Wildlife!

I have been doing a lot of walking on the local trails as part of my recovery from surgery and have been seeing a surprising amount of wildlife for urban parkland! 

Two pictures of what I'm pretty sure was the same deer. I took the first photo one on my way out and the second one at about the same place 45 minutes later on my way back - that deer was in no hurry. 

Two different foxes on two different days (one was healthy-looking with fluffy fur, the other was favoring a paw and didn't look too healthy). All along the W&OD Trail in Dominion Hills and Bluemont Park.

"... and you biked here"

Regular readers are aware that I recently underwent some rather serious surgery, recovery from which is keeping me sidelined from any exercise more strenuous than walking. Thus, I don't have a lot of material to write about right now. However, to keep my avid readers from going through complete withdrawal, I figured I would document some little tidbits and older stories.

The main symptom which I had been experiencing was that I would get out of breath and feel some tightness in my chest when I exercised. Back in August the shortness of breath was severe enough that I absolutely couldn't run, but I somewhat chalked that up to the awful August weather that we experience in DC. Over the course of the fall and winter, my symptoms improved but never fully went away.

Anyway, my favorite episode in the long sleuthing process towards a diagnosis was when I went for a CT scan of my chest in early February. The weather that day was wintry but not extreme, maybe mid-thirties in temperature. Very comfortable cycling weather if you dress right. Rather than deal with the mess and expense of parking at the hospital, I decided to bike the mile and a half or so there.

I walk into the CT scan room. The technician is looking down at his clipboard. "So," he says, "your diagnosis is dyspnea* on exertion." He looked up at me and took in the fact that I was standing there holding my bike helmet and jacket, paused and said, "... and you biked here." I've got to hand it to him - I biked to most of my medical appointments and he was the only person to notice the dissonance between my symptoms and my behavior. 

I grinned. "Yeah, it's slowing me down but it's not stopping me."

To his credit, he didn't roll his eyes at me or chastise me. Actually, he started talking about how he really should exercise more - I guess being confronted with my perseverance made him feel guilty.

Not only was this the most amusing of my visits to the hospital, it was actually the one that revealed a key clue towards my ultimate diagnosis. 

*Shortness of breath

Coffeeneuring Ride #2.1

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, suddenly out of nowhere I have some sort of muscle cramp/strain in one of my groin muscles. I didn't feel this while stretching - where did it come from? Well, having learned the hard way from many years of making matters worse by trying to exercise through pain, I decided to quit. Another run aborted after about a minute.

This put me in a really bad mood and, knowing that I really didn't need to interact with anyone at work anyway, I decided to just work at home. On such a nice day I should have spent the day on the back porch but I wanted to multi-task between work and getting files transferred over to my new laptop, so I worked at my desk in the basement.

By about 2 PM I couldn't take it anymore. The outside called, sore muscle or not! It was time for a #coffeeoutside adventure ... albeit a local one. I packed water, coffee, AeroPress and Jetboil and headed for the bike trail. I rode down to Glencarlyn Park where I set up shop in a nice spot on the rocks beside Four Mile Run. Coffee was soon ready, and I had a pleasant time sipping a fresh cup and listening to the flowing water.

My Workplace

Just so's you knows that I'm not a total slacker, I brought my computer along and while I drank my coffee I watched some videos from a Coursera course I'm taking on the topic of Data Analysis. I'm not sure if there's a #geekycoffeeoutdoors hashtag, but in this case such a thing would apply.

Coffee & Coursera Outdoors

Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/748989257

Cannonball Ride

• Father's Day present #1: Hearing David leave for work at 4 AM
• Father's Day present #2: Hearing Ted leave for work at 6 AM.
• Father's Day present #3: A nice bike ride with the NOVA Casual Bike Group (CBG) meetup.

With cycling as with many things I find myself between categories. I'm too slow to ride with "serious" cycling groups, but can do distances longer than the "casual" bike groups. The CBG Beginner rides are about the right pace for me, but too short in distance. Sunday I decided to join the CBG on a Civil War-themed ride. I biked from home to the Shirlington meeting point, turning the official 16 mile official ride into a 26 miler.

