Tag: travel

The Mo Mo Tour: Day 18 continued – That’s a Wrap

I went to the rental car place as soon as it opened. They did not have the SUV I reserved. Instead I settled for a white Dodge Charger. I was prepared to drive to WalMart up the hill to buy a bike rack if necessary but the Charger’s back seats folded down giving me room for The Mule and all my stuff. Impressive. (Note: I did have to take off the front wheel and lower my seat.)

The drive to Berea went on a parkway west to London and north to Berea on an interstate. It took about two hours because, despite my sporty car, my brain had been dealing with 3 to 35 miles per hour for over two weeks. Big trucks were zooming past me as I puttered along.

The terrain was very mountainous until I arrived at Berea (the second “e” is long). It was like someone threw a big geological switch; the town was basically flat.

The drive gave me time to think. The original point of this tour was for me to complete the eastern third of the TransAm. I had already bypassed 20 miles of it from Hindman to Hazard. Now I had blown off roughly 110 more in the car.

Most journals I read were all dated five or more years ago They made it sound like the dog problem was no big deal but the eastbound rider I met at the Cookie Lady’s house was still stressed out about his dog experiences in Kentucky over a week later. The hostel contact in Booneville sounded downright scary. The rental agency person in Hazard had all kinds of tales about indifferent dog (and pony!) owners. Owners who don’t neuter their animals so when the puppies get big enough they turn them loose in the woods. A person in Berea told me that Booneville is near an old coal mining area. Since strip mines have taken over, these old coal mining families are screwed and bitter.

(Another thought about doing chemical warfare with loose dogs: I have ridden past a half dozen gun shops, most of which displayed signs advertising AR-15 style semi automatic weapons. Gulp. My wife’s uncle Terry lives in southern West Virginia. When you drive onto his property there is a sign that say’s “You are in range.” Terry’s a pretty funny guy but I’m not entire sure he’s joking. And he isn’t economically distressed like these Kentucky folks. (I’m pretty sure Terry doesn’t have an AR-15 but

So I get to Berea and I have a choice. Do I continue on by bike in a totally stressed out mental state? I took two Advil PMs last night and still didn’t sleep a wink. I am physically and mentally exhausted. The dog problem is supposedly no big deal west of Berea but I really, really, really do not want to deal with them anymore. It was time to call it a tour and head home.

So I investigated my options. I can fly for free on Southwest with credit card points so I checked to see where the nearest airport was on Southwest’s route system. It was Louisville, about 160 miles by bike. Not gonna happen. I called U-Haul in Berea. They only had a 15-foot truck which would have cost over $500. Nope. However, the U-Haul guy said to talk to the car rental agency in Berea. Maybe there was something we could work out.

So I went to the car rental agency and talked with Chelsea, a very intelligent and personable person. She said it was indeed possible to do a one-way rental. All she had to do was talk to someone up the corporate food chain. That person freed up her software to allow her access to interstate one-way rentals. So we closed out my rental agreement from Hazard and opened a new one. Recognizing that I had been needlessly charged for the Hazard to Berea rental, she marked down the price of my trip from Berea to home. Chelsea is the best,

So for the cost of having someone pack and ship my bike, I hit the road in a sports car, driving over 500 miles from Kentucky to home. Google Maps has a sense of humor. It routed me through central West Virginia on two-lane mountain roads for about an hour.

Now that I’ve had a day to mull it over, I can’t exactly call this a failure. After all, I did end up riding 840 miles which is more miles than my 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2015, and 2016 tours.

That said, I have to admit that my last two tours have been a mental challenge for me. I love the riding parts of the tours. I won’t soon forget the fantastic ride to Damascus on this tour, for example. But I can really live without church hostels, campgrounds, Warmshowers homes, hotels, lousy GSCS food, etc. As my toddler son used to say over 25 years ago, “I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

My advice to anyone who is planning to do the TransAm is: don’t. It’s glory days are long gone. The dog situation in Kentucky is just one example. Many of the towns in Kansas on the route are virtual ghost towns. The traffic in eastern Oregon is godawful. The legendary bike accommodations in Guffey CO are dreadful.

When the TransAm was designed in the mid-1970s, touring bikes were heavy and had ten-speeds and only rear racks. I can’t imagine how the first riders did the whole 4,000+ miles. (A friend who participated in Bikecentennial, the 1976 event for which the TransAm was established said that she was doing fine until Kentucky. Her knees were trashed when she finally left the Appalachians.

There is a new alternative to the eastern half of the TransAm. The Eastern Express goes from DC to Colorado in a more or less straight line. It was designed specifically to avoid the dogs and hills of Appalachia and the Ozarks. Or design your own route as I did in 2018.

And for a two-week tour, Yorktown to Damascus isn’t bad idea.

Tour Options for 2024

It’s starting to warm up and my thoughts are turning to a spring/summer bike tour. I have pared my ideas down to two tours, all originating from home and involving parts of the Atlantic Coast, Trans America, and Great Rivers South routes designed by the Adventure Cycling Association.

