An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

First things first: I always like to associate my blog entries with the date they happened rather than the date I write them. As a result, sometimes I write entries that sneak in behind the one which appears on top. What I haven't realized until now is that as a result, my vast readership winds up missing these entries as they're never on top. So before you read this post, go read these two: Off Topic: Giving Thanks  and  Shenandoah Spookout Now, back to business: My biking friends organized another "Bicycle Fun Club" ride - these rides are relatively leisurely, short, fun rides, usually associated with an event or theme. My kind of riding (as opposed to, say, the Hains Point 100, where people rode a Century (100 miles) by riding thirty-some-odd laps around Hains Point). This time, we were going to join up with the Del Rey Christmas Lights Bike Tour. On the grounds that this ride promised to be "no drop" and slow and family friendly, I convinced Vale...

I've said before that I never actually ride bikes with my friends from the biking world, I just meet them for coffee. Well, occasionally there's an exception. Coffee club friend Judd is organizing a series of "Bicycle Fun Club" rides over the winter - fairly short, moderate pace rides - stuff that is within my capabilities. Tonight's ride was from The Crystal City Water Park to Old Town Alexandria to see the illuminated boat parade. I had originally planned to do the ride starting from home, but time got away from me and so I wound up putting my bike in the car and driving to Columbia Island Marina, where I bumped into Deke. I bump into Deke everywhere . It's a quick ride from Columbia Island to Crystal City. Still, I hadn't allowed quite enough time and I was the last one there. No problem. The group, which at that point numbered seven, hit the Mt. Vernon trail and headed to Old Town. Alexandria has been on another of its periodic traffic enforcement ...

Yes, I know this is supposed to be about my outdoor adventures, but I do sometimes sneak in some music-related posts. After all, I do have to do outside to get to gigs, don’t I? Maybe I should rename it “One foot outside, and the other one tapping the beat.” Anyway, indulge me … Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend I played Sehkraft Brewing with Shawn Cody and the Kodiaks. I love these guys. We play only a handful of gigs per year, often with little to no rehearsal, but thanks to the combination of talent and experience these guys have (combined, I’ll admit, with choice of straight-forward material), we can get up on stage and make it happen. At this gig we were indeed strong right out of the gate and were sounding good. Among the audience there were four women who were hard to miss. Attractive, dressed to kill and clearly out for a good time. They spent a lot of our first set dancing as a group in front of the stage. I was at the bar getting a beer in between sets when one o...

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed with what I thought might wind up being my final #coffeeneuring ride. I had been tired of sitting one short of the required number of rides and so I took a quick ride over to the Lee-Harrison Center and got coffee and a lousy donut. It was a coffeeneuring ride in the letter of the law, but maybe not in the spirit. I wanted to do better. My thought had been to do something grand: maybe break my previous distance record (which isn't that many miles, to tell ya the truth) or ride to someplace really special. Then, while I was staring with glazed eyes at the election results in Wednesday morning's paper, the phone rang. My mother-in-law had died. In short order I was in New York City, supporting my wife and her family. Family first, politics and coffeeneuring later. I have written before about how natural biking is in New York. It seems that everywhere you look there's someone on a bike, and every street sign has a bike locked to ...

So, I took some time off in between jobs. My idea was to spend about half my time catching up on the “to do” list so that I could go into my new job without worrying about that kind of stuff, and the other half doing fun things. As it happened, the weather throughout the period was absolutely lovely and so it was hard for me to focus on anything but outdoor activities. Well, one day I decided spontaneously to head out to Shenandoah National Park. I just had an urge to be in the woods, to hike. I knew that the foliage post-peak, but I wasn’t really going for leaf-peeping. Since I hadn’t planned this trip my first step was to hit the computer and find a hike that I hadn’t done before, which was fairly accessible, had something to recommend it, and was about the right length. That led me to the idea of doing a hike on some of the trails out of Mathew’s Arm campground area. There’s a nice hike there that leads to what is supposed to be a pretty waterfall. Unfortunately, this choice t...

There reaches a certain point in your life when you see things not only as they are, but how they used to be. So I'm sitting on the bench outside Duck Donuts, the self same bench that was there when that store was occupied by Baskin Robbins. Envisioning sitting there watching my kids when they were little  vilde chayas sticky with melted ice cream and jet-powered by sugar, running around and around the little area beside the store. The ice cream shop is long gone, replaced by the dreary Duck Donuts. I'm not much of a donut person, but since Duck opened with great fanfare a while back I had been meaning to get over there to try the place. Today I toted up my coffeeneuring  rides to date, realized I had been sitting for a week just one ride short of the required seven, and decided that this is how I would finish up my coffeeneuring patch requirements. I think I had donuts on the brain since late-of-Pasadena Gina had reported a donut ride (Sugar Shack) on Strava this morn...

