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!

Biking on the Dog Days of Summer

Okay, so it's not blazing hot yet. But when the dog is spontaneously drooling, no chicken burrito in front of her face, you know it's just plain hot. So what do sane people do? Stay indoors. What does the Bike Friday Club of DC do? Go for a ride. In the hottest parts of the day. Well, okay, we took a lunch respite in the dark, cool confines of Roy's Place Sandwich shop in Gaithersburg, MD. "A tavern", Roy described his place, not far missing the mark. It has all the wall-crammed chotchquis of a TGI Been There's, except Roy and his wife hand-picked their stuff over the course of many years, at yard sales, from original owners. Roy's is the blues to Chili's Muzak.

Roy passed away May 15, 2009. From what I've read, learned from talking to people, and seen for myself while at Roy's, he was cantankerous. Contentious. Or, maybe just straight-up honest, never going to suffer fools gladly. I'll borrow the best anecdote from the restaurant menu. Once upon a time (Roy after all opened his restaurant in 1955) a customer got angry at the too vast array of strange sandwich concoctions on the menu, and grumbled to Roy: "Can't I just have a cold sandwich?". Big mistake. "Here you go," responded Roy, handing the customer two slices of bread with ice cubes in between. And, as the menu proudly states, it's still an option (though the price has increased over the years).

I bring all this up as Roy was the inspiration for our fearless group leader to plan our trip through southern Montgomery County and end up at his restaurant. She read a newspaper article about him after his passing, and, like I had been over a year ago, she was instantly fascinated by the man and the place, Roy's, and knew it was a destination worthy of half a dozen sweaty bikers with rear-view mirrors wired to their sunglasses. And while the 15+/- mile ride back to our meeting point may have worked off some of our sandwiches (well maybe just a fraction of my "Marsupial", the fried oyster and roast beef sandwich pictured above, and number 21 on the menu) the memory of Roy and our ride to his tavern will stick with us a lot longer.

The Bridge and Tunnel Crowd

Okay, so back to something more bike related. This is, after all, the Unemployed Bike Commuter blog. Bridge and tunnel crowd, then? What gives? Angry Manhattan-ites sick of the Jersey City and Connecticut interlopers? Irritated DC'ers sneering at MD and VA cars making wrong turns onto one-way streets in the CBD? Nope. This time it's the Capital Crescent Trail and its bridges and tunnels.

The CCT is a great bike escape on the NW side of town when you don't feel like playing in traffic. It's actually quite scenic in spots, too. The pics above are of the Dalecarlia tunnel, which burrows beneath the street to provide safe passage for cyclists after the railroad left town in 1985; and the trestle bridge over Canal Rd, where Arizona Ave creeps up into DC. And, of course, The DC Flyer, complete with neon panniers.

Aside from being a beautiful ride, the CCT seems to discourage weekend Lance-a-lots; our superhero-clad racers who think the area bike trails are training grids. I think the CCT is short enough that these would-be tightsights steer more toward the Mount Vernon Trail. I find my rides on the CCT very relaxing, especially on weekdays. Further, the CCT provides good calf resistance when you ride north, the gentle grade insistently plucking at your gastrocnemius if you keep the gears at least in the middle ranges.

[Bike geek alert!!] The DC Flyer has twenty-four gears and uses most of them (3-speed internal hub coupled with an 11-32 rear sprocket spread and 46T front chainring), being my workhorse, grocery getter, speedster, do-it-all bike. However the middle gear of my SRAM three-speed internal hub sees the most use, so I am generally cruising the CCT somewhere between twelfth and fifteenth gears. (NOTE: the preceding sentence is a contractual obligation to satisfy the serious bike geeks who read this blog).

Not only does the CCT offer scenic cruising and a bit of a workout, you can turn it into a nice loop in combination with the Rock Creek Park Trail. If you start by going south to Georgetown, you can ride the Rock Creek Trail back to upper northwest. Conversely, if you head north on the CCT, you will link up with the interim Georgetown Branch Trail and can double-back along Beach Drive and eventually back to the Rock Creek Trail. And speaking of bike trails and the city...