Pre-tour Jitters

I have some trepidation about this tour. Of course, pre-tour worry and anxiety is nothing new. It is tempting to let these feelings snowball, what Buddhists call papañca. There is some usefulness to anticipating problems, of course, but, left unchecked, this sort of mental proliferation can ruin your tour. About 50 miles into my 760-mile DC-to-Indiana tour, I was making myself miserable with pointless worrying. I stopped and gave myself a mental dressing down: “You’re on vacation. Relax. If bad things happen, you’ll figure them out.” It worked.

My list of worries is short. For a start, I am not a kid anymore. I was a youngster when I rode across the US alone in 2018 at the age of 62. I’m now 68 and don’t I know it. I have nagging physical issues with my lumbar and cervical spine. Also, I have the usual age-related reduction in muscle strength. The only cure for these things is to walk when I need to and to shorten my riding days to the extent practicable.

A second concern is dogs. The route I am taking is notorious for aggressive dogs. In the past I brought a small can of pepper spray. I never once used it gave me peace of mind. It occurs to me that on a windy day or on a downhill I am likely to spray myself. Yeah, let’s do 25 miles per hour downhill on a bumpy road with a snarling junk yard dog at my heels and get a load of pepper spray in my face. Nope. I am going to find a small horn of some sort and hope for the best.

Weather is always a concern. Since I am heading south, I am sure to encounter much more heat and humidity than last year. I’ll need to stay hydrated and take breaks. Depending on which route I take I’ll could be dealing with serious headwinds.

The topography is a bit intimidating. Like last summer, I’ll be crossing the Appalachian Mountains for a good chunk of the tour. In my mind’s eye this means steep climbs straight up one mountain after the next. That’s not how it works, of course, and I never seem to remember that those climbs are followed by descents.

Now, let’s consider the options.

Option 1: Finish the Trans Am

I have about left over 1,000 miles of the TransAmerica route unfinished: from Ashland, Virginia (just north of Richmond) to Ash Grove, Missouri (just east of the Kansas border). I’d ride south about 110 miles to Ashland then bang a right on the TransAm. And follow it over 1,400 miles to Ash Grove.

The eastern third of the TransAm Route

A big advantage of this part of the route is the lodging situation. There are something like 21 inexpensive places to stay including campgrounds, town parks, fire houses, hostels, churches, and such. Another advantage is the fact that I will encounter bike tourists along the way thanks to the popularity of the TransAm.

After Ash Grove it makes sense to me, at least, to ride south to Bentonville, Arkansas. This would take about two days and add 110 miles. There’s all kinds of flights to DC from this city thanks to the fact that it is the home of Wal-Mart.

Beyond Bentonville is the possibility of picking off Oklahoma. Tulsa is three days and 130 miles west. Add another 150 miles on old Route 66 and I’d be in Oklahoma City, another city with several flights to DC. All told, DC to Oklahoma City would make for a tour of about 2,000 miles. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have the added benefit of being on Southwest Airlines’ network, meaning I’d probably fly home for free.

Continuing on to Oklahoma City

Option 2: Laissez Les Bon Tons Roulez

This town is identical to the tour above until Marion, Kentucky just south of Cave-in-Rock. At Marion, I would pick up Adventure Cycling’s Great Rivers South Route, taking that to the start of the Natchez Trace near Nashville. With the exception of a detour to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to take in a bit of music history, I’d ride to Natchez, Mississippi. After that, it’s a few days of riding to New Orleans. The total mileage is about 2,100. Theoretically, I could take a train home from New Orleans but it would take at least 26 hours.

DC to Nola

I once had a business trip to Louisiana in April and could not believe how humid it was. Add ten or 15 degrees and you get pure misery. It probably would make more sense to just fly to Nashville, do the ride to New Orleans, and fly home. That would be about 900 miles and would take me about a month.

Blossoms and bikes and yard work

We’ve been really weather lucky lately here in the DC area. We had five days in a row with high temperatures in the 70s. That means SHORTS! Yes, baby. And shorts mean longer rides. Yay.

I have switched to The Mule in the hopes that it will help my neck problems. So far it seems to be working. My range of motion is better and the pain is less. Fingers crossed.

The week of riding started with a two-wheeled recon ride to DC to check out the status of the famous cherry blossoms. Alas, I was a few days early but at least the trees on the way to Hains Point in East Potomac Park were putting on a show.

The road to Hains Point

The next day I rode mostly trails to the Kenwood neighborhood of Bethesda, Maryland. Conveniently located a block from the Capital Crescent Trail, Kenwood is lined with decades-old cherry trees. Alas again, the trees were still in winter mode. After a stop for an everything bagel in the downtown Bethesda, I rode home clocking my first 50 mile ride of the year.

Next up was a family auto tour of the DC tree scene. Once again we were disappointed. As a consolation, we drove to Great Falls Park in Maryland to check out the raging waters of the Potomac River where it passes through Mather Gorge. We followed a path out to Olmsted Island in the middle of the river and saw and, even better, heard the deluge as it passed all around us. After the drive, I did a 30-mile jaunt on The Mule in the area near home. During the ride I spotted the head of a bald eagle peaking above its nest in a tall pine tree in the backyard of a McMansion.

