My mother was born in the U.S., but as the first American-born child in a recently-arrived immigrant family living in a Jewish immigrant neighborhood, her first language was not English, but Yiddish, and that's the language which she used when speaking to her siblings and to my grandmother, even into adulthood. Growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family, I learned a lot of Yiddish phrases, such as "alter kocher", which translates pretty closely to "old fart". Which brings me to last week's bike ride. I lead rides for the bike group within Arlington's 55+ program. While the group is officially called the "Tour de Friends", if you follow me on Strava, you'll see the entries for those rides titled as "AK Ride", "AK" being an abbreviation for the aforementioned Yiddish phrase. The participants in theTour de Friends rides are generally well on the "+" side of 55, and so it was a matter of some concern when one of my riders disappeared in the middle of a ride. Not that I wouldn't have been concerned if a younger rider had gone missing, but there's a wide range of harm which could befall someone who is, well, 55+++.
It was a cool, drizzly morning and I was pleasantly surprised to see about ten people waiting when I showed up at our meeting place of Barcroft Community Center. The rain was supposed to be stopping shortly, and while I had a few cancellations, there were more stalwarts than I had expected. We did give the rain a little time to dissipate, and by the time we started riding it was just misting, but the trails were definitely wet.
We headed down the Four Mile Run Trail to the Potomac, then south down the Mount Vernon Trail. At the top of Old Town I decided to stop and wait for the whole group because there was an unexpected trail detour. The group caught up, including my sweep, but we were short one rider. We tried calling him, and on the first time the phone was answered, but there was no one on the other end of the line. We tried texting, but no response. At this point I started to imagine that my missing rider had slid out on a rain-slicked section of trail and was lying in a ditch by the side of the trail somewhere, injured and barely able to get to his phone. The only consolation was that he hadn't been the last rider in the group and no one had spotted him as they rode. We had a planned stop under the Wilson Bridge just on the other side of Old Town. I conferred with my other trip leaders and we decided to continue on to that point and see if he'd show up there.
We got to the Wilson Bridge and, well, no missing rider. By this point the rain had stopped, but it was still a wet, grey sort of day, so a few participants were more than willing to turn back and retrace our steps, looking for our missing rider along the way. I continued leading the remainder of the group south, though we too turned around a little short of our original planned destination of River Farm.
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. When my group met up at Peet's Coffee in Shirlington with the folks who had turned back early, they reported that they had finally been successful in contacting our missing person. He hadn't dressed for the inclement weather, was getting cold, and just decided to turn around and head home without telling anyone. So, I was able to close that Missing Person case, and I didn't have to report anything back to the county Recreation Department. Whew!
So please, dear reader, if you ever decide to leave a group trip early, please let someone know!
I usually like to be on time, but recently I wound up being late for two different outdoor activities. But they turned out OK.
The first was Ralph's Cherry Blossom paddle. I left plenty of time to get there, but as I was driving there my stomach gave a little bit of a twist - the kind of feeling which sometimes signals that sometime soon I might need to find a bathroom in a hurry. Since my stomach had in fact been a little upset the day before, I decided it was worth it to detour to try to find a bathroom along the way, since we were launching from Gravely Point, which has no facilities other than some truly disgusting Port-potties. And I really wanted to take care of any digestion issues before I found myself out on the river in a dry suit.
My first thought was to detour to my home-away-from-home at Columbia Island, but for some reason lately they've been locking the bathrooms there, so instead I detoured into Rosslyn, figuring I'd head for the McDonald's. Long story short, the bathrooms there required a code and the place was crowded, so I decided to roll the dice and skip the bathroom break. It turned out not to be an issue.
I was surprised to find Ralph and a group of about ten other paddlers still there when I arrived at the marina ten minutes before the stated launch time of 10 AM. Ralph has the annoying habit of launching whenever he's ready without regard to agreed-upon launch times. As an example, I remember one Assateague camping trip where, fifteen minutes before our scheduled departure time, I was still packing up my stuff and looked up to see the rest of the group caravaning out of the campground to head for the day's launch site.
Anyway, I managed to get ready in a real hurry and was ready to get underway at 10:01; however at that point we didn't actually launch. Rather, we did 10 minutes of warmup exercises on land, then launched.
