and lingered because most of us had no job to go to thanks to the government shutdown. Mary, Queen of Coffeeneuring, was anxious to get back to her government job. I tried to get her to be one with the furlough, to accept her nonessential fate, to embrace unpaid sloth. I am not sure I convinced her.
Hugo is my favorite coffeeneur
After a long linger, we went our separate ways. I actually participated in my first roll out, the tradition of riding east across White House Plaza. Ed, normally the roll out photographer declined to snap my picture, protecting his camera from the steady rain. I bid adieu to Ed and Mary at the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track and headed for home. Once back on the MVT I enjoyed a steady tailwind and a trail of my own all the way to Old Town. With each passing mile the rains increased in intensity until I was riding through a deluge. Belle Haven Park had a decent number of runners slogging about. Runners are tough.
I rolled into home to find my house invaded by our cleaning service. I snuck in the back door and went down to the basement to take off all my wet things. Once the crew left, I showered and sat down to another hard day of furloughing.
Coffeeneuring No. 4
Location: Swings House of Caffeine at 17th and G Streets NW, Washington DC
Drink: Colombian house brew. The best of the four coffeeneuring brews so far.
Miles: 28.5 (I think my new front tire short changed me by about a mile.)
It was a splendid early October morning for today’s bike commute on The Mule. Too bad it’s August. Oh well. I broke out a long sleeve t-shirt (that my daughter bought me in Alaska ironically) and hit the road. I was in the zone the whole way to work. I said hello to the Hoppy Runner and Nancy “Lumberjack Jersey” Duley along the way but I don’t recall anything else. You know the David Byrne feeling you get when you drive somewhere for the umpteenth time, you arrive at your destination, and think to yourself “How did I get here?”
During the day, John Roche, BikeDC’s Godfather of Craft Beer, announced the details of this year’s Hoppy 100 ride. Last year’s ride was pretty epic, 100 miles, three beer establishments, a ferry ride across the Potomac, a torrential downpour, and a ride home in the dark. What more could you ask for. (And one of the beers was even called Derecho!)
This year’s ride will be a little more urban in focus and only 73 miles. In order not to tie a car up for the day, I’ll have to ride to the start in DC. This should push my mileage for the day up to 100 miles.
There seem to be quite a few folks interested in this year’s escapade, including my personal riding buddy and returning Hopster Lisa. Also, joining us should be Alex Baca who I’ve done two rides with.
My choice of steed is up in the air. I hope to pick up Big Nellie from Bikes at Vienna on Saturday. We’d been waiting for a fork from Big Nellie’s home base in California, but they sent it to the wrong bike shop. Tim of BatV is hopeful that I’ll be back in the foam seat (just doesn’t have the same ring as “back in the saddle” does it?) again on Saturday. All that said, if it rains on Sunday, I’ll probably ride The Mule cause The Mule’s a good mudder.
Well, the ride home was so nice that words fail me. I had lots of company. There were so many bikes streaming across the 14th Street bridge I did a double take. Of course, most of them blew by me within the next mile. People coming toward me were talking and smiling. If I had regular pants on, I would have sworn that my fly was down.
The last few miles were a bit of a slog. I rode up the Park Terrace hill without my usual verve, which is saying something because I normally climb like a crippled gnu.
Time to shut it down again for the night. Gotta get up early for Friday Coffee Club.
After five days without Internet service, I am back at the blog, sounding a bit like Jackie Stewart’s commentary at the winter Olympics, to boot. (It’s a beautiful day here at the blog.) Conditions for bike commuting have been positively eclectic.
Friday’s commute featured a big surprise. I left home early to go to Swings and Friday Coffee Club. I looked for Nancy Duley under the 14th Street Bridge where she has been known to lurk. There were two cyclists there but no Nancy. I continued into the city without incident, pulled into Swings, bought coffee, and sat down at one end of the long table filled with bike commuters. People at the opposite end started yelling for me to come to their end where there was woman with curly hair that I hadn’t seen before. It was Nancy Duley, whom I have never seen without a helmet on. She, of course, fit in perfectly with the gang and had a fine time.
Nancy Duley (left foreground with glasses) at Friday Coffee Club
Monday’s commute was so uneventful I don’t remember it. When I get into the bike commuting zone, I get into the zone!
Tuesday morning was pretty muggy. Not much happened on the way to work. In the evening I rode shotgun in a Prius to my friend Kate’s (yep, another Kate!) happy hour party at Bar Louie in Penn Quarter. On the way we stopped at the light at Constitution and 15th just as French Braid Kate (no relation to the Bar Louie Kate) rode across the cross walk in front of us. I am not stalking her. Honest.