DC certainly isn't constructed to be bike friendly like, say, Portland, Oregon. At least not in terms of previous civic planning. But we're working on it. Mayor Fenty has a plan and seems to be slowly executing it. DC installed its 1,000th bike rack in 2008. Plans also call for 40 miles of bike lanes in the city. I will leave discussion as to the usefulness of bike lanes to those on the bike forums all across the web. But the point taken is a good one--bicyclists are evidently being heard by the city, and their needs considered.

Now back to the bridge and tunnel crowd--sort of. Read on!

Further to the above progress, there is a bike center under construction at Union Station. As has been posted by others on the web, it will hold 150+ bikes, in a protected parking area, plus additional unsecure (standard) bike racks outside. There will be a changing room and lockers to rent, but no showers. The bike center itself should be badass. It will be largely a glass structure, shaped kind of like a football. The developer wanted a "non building" specifically so as not to compete with Union Station itself. Comments on the web show that current outdoor bike racks at Union Station are somewhat theft-prone. For those parking here and commuting, I reckon the bike center will be a welcome relief. And the price tag? $100 a year. Cheaper than a new frame! For more information from the DC guv itself: http://tinyurl.com/lzvquj

Happy riding amigos!

Of Matches and Fireworks

On the heels of July 4th conflagrations came the epic Wimbledon tennis match, the fight for the men's singles title. Or, as they term it at Wimbledon, the "gentleman's" title. Those of you who are tennis fans know the Federer/Roddick match went all five sets, and to sixteen-fourteen in the final set. Ultimately Federer, the quiet bully, wore down Roddick like your girlfriend wears you down about buying the fifteen piece bedding set, complete with duvee.

The only thing that lasted longer than the tennis match was the fireworks melee on the river in Pasadena, Maryland. My wife and I had our families up to the river house in southern Maryland, located on a creek, which is not a creek at all but a wide river with boating communities en masse on its shores. It feeds into the Patapsco and eventually into The Bay.

So, on this July 4th Saturday, all along the banks of the river, and inland, and all three hundred and sixty degrees were fireworks--hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal fireworks. Not the crap cones and fountains that spew a few moments of rainbow Lucky Charms colors ten feet into the air. Nope--fireworks--rockets; the kind that make a soft fwump as they are launched skyward, then burst into champagne magnolia bloom, or serpentine sidewinder trails of blues and reds. Some belch forth as eagle talons, shimmering gold; others a singular smoky thread and... BOOM!

This went on all day and all night, mercifully ending sometime around three or four o'clock in the morning on Sunday. By then it was nearly time to get up and go to church, and pray most people still had all their fingers and eyeballs intact. At least the ones that started with them intact. Judging from this, my first experience on the river, that's not a given.

It's Time to Pull Out

No,
The blog title is not an adult film director's command. Under international agreement, the U.S is going to begin it's systematic withdrawal from Iraq. It's time to pull out. We now leave major cities and towns, and place their watch under the Iraqi army.

Riding around town on my Bike Friday, there's a lot more to think about than just finding a job. It's easy to become provincial, nay, self-centered, when job searching. But the world goes on around me. It's like that feeling when you have a vacation day and choose to stay in town. It feels like everyone should be on vacation. Why is there rush hour traffic? I'm on vacation!

When there is possible progress in Iraq, there is, to say the least, uncertainty with Iran. But it's mostly governments we battle, or media-driven perceptions. Not people. Yes, people are on the front lines; the soldiers, the rebels, the activists. Somehow, though, our government, our media, seems to inculcate in us those who we should view as the enemy; and those who are supposed allies. "The New Europe", Little Bush had coined some of the former eastern block nations as he turned his back on Germany and France. Quite a spin doctor. And before him, Clinton, he of the flaccid peace and diplomacy efforts that got a destroyer mangled in Yemen; the World Trade Center bombed (lest we forget in the wake of the larger tragedy on 9/11). So Iran looms as a shadow passing in the night, navy blue on black, barely discernible, largely unformed but fully targeted by our government. And I'm having reconciling problems.