The rapids at Great Falls

Next was my Friday morning trek to Coffee Club. My route conveniently passes the Tidal Basin on the awesome new cycletrack. The trees were starting their bloom.

On Saturday, I rode to the Lincoln Memorial then back along the Potomac on Ohio Drive in DC. Once again I skirted the Tidal Basin. Now the trees were starting to put on a show in earnest. I managed 31 miles before spending the rest of the day weeding the garden.

Sunday brought what I call my perimeter ride. I ride on neighborhood streets around Mount Vernon. I stay off the bike trail and do mostly right turns on local streets. No tourists. No root bumps. No cold breezes off the river. Just beaucoup spring colors from southern magnolias, forsythia, yoshino cherry trees, weeping cherry trees, bartlett pear trees, daffodils, and tulips. This 30-miler was also followed by a stint working in the yard, doing maintenance on my drainage ditches.

Monday was officially the start of peak bloom in DC. I rode into a headwind to the Tidal Basin and reconnoitered with my wife and daughter who had driven into town after a dental appointment. They were just about done with their clockwise walk around the basin. I continued on, walking my bike counterclockwise around the basin. After passing the Jefferson Memorial I saw a group of people in business attire walking toward me. A few of them were rather large humans. In the middle of them was Merrick Garland, the US Attorney General. He had surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis about six weeks ago so I was happy to see him walking perfectly upright without a cane. The rather large humans were likely with the Secret Service. (Why is it called the Secret Service? A better name would be the Obvious Service.) This was my first DC celebrity sighting in quite some time. The ride home made for another 30-mile day.

Stumpy
MLK Memorial

Sadly over 100 cherry trees are scheduled for imminent removal as the National Park Service rebuilds the area around much of the Tidal Basin and West Potomac Park. Stumpy is doomed but most of the trees near the MLK and the FDR Memorials will be spared. Eventually, the perimeter of East Potomac Park will be restored as well. Depending on who you ask, either the water level is rising or the parkland is sinking. Either way, it’s going to be quite a mess for the next couple of years. I do hope that in the process the jersey barrier farm near the Jefferson Memorial will be removed. It’s been there for over 20 years. Other DC monuments had their security barriers upgraded years ago.

Today was cold and blustery. My daughter was headed back to law school so I decided to take the day off from riding to see her off and get more yard work done. I managed to spend about four hours edging the rest of the gardens and clearing and widening the drainage ditch across the back yard. It is safe to say that I used muscles I forgot I had. It’s going to be an ibuprofen night.

I have started to think some about my summer bike trip. I need a few things. A simple water filter, a bigger pillow, a power pack for my phone, and some sort of noise maker (for warding off dogs). I might take The Mule in for a tune up and buy a new tire or two. The front tire still has plenty of tread after over 5,000 miles of touring. My rear tire has been going strong since my flat near Sisters, Oregon in 2022. They may ride like rocks but Schwalbe tires last a very long time.

I still haven’t decided on a route. Three possibilities would involve the eastern most section of the TransAmerica Trail. The fourth possibility is a ride out west in bike over country. Stay tuned.

After driving to DC to see the blossoms with my family,

December 2023

Riding

This was a month to back off a bit. I managed to ride 749 miles or about 24 miles per day, less than half of my daily mileage on my summer tour. The cold weather makes riding my normal 30 miles feel like an ordeal. My outdoor rides ranged from 30 to 32 miles. I rode 110 miles on Big Nellie indoors. Most of the outdoor miles were on The Tank, my Surly CrossCheck. I did ride The Mule a couple of days but Little Nellie took the month off.

I reached 11,000 miles for the year on December 9.

Riding The Tank has been a struggle this year. It seems slow and heavy and hard on my legs. Once I reached 28,000 miles on its odometer on December 22, I put it away for a few days. In addition to my dissatisfaction with the ride quality of this bike, I had been experiencing a marked increase in back pain accompanied by worrisome neck, shoulder, and arm aches. A two-mile stroll (with cane) through Georgetown last week left me with even more pain. And, despite doing all kinds of physical therapy exercises for months, my back was stooped like never before. I seemed destined to return to the dreaded medical merry-go-round.

On a whim, I compared the saddle height on The Tank to that on The Mule, my touring bike that fits like a glove. The Tank’s saddle was more than a half inch higher. I must have raised the saddle earlier in the year. Why? I have no idea.

Anyway, I lowered the seat by a half inch or so and went for a spin. Bingo. Suddenly the bike fit me nearly perfectly. My mechanics were much better; my speed jumped by ten percent or so with less effort. The handlebars were still a little higher than on The Mule so I paid a visit to my local bike store where I bought some thin, 2.5-millimeter, spacers. I used them to drop my bars 5 millimeters. Dang. Locked and loaded. I finished the year with three 30-mile rides. My back feels much better and my neck, shoulder, and arm pain are nearly gone. Thank god I didn’t go to the doctor. It would have been a total waste of time.

Watching

Minari – A Korean family buys a farm in Arkansas. Nominated for all sorts of awards. Korean cast was outstanding including a little boy played by Alan Kim. They overshadowed a stellar performance by Will Patton as a religious nut who is the family’s farmhand.

