Lost at Si

There's nothing like getting lost on bike trails, and off them, so long as you've got the time to spare. I headed north on the Rock Creek Trail from it's overhead intersection with the Capital Crescent Trail. Normally I am riding up Rock Creek/Beach Drive and use the CCT as a loop back to NW DC; or the reverse coming from the CCT to the Rock Creek Trail. But last night I had a destination of Shady Grove, and wanted to bike there. Well, I didn't get to Shady Grove, but I had great meanderings through some beautiful, if bumpy sections of the Rock Creek Trail and a host of contiguous trails and neighborhoods.

Where the RCT goes under I-495, it bends back to the left, almost where it came from. There's a closed section and detour a little farther on, and that's where I started playing hid and go seek with the actual RCT. I found lots of side trails and spurs that usually led to some neighborhood parks, like Dewey Park.

Dewey was cool--tennis courts, basketball courts, and soccer fields. Soccer fields filled with spanish wafting toward me and trailing behind as I rode by. I love soccer--played for years growing up, like most god-fearing suburbanites of northern Virginia. But even better is the passion many latinos have for the sport. Unlike a lot of us NOVA suburbanites, they don't stop playing after high school. Pick-up games are de rigeur if your native tongue is spanish. It's great. It's just like the pick-up hoops I used to play. Not much equipment is necessary, and skill level can vary greatly, even among one team. Yes, you might spend some time on the sideline if your skills are not great, but you'll eventually get in the game so long as you are not prone to scoring on your own team. Shirts and skins; full-fledged, refereed games and official jerseys; six-on-six. You name it, soccer has its variant and it was being played right alongside Rock Creek Trail and the other network trails in Montgomery County.

I ended up with a two hour and forty minute "jaunt" of a bike ride. One hell of a therapy session, let me tell you. It was great getting a mix of trail riding and road riding. The trail is often a foliage tapestry, twisting and turning through the wooded terrain, over small dips and up short inclines. The RCT is bumpy in a lot of places, so hang onto your pedals. Once I got tired of jockeying the bike over this semi-rough terrain (I've got slicks on the bike, though they are 1.35 inches wide) I hopped over to Beach Drive and enjoyed the smoothness of car-grade asphalt. The drive was fairly relaxed at this time of day, around seven-thirty at night. Most of the cars were fine with encountering a cyclist or three (I was not alone this overcast, cool, splendid biking night) and I only had a few close passes.

There's a point in here somewhere. Oh yeah. Just shut up and ride. If you think great riding doesn't exist in the self-important blowhard capital of the world, think again. It was a Monday night. People are stressed. Yet I had a terrific ride approaching three hours long, taking advantage of the long days we still have, and also making use of my lights as I doubled back on the CCT at around eight thirty at night. We don't need a velodrome. We don't need to always have the roadways to ourselves as cyclists. If you can ride confidently in traffic, and don't mind some trail riding complete with root bumps and baby strollers, DC area biking serves up plenty of routes and ramblings for the two-wheel inclined! So, I shut up now, you go ride!