I had a couple of beers and commiserated with Bar Louie Kate who was celebrating her new job at a new agency. We met during Earth Day activities. We shared a display table, me doing the bike commute thing and she doing the walk commute thing.
I left the bar at 7 and took the subway back to Rosslyn. I changed and headed out on The Mule at 7:20 with an ominous line of clouds just to the west. I didn’t know there was a severe thunderstorm warning in effect. Oops.
It was still light out so I didn’t bother putting my headlight or taillight on. I knew I’d need them for the second half of the commute so I figured I’d stop and put them on when it got dark.
The ride down the Mount Vernon Trail to Old Town began into a headwind. The trail wasn’t crowded and the riding was peaceful. As expected, by the time I reached Old Town Alexandria it was dark out, suspiciously so. What I didn’t realize was that the weather front had blocked out any remaining daylight and moonlight.
I kept rolling right through Old Town. It was dark but I could see just fine. South of Old Town I rolled along the trail when all of a sudden I entered a cloud of gnats that went on for a half mile. It was biblical. I had to keep my mouth closed. They were hefty little bugs, bouncing off my arms, legs and face. I think if I had my headlight on the size of the swarm would have freaked me out. South of Belle Haven Park the darkness was jet black. I had to slow way down. Seeking street lights, I bailed out on the trail at Tulane Drive, opting to trade the climb up the Park Terrace hill for the blackout.
I noticed that I now had a tailwind. Uh oh.
The good news was the bug swarm was behind me. The bad news was the storm hit. I was drenched in a minute with two miles to go. And the rain was COLD!!! No worries. Pedal, pedal.
I pulled into the Rootchopper Institute and rolled my bike to the backyard shed. It was so dark I had to fish my cell phone out of my panniers to shed some light the lock on the door. Fortunately, by this time, the rain had stopped. When I got inside the house, I noticed that most of the gnats had been washed off my skin.
In the house, home and wet. Nine o’clock. All is well.
After yesterday’s chain problems, I switch over to The Mule, my much neglected Specialized Sequioa steel touring bike. The difference between riding it and Big Nellie, my Tour Easy long wheel base recumbent, was incredible. I felt like I was somehow riding a big rock with handlebars. Initially, my legs were moving me along at a much faster than normal pace, probably the result of engaging leg muscles that have been in hibernation for months. After about five miles, my pace slowed as my pathetic legs started to wimp out. I was back to my normal 12 miles per hour, my trance speed. Once I lock into the 12 mph groove, I feel like I could ride to Kansas without stopping. I don’t breathe hard. I don’t remember the ride. I arrive and have one of those “how did I get here moments”.
Nothing much happened on the ride in. I saw the Three Step Runner and the Trash Walker, two of my regulars, but nobody else. This is the norm for days when I leave work early, like today when I was headed for Friday Coffee Club.
The weather was splendid so it’s not at all surprising that attendance at Swings House of Java was high. I handed over my third bag of roma tomatoes to Kirstin, who will eat them tonight after killing a deer in Rock Creek Park to satisfy her paleo diet needs. (She uses humane methods: she runs them to death.)
I am the anti-Paleo person. I eat fritters or what I call sugar encrusted pastry bombs and wash them down with coffee. What better way to end the work week than a caffeine-buzzed insulin spike.
I asked Felkerino who does much of his own bike maintenance (in his dining room, no less) about my chain problem. He is usually pretty thrifty so I was expecting him to tell me some clever way to fix the chain and ride it forever, but he quickly advised me to replace the chain. So my plan is to spend some time tomorrow practicing chain link replacements on it which should get me another couple of weeks worth of use out of it. (And possibly a sheepish trip to my local bike store to have them fix my fruits of my mechanical ineptitude.) Near the end of August, I will take it in to my not-so-local recumbent store for some major repairs (new chain, new chainrings, new cassette, new cables, etc.)
The ride home was a slog. My body and The Mule were not in general agreement as to proper propulsion mechanics. And my butt hurt. I think it’s time to buy a new saddle. My Brooks Champion Flyer is starting to look like a sling. Normally, I’d tighten the leather up using the adjustment screw, but it’s been broken for a couple of years.
I arrived at Casa Rootchopper to throngs of cheering fans. They were celebrating my 100th bike commute of 2013.. A bike commuting century! They ran alongside me as I made my way up the street to my house shouting “Allez! Allez!” and patting my back.
Okay, the part about the 100th bike commute is true, but I was greeted at home by the cat that eats the birds off my bird feeder. The cat was running fast around my house. He had been flushed out from under my daughter’s car by my neighbor’s dog Amy who was standing on my front lawn with what looked like a “Heh, heh, heh” snicker on her face. I don’t think she was aware of the neighborhood cycling history that was being made.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 