The first thing I noticed on my arrival is a lot of straight bar, hybrid bikes and that, refreshingly, not everyone was in twee Lycra outfits. The group turned out to be a mix, from an older couple with electrified bikes (they dropped out partway) to some folks in full fig.

The second thing I noticed was that of the twenty people on the ride, about fifteen were women. Was it because it was Father's Day? Do women not celebrate Father's Day? Was it because guys would never sign up for a ride advertised as "Beginner"? Who knows ...

Anyway, we headed out from Shirlington down along Four Mile Run. We connected to the Mt. Vernon trail and followed the river south into Old Town Alexandria. Our first stop was the Freedmen's and Contrabands Cemetery. During the Civil War freed slaves fled across Union lines to seek safety. Unfortunately, they found mostly squalor in refugee camps. The Freedmen's Cemetery was the final resting place of many of these poor folks who wound up in Alexandria, along with Union soldiers from Colored units. After the war the place was neglected and desecrated - a gas station and an office building were built on parts of it, and people mined clay from its western end, disturbing many graves. Only recently was the cemetery restored and, through the use of underground sensing, hundreds of graves were remarked.

Checking Out Freedman's and Contrabands' Cemetary

From there we continued to the Alexandria National Cemetery. Yes, another cemetery to remind us of our mortality on the holiday. This Cemetery was established early in the Civil War, frankly before the government had any idea of just how much burial space they were going to need. The 5 acre cemetery filled up quickly and is today largely unknown.

Alexandria National Cemetery

Our final stop was Fort Ward, which was part of the Union defensive line around Washington. At the outset of the war the Union Army occupied Alexandria and Arlington to provide a buffer around Washington. Ft. Ward was built after the Union defeat at First Manassas, when there was considerable fear that a Confederate attack on Washington was imminent. Today the area is a pretty park.

Group Photo at Ft. Ward

Getting to Ft. Ward involved a significant climb (forts tend to be on the high ground) - which I'm happy to report I made without a problem. As a result, the ride back through Fairlington to Shirlington was mostly a nice downhill run.

I didn't stick around to socialize after the ride; I just grabbed a quick iced latte at Peet's and did one more climb - the five miles back uphill home.

You Will Be Assimilated

A while back my friend Cyndi had told me that the cycling community is huge compared with the kayaking community and that as I got into cycling I would find people who shared whatever kind of cycling I was interested in: road touring, mountain biking, gravel rides on odd number Tuesdays, whatever. To date I haven't really found this to be the case - or maybe it's too true. I joined a cycling Meetup but every ride is instantly over-subscribed. I joined Potomac Pedalers, but most of their rides are beyond my capabilities. There are so many cyclists out there that I never seemed to see the same people twice. Plus, the cycling world seems to be heavily populated with poorly behaved "Lycra Louts" for whom Spandex bibs are religious garments and who obsess over every aspect of bicycles and bicycling down to the weight of their spoke nipples.

Not for nothing does Pearls Before Swine have a recurring obnoxious bicyclist character.

I have known for a while that there were groups of cyclist who meet for coffee at various locations on various days, but I always had the impression that they were attended primarily by people who stop by for coffee after having knocked out their daily century rides - maybe that was influenced by knowing that Cyndi, who is that kind of person, is a coffee club regular. However, kayaker Gina, who now lives in my neighborhood and is an avid but not extreme bicyclist, assured me that the groups are friendly.

So, Wednesday morning I left early and somehow my EFC to Virginia Square ride picked up a detour to Shirlington. I arrived to find a couple of cyclists, including my neighbor Steve C. (who is a hardcore) there. I joined them and soon more people trickled in. About 15 in all, including kayaker Gina. Everyone was very friendly. When I admitted to being something of a newbie and casual cyclist they reassured me that anyone who enjoys cycling is welcome. I think it helped that (a) I had already signed up for the wintertime "Freezing Saddles" competition, showing my commitment to cycling, and (b) despite the fact that I profess to be a newbie, I do know something about what the sport - and was dressed in appropriate tribal attire (baggy shorts, no Spandex look for me, thank you very much).

