Over the river, not through the woods

Decided to check out the new bike path over the Wilson Bridge today. It rocks! They were even nice enough to build in some overlooks where you can pull out of the main bike path and look out over the river through built-in binoculars.

I started at Gravely Point and headed down the river to Alexandria. When I get to Old Town I'm never sure if I'm still on the bike path or not, but it doesn't matter. I just keep heading South. This time I would up on a block I hadn't been before, where I went through this weird little tunnel that took me back to Washington St and the entrance to the bridge path.

It's interesting - the Virginia side of the bike path is at the South end of Old Town, which is a very nice, colonial era town. The path entrance is itself, however unremarkable. The Maryland side of the bridge, on the other hand, is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but has this beautiful landscaping. That seems backwards to me, but maybe they just had more room to work with on the Maryland side.

Anyhoo, once on the MD side I rode down the crushed shell bike path to National Harbor I spent some time looking out over the river. It being early Sunday morning, nothing was open. Like a rule-following fool, I walked my bike through the deserted National Harbor area because the sign said to. A couple of other cyclists rode past me while I was doing this. As far as I can tell they weren't ticketed or arrested. Anarchists. Hoodlums.

Comments

Apostle Islands: Gordon Lightfoot Warned Us

This entry is part of my write-up of a September 2024 trip to The Apostle Islands. The story begins here . Thursday 9/5 Thursday morning we drove the roughly 20 minutes to our launch point at Little Sand Bay in The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Upon our arrival we were met by Ranger Angel (it makes sense that the Apostles have a guardian Angel, right?), who directed us as to where to launch, checked our permits, gave us useful information about the weather, and told us how to describe our location ifwe needed to call 911 (!). She also gave us a once-over and declared that we appeared to be "shipshape". It is not her responsibility to evaluate people's ability to paddle in the open waters of Lake Superior, but by her own admission if she detects that people don't have the appropriate skills or preparation, she'll gently steer them to safer courses of action. Loading the kayaks at Little Sand Bay Many people are familiar with Gordon Lightfoot's song The...

Visiting Charles in Upstate New York

Looking back, growing up I was friends with a lot of the weird kids. It makes me think - maybe I was a weird kid too? Let's table that line of thought for now, but along those lines, let me tell you about my friend Charles, who was a textbook example of ADHD before ADHD was even in the textbook. For the record, ADHD was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM) in 1968. Coincidentally, that's the same year Charles and I met, and yes, he's an ADHD dude. A smart kid, he nonetheless never paid attention in class and typically spent class reading a comic book he had hidden inside whatever book we were supposed to be reading - when he even bothered to sit in his seat and pretend to pay attention. During our college years Charles attended something of a party school, where he focused more on party than school. As a live-at-home commuter student, I loved that I could visit Charles and get a taste of the ov...

A Guilty Pleasure

I have to admit that I feel guilty doing it. It's just not something that people like me do. In fact, I have spent years looking down on people who do it. I'm talking about powersports. Activities which involve using a motor to have fun. I have always been a people-powered person. On the water I scowl at jet skiers and water ski boats. On the cross-country ski trails I shake my head at people who ruin the pristine winter wilderness with snowmobiles. Being something of a car guy, I go a little easier on the pleasures of motorized vehicles on land. I don't expect car owner to be a super-miler in a Prius, but I also give a pretty wide berth to ATVs and dirt bikes. But now I'm motorcycling. Over the summer I fulfilled a "bucket list" item by learning to ride a motorcycle (Valerie took the class too). For the last month or so I've been tooling around on a borrowed Kawasaki Vulcan cruiser, and I must say I'm enjoying it. Riding a motorcycle is ridiculous...

An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

Search This Blog