Geocaching trip with Ted

I just looked at when I joined Geocaching.com: Christmas Eve of 2006. That seems about right - I started doing it as a way to get outside with Teddy and David way back when. I've been away from it for a while; other than picking up one or two while traveling, I haven't really cached since 2015. Ted has persisted more with it, including finding some really ingenious geocaches out in West Virginia. He's been saying for a long time that he'd like to show me some of these clever caches, and we finally found the time to make a trip out to West Virginia.

I picked Ted up at around 7 AM. I figured I should drive - riding as a passenger with Ted on Friday the 13th would have been tempting fate a little too much! It was one of those anomalously warm 80 degree days in April, and the sun was shining as we headed for Martinsburg, where our first stop was the Visitor's Center, located in the historic home of famed Confederate femme fatale and spy Belle Boyd. The center wasn't open yet and so we walked through the town to find some other nearby geocaches. Let me tell you, the people walking around downtown Martinsburg are the ones who had no place else to go - the kind of folks who would have been rejected from "People of Walmart" for being to odd and rednecky. This was a good thing, actually, since it meant that the things we did as we searched for geocaches - crawling around on all fours, rummaging through bushes, and sticking our fingers inside birdhouses - didn't stand out as odd in any way. As an example of the people we ran into, while walking down the main street we saw a guy - maybe late 20's, with shoulder-length bright pink hair, walking with an elementary school-aged girl. His daughter? His child bride? His abductee? All of the above? We weren't sure.

I mentioned birdhouses; let me explain. Most of the caches we found were created by a geocacher named "WVTim". Usually, the challenge is just in finding the geocache - they're often very cleverly hidden in odd places. In contrast, many of Tim's caches are out in the open, often disguised as birdhouses. The fun of his geocaches is that you have to interact with them in some way to solve them. Heck, he's got his own Youtube channel about his geocaches. There were electronic caches - like the one where flipping up the false front of the birdhouse revealed a custom electronic trivia game - computer screen and all. Only once you answered all ten questions correctly would the logbook pop out of the cache. There was one that was a game like Simon, one where you had to stick a balloon into a hole on the side and inflate it to release the latch, and so on. All very cool and extremely clever. Apparently, geocaching is a form of tourism the area encourages - many of these caches are located at local businesses rather than the usual in-the-woods sorts of locales. I have to admit, as a form of economic boost for the local area, it works - we ate lunch at a local restaurant, and spent money at two of the local farm markets the caches took us to.

Of course, along the way we saw the evidence of all sorts of redneck West Virginia stereotypes. The "gentlemen's club" advertising midget tossing. The young woman heading into the quick mart open carrying a pistol in a cute pink holster. A pickup truck with the license plate "RDNKLIFE". The Confederate flags - which, incidentally, make no sense, since West Virginia was part of the Union. In fact, West Virginia was a part of Virginia that broke off to stay in the Union when the rest of Virginia seceded.

However, let me interrupt my snooty comments about about West Virginia to admit that in Virginia - even NOVA - we're not that distant from our "cousins" in West Virginia. The day after this trip, Valerie and I were drinking coffee outside our local Starbucks, right in downtown Falls Church. While Valerie talked to me about how nice a day it was - the warm sun, the breeze, the birds chirping - behind her I watched a guy, pistol protruding from the waistband of his shorts - cross the parking lot and go into the Starbucks. I bet he and the pink holster girl would have gotten along just fine.

Hanging with Ted

Anyway, Ted and I had a good day. Most impressive was how well he had organized the whole outing. Ted can be a little bit of a space cadet, but he says nursing has really taught him how to prioritize and be efficient - and it really showed in how he had planned out this outing. A good day!

VASA Ride

The Vasaloppet is a famous ski race in Sweden. It has absolutely nothing to do with bicycles, and so naturally every spring since 2007 the Swedish embassy in conjunction with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) has hosted the VASA bike ride in tribute to the Vasaloppet and the coming of spring.

Yes, it makes no sense.

