Loudoun Lockdown

It's a little hard to write an outdoors blog during a "Stay At Home Order", but at least I did get to sneak out one last time before the lockdown hammer dropped. I had been planning on doing a Loudoun gravel ride anyway - I even had a route laid out and loaded into my bike GPS. As it happened, just about the time I had planned to head out my son David stopped by to pick up his mail (three years after he moved out, why do checks from his clients still come to my address?). Valerie, David and I spent some time chatting, but once I heard the rumors that a lockdown was coming I excused myself and headed straight for Purcellville.

Gravel riding

Wildflowers

For those not in the cycling world, gravel riding is a thing. I don't know exactly why it's a thing, but it is. Actually, maybe I do know why. A quick search of a "Why is Gravel Riding So Popular?" thread in the gravelcycling sub-Reddit (see, it must be a thing if there's a sub-Reddit for it) reveals some obvious answers: a chance to ride quiet roads that aren't chockablock with high speed homicidal drivers (n.b.: on country roads one may avoid the high speed traffic, but there is always the chance of an encounter with a homicidal redneck pickup truck driver), beautiful country scenery, a great workout from extra effort that's required to move a bike over a rough surface, and of course the lack of road-biking culture. Since I never miss an opportunity to do so, let me take a moment to trash the obnoxious culture of road riding - roadies are the people riding in packs in matchy-matchy Lycra outfits, and if you can't match their fast pace in a tight pace line, they have no use for you. Elitist, competitive, obnoxious.

So, gravel cycling offers a more mellow, in touch with nature workout - much more my kind of experience. Plus, if you for some reason want all of your internal organs vigorously rattled until you feel that your internal organs might start leaping out of your body, there's nothing like riding a no suspension bike down a washboard gravel road.

That about sums it up

One downside to gravel riding is that for those of us in urban environments it can't be done close to home. The closest unpaved roads to me are out in Loudoun County, a good 45 minute drive from home. So, I don't get to do it too often, but I enjoy it when I do!

Holsteins

A new friend

I parked in the nearly empty parking lot of Harmony Middle School in Purcellville (when I set it as a destination Google Maps warned me it might be "closed permanently" - ulp!). There was a cop in a police cruiser sitting near the front of the school, but he didn't seem to mind my being there. I pulled out my bike and geared up, including a new innovation. As mentioned above, I have a bike computer/GPS device which I had loaded with the route I was going to ride. Through a mechanism that remains a little bit of a mystery to me (by this I mean that there's no app explicitly handling this this connection), the bike computer connects to my phone. It was about 2 PM and I knew the release of the Executive Order initiating the lockdown was imminent. I stuck an earphone in one ear (leaving the other open for situational awareness), started the local news radio station streaming, and headed off. It worked out really well - I had the radio playing in my right ear, and every time I was due to make a turn the bike computer would beep and the radio would momentarily be interrupted and the GPS would deliver directions in my ear - just like GPS in the car. After the lockdown news report I switched to podcasts. Listening to something really makes the miles fly by, and the turn-by-turn directions are great, as I do have a nasty knack for missing turns when I'm out riding in the countryside.

Horse farm

Sadly, Loudoun keeps getting more and more built up and along the way more and more roads are getting paved, so my ride switched back and forth a lot between paved and gravel roads.And have I mentioned the wind? This was something I hadn't anticipated. The weather overall was just about perfect - sunny, 70-ish temperature, but oh, the wind! Blowing from the west at 20+ MPH (according to Weather Underground, peak gusts were 29 MPH). I started out riding right into it, and after a few miles I wasn't sure whether to even continue. Actually, the first couple of miles were pretty miserable overall. For my route, I had cut a 40 mile loop I had found online in half and the extra connecter part, which is where I started, was classic no shoulder high speed traffic riding. But then I made a turn of off the highway of doom and ... graveltopia! Well, I was still riding into the wind, but otherwise it quickly got pretty bucolic. Open vistas, mountains in the distance, farms, barns, animals, flowers, rolling hills - climbs steep enough to make you work, but not so long and steep as to challenge the stitches in my patchwork ticker.

The donkey

Let me tell you, this part of Loudoun has some pretty spectacular houses, too. Big, estate-sized homes on acres of land. I enjoyed looking at them (I wouldn't enjoy mowing the lawns). When I got home I looked up the area on Zillow and was amused to discover that only the largest homes were worth more than my dumpy little Arlington house. Yes, I could trade in my life for 5,000 sq. ft., a two car garage and three acres in Loudoun. But I wouldn't want to.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the ride. It was a beautiful day, the scenery was great and I particularly made sure to experience it to the fullest knowing it would be a while before I could do a ride like this again (while outdoor exercise is allowed under the pandemic lockdown order, it doesn't seem right to by traipsing all over Virginia during an order to stay close to home).

Country vista

Toward the very end of the ride I noticed that my rear tire was losing air. I had three choices: keep riding and hope I got back before it went totally flat, use my precious compressed air canister to fill the tire, hoping that even with a slow leak it would hold me long enough to get back, or stop and change the tube. Well, I knew I had maybe a mile left to ride and could walk it if I had to, so I opted for the first choice, figuring I could use the other two as a backup. I made it - barely.

Overall, a great ride and I zoomed home on cruise control in what ordinarily would have been peak rush hour - lockdown does have its silver linings.