Last night I went to the memorial service for my friend's wife's mother. The mother, and most in attendance, were persian--iranian. Warm, welcoming. The surviving husban, "bubba" as affectionately termed in farci, gracious to a fault this night and every time we've met. But dignified and humble, ever thankful to each and every person who came to pay respects.

There is no shadow looming in this room. There are no diplomatic breakdowns, no communication problems. The three speakers of the evening, the widower included, all spoke in farci. I understood not a word but understood it all. When the second speaker (an older iranian apparently of some high media and political importance) droned on for more than twenty minutes, the buffet food getting cold as two sterno cans ran out of fuel, I didn't need to know a word of farci to see the proverbial hook coming to wrangle him from center stage. It was time to eat, to commune as one people, to celebrate the life of a magnificent iranian woman who raised a beautiful persian daughter, who grew up to marry my good friend, a U.S. marine; he who refused to call her by her adopted american name, instead celebrating her heritage. And now we prepare for what--for war? Diplomatic sanctions against Iran? Let us all sit at the table and break bread together.

20 Years in the Blink of an Aye!

A crazy silver sliver of a crescent moon shines down on me tonight, from a sky that is for once not shrouded in a misty veil of clouds. There is clarity tonight and I lift my head from the fog of a once-in-a-lifetime event that happened last night--mine and my wife's twentieth high school reunion.

I skipped out on the year five reunion, and one of the classmates I saw last night noted simply that "it sucked. The same cliques. Waste of time." Ten years was apparently a bit more of the same recipe, with a dash of the "what do you do what do you drive how large is your 401(k)". No stranger to the kitchen, I had feared as much and stayed away from both of these reunions like Willie Nelson from the IRS.

Well, twenty years has a way of making some of the world's atrocities not look so bad. High school went from mental canker sore to a mere throbbing reminiscence of chaotic conformity. What I realized yesterday, at the afternoon reunion picnic, and later at the formal reception (with standard shrimp and cheese) was that the people in high school were largely awesome, magnanimous, pimply, insecure screw-ups just like me! And now they were card-carrying adults and fantastic people. And no, not everyone worked for the government, or "in I.T". One of our classmates had not had a haircut since just before joining us senior year from another school. He literally sported dreads down to his rear end and a spirit and depth of soul as large and long as his coiffure. Others had participated in a diaspora to the corners of the contiguous states. What all had in common was a desire to genuinely know, "hey, how the hell are you?" and bother to wait for a response.

All imminence front and poseur had disappeared between years ten and twenty since our gleeful crossing of the stage to receive our rolled-up parchment passkey to life after six periods and a lunchbreak. My once proudest high school memory had been riding my bicycle from out in the sticks into town and to school on the last day of school. Now I was proudest simply to have been a part of such a great class; a class that absorbed me and many others in a county boundary shift that changed the dynamics of the school, but resulted in the smoothest of blended cocktails that defined our class.

We grew out of the boombox era; early records (yes, LPs!) gave way to the horror of cassette tapes and Say Anything moments; and later, CDs. And now we make the leap to all-digital storage and playback, or persist in our luddite lapse. But we do persist, twenty years and counting, most all of us. And that in itself is worth all the pomp and circumstance tapes you can dredge up from the cutout bins.

When Space Opens Up

I am discovering that being unemployed is a grieving process. Quite simply I am grieving the loss of a job. I've gone through shock, anger, and now am in a reflective space. No, I don't mean in a 3M-tape-on-your-bike reflective. But I've found a quieter, rippling, lapping alcove of life, off to the side of the rushing current of commuting and daily jam-packed living. A space has opened up for me.

So what now? What to do with this space? Forgive my car analogies in a so-called cycling blog. But when a space opens up for us, do we try and ram our Hummer H1 into a space that's too small? Do we zip in with our Miatta, blind to any others who may have signaled first? Do we assume it's handicapped and don't bother checking it out? Perhaps we were done shopping and didn't need the space. Or, do we size it up, and steadily guide our way into it with nary a door ding? Or, finally, are we the self-important asshat that parks diagonal, taking up two-and-a-half spaces?