Top Gun – Maverick. Another movie we skipped a few years ago. I’m not a big Tom Cruise fan but he’s far better in this than in the earlier movie. The plot is predictable but the editing and sound and visuals make for a fine action movie.

Interstellar. A Christopher Nolan film I missed when it was released nine years ago. Matthew McConaughey at his best. The rest of the cast, other than McKenzie Foy as his daughter and Michael Caine as an aging scientist, left me a bit flat. The story is filled with sci fi bafflegab and impossibilities but it was still very entertaining.

Yogi Berra – It Ain’t Over. A documentary about Yankee catcher Yogi Berra. One of the most highly decorated athletes of the century. He was short and funny looking. And he was famously a malaprop machine. History treated him like a clown, but he was anything but. He earned more professional championship rings than any athlete in the 20th century, including Bill Russell. (Russ has nine NBA championships, two NCAA championships, and a gold medal. Don’t at me.) And virtually everyone who appears on screen says he was a phenomenally decent human being.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. This movie took tons of awards including the Academy Award for Best Performance with a Butt Plug. Also, people with hot dog fingers, a sword fight with dildos, an all powerful everything bagel, and sentient rocks. How many hallucinogens did the filmmakers take when writing and directing this thing?

Air. The story of how Nike, a running shoe company, signed Michael Jordan. It’s funny. Interesting. Great cast. Matt Damon is the new Tom Hanks. Viola Davis rocks. Jason Bateman is terrific. Ben Affleck is quite good as the head of Nike. And he directed.

Nyad. A very entertaining movie about a self absorbed jerk who swims from Cuba to Key West at the tender age of 64. As good as Annette Benning was as Diana Nyad, Jodie Foster was even better as her coach and friend. I am not a big fan of either actress but I’d be shocked if they don’t both get nominated for Academy Awards.

Big Adam Bikes – This is an Instagram daily journal of a young man who rode the TransAm this year. It’s funny and brings back a lot of memories. Adam Bigelow doesn’t leave out the tedium, the bad weather, and the dogs. And the headwinds – forget about that nonsense about getting tailies going west to east. You get a pretty good idea of what it’s like to ride from the Oregon coast to Yorktown.

The Crown – We watched the final six episodes over the course of three nights. How odd that of all the characters in the story, Camilla Parker-Bowles came across best. In the end, the Queen is humanized although I have to say of the four women who played Elizabeth over 68 episodes, I found Imelda Staunton the least appealing. (There’s a new actress who plays the not yet queen as a young woman. She looks remarkably like a young Claire Foy.)

Death on the Nile – I’m not a big Agatha Christie fan and this movie did nothing to change my mind. An impressive cast but not one memorable performance. Dull. If you’re going to watch a Kenneth Branagh film there are many others worth your time.

The Big Dig – This nine-hour podcast covers the biggest urban traffic project in US history. The Big Dig involved burying the Central Artery, an elevated highway built in the late 1940s. The highway design predated the interstate highway system. It was characterized by narrow lanes and more miles of on and off ramps than roadway miles. To get on the thing you had to drive like a maniac which may explain why Boston drivers are such Massholes. The Central Artery was a daily nightmare for drivers and it ruined the city, separating the North End and South Boston from the rest of the city. The Big Dig also included building a new tunnel to Logan Airport, a much needed addition. In the first episode I learned how an inner loop highway that cut through Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury was on the drawing boards. A grassroots effort stopped the project, but not before acres of Roxbury were levelled. (I drove a cab in Boston in the mid-seventies and always wondered why there were so many empty lots in Roxbury. Now I know why.) The same sort of thing happened in DC where I-66 would have cut the city in half if not for local opposition. The Big Dig took over 20 years to design and build and cost billions more than planned. Although the podcast doesn’t mention it, the Big Dig was not unlike another big dig, the Panama Canal, in terms of its complexity, cost, political intrigue, and length of time to completion.

Reading

The Path between the Seas. David McCullough’s award-winning account of the building of the Panama Canal. As with many of his tomes, the amount of information in this one boggles the mind. Not only was the canal an engineering feat that rivalled Project Apollo, the effort also included the early use of electricity for industrial purposes and pathbreaking epidemiological work. It cost over $300 million and tens of thousands of lives, mostly those of unskilled black workers from the West Indies.

A Truck Full of Money by Tracy Kidder. This is the story of Paul English, a working class kid in Boston who eventually made $120 million (hence the title) from the online travel company he founded called Kayak.com. The book oddly dovetails with two other Kidder books: Mountains beyond Mountains and Rough Sleepers and seems like a fitting companion to Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine.

Mornings on Horseback. After reading about Theodore Roosevelt’s involvement with the Panama Canal in the book above, I decided to read this biographical book, again by David McCullough, about TR’s upbringing. (The book ends well before he becomes president.) A chapter of the book deals with his three years of on and off adventures in North Dakota and eastern Montana. I rode through this area on my 2018 bike trip and was curious about his times there.

