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.

What about the bison?

Thursday only three of us showed up to paddle; everyone else was SK102-bound. Given that we were an intimate little group we had some time to muse as we headed upriver (I won't dwell on the coastal flooding advisory which was in place). What's with the central section of the Memorial Bridge - why is it metal when the rest is stone? And what's with the buffalo head decorations at the apex of all the arches?

A little research revealed that the center span was originally a drawbridge. Over time, as less boat traffic headed to Georgetown it got used less and less frequently. by the 1960's there was basically no longer a demand for passage of tall boats and so when Roosevelt Bridge was built they didn't bother making it a drawbridge. Having a low bridge just upriver was the final nail in the coffin, and so the drawbridge mechanism was disabled and was removed in the 70's.

As to the bison, I couldn't find a story. The bridge symbolically relinks the North and South (connecting the Lincoln Memorial top Rober E. Lee's house at Arlington). Maybe the bison were considered a symbol of the "post-bellum" vitality of America, in particular the American West. Or something.

Anyway, a good paddle. Water was high - the normally poky boundary channel was wide and deep.

Ich bin ein Fredericksburger

A little less than 150 years ago bullets were flying over the spot where we launched. Union and Confederate forces stood arrayed on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River in what would ultimately be a brutal defeat for Burnside's army at the hands of Robert E. Lee. Today, nary a ghost of that time stirred as Tom and I arrived for our trip up the Rappahannock. A group of us had accepted our friend Paige's invitation to come down his way, spend some time on the water, then check out his new house. Paige frequently makes the trek to DC to kayak with us, and we really owed him a return visit.

Tom and I, carpooling, arrived early, so we spent a little time driving around and checking out historical markers around the town. We headed back to the dock just as the rest of our group arrived - Dave and Cyndi, Nelson (without Caroline, who was sick), Kingsley, and Paige. In not time flat we were zipped up into our cold weather gear and were on the water.

The river had a pretty strong current and the weather was iffy so we decided to head upriver, figuring it was better to do the tough paddling on the way out and coast back. The river is narrow and shallow, but we made it all the way up to the base of the rapids in the center of town. A couple of our group went to play in the rapids a little bit. Paige got out of his boat and body-surfed the lowest rapid a few times. Tom and I, being a little more safety-oriented, beached our boats just downstream and walked up the river to hang with the rest of the gang. Definitely a fun interlude.

On the way back we did have the benefit of the current pushing us along, but we were subjected to crazy, very rapid changes in weather. Sunny. Stinging sleet. Sunny again. So windy that you just stopped paddling and ruddered to keep the boat pointed in the right direction. Cloudy. Rain.

After we got off the water we all headed over to Paige's house, which was just a few minutes' drive from the put-in. It's a beautiful house in an attractive new development. He just bought the place this past year and so it has an, um, open look. That is to say, he has very little furniture outside the bedrooms. First we stood around the kitchen eating snacks and drinking the beer assortment that Dave had so thoughtfully brought. Then we all sprawled out on the carpet in the totally empty family room while we waited for the incredibly slow Frederickburg Dominoes to deliver. Once the pizza arrived we discovered how hungry we were, as we devoured it in what seemed like seconds. Then we made equally short work of the brownies Caroline had thoughtfully sent along with Nelson.

Finally Tom and I said our goodbyes and headed back North, away from the civil war and back to Sunday afternoon chores.