As is always the case, the day of the Cherry Blossom paddle was breezy, with conditions forecast to worsen as the day went on. We could feel it when we headed across the river. A group from Waters Edge Kayak Meetup launched at the same time we did, except they left from Columbia Island. We could see them make their way across the river, and we met up with their group as we all approached the Tidal Basin. They looked at the trees for a bit then headed straight back - I assume they didn't like the choppy conditions. Being more hardy, we CPA'ers headed on, down towards Haines Point; however as soon as we got south of the 14th Street Bridge things really started to kick up. The wind was from the south and the tide was out, which combined with the clapotis (bounce of the waves off of the shoreline) made for confused, choppy waters. I remarked to Ralph that we might want to reconsider our plan, but he said that all we had to do was make it around Haines Point into Washington Channel and we'd be fine. This didn't really make sense to me in that, (a) even if we were protected in the channel, we'd still have to come back out into the soup to it home, and (b) the channel wasn't guaranteed to be calm (in fact, the area around Haines Point is often particularly choppy in these kinds of conditions). As we pressed on I had to make a decision - turn back and face the waves back to Gravely Point on my own, or stick with the safety of the group as it pressed on into worsening conditions. I decided that staying with the group was the better choice.
We pressed on for a while, making perhaps a half mile of forward progress, before Ralph finally decided to cut the trip short and head for home. He estimated the waves were around 2 feet at that point. While in terms of amplitude they were nothing like, say, Georgian Bay, they had a short period and seemingly random direction and so pushed us in all sorts of directions, as waves in the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay tend to do. We retraced our steps up the DC side of the river to the 14th Street Bridge, which (along with construction barges parked in the river for bridge work) gave us some cover from the wind. The ride back up to the bridge was challenging, but crossing the river in the lee of the bridge wasn't bad at all. Once we made it across we had to head back downriver to get to Gravelly Point, but interestingly, the water on the Virginia side of the river was much calmer. We could see whitecaps on the DC side, but we had only light to moderate chop. A little more excitement than expected, but it still beat fighting traffic to see the blossoms!
Getting ready to launch
My second lateness isn't nearly as interesting. I just forgot my bike shoes when I left to meet someone for a bike ride (I was driving to a bike ride, something I hate doing) and had to double back to get them. The ride, though, was really cool. Many times I have ridden the Anacostia River Trail as far as Bladensburg, but had never before continued past it. Those of us who live in Washington's tonier suburbs sometimes consider PG County in Maryland to be the poor relation, but the county has some amazing bike trails! This was one of the prettier bike rides I've done in the DC area. Past Bladensburg we continued to parallel the river on the Northeast Branch Trail, riding through Northeast Stream Valley Park. The trail took us past the end of the runway at the tiny College Park Airport, and then finally we turned onto the Paint Branch Trail to Lake Artemesia Park. It's not a giant lake - maybe half a mile end to end - but it's a pretty park, and we rode the trail around the lake.
From there we bumbled our way into the town of College Park (GPS tried to take us through a chain link fence), where we got coffee at Vigilante Coffee. Being a lefty college town, the bathroom at Vigilante had several pieces of anti-Zionist graffiti. At least I initially thought it did, but when I looked a second time the writing turned out to be illegible, as if it had been scratched out with a key. Whatever one might have to say about their restrooms, their carrot muffin was delicious, and given that the ride was the day before Passover, I especially savored it knowing I was going into a week where I would be forbidden from eating decent baked goods.
We retraced our steps on the way home. This is a ride I definitely want to do again.
OK, not everyone wants to read the full five part series about my trip to Japan and Thailand. With attention spans ruined by social media, they deny themselves the pleasures of reading thousands upon thousands of words of my masterful writing. Anyway, for such people (frankly, I'd be among them if it was someone else's trip), here's a summary of what was an amazing trip mostly in pictures, with only a little to read.
The genesis of this trip was that I wanted to visit my old friend Peter, who has chosen to spend his retirement years in Thailand. Japan has long been a bucket list destination for me, and so I deided to add some time in Japan along the way.
Tokyo
Shibuya at night
My trip started in Tokyo. I stayed in the Shibuya neighborhood, which is very glitzy, futuristic, high energy, youthful, and fun.
I've come to realize that travel has become unduly influenced by, well, influencers. People want to do activities either that they've seen on Instagram or TikTok, and which they can post about themselves. Tokyo is certainly a place where one can find outlandish, over-the-top experiences. My one foray into this type of tourism was touring Shibuya by go-kart. Yes, I am wearing an Eeyore kigu.