On the Street by Bill Cunningham. Cunningham was a fashion photographer of sorts for the New York Times and other publications. He chronicled the art of fashion, mostly as it appeared on the streets of New York and Paris over four decades from the 1970s to the 2000s. I often have wondered who wears those weird outfits you see in fashion magazines. The answer is New Yorkers and Parisians. Cunningham traveled the city on his beat up three-speed bicycle. His photos of people walking to work in Manhattan after a big snow storm brought back oh so many miserable winter days in Boston. The book made me all the more appreciative of amateur photographers Joe Flood and Mary Gersema, two friends of mine who have an fine eye for life in DC.

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose. This whodunit is the follow up to Prose’s The Maid. Molly the maid solves another murder in the hotel where she works. Molly’s a bid of an odd duck but she’s a good egg and has an eye and an ear for detail. After two months of nonfiction, this novel was a fun read to end the year on.

Top Ten for 2023

Once again it’s time to take stock in stuff that happened over the last 12 months. Here we go in no particular order.

  1. The Boy Comes Home – After four years, our son came home from Thailand for a visit. We rode bikes and went to baseball games and hung out. During his travels, he also managed to see West Virginia, Indiana, Chicago, Montana, New York City, and Romania. Go figure. It seems impossible that he is 32 and living on the other side of the world. If you ever want to learn to scuba dive in Thailand, he’s your man.
  2. Cold, Rain, Hills, Smoke, Mud – Bike Tour 2023 – I’ve never ridden in Maine but I’ve been to Oklahoma. Okay, I’ve never ridden in Oklahoma either, but the line worked for Hoyt Axton. After the southern half of the Adventure Cycling Atlantic Coast Route by riding from DC to Key West in 2017, I decided to finish the route by riding from DC to Bar Harbor, Maine. Rather than re-trace my steps down the coast, I made a big loop from DC to Bar Harbor to Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls to Erie, PA to Pittsburgh to DC. The first month was cold and wet and brutally hilly. I managed to avoid the smoke from Canadian wildfires until Erie, PA where I rode in Code Purple air with an N95 mask on. No problem. I rode in a foreign country for the first time, riding along the Niagara River in stormy Ontario. The final push on the C&O, which was supposed to be the easy part, featured slogging through miles and miles of thick mud and a brutal hike over a mountain to bypass the closed Paw Paw tunnel.
  3. Bike Events – I rode five bike events this year. The Washington Area Bicyclists Association changed the name of its May ride from the Spring Fling to the Bike How You Like Ride. I rode the Spring Fling a few years ago and it was brutal. I swore I wouldn’t do it again. Fool that I am, I learned the morning of the ride that the BHYLR was the same course. Oof. Somehow it was easier this time. In September, I rode the 50 States Ride for the 15th time with a splendid posse. The route took us all over DC clockwise for the first time but we still had to contend with a brutal climb through the Palisades to Cathedral Heights. In October, I rode the Great Pumpkin Ride in the Virginia Piedmont for the umpteenth time. This time I brought my own snacks and rode it solo nonstop. The weather was perfect and avoiding long lines at the pit stops cut my time by nearly two hours. In November, I rode the Cider Ride with most of my 50 States posse. On this year’s ride one member of the posse rode all 60 miles on little more than water, a slice of apple pie, and a stalk of celery. Incroyable! Later that month I rode the Bike for Your Life event. The point of the ride was to raise awareness of the problem of traffic violence in our area. We passed four ghost bikes (indicating where a driver killed a cyclist) before ending at the ghost bike of a five-year old girl.
  4. Big Nellie Hits 50,000 Miles – It’s been over 20 years but persistence paid off as Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent, finally broke the 50,000 mile barrier. (This does not count the hundreds of miles ridden on the bike indoors during the winter months.)
  5. Little Nellie and The Tank Re-born – I had all but stopped riding Little Nellie, my Bike Friday New World Tourist, because of the intense lower back pain I experienced after even short rides. I decided to swap out the drop handlebars for more upright H bars. It made a world of difference and I ended up riding the bike over 2,000 miles this year. In late December I was ready to get rid of The Tank, my Surly CrossCheck. Riding it gave me weeks of intense nerve pain in my back, arms, shoulders, and neck. Then I made seemingly minor adjustments to the seat and handlebar height. The bike now goes considerably faster with less effort and my nerve problems have all but disappeared. With a few twists of an allen key and some headset spacers, I saved a bike and avoided the medical merry-go-round for the winter.
  6. 50th High School Reunion – I attended my 50th high school reunion. My high school classmates are so old! During the trip, I visited with family and did a bike ride with my brother Jim on the new rail trail that runs from the Hudson River to the village of Voorheesville west of Albany. I also managed to check out the Walkway over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, the home of Franklin Roosevelt in Hyde Park, the graves of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Hyde Park and of Chester A. Arthur near Albany, and my parents’ and my brother Mike’s graves. I also found the weathered tombstone of my great grandfather Sylvester.
  7. King Lear at Shakespeare Theater – My wife, daughter, and I saw a mind blowing performance of Patrick Page as King Lear, He stole the show when we saw him as Iago in Othello many years ago but his Lear was next level stuff. From the second he stepped onto the stage we were gobsmacked. It helped that we were in the second row.
  8. The Mule Gets Some TLC – I took The Mule into the bike doctor for a physical and found out that, among many other things, the rims had multiple cracks in them. The new rims were right as rain after my summer bike tour. Later in the year, after years of frustration over rear brake rubbing issues, I finally forked over the big bucks and had an expensive brake installed. It works great.
  9. Crowded House – My favorite band from the Antipodes was supposed to play DC in September 2022 but the drummer injured his back. I can relate. The concert was rescheduled for March and was worth the wait. Liam Finn, a band member, opened the night with a frenetic solo performance. The main event was terrific, marred only by two drunken idiots who sat in the row behind us and talked loudly through most of the songs.
  10. Museum of African American History – I finally got to see this amazing new Smithsonian museum. We spent hours in the place and only saw half the exhibits, mostly about slavery, Jim Crow, and civil rights. I need to go back to see the rest, most of which is likely to be more upbeat.
  11. And one more for Nigel Tufnel: In January I became a lifetime member of the Adventure Cycling Association. Without ACA maps and advice, I’d never have done so much touring or had so much fun. I should have done this years ago (and saved 20 years worth of annual membership fees) but I didn’t think I’d ever do this much touring.