Maybe we ride a bike instead. Now the parking spaces are nearly unlimited, but quite likely undefined. That fence, that could work. But not that parking meter--any petty criminal worth his salt knows to just lift the bike and U-lock straight up and over the top of the meter--gone, daddy gone. Maybe there actually is a purpose-built bike rack. Maybe. They are few and far between even here in the city. The land of opportunity. More likely we've got to create our own space to park the bike, or, even if on the rack, find the best way to secure frame and quick-release tires--be creative; twist our cable lock round about--take that plain Jane rack so generically made and adapt it to suit our needs. What do we do with the space before us, or do we even see it?

Le Chat in Tenley

If you want a great spot to chat, come to Le Chat Noir in Tenleytown/Friendship Heights, on Wisconsin Avenue at Ellicot. What a great, casual atmosphere and terrific food, especially the dessert crepes. For Father's Day, the families got together and they gave us a table on their open-sided, covered patio. The eight of us soaked up the Sunday breeze and strizzled rays of sunlight that slithered in the sides of the patio.

Sunday is no corkage fee at Le Chat, and I highly recommend coming with your own favorite hooch. We brought several bottles of our "estate" wine. Yep, we have an acre of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, producing since 1997, and each year that we have a successful harvest, we have wine commercially made for us--our own private label that gets sold around Charlottesville, VA (near where the grapes and my brother live). My brother and dad do most all the work in keeping the grapes alive throughout the spring and summer; weeding, spraying, praying. And when things work out, we all come down and harvest in late September or early October.

The last year we had a harvest was 2006, so three bottles of that year came with us to Le Chat Noir as we took hearty advantage of the no corkage fee Sunday. Given that most meals in DC consist of reasonably priced food and overpriced drinks, this offer is a great way to have a meal out and not break the bank. Even this unemployed cyclist could spring for some vicchysoise, Ahi tuna and macerated tropical fruits.

Tenleytown is still in a manner of transition. It has a few vibrant spots, a touch of class, but still some remnants of suburban planning, right along Wisonsin Ave, mixed with the occasional dead spot where a store has closed and the economy has slowed a new tenant. Years ago the fantastic Babe's Pool Hall was shut down to make way for a deluxe condo building. Well, the bottom dropped out and we've had this building wrapped in black advertising Maxim Condominiums for the last four years! Yet, there are gems here in Tenley, and Le Chat is one of them. It has positioned itself as a neighborhood restaurant and seems to have just the right mix of "fancy french" if you want to come in your Sunday best; and laid back provential eats for those in jeans and a polo. The no corkage Sundays is just one of their daily specials. Come check them out. You might even see me pedaling around on the DC Flyer, working off the three secret ingredients that make french cooking so good: butter, butter and more butter!

Oh...A Camping We Will Go...A Camping We Will Go...

Here's another side benefit to being unemployed. I called my brother last night to relay my joblessness, and he invited me to join him and some friends on a camping trip down in Virginny, near Madison (that's off route 29, about 1.5 hours due south and a little west of DC, for you city slickers who think anything outside the Beltway might as well be Tadjikistan). So this evening we will camp with friends and spend some time together.
My brother lives about two hours away. We're close, but not supremely close. He's older than me by eight years. I won't say I was an accident, oops baby; but let's just say the best laid plans of mom and dad took about seven years longer than anticipated. So, given our age difference, my brother Rob and I were really in totally different spheres. He was running around with his high school party crowd when I was still mesmerized by Scooby Doo.
( Hmmm...Actually, I still am, but that's another matter. And Dexter's Lab; and, oh Johnny Quest is the best of all!).

Suffice to say, I think we missed out on a deep connection. Yet, at times like these, when life decides I'm just a target for overhead birds, Rob seems to be there for me. Oh, he hasn't signed on to be my therapist on this trip. But I already know his generous spirit shines in times like these. He'll commiserate and share a brew. What more does a brother need? So here's to the irony of being out of work: it's hard work; yet it can afford these moments to spend time with family, reconnect and just take a deep breath. Now what was the name of the campground he mentioned we were going to...Camp Crystal Lake I think he called it...