My first day I also visited Chi-Chi's, Tokyo's Grateful Dead themed store. A Great Northern sticker has been added to their iconic VW bus.
Go-karting
Chi-Chi's
The next day I signed up for a bike tour around Tokyo. Well, around part of the city. Tokyo is enormous, with a population almost twice that of New York City. Our six hour bike tour (which included a lot of stops - we weren't riding for six hours) covered only a fraction of the city.
Bike Tour
One evening I booked a food tour. We ate great sushi, okonomayaki, chicken wings at an izakaya, ramen, and had a dessert of red bean cakes at a food hall. And we drank sake. Each and every dish was delicious, and I was so full afterwards that I didn't eat again until dinnertime the next day.
Toasting over our okonomayaki
Food tour ramen
Most of my days were spent just exploring on my own, taking in traditional sites like Senso-Ji temple, modern areas such as the upscale Ginza, home to the Yamaha Flagship Music store where they show off all their musical instruments, seeing the beauty of Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, going to observatories and jazz clubs, and just checking out neighborhoods. I averaged 20,000 steps per day.
At the gate of Senso-Ji temple
The shopping streets around Senso-Ji feel very old school
Trying keyboards at the Yamaha Music Flagship Store
Sunset at Shibuya Sky observatory
At Shinjuku Gyoen garden
This is not food - it's fake display food for restaurants, for sale in the Kappabashi restaurant supply district
Samurai armor at the Tokyo Museum
Shinjuku, another neighborhood which feels like the future
On my last day in Tokyo I watched sumo wrestlers work out at their training gym then boarded the shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto, which afforded a great view of Mt. Fuji along the way (how's that for a a lot of Japan packed into one sentence?!). This was also the day I received news of the death of Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead.
Bantam-weight sumo
Sumo practice
Mt. Fuji, seen from the train
Kyoto
While Tokyo leans into the future, Kyoto seems linked much more to highlighting its past. The city contains many historic shrines and temples, as well as historic neighborhoods.
After checking into my hotel I visited the To-ji temple, a beautiful, serene place. This was also the only uncomfortably cold day of my trip - I enjoyed the serenity for a bit then headed back to the warmth of my hotel.
To-ji temple
The next morning I visited Fushimi-Inari shrine, famous for its thousands of vermillion red gates. You do a meditative walk up the mountainside, passing through gate after gate after gate.
Fushimi Inari
Fushimi Inari
At the historic sights in Japan you'll sometimes see people wearing traditional Japanese dress. In another example of how Kyoto is more linked to its past, traditional dress seems to be more popular in Kyoto than Tokyo.
I visited a number of other temples and shrines, and the shogun's palace.
Kiyomizu-dera Temple
City view at Kiyomizu-dera Temple
Kinkakujicho, the Golden Temple
Maybe my favorite neighborhood of all the places I visited was Arashiyama. It's on the outskirts of Kyoto and has natural attractions like a giant bamboo grove and park filled with wild (well, semi-wild) monkeys, and it's also a cute little town with lots of interesting shops.
Arashiyama monkey park, on a mountain outside of Kyoto
At the Rilakkuma Cafe
In the bamboo grove
Arashiyama street scene
My final stop in Kyoto was Nishiki Market, an amazing food hall experience
Octopus stuffed with quail egg
Food for sale
The most amazing tuna sushi I've ever eaten
Back home, my Grateful Dead tribute band performed at an amazing concert as a memorial to Bob Weir. I missed the show because I was on the other side of the world, but I was able to watch a little of it via a live stream while riding the Kyoto subway!
Watching Great Northern from half a world away.
One last thing. I spent the night at an airport hotel before my flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. In the morning I looked out the window and happened to catch a group of airport workers doing their morning calisthenics. Not something you'd see in the U.S.
Bangkok
I had planned on spending my whole time in Thailand with my friend Peter. "Don't worry about planning anything," he had said, "I'll be your tour guide." However, sometimes life throws you a curveball. When I arrived in Bangkok I got a text from Pete saying that he was in the hospital with a medical emergency. He wound up being hospitalized for five of the seven days we had planned to spend together, so I had to do a lot of improvisation in terms of sightseeing (with Pete's guidance from his hospital bed!).
My first day I went to several of Bangkok's most famous temples, Wat Phra Tep (and the adjacent Imperial Palace), and Wat Pho. After the calm minimalism of Japanese temples, the raucousness of the decor in the Thai temples was mind-boggling. I almost couldn't believe my eyes even as I was standing there looking at these places.