I'm taking a little time off in between positions - just a week or two to relax, unwind a little bit, and put the ugly denouement of my previous position out of my mind. However, I'm not really good at downtime - you know, when you spend hours of time on the couch zoning out to Netflix, or reading a book cover to cover. I like doing things more than not doing things. So today, I decided to go kayaking. But first, I had to go bike riding. Last night I played music with Shawn Cody and the Kodiaks - the first time we had gotten together since our gig at the end of the summer. By the time I got home from Shawn's place in Nokesville and dragged all my gear into the house (I'm too paranoid to leave anything in the car overnight) it was around midnight. As a result of getting to bed late I slept in all the way to 6 AM, which meant that when I woke up I had to pretty much hop into clothes and head right out the door to make it to the cyclist Hump Day Coffee Club in Shirlingto...

Valerie once said that her ideal vacation wasn't about a particular destination - it was going away with a good group of friends. Not being a people person (to put it mildly), I think in terms of dream destinations, but I guess she has a point. I mean, I don't think Teaneck, New Jersey makes many "Top Ten Vacation Destinations" lists, but the night before my recent Manhattan circumnavigation the group went out and had an uproariously fun dinner at a Yakitori restaurant in Teaneck. It was the people, not the place. So, when Bela's new bride Leigh came up with the idea of a fall getaway weekend, I saw the opportunity to make a couple of days of the group trip thing come to pass. And in a place much nicer than Teaneck. Lavinder house view One challenge for me is that Valerie's not a kayaker, and so is not necessarily going to have a good time on a trip where all everyone does is talk, eat, drink, and smell like kayaking. Leigh is another non-paddler, and so...

It's funny writing this today: it's October 30th and today's temperatures were in the high 70's. I can tell you that last Wednesday it felt like winter was just around the corner. It was in the low 40's and still dark out when I hopped on my bike to ride to Hump Day Coffee Club. It was my first day bundling up for the winter - balaclava, full fingered gloves, long pants. My hands still got a little cold. I got to coffee club to find everyone else similarly bundled up, and the gathering had moved from the outdoor tables to inside. Today's anomalous weather notwithstanding, the cold is coming! Strava:  https://www.strava.com/activities/756421962

As I've mentioned in recent posts, my job is temporarily in a fugue state . I have finished everything I needed to do at my old position, but my transfer doesn't take effect for another three weeks. So right now I go in and do things which are productive for me and for the company long-term (like online training and reading related to my new position) but I might as well be invisible at my current position. I get no emails. No one talks to me. This is quite a change from before I handed off my responsibilities, where I would typically get 20 emails during my ten minute drive home (more when I biked, which takes longer!) and always had a stream of people and phone calls. Anyway, it's hard to get motivated to even show up and I've been doing a lot of working at home. Which no one even notices. I'm going to enjoy it while I can, because three weeks from now things will get busy again. This ride started with a drive in the coffee-themed car I have also been frea...

The end is near! The end is near! The end of our unseasonably warm October weather, that is. I don't usually go to the Friday coffee club (even though Java Shack is very close to my office), but this has been a bad week for exercise and so I decided I needed a little extra time on the bike. I have to admit, I like riding in traffic. Maybe it's the legacy of having grown up in New York City, where bike lanes were non-existent and bike paths were rare (though I regularly rode what has been described as the oldest bike path in the United States - even after my dad broke his hip when he was hit by a car while biking there). When I ride on a bike path I kind of zone out, but riding in the streets requires a continuous mindful awareness. You have to be in the moment, watching the movements of every car and every pedestrian. Every parked car could pull out with warning. Every light could change unexpectedly. So, while I started my ride on the W&OD/Custis Trails, I got off at ...

Good heavens we've been having good weather! The sad truth about life today is that every time I revel in unseasonably warm weather I fear I'm talking up the positives of climate change, but still ... what nice weather! Mid-October in the mid-Atlantic with highs in the 80's. When I was a kid we used to call this kind of weather "Indian Summer", but I'm not sure that term is still acceptable. But, it does raise the point that we had this kind of weather when I was a kid, so maybe the phenomenon I'm enjoying isn't global warming after all and so I can enjoy it without guilt! Which is a long-winded way of saying that this week I kept my usual Wednesday morning coffeeneuring appointment. As I have described in previous posts, the D.C. area has any number of weekly breakfast gatherings of cyclists. Every weekday has at least one. Wednesdays at Best Buns in Shirlington is my favorite, since it features a nice mixture of people - not all hardcore Lycranau...

Let's start with these facts: 1. It's a gorgeous, sunny, 80 degree day in mid-October. 2. I'm basically killing time at my job since I'm about to transfer to a new position and no one really expects me to do much of anything. 3. The Coffeeneuring challenge is underway. 4. I was short-changed on my outdoors time this AM due to yet another aborted run. 5. My son borrowed my car today, which took kayaking off the table (he left me his Miata but that didn't help for carrying a kayak - though I have seen it done). The signs all point to ... #coffeeoutdoors #coffeeneuring! So here's how my day started: After sleeping fitfully I woke up with the intention of going for a run then heading to the office. I'm thrilled that I have been able to run again after a month and a half of some sort of asthma or allergies so severe that it would become painful to breathe after about a minute of running. So I headed out the door and ... wait a minute, ...