Unfortunately, it's a tradition that's coming to an end. After last year the Swedes decided they could no longer host the event (no reason given - perhaps diplomatic ties have frayed). This year REI stepped in to host one final VASA ride, so my first VASA ride will almost certainly also be my last VASA ride. I had registered for the ride last year, but it was held the day I was released from the hospital, a day when I was in no condition for a long bike ride.

With the change of hosts came a change of venue - the ride started and ended at the flagship REI in Northeast DC rather than at Sweden House. Rather than bike the ten miles from home to REI I lazed out and took Metro to Capitol South which left just a mile and a half of biking to the start. I could have lazed out even further and taken the red line almost to REI's front door, but I decided a little riding was better than dealing with switching trains.

Upon my arrival I immediately bumped into lots of people I knew: Judd and Josephine were volunteering at registration. Yvonne and Jay (who I think of as paddlers, not cyclists) were marshaling the 15 mile ride. Lots of my coffee club cyclist friends were getting ready to head out for the 60 mile ride, which started first, so I said a quick hello then they headed out.

Gina, Ken, young Chris and I had arranged in advance to do the 30 mile route together. Gina's "significant other" Peter was supposed to show up on a tandem with his 12 year old daughter Sophie as well, but he was late in arriving so the rest of us minus Gina headed out, picking up some other riders (people we didn't know) as part of our group - eight people in all, joined midway by a ninth. I was using the "follow route" function of my bike computer for the first time. Chris was running two different computers, which seemed appropriate on his space age specially imported German pinion gear, belt- drive Rose bike, and so between the two of us and our three computers we managed not to make any wrong turns. The route took us across DC into Georgetown, and then up to Bethesda via the Capital Crescent Trail and MacArthur Boulevard. One could actually have taken the Cap Crescent trail the whole way to Bethesda rather than dealing with traffic on MacArthur, but we opted to keep to the official route and take the road from Fletcher's Cove onward. I think they routed it that way to get the route to be exactly 30 miles.

Bethesda offered a halfway pit stop - bathrooms at Panera, bananas, granola bars and pretzels. Ken is another Jewish rider and, being Conservative, observes eight days of Passover. I observe seven and so it was still Passover for him but not for me - so unfortunately he couldn't take advantage of the free granola bars (he wouldn't even take possession of chametz on Passover). While we were chomping our snacks Gina, Peter and Sophie caught up with us. Also, a few of our group took off ahead of us, so when we started the ride back we were a reconfigured group of Ken, Chris, Gina, Peter, Sophie and me - which was kind of nice, since we all knew each other.

The ride back from Bethesda was pleasant: mostly downhill, and a lot of it was through the closed roads of Rock Creek Park. When we got back to REI we were served the traditional blueberry soup and Swedish meatballs (yes, they had meatless Swedish meatballs!). I hung around for a bit but didn't opt to wait until 2 PM for the after-party at Wunder Garden, since I needed to get home, change, rest and then head back to Northeast DC for an evening out with friends. Feeling like I still had some gas left in the tank I decided to bike home rather than taking the train. I will say that I started to feel tired about half-way through the ten mile ride home, but I made it, completing my longest day of riding (about 43 miles) since my surgery. I love every new milestone like this, so it was a really good day - good riding, good friends, and a new distance accomplishment. I am glad, though, that I didn't try the 60 mile ride. That would have been too much.

Bethesda pit stop

Strava track of the VASA ride

Strava track of the ride home

Cherry Blossom Paddle

First they said the cherry blossoms would peak really early, around St. Patrick's Day. Then March was cold and they pushed the forecast peak to late March. Then early April. Then later in April. Admittedly, the peak bloom forecast always moves around, but this year's particularly unsettled weather made it really hard to pin down a date for a cherry blossom kayak trip. I suggested to the PoG regulars that we do a cherry blossom paddle the last Thursday in March, but after the peak bloom was pushed into April I opted to delay a week to April 5th.  In all the confusion I lost some of my original group, but the PoG stalwarts showed up: Tom, Rob and Larry.