Shops near Wat Pho
With some of the birdmen who guard the temple
Giant statues!
Gold statues, giant stupas, and more detail than the brain can process
Another giant statue!
Buddhas galore!
The 150 foot tall reclining Buddha at Wat Pho
The Emerald Buddha, a major cultural artifact
Chiang Mai
Peter and I had airline and hotel reservations to go up and spend a few days in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is Thailand's second largest city, but the heart of the place - the 1 sq mile old walled city - feels like much smaller and older. Peter, still in the hospital, couldn't go, but I headed up there anyway. The old city of Chiang Mai seems to be a great hangout place which people travel to from around the world. Also, there's history - the old city is chock full of old temples. On the afternoon of my arrival, after lunch at a rockin' vegetarian place, I walked the city and popped into some of them.
Here are some pictures are of Wat Inthakhin, a shrine which holds the city pillar. It is said that if the pillar is properly venerated, it will bring prosperity and keep the city from harm.
Exterior of Wat Inthakhin
People press gold leaf onto statues for good fortune
Interior of the City Pillar shrine - that's the city pillar in the middle
Temple guardian
This is the towering Wat Chedi Luang, a 14th century temple, somewhat collapsed from a long-ago earthquake, but still huge.
Elephant statues at Wat Chedi Luang
There is always another Buddha statue
And another
Chiang Mai has wild night markets, with street vendors selling all kinds of wares, artisans, amazing street food, and entertainment. It seems like all of the city's million inhabitants turn out. There was a big market the first night I was there. The main market street was about a mile long, plus there are lots of little side streets and plazas to explore. It was so crowded that you couldn't really walk; you just had to shuffle along with the crowd.
Night market
Night market musicians
Entertainment on the big stage at one end of the market
Temples lit up at night
Street food in the courtyard of a monastery
Doppelganger
Thai grunge band!
Scorpions and other delicious snacks
Elderly musicians band
I spent my first full day in Chiang Mai at an elephant sanctuary. There are many such places in the area; the one I visited was small, with just four elephants, all rescued from hard work or mistreatment. Peter knows the owners of the place. I was pleased to find that it was an ethical sanctuary, where our interactions with the elephants were limited to feeding, and a guided walk with the elephants to a nearby river.
Hanging with elephants
Elephants by the river
Monday evening Chiang Mai was much quieter than it had been on Sunday. I ignored Peter's suggestions to go out and party with the bar girls on Tha Phae Road. I did try to go to a music club which had been recommended to me by a guy on the plane, but paradoxically, while the rest of the city was quiet, this one place was packed to the gills - I didn't stay.
Even on a quiet night, people are out eating
On my second day in Chiang Mai I took a songthaew "red truck" taxi (a shared ride in a pickup truck with benches in the back) up to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a striking temple up on a Doi Suthep mountain overlooking the city.
Golden chedi (a monument holding relics)
At Doi Suthep
Visitors circling the golden chedi
White elephant statue commemorating the story of the location of the temple
View down to Chiang Mai
Temple grounds
Riding in the red truck taxi back to Chiang Mai
Back to Bangkok
Our plan had been to spend another night in Chiang Mai, but Peter was finally out of the hospital back in Bangkok, so I grabbed a flight back there a day early so we could finally spend some time together.
Old friends, together at last!
Peter took me around like a local. I ate in a non-touristy restaurant with salmon heads, crocodile, and silkworm pupae on the menu (though I didn't order any of those things). We got around on scooter taxis and via Bangkok's confusing multiple mass transit systems. I got massages for eight bucks an hour at a totally reputable - but off the beaten path - massage place. We went to a Buddhist temple which wasn't a tourist attraction, but was still way cool.
Pete is brave enough to film while riding. That's me two scooters ahead.
Scooter taxi in Sukhumvit
Local Buddhist temple
Pete, the Buddha, and me
Chanting at Wat Suthat in Bangkok
We walked through Bangkok's Chinatown
In the evening we went to the Muay Thai fights
I insisted that we go to Lumphini Park so I could see the giant monitor lizards which just wander freely there
Finally, it was time to say farewell to the land of seaweed meat floss cake and head home
Thailand is almost literally on the other side of the earth from DC (it's 177 degrees of longitude away). With flight time and layovers, it takes about 30 hours to get home. I was happy to be home, despite coming home to a snowstorm.
.JPEG)
.JPG)