London thoughts

  • The streets in London are smooth. I didn’t see a single pothole or patch.
  • The Underground is more than 100 years older than DC’s Metro. And it seems infinitely more reliable.
  • Underground trains come every two minutes. There is no crowding on the platforms because there’s no time for a crowd to accumulate.
  • With that level of train frequency, why would you ever want to drive?
  • I wonder how many billions of dollars we could save if DC’s Metro trains ran every two minutes.
  • Horn honking in London is not much of a thing, mostly because drivers seem to obey the rules. (Truer still in Stockholm.)
  • I didn’t hear anyone cuss out a cyclist in my seven days. They often use bus lanes and the bus drivers just go with the flow.
  • Bromptons are very popular in London.
  • Bike theft is apparently a problem; people lock their bikes with serious hardware.
  • People in London walk fast. They seem to be underdressed for the temperature.
  • I have yet to figure out if walkers should stay to the left or the right. When on an escalator, you stand on the right.
  • Footbridges across the Thames are the best. They seem to be about the length of the Key Bridge between Rosslyn and Georgetown.
  • I don’t quite understand why the platforms and the train floors are not at the same level. “Mind the gap.”
  • You can actually understand the announcements in the tube stations and on the trains. I wonder if they could send someone to DC to teach Metro personnel how to pronounce “L’Enfant Plaza”.
  • Curbstones are not nearly as high as in the US. And the buses come right to the very edge of the curb.
  • I’ve now been to five left hand drive countries. It still confuses the hell out of me.
  • I was hit by a wrong-way cyclist on a one-way street in Boston when I was in college. I now look both ways all the time, regardless of traffic flow. Without this I would have been roadkill in London.
  • The entire time we were in London, the temperature varied only about 10 degrees F. And it was warmed than DC despite being at the same latitude as Labrador.

London

For the first time in a year, I took a week off my bike. My wife, daughter, and I went to London to attend my daughter’s graduation from King’s College masters program in International Conflict Studies.

Last Thursday we took a red eye from Dulles to London. The plane was a 787 Dreamliner and it was a dream for British Airways profit margin. Economy class had nearly no leg room which is not a good thing if you are tall and have a history of pulmonary embolisms as I do.

Also, the air circulation was lousy. Within an hour I was sick as a dog. This really ticked me off because I had just recovered from a cold a few days before our departure.

When we got to London, my left knee, hip, and lower back ached. My daughter is the travel expert and knows how to get around London better than she does DC. So we proceeded to walk nearly 8 miles before succumbing to the time change. By the time we ended the day walking to and climbing Primrose Hill I could no longer stand up straight. Ugh. We finished the day walking 6.9 miles. (By the end of the trip we had walked 44 miles. Ironically, switching from my hiking boots to my black Clark dress shoes made a huge difference in my comfort. Go figure.)

In addition to her graduation at the Royal Festival Hall, we hit beaucoup sites including:

  • The British Museum
  • The Millennium Bridge, a new-ish footbridge across the Thames. Here we talked with Ben Wilson, known as Chewinggumman. He makes intriguing mini-paintings on the remnants of chewing gum along the bridge.
  • The Tate Modern Art Museum where we saw all manner of exhibits purporting to be art. (Including a urinal that was less artistic than those in the men’s room)
  • St. Dunstans in the East, the ruins of a church (designed by Sir Christopher Wren) bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz. It’s now a garden with walls.
  • The Monument to the Great Fire of London, 1666. The fire was started at a baker’s home on Pudding Lane.
  • The Royal Observatory and the Queen’s House in Greenwich. This included a fun boat ride on the Thames. It was fun to stand on the Prime Meridian.
  • The Book of Mormon at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Piccadilly Circus. (Sadly, after we were back in the hotel room, I learned that Neil Finn had played about 2 miles due north of our hotel.)
  • The Churchill War Rooms, a warren of underground offices and living quarters where Churchill ran the war effort during the Battle of Britain.
  • The Seven Dials
  • Covent Garden
  • The Natural History Museum
  • Westminster Abbey
  • Regents Park
  • Primrose Hill

We skipped the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower Bridge because we had done them before.