The best place to see the blossoms from the water happens to be the little Tidal Basin inlet directly across the river from Columbia lsland, so we started our paddle by crossing the river to the blossoms. Cherry blossom season always yields interesting sights, in this case some Asian women doing a fashion photo shoot and what looked to be a couple posing for wedding photos. For the record, my wedding was this first week in April (29 years ago!) and our wedding was less than a mile from the water but we didn't take waterfront photos. No, instead of beautiful pictures looking out over the controversially named Negro Bar Channel, we just posed outside the synagogue. I wasn't as much of a water person back then so detouring on our wedding day to take waterfront pictures didn't even occur to me. In addition, for various reasons our wedding took on an out of control freight train sort of life of its own, and so I doubt we would have risked having things go off the rails by heading to an additional location for pictures even if we had thought of it.

It had been quite windy and so the blossoms were less puffy than usual. I think the wind had blown off some of the blossoms. And it wasn't that we were off peak: the park service declared April 5th, the day we paddled to have been the peak bloom day.

Still, we had a nice outing - after blossom peeping we headed upriver, marveling at the features revealed by the unusually low tide. We continued on our usual route around Roosevelt Island then headed back to the marina.

As we were landing Gina (an ur PoG-ger from the Georgetown days) showed up on her bike and joined Rob and me for dinner. Tom had planned to come to dinner too but took a wrong turn and headed into the Bermuda triangle of roads that inter-tangle around the Pentagon. Or so he says ... perhaps he just abruptly reached his limit of being sociable and blew us off. Whatever the case, the three of us had a good time, discussing travels, relationships, interesting work projects and boat building over Nando chicken and sangria.

Heading out from the marina

Wsdding photos?

Rob, Tom and Larry

Me

Kitty's Sushi Roll Ride

Bike friend Kitty (real name: Grace) is a Japan expert. I mean that for real. Her degrees are in Eastern Studies and her day job has something to do with Japanse-American relationships. She has lived in Japan and recently returned from a trip there. She's also a serious cyclist and is a typically hyper-normal mid-Westerner while also being the kind of nutcase who shows up at events dressed as a penguin. So, I knew I would be good hands when she planned a Japan-themed ride, timed to fall in advance of the cherry blossoms so it wouldn't be a cherry blossom ride.

The weather didn't fully cooperate. We were at the tail end of a fierce windstorm that had descended on the whole east coast. Friday had been really crazy, with gusts up over 60 MPH causing our house to make weird moaning noises of a kind we've never heard before. Saturday was a little better, with winds "only" 20-30 MPH. As is my wont, I woke up in plenty of time but puttered around - breakfast, newspaper, stretching, coffee - until the point when I had to rush out the door to have any chance of getting there in time. Bundled up against the cold and wind, I hit the W&OD. The wind was at my back and I found myself doing incredible speeds - up over 20 MPH - with fairly little effort. With wind assist the trip to Rosslyn, which usually takes me about 35 minutes, took only 25. Crossing the "Intersection of Doom", I found the entrance to the Mount Vernon Trail blocked by a downed tree. Fortunately, it was the trunk blocking the path, not the crown, so it was possible to lift my bike over and then scramble after it. Another cyclist ... who turned out to be none other than Kitty ... hit the blockage at the same time. We helped each other over the tree and then continued on. Initially we rode together, but I told her to go ahead since she was in a hurry to get to the meeting spot. The meeting spot was a coffee place in Navy Yard. There was pre-ride coffee 8:15 followed by rolling out at 8:45. I had timed my arrival to be there for the ride start, not the coffee, so I was surprised to see that Kitty was on my schedule. Turned out she had gotten a later start than planned. She bolted ahead while I continued at my meandering pace. Obviously she got there first, but even with a restroom break at Columbia Island, I got there in plenty of time.