The bottom line is that my 3 mile, 20 minute commute somehow stretched to ten miles and two hours, but it was fun and I will certainly be back. Have I been assimilated into the bike borg?

Bringing Up the Rear

Yesterday I rode the Lynsky to work. For one thing, I have broken yet another spoke on the beater bike. Also, it was my intention to check out the infamous Freshbikes Tuesday night ride.

I started my day with a nice discovery. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of leaving my bike outside all day and so I went down to the garage in search of a place to lock up my bike - a pipe or something I could lock to. Well, I was thrilled to discover that my building actually has a bike storage cage - in fact, there's two! I didn't have to leave my nice bike out front, and I'll no longer have to chat with the homeless man who spends his evenings in the vestibule next to the outside bike racks.

After work I saddled up and rode the block over to Freshbikes. As regular readers of this blog know (assuming there are any), I'm no fan of cute little bike outfits. I was recently thrilled to learn two biking terms:

Lycra Lout - a term describing the poorly behaved, race-clad biker set, and

MAMIL - an acronym for Middle Aged Men in Lycra

If terms like this exist then clearly I am not alone among the general population in my feelings about bikey fashion, but I sure wasn't going to find anyone who felt that way in this crowd. It was like unto a Lycra Lout fashion show! I was one of the few wearing a regular t-shirt rather than a jersey and also one of the few wearing baggies rather than tight-fitting Spandex shorts. Most of the bikes there were road or racing. I didn't see anyone else on a gravel grinder. A few adventurous souls showed up on MTBs or hybrids.

Waiting for the ride to Start

Anyway, the first Tuesday of the month is the big ride, with police escort through this intersections and food afterwards. I took off with the group (the ride started a few minutes late, in part because of thunder) but quickly fell towards the back. A couple of miles in I was far enough back that I lost the police escort. The group overall got pretty spread out and I was happy that I had taken a look at the route beforehand. I generally had some other cyclists in sight, but it would have been easy to miss a turn.

The ride went through familiar territory including, I'm happy to say, part of the route I used to drive home from Shady Grove. So much nicer to be biking it!

After the ride there was food from Baja Fresh at the little park adjacent to the bike store. Tacos! I chatted a little bit with another rider, who I had also talked with before the ride. Most of the Lycra Louts were busy with their own groups and so weren't too friendly. I ate by myself, then headed up to the office to pick up my backpack, lock and lights. I couldn't resist checking email and wound up working for a bit and chatting with my boss - who was still there at 8 PM.

Dinner Afterwards. Auughh - way too many pretty outfits!

Then, a quick ride home in the dusk. I think I need brighter lights. I'm sure I could be seen, but my headlamp doesn't really illuminate the road ahead very well.

In summary, three miles to work, 16 miles on the Freshbikes ride, and finally three miles home.

Baby's First Group Ride

Today I participated in my first group cycling ride ever. Looking for something different than just riding the Arlington Loop by myself, I sought out a group ride through Potomac Pedalers and wound up riding the Arlington Loop with a bunch of other people.

Unfortunately, I'm a slow rider and so am limited to the slower organized rides. Such rides draw geezers and casual cyclists. I showed up  and - surprise! - it was mostly a bunch of alter kocker guys, mixed with a few casual riders on hybrid bikes. One guy immediately launched into warning us to be careful out on the trail for dogs and children because they do their best to jump in front of cyclists and cause accidents.

And there you have it: the cyclist mentality. There are two types of people in the world: cyclists, and people who are in the way of cyclists. Thank you for that piece of advice, Mr. Cyclist, and may I compliment you on how your tight cycling jersey highlights your enormous gut?