We saw a taxi protest during the evening rush hour. How they managed to get taxis side by side lined up for three blocks in the core of downtown is a mystery.

For food we ate at:

  • Dishoom (twice) for the ladies’ favorite breakfast with bottomless chai. The vegan granola is to die for.
  • Pizza Sophia, a cozy pizza place near our hotel that dispelled my hatred for London pizza from a previous trip
  • The Marquis Cornwallis, a pub two blocks from our hotel, for fish and chips and lager. Twice.
  • Nicholson’s Pub in The City (the old part of London). More beer and food. Walking fuel.
  • Nandos, because I’d never eaten there before. Underwhelming.

I didn’t ride a bike, but there is bikeshare everywhere including dockless MoBike. Feel free to ride them but good luck with the left hand drive thing.

We stopped at the Brooks Store. It’s heaven. (Unfortunately, they confirmed for me that they do not make a longer adjusting bolt for their leather saddles, leaving me with two saddles about to run out of adjusting room.)

The temperature barely changed the entire time we were in London. It was in the low 40s F every day. We were rained on once or twice but it was a light, misty sort of thing.

The flight home was another BA 787. This one had some leg room, thank god, but the air quality sucked so I got sick again.

After a day of rest, I’m heading back to the basement for some recovery bike riding on Big Nellie.

Lots of pix on my Flickr page.

Cheers.

fish and chips

 

 

 

 

 

Planning 2017 – At Last

After two months of dithering, I have finally started to sketch out my battle plan for 2017. I have only a couple of solid commitments to deal with and the rest is flexible.

Solid Commitments

  • Volunteering – because every time I see Michelle (WABA’s event manager) I feel guilty.
    • Vasa Ride – I’ve done this ride several times during the event and on my own or with others during the summer and fall. It’s well worth doing and you should give it a go. I mean when was the last time you had warm blueberry soup?
    • Tour de Fat – I am a trained beer puller. I have two hours of Tour de Fat beer pulling expertise. It would be a shame to let my skills evaporate like beer suds.
  • Family Events
    • Holy cow, my daughter’s graduating from Butler University. Woot! (This one is not at all flexible.)
    • Family reunion – this is in the middle of July.

Bicycling Events

This is a much shorter list than usual but has two new (to me) rides.

  • Car-Free Skyline Drive – I just heard about this today. It’s a brutally hilly road but, well, no cars! Also, I totally suck at hill climbing.
  • Bike to Work Day – probably my last one. Not because I don’t like the ride but because I am retiring in August.
  • Tour dem Parks – A ride around Charm City (Baltimore) that has very good word-of-mouth reviews. Also I might get to meet Eleanor (who was a bun in the oven the last time I was in Baltimore) because I hear she is swell.
  • 50 States Ride (my 10th!) – Need I say more?

Baseball

So far, I have committed to an exhibition game against the Red Sox on March 31 and an Orioles v Red Sox game in April in Baltimore. I blocked out on my calendar all the weekends that the Nationals are at home. If you want to go to a game with me, I am tolerable company. I can provide references. Also, I will shamelessly accept any tickets you get comped or otherwise stuck with. Also, there are two road series against Philadelphia. I might drive up for a day game just for the hell of it. Wanna ride shotgun?

Hiking

When the Nats are not playing I have free weekends. So these are all potential hiking days. My white board list of hikes is pretty similar to last year because I failed miserably at hiking last year. Doh.

  • Potomac Heritage from Turkey Run to Chain Bridge and back
  • Thompson Hollow Loop
  • Buck Hollow/Mary’s Rock
  • Double Bear Rocks
  • Stairway to Heaven
  • Broad Hollow/Pine Hill Gap
  • Loudon Heights/Split Rock
  • Jones Run/Doyle River
  • Corbin Mountain
  • Fountainhead

Mostly these are in the mountains to the west. If you live in the DC area and don’t mind getting up at the crack of dawn, feel free to come with. As with biking, I may be old but I am slow.

I could also use these non-Nats weekends for bike trips. Maybe an out and back between Williamsburg and Richmond on the new-ish rail trail.

Foreign (?) Travel

My daughter is thinking about going overseas for grad school so this would be an excellent excuse for a trip. If she goes to school in the US, this will require a college move-in road trip. Also, my son may still be in Thailand next winter. I wouldn’t mind seeing the place when it’s not pouring rain.

Bike Tours

Since I am retiring in August, I am saving up my annual leave for a big check. Once I get the 50 States out of the way, I think I might ride somewhere warm. Key West sounds like a good destination. The rough plan is to take the Adventure Cycling Atlantic Coast Route about 1,500 miles to Key West, take a ferry to Tampa, ride across Florida to Miami and take Amtrak home. I figure this will take about a month to do. This would be the warm up for the big one in 2018 which will probably involve riding to the Pacific Northwest.

