Saturday, in the park/I think it was the fourth of July: So the Chicago song goes. Well, it's Saturday, July eighteenth here in DC, not Chicago, and the park is Rock Creek Park. "What a day for a daydream" someome also sang waaaay back, when long play albums were king of the candy store and CD's weren't even a twinkle in the cassette tape's eye.
What a day for a bike ride, actually. And Rock Creek is the place. I can't overstate how massively, hugely awesome it is to have Beach Drive closed down, and even the parts that have traffic, have limited, non-through-way traffic that is mostly going to a parking lot to picnic. Ahh, but Beach Drive itself. You've got space to fly on your cycle; or; just hang right and dawdle along. This is no bike trail. This is a road. Cars removed. Surface decent. View: fantastic.
I start in Tenleytown, and head down Brandywine, right onto Broad Branch for a short ways, and pick up Rock Creek/Beach Drive right where it is first closed off to car traffic. Then I head steadily northward through the park, gently climbing until that last hurrah, a steeper climb up to the next set of gates that blocks the cars and a great leg burner. I keep churning from the second I hit Beach Dr until I crest this great hill, then enjoy the descent down to the next section of closed road as I approach the Maryland ball fields and Candy Cane Park at East/West Hwy.
Next I abandon the trail for a somewhat steep ascent up to the top of the neighborhood behind the park and turn off to the Georgetown Branch Trail. Soon ahead is the high trestle back over Rock Creek, a great place to stop and admire the climb just made. This is the unpaved section of trail, but it's not a bad ride on slicks until you get closer to the tunnel in Bethesda, and it gets bumpier from the recent construction equipment that was extending the paved section of the Capital Crescent Trail just a bit on the north/east side of the tunnel. As you pop out of the tunnel, heading south, the tree-lined trail suddenly gives way to Bethesda Row. Giffords Ice Cream and the movie theater (and probably a damned Starbucks in there somewhere, too) give rise to congregation; children's screams of playful delight--their accompanying adults actually smiling--and ice cream bribes. It's a great awakening as you come out of the dark of the tunnel and into the din of joyful baby stroller pushers, dog walkers, gangly teenagers and button-nose toddlers clumsily slapping palms and feet on the plaza in front of Borders.
After a turn back onto the CCT, it's back into the channeled ride through the trees, and on a terrific sunny day like today, it's a slowish ride with "on your left" and "passing" the extent of your vocabulary and often your thoughts. It takes a keen sense of preparedness to dodge the little boys and girls weaving along on their single speed bikes or x-mart fake suspension rides, parents just behind on creaky old cruisers, or, sometimes, top-shelf, never-used mountain and road bikes, the chain stay still shiny; no tell-tale commuter grime.
The narrow trail presents challenges that Beach Drive does not. At this point in my ride I miss Beach Drive and cranking up the hill, almost wishing for an incline again just to have that space to ride. But I am winnowing gently down the old railroad grade and to my turn-off at Mass Ave, literally separating myself as grain from the chaff on the trail until I reach the steep little pull-off to Mass Ave and my ride back through lazy Maryland suburbs that tuck right against DC, and onwards into Northwest and home again.
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