There were some nice people on the ride too, young and old. Most folks were kitted out in cycling gear. I was defiantly wearing a cotton t-shirt, though I was wearing bike shorts (not the skin-tight Spandex kind), shoes and gloves. I got to wondering - if I want to ride with other people, am I going to have to start dressing in the cyclist garb I hate just to fit in?

We did the loop clockwise, opposite the way I usually do it, with THREE rest stops - one where the W&OD meets the Custis trail, one at Spout Run, and a third at Gravely Point.

At the very end of the ride, I happened to be riding second, just behind the leader, or "point" person. As the group crossed Arlington Mill Dr. the leader stopped in the middle of the street to block traffic so the whole group could get across (cyclists have the right of way over everyone else and all traffic signals, because, well, because all cyclists are ubermentschen). I kept riding, heading back to our starting point at the Shirlington Library, about another three blocks. When I got there I turned around and saw ... no one. I really don't know what happened to the group. Some folks were going out to luch afterwards at Cap City Brewery. Perhaps the whole rest of the group stopped there. Or maybe they just split up and went back to their cars. Or were abducted by aliens. Well, my first ride went out with a whimper, but it was still fun. I'll do another. One of the riders on the trip mentioned a casual cyclists Meetup - I'll have to check that out too.

Test Ride 4: Reference Route

I was teleworking on Bike to Work Day. That circumstance would initially seem to preclude participating in biking to work.

Mathematics to the rescue! It is well known that if you travel in a circle you eventually wind up back where you started (Valerie could prove this, I'm sure). So, if I were to go out for a bike ride that was, say, a loop I would wind up back where I started, riding to my home office from my home home, allowing me to bike to work. How fortunate for me that the bike-lovers who run Arlington sustain a loop trail known as the "Arlington Loop" and that I can access said loop easily from my house.

Riding the Arlington Loop had two additional benefits. First, it's the bike ride I have done far more often than any other over the past two decades. It is my Steely Dan Aja of bike rides (Aja is an album I've pretty much memorized over 35 years of listening - it's always what I use for test listening to new audio equipment - it's the first CD I ever bought and remains the only album I already owned on vinyl that I re-bought as a CD). Thus it would make a good, calibrated test for the new bike. Most importantly, since there were Bike to Work pit stops along the loop, there'd be SWAG!

Alas, conditions varied from the norm so it wasn't quite a calibrated ride. I had been out very, very late Thursdya night partying, dancing and perhaps drinking at a Jerry Garcia tribute concert at Merriwether Post Pavilion. My legs were a little achy in the morning and I was sleep deprived and dog tired. I let myself sleep in a little bit, not getting on the bike until 7:30 AM (my usual exercise time is about an hour earlier). I rode the loop counter-clockwise to minimize my interaction with commuters. Down the W&OD to Shirlington I went. I got happy as soon as I got on the bike - achiness and tiredness forgotten. It's easy to feel good on this part of the trail, since it's downhill all the way to Shirlington. I continued onto the connector trail they cleverly squeezed in to connect Shirlington to the river (before they added this trail segment this was the bad part of the ride, a confusing ride on the streets through some borderline neighborhoods).

The ride up the river is always my favorite part. Columbia Island Marina had signs saying they were a BTWD pit stop - yay, a swag opportunity!! I detoured into the marina but it was quiet - no pit stop in evidence. I was on the tail end of bike commuting rush hour and either the pit stop had already shut down or I somehow failed to find it. Dang, it appeared at I had missed my swag opportunity. With a heavy heart I pedaled back out of the marina and continued north on the Mt. Vernon trail joining the flow of bike commuters. I was quickly reminded what a slow rider I am. I was being passed by just about everyone from Spandex-clad robot riders to normal humans. The only riders I passed, and I must say I totally crushed them, were people out on Capital Bikeshare cruiser bikes. Riding in the bike commuter peloton in rush hour was not all that different than being on the Beltway and I was happy when I reached Rosslyn and broke off from the pack (they were mostly headed to DC) for my climb back out west.