Also between my birthday and the 50 States Ride I may have time for a short tour. I have no idea what that might entail. Maybe a road trip to rail trails in Virginia. Or the Grand Canyon of the East.

 

 

 

 

My Top Ten of 2015

The year began with a paper lantern rising in the post-midnight sky over Old Town Alexandria. I hoped it was a sign of good things to come. Here in no particular order are the highlights of what followed:

Around the World in 19 Days: When your kids move to the other side of the world, you have a perfectly good excuse to go visit them. We flew via LAX to Sydney to meet up with our daughter who was studying abroad at Macquarie University. We explored Sydney, Uluru, and Melbourne in Australia and Rotorua in New Zealand. Then we flew to Thailand where our son now lives, teaching English at a school in Phuket. We flew back via Abu Dhabi and JFK, completing our trip around the world. Speaking of travel….

Six Days without a Plan: I did my first bike tour in ten years, riding 370 miles from Pittsburgh to home, nearly entirely off road in six days. Kevin and Ryan made for good company. The Meth Man not so much. Earl and Anne, two friends from my years in Boston,  met up with us for Mothers Day brunch. And we saw the Pirates execute a triple play at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Speaking of baseball….

Where’s My Ring?: I pretty much went all in as a Washington Nationals fan this year. I attended 8 or 9 games (one was a rainout) and watched dozens more on the tube. In the process I discovered the wonderful bike valet service at the ballpark, bottles of ice water (mostly ice) sold outside the stadium, and SeatGeek, a web service for cheap seats. Sadly, the Nats completely fell apart in August and September ending with the sad display of a bad apple reliever choking the eventual league Most Valuable Player. Speaking of things surly…

Getting Surly: My bikes were getting old. And so was I. So I decided to buy a new one, just for riding events and such. I bought a Surly Cross Check on the enthusiastic recommendation of a half dozen friends who own one or wish they did. I’m still working on giving it a name. My fleet of now four bikes carried me over 7,000 miles this year. Speaking of mileage….

Turning the Odometer: I hit 60 in August. My brain still can’t believe it but my body does. Denial only gets you so far in life. I celebrated by hiking Old Rag. My advice is to do this hike long before your 60th birthday. Mrs RC made me with a quilt  from my old running t-shirts. This totally surprised me with it even though she made the thing right in front of me. Still, turning 60 was inescapably depressing.  Speaking of depressing…

Goodbye Blue Mondays: I started the year dealing with rather severe depression, not the “I’m sad” kind but the clinical kind. It’s a drag just thinking about it. I forced myself to socialize (see below), ate vitamin D supplements (I had a severe deficiency), and began daily meditation at the repeated suggestion of a friend. You could say that when it was over I had become comfortably numb. Speaking of numbness…

My Right Foot: I also started the year with a mysteriously numb right foot. I saw a neurologist who was incredibly enthusiastic, competent, and beautiful about my case. She sent me to a physical therapist who gave me a set of exercises including bird dogs, side planks, and nerve flossing that I still do every other day. On a whim, I went for a Thai massage. It didn’t do a thing for my foot but it was just about the most relaxing 90 minutes I can recall. “Use your third eye, John.”  I also went to an acupuncturist who didn’t do a thing for my foot either. He did fix a pain in my upper arm and recommended some orthotics for my shoes. Speaking of shoes….

Ramping Up My Hiking:  After each of my hikes last year, my back and knees were killing me.  The second I put the orthotics in my shoes, my back felt better. I did ten hikes this year, most of them in Shenandoah National Park and a little further north on the Appalachian Trail. All but one were solo hikes. The exception came when Ultrarunnergirl kicked my ass all the way to the top of SNP and back. My knees and back hardly protested. Speaking of protests…

What’s a Park It?:  Bike riders in DC had been getting hit by cars turning illegally through the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes. I attended a protest that was designed to bring awareness to the fact that new barriers called Park Its had not been installed on two blocks of the avenue. The protest was successful (the Park Its were installed a few months later) and was a great opportunity to get together with friends old and new. Speaking of new friends…

Do I Even Have a Fusiform Gyrus?: Three months after apparently meeting me at a December 2014 holiday party, a woman walked up at a post-ride reception and said “Hi John.” I had no idea who she was. She later said I needed to have my fusiform gyrus checked out. So began my improbable friendship with Katie Lee. A few days later we spent four hours in a booth in a downtown tavern. Two peas in a pod, pod people you might say, engaged in an incredibly intense conversation. I felt as if I had caught lightning in a bottle of Shiner Bock. On my way home for the first time in months the fog of my depression had lifted. Like a paper lantern. I know a sign when I see one. Thanks for showing me the score, KL. 

Encore, you say?….

Sitting in the Lap of the North Wind: A year or so ago, Mrs RC bought me a CD of celtic sounding music by a Quebec folk group called Le Vent du Nord. As luck would have it, they played very small venues near DC twice this year. We were in the second row for both performances, practically in the lap of the foot drumming, song singing, fiddle player. Even though I studied French in high school and college I can’t really follow their lyrics but I have no trouble enjoying their hurdy gurdy fueled music. Tres bon.