What I Have Learned about my Neighborhood while Unemployed

1. Whole Foods is surprisingly crowded at 2:30pm on a Wednesday.

2. The scraped part of Reno Rd (as they prepare to resurface it) really sucks for bike riding. It feels like a washboard.

3. They do no allow bikes in the Tenleytown Post Office.

4. If you attempt to wheel your bike into the Tenley Post Office, you will be quickly rebuked.

5. They will still help you mail a package to Germany; no hard feelings.

6. The ads/flyers that get placed semi-monthly on my car windshield, underneath the wiper arm, and which flap flaccidly yet with an annoying staccato in the wind as I drive around, are not placed there by evil gremlins as previously assumed.

7. It rains a lot. Intermittently all day, every day in the DC springtime. This is not readily apparent when you sit in a windowless cubicle for 9 hours a day.

Washington Caps--beer caps!

Angry Detroit Red Wings fans are pretty cool. Four of them said hello to me and my bike as I waited for the Metro at the Shady Grove Station. They were headed into DC for a little fun. I think the out-of-town conference was over and it was definitely party time. So where did I steer them?

Well, interest was expressed in "beer bars" (my term to them) so here's the list:

Bedrock Billiards

Brickskeller

RFD

Birreria Paradiso



It's a quick0-and-dirty list, but gets the job done if one desires copious beer choices and some cool atmospheres. Bedrock tops the list for laid-back funky with a clientele that manages to largely be hip without being pretentious douchebags. You'll find tattoos aplenty along with smiles and old friends trading insults. The tap list is short but usually has a couple good brews. The magic fridge behind the bar has an assortment of ass-kicking goodness!



Brickskeller wins on sheer volume. It's also a great hovel of a bar, particularly the basement. Server beer knowledge ain't what it used to be, but some of the bartenders are sharp and you can ask them to keep 'em coming in a certain style, and not be disappointed.



RFD is like the bastard child of TGI Friday's and a Sports Bar, with a generous helping of good taps and bottles, only because of its lineage to the Brickskeller--it's the offspring of the same owners. Great spot for belgian beers.



Birrerira Paradiso is awesome because--let me count the ways: it's Pizza Paradiso's underground beer bar. That means underground, which means cool, and Pizza from the best pizza shop in town--even cooler. It also means roughly fifteen taps of always awesome and varied microbrews. Now what else-oh yeah! A LARGE fridge full of beer bottles from around the world. Enough said. Go here. The 90's Metro buses down Wisconsin Ave will get you close. Walk, or bike the few blocks here. Hell, you could walk across the Key Bridge from Virginia, too.



I HIGHLY recommend public transportation to all these fine establishments. Bike down, Metro back. It is seriously hard to leave these places sober. I know, I have been trying for years. Trust me, I'm the son of a doctor.

A Little CCT and Yes Album Cover Art

I love the smell of napalm in the....wait, wrong movie. This is my life, no surfing (yet). Just a scene repeated since last Wednesday---no need to get up and go to work. So what calls at 10:00am? A ride on the Capital Crescent Trail. Hey, it's in-between rain squalls at the moment.
The trail is great at 10:00am on a Thursday. Just a few biker superheroes, some joggers (and one damned fast, honest-to-God runner who I think might have been running at about the pace I was riding), and assorted others ambling along with, as Chuck Berry sings "no particular place to go".
Before I knew it, I was down at the boat houses in Georgetown, watching the 'ere-do well skulking around the skulling hulls and tuning up for their mid-day rides on the Potomac. We're all hoping for just a little more time without rain.

On the way back, once I left the trail, I snaked through some neighborhoods just on the Maryland side of Western Ave. I wanted to avoid Massachussetts Avenue as they are working on the road just east of where the CCT trail crosses. Due to the construction, there's only one lane going up a steep hill, and I didn't feel like being "that jackass on the bike" holding everyone up as I inched up the incline. So I ducked into some fetching side streets to try and connect back to Western and over towards Tenleytown.