As I climbed out of Roosevelt Island lot I chanced upon Arlington's main Bike to Work Day pit stop at Arlington Gateway Park! OMG! Booths. Water bottles. T-shirts. Cyclists milling about. Free coffee. Walter Tejada making a speech. I stopped and filled my pack with stuff before heading on. Swag at last!

A little confession: I set out wearing an empty backpack *strictly* so that I'd have a way to carry swag and to look enough like a genuine commuter to fit in (and get swag).

The ride up from Rosslyn to Ballston is always ugly. A series of inclines and dips, inclines and dips. On this type of ride I really miss the 3x front cog on my other bike. I can drop that thing into the granny gear and have instant access to the low range. On a 2x bike you have to shift down, down, down through a bunch of gears to get to the low end. Up through the gears, down through the gears. Up through the gears, down through the gears, all the way to Glebe Road. The good news is that my knees did not hurt at all on this ride, but towards the end the combination of sleep deprivation, hangover, tired legs and hills did get to me. I was happy to reach Mile 4.5 and do the final climb-out up to my house.

Some observations:

1. I am at this point a really slow rider. I seem to be averaging 12 MPH on rides. In Potomac Pedalers terms I am maybe a C or CC rider.

2. The bike is comfortable and well suited to purpose. I may at some point buy a second set of wheels and equip them with more roadie tires.

3. I need replace the front derailleur cable and adjust the derailleur.This is more daunting than the brake and tire work I've done since in my experience getting a derailleur adjusted is a dark art. If I'm going to keep writing on this topic I'll also need to learn how to spell "derailleur" without thinking about each letter each time, just as I have to learn to spell "reconnaissance" for my new job.

4. I need to continue tinkering with cleat positioning on my shoes. I have trouble unclipping my right foot, which naturally angles out. I adjusted the angle of cleat on that shoe but made matters worse (harder to unclip).

5. Before starting this ride I stretched much like I do before running. Maybe that's what I need to do to keep the ITB pain away.

6. I miss my rack trunk. I may need to put a rack on this bike. Carrying a backpack just for small items like a lock is a pain. And don't suggest I start wearing bike jerseys with the pockets in the back.

7. I need to break the bad habit of grabbing for the left brake. I'm a leftie and it's my dominant hand, so when I'm riding on the upper part of the bars I tend to drop down and grab left. Grabbing just the front brake is a dangerous practice. Bicycles are yet one more thing made for right-handed people.

8. I haven't been on the Marin since I bought the new bike. I need to re-ride the reference ride with that bike to have a controlled experiment.

Bonus observation: I remain convinced that cyclists are douchebags. I saw a lot of bad behavior out on the trail - dangerous passing, taking up too much trail, paying more attention to their phone than to the trail, etc. But you already knew I felt that way ...

March 5K

We had to scramble to find a 5K in March. The week before we had decided to blow off a Pi Day 5K. I was exhausted from having had a gig the night before, it was cold and rainy, and Valerie had a headache. With the days ticking away we had to find a replacement.

Fortunately it turned out that there was a 5K at nearby Nottingham Elementary School. We figured we'd do well in the standings, since everyone would be going slowly with their little elementary school kids. Wrong. Kids have a lot of energy.

On a hilly course, I ran a somewhat respectable 32:25. Valerie finished ahead of three other people. 

After the race we went out for breakfast at the Harrison Center where we bumped into the Yorktown High School girls softball team - including many former students who were excited to see their old math teachher, Mrs. A.

On the Road Again

I have a goal for 2015 of getting back into road biking. While I hate to wade into a sport with more sectarian schisms than Iraq and see no reason to spend as much on a bike as I did on my first three cars combined (which can easily be done once you venture into the land of carbon fiber construction and shift-by-wire derailleurs), the fact of the matter - as Cyndi points out - is that there are a lot of places to explore in the world that aren't on the water.

I got an start on my 2015 riding by doing the Arlington Loop today. After spending the morning of what was forecast to be the last day of a late December warm spell doing chores and paperwork I decided I just needed to get out and take advantage of the weather. It took me a while to get everything together: bike tires inflated, proper clothing, proper layering for the weather, helmet, phone, various braces in case my knee or foot gave out. Finally I headed out the door, and as I did it started raining. Fortunately the modern world is a wonderful place and so I was able to see on my phone that the rain was a band of light showers which would soon pass, leaving me to do at least most of my ride dry. I decided to go ahead with the ride.

As expected, it rained a little as I zoomed down the W&OD towards Shirlington. The first third of the loop in this direction is great - largely downhill with a 300+ foot elevation drop from my house to the river. Anyone can feel like a powerful rider on a long downhill trail! Phase two of the ride, always my favorite part, was rain-free. I love this part because it's along the river. Which means I was using my bike which can explore away from water to explore a part of the world that was on the water ... never mind. I didn't make any long stops on this ride, but I did pause to watch one airplane depart out of DCA.

Part three of the ride stank as always. The ride up from Rosslyn back to East Falls Church is hilly. Lots of steep ups and downs, and of course you have to gain back that 300+ feet of elevation. Plus it hard started to rain again - but again, just lightly.

Total mileage: about 18 mi.
Average speed: a slow 12 MPH.

Conclusion: I feel like I had some power in my legs from my exercise bike workouts at the gym, but I'm clearly just at the beginning.

Sunday Morning Loop

Sunday morning I woke up early as usual. It was a beautiful day and I knew it would be several hours before the rest of the family woke up. Kayak? Boy, I wished I had loaded the boat on top of the car the night before, as I was feeling just a little too lazy to deal with it right at the moment. Besides, the overhead of a paddling trip - loading, driving to the river, driving home, unloading - would take more time than I felt like investing in the morning's outing. I decided to have breakfast, read the paper and think up an alternate plan.

How about biking? Well, that would have a lot of the same overhead -- but wait, there's a bike trail two blocks from my house! And I've heard that the county has built a new connector trail from the terminus of my local trail to the Mt. Vernon trail. I decide that the W&OD / Mt. Vernon / Custis Trail loop is exactly what I the doctor ordered and in a few minutes I'm out the door. It's 7:10 AM.

The first 4.5 miles of the ride are familiar ground, as this is my usual running / biking / walking turf, and pleasantly downhill ground to boot. When I get to the bottom of the W&OD trail in Shirlington, sure enough, there's a sign for the new connector trail. Let me tell you, this new trail is a great thing. Connecting between the W&OD and Mt. Vernon trails used to mean riding through the streets in a somewhat ugly neighborhood and for me, inevitably getting lost. Now it's smooth sailing. Exit the W&OD, turn right, turn left at the Weenie Beanie, go around the Exxon and you're golden.

The Mt. Vernon trail has always been my favorite section of this loop. It takes you right along the river, alongside National Airport (that's Reagan National for all you friends of Ronnie, or DCA for you ATC types) and past some of my local kayaking put-ins. I took a break at Graveley Point Park, which has the dually cool location of being on the Potomac in sight of all the monuments and unbelievably close to the north end of the main runway at National. The spot is a popular local attraction just because of the experience of hearing/feeling/seeing the planes take off. It's really loud, they're really low, and it's great fun. I had the foresight to bring a small thermos of coffee. So I plop down at a picnic table by the water's edge (a little off the flight line) and relax with my coffee.

Much as I hate to leave that spot, I get going again after a bit and face the icky part of the ride - the undulating hills along the Custis Trail from the river back up to my house. Up and down. Up and Down. Up and Down. Up over Lee Highway and down. Up over I66 and down. Up for no apparent reason and down. The granny gears become my friends.

I get home a bit after 9. As expected the rest of the family is just getting going. In summary: 18 miles, exploration of a new trail, and a good cup of coffee in a striking spot.