Tucked away on Allan Drive, amidst the familiar brick colonials and bungalow houses, wow! A house like the cover of Yes albums circa nineteen-mega-ballad. It was huge and gray and, well, not a right angle in site. It's like when Eddie Murphy, as detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop II, "steals" a house by pretending to be a building inspector. He shouts to the workers: "Stop! Stop working! Didn't you all see the revised plans? The homeowners don't want a right angle on this whole place. If they want to live in a donut, that's their perogative". So was the visage before me. A house that was the very mist itself; part oversized hobbit hovel, part Lego set piece that no-one knows how to use.

Do You Fit Into Those Genes?

One of the great benefits of biking for practical reasons (commuting to work, running errands, doctors visits, etc) is that it gets you into shape without your having to do anything much else. There's no thinking about going to the gym, or how I'm going to stay in shape. I bike to the grocery store, haul the load home, and I've just had a workout--no fuss!
Another benefit is that life slows down. The old cliche rings true: you do notice the little things that before might have escaped attention. For example, standing at CVS to drop off a prescription. There's only so long you can stare at the assorted condoms on the rack while you wait. So I looked behind the pharmacy counter and noticed a box labeled IdentiGene---a take-at-home paternity test. Maybe this is a new product. It's prescription only, though I don't know why. I don't imagine you could abuse it, or sell it in high schools or college campuses, or get hooked on it and suffer withdrawals. But there it was, front and center. Much more interesting than the condoms. Though I suppose the condom/IdentiGene corollary is pretty much exactly inverse (1:1): know condom, no father; no condom, know father?
So I love this biking about town. How many times have I been to CVS, rushed in, rushed out. Now I've slowed down, and ironically, have more time to ponder the mysteries of the universe and the contents of the IdentiGene box.
Bikes, it has been said, are a human scale machine. They move at a pace a human can relate to: a natural pace that we, after all, control. They are human sized. They roll on smoothly. They are easy on, easy off. Kind of like a condom.

When Work Doesn't Call--the Stomach Does!

So what does an unemployed bike commuter do when the road no longer goes north to the office? He goes to Safeway for groceries. Where else! Instead of spread sheets it's sandwich spread. Excel? How about Ex-lax. From Power Point to Power Bars.
By George, a standard pannier for a small wheel bike does hold three bags of groceries. And the rack, along with several cubic yards of bungee cord, will successfully portage a case of Coke. Or, if you've gazed at this blog's flagship photo, a 20 pound bag of Dog Chow, with nary a kibble split loose on the way home, despite DC's adeptness at preventing level pavement for any stretch longer than your middle finger.
There is one bike rack at the Safeway on Davenport, but you might miss it. It looks more like Mork from Ork's L'eggs spaceship; or some twisted precambrian bivalve you might see on late-night Discovery Channel science geek porn. The standard welded dual-bike rack is covered with a hot tub-shell-like gray casing that you lift up like Delorean doors, and once your bike is parked beneath, envelops the cycle in a never-to-decompose plastic sheath which you then lock with your U-lock. Magic! It's kind of a pain to hold the pod open while maneuvering your bike underneath, but once in, it provides (what might be merely an illusion of) safety in disguising your bike. All you can see once you've batoned down the hatches is three inches of wheel.
There's nothing like walking around Safeway in a neon reflective vest, either. Until they spot my bike helmet in the cart, their facial expressions range from "oh, he's just off shift at the construction site" to "the poor dear. Jim, hand him the broccoli."
So while I may not be bringing home the bacon, I've got the greens safely tucked away in the pannier. Heading home laden with the groceries gets me a wide berth from traffic, too. Especially when carting the aforementioned twenty pound sack of dog food: "Look Margaret, he had to sell his car to pay for dog food". Hey, I hold my head high and proud. I may be employment challenged at the moment, but I challenge anyone to race me and my groceries home! On second thought, by the end of the trip I'm ready to send the canned goods flying like so much chaff and ballast along Connecticut Ave. I get exercise and feed the homeless all at once. Brilliant.

Strollercize on the CCT

When I got the axe from work, on the way home I took the early Red Line Stop at Bethesda, instead of coming down to Friendship or Tenley, closer to my house. I wanted to meander and ponder the suddenness of my newly gained employment status. Permanent Vacation, Aerosmith album title style. Extended holiday. Work challenged. Leisure Engineer. Whatever the term, I had become a statistic, and not a good statistic. Something more akin to the back of a health clinic pamphlet. And yet, this is reality. I still have my legs and my Bike Friday. The IRS can pry that from my cold, dead hands! So, you can see the meanderings of this post exactly echo my mind and my bike ride on that fateful day. The Capital Crescent Trail wends on, oblivious to the chaos in my head. Eyes front. Watch for peds and dogs! Well...

What to my wondering eyes should appear but a group of young mothers, all gathered in near--well, nearly to the side of the CCT, in a half-circle. There they were ensconced, a veritable gaggle of Gracos, babies in various states of WTF as the moms, clutching stroller handlebars and brakes, jumped and juked and swayed to the marching orders of Head Mom. She whipped them through a rousing round of trailside Strollercize. Maybe they have a denoument of lattes and light stretching. I'll never know, as I was out of sight by then. And I applaud them, each one, for getting out there and getting active, being social and, well, for being damned creative. I'd have never thought to organize a Strollercize class. I merely rode by on my bike with thoughts of how to cover the mortgage.

Welcome to the Commute That Just Ended

I became a bike commuter. Not sure how I got sucked into that spandex vortex, but six months later and I was still riding the DC Metro's Red line and my orange Bike Friday Pocket Crusoe. What's a Pocket Crusoe? It's the model bike from the Bike Friday line of folding bikes produced by Green Gear Cycling in Eugene, Oregon. Hand made there. Hand welded there. I have dubbed my Pocket Crusoe "The DC Flyer", though Safety Orange is probably a closer match to the marketing brainchild you'd find on a Duron paint color swatch.

I changed jobs about a year ago, moving north of the border into Gaithersburg, Maryland. After some hemming and hawing and logistics, I decided to give the bike commute a try. The first commute was riding a half mile to Tenley Metro, then departing at Shady Grove Metro. I went out the wrong exit, and started pedaling toward what I quickly discovered was going to be an on-ramp to I-370! I turned around and rode in the grass, back to 355. Then it was a sidewalk ride up 355, briefly onto 355 itself, and to the office. I only got honked at once, by a minivan driver.


Well, six months later, I'd nailed down my route and rode with confidence for about a mile on 355 before ducking into some mercifully quiet residential streets. The worst part of the commute was on 355, where the I-370 on and off-ramps come in, right by Shady Grove Rd. I have to stay in the third lane, with the I-370 on-ramp to my right and two lanes of straight-through traffic to my left. Cars and heavy vehicles are amped up to get onto the interstate and are whizzing by on my right, as are the fast-moving vehicles in the two lanes to my left. And I pedal along innocently through this column of traffic. Though I was often buzzed (passed closely) when in the right lane, on this stretch of road I haven't been honket at, ridiculed or derided. I pedal smoothly and quickly from a dead stop at the light, gaining momentum as fast as my thighs allow, trying to get past the I-370 on-ramp and get some relief--for just a few seconds. See, now that I-370 has come and gone, I've got to get over two more lanes to my left to get into a left turn bay so I can get off 355 and onto the comparatively bucolic residential side streets.

The saving grace in the commute, both on the roads and on the train, was that it was a reverse commute. The trains are much less crowded, as is 355. There's traffic aplenty, but it isn't mobbed like the southbound side.

Well, now I think I've discovered the real reason Wednesday is called "hump" day--I was riffed from work yesterday. On the bright side, I've got more time for biking now, and it doesn't have to just be the "play in traffic" kind of biking. I can revel in the thrill of dog walkers and joggers on the CCT. Or the wanna-be roadies who think the Mt Vernon Trail is the place for training rides, passing perilously close as they squeeze between me, the baby strollers, and oncoming bike traffic. Leave the Freds like me in peace! Get yer carbon kopy bike on the road and ride like Kevin Bacon! Sing the Star Spandex Banner! Me, I'll tootle along with my neon helmet and legs strong from a winter's worth of commuting.