After donning some Japanese garb over her biking gear (not a kimono - too hard to ride in), Kitty saddled up and led us out. While I won't go into all the details of her well-researched and interesting presentations, I'll list some highlights:

• Stop at the Washington Navy Yard, where a delegation of Samurai made the first diplomatic visit of Japanese to the U.S. in the 1800's. Apparently they made quite a splash. According to Kitty, by the 1800's the Samurai class were no longer warriors so much as they served as the top echelon of government bureaucrats.
• A look at the Stone pagoda. This gift to the U.S. from the mayor of Yokohama in the 1950's is located near the FDR Memorial.
• A stop outside the Freer/Sackler galleries of art.
• Most moving, a visit to the Japanese-American Patriotism Memorial, which commemorates both the Japanese-American who were sent to internment camps during WW II and the Japanese-Americans who died fighting in the war.
• While the ride most definitely wasn't about the cherry blossoms, we did learn that the Cherry Blossoms symbolize life's fragility and beauty: the blossoms are a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short. I'm still working on the beauty part, but I'm for sure feeling the tragically short part these days!

Kitty gives her shpiel at the Sackler

By the end of the ride the sun had come out and the temperature had become quite comfortable. We lingered a bit and took group photos at our last stop, the Japanese Information and Culture Center (JICC). From there the group was continuing on to lunch at a Japanese restaurant above Georgetown. I have some sort of mild allergy to some ingredient/seasoning in Japanese food (I cough for the rest of the day after eating Japanese), so I skipped the lunch. I rode with the group as far a Georgetown then broke off and headed home over Key Bridge. It was on the late side of lunchtime and I got a craving for an Earl's salmon sandwich, so I made a little detour into Ballston for a lunch stop at Earl's.

Group photo at the JICC

It was an eventful ride. In addition to the places I've already mentioned we passed by the White House, biking past apparently just ten minutes or so before someone opened fire there, and saw the unveiling ceremonies for the Mayor Marion Barry statue. Wait, what?! There's a Marion Barry statue? Crack-cocaine abusing, woman-abusing, "Bitch set me up!" Marion Barry??!? 

Plus, I got a chance to visit the new DC WaWa market. Ted and I are big WaWa fans and so this was very exciting to me.

31 miles - my longest ride since surgery.

First Kayak Trip of the Year

This winter started out harshly. The "bomb cyclone" in January treated us to single digit temperatures coupled with strong winds. This makes the recent thaw - temps in the 40's and 50's (not to mention a few days with temps in the 70's!) - feel really like springtime. The river, frozen solid six weeks ago, started to reach the 50's as well. It was time to go kayaking!

Dressed for biking during the "bomb cyclone" super cold weather. I look ready for the planet Hoth.

Unfortunately, no one was available to go paddling last Saturday and it was a rainy day besides, so I didn't go. I awoke Sunday still burning with paddling fever, but the morning was rainy and chilly - not pleasant weather. Fortunately, the rain abated mid-day and I headed out on my own to go paddling.

Getting ready to launch

Yes, yes, you should never paddle solo, particularly in wintertime. Yes, yes, a person with my medical conditions probably shouldn't paddle solo. But life is a balance of risk and reward. After all, last summer I came closer than I expect to being shot while doing the seemingly safe activity of playing music at a festival. Today it almost happened again - someone opened fire outside the White House a mere ten minutes after I passed by on my bicycle. The lesson I draw from this is that you shouldn't be afraid to live your life - risk can find you at any time and place, so why cower from it?

First, I loaded the kayak onto the car and spent some time measuring how tall the car was with the kayak on it. I'm curious to see if I can fit into the garage at work with the kayak on the car. My method required the use of a level and, needless to say, my level was mysteriously missing (I'm betting David has it) but fortunately I have a backup. In fact, my backup level is a thing of beauty - an old wooden level inherited from my father's toolkit. The highest point on the kayak measured 6' 2". Now, to see how tall the garage is ...

I launched from Columbia Island. After going through the extreme contortions required to zip my dry suit unassisted (whose idea was it to put the zipper across the back?!) I launched and headed up the Boundary Channel. The channel is a few hundred feet wide at its widest and is extremely protected - I figured it was the safest route for me to take. Well, then again, it's pretty isolated. While I was unlikely to run into problems from wind or waves there, was never far from shore, and for most of it I could probably walk to shore if I capsized, if anything had happened back there who knows how long it would have been before anyone found me.

The days of rain combined with high tide put plenty of water in the river and the channel, which dries out at low tide, had plenty of water in it. The lowest spot, which is frequently barely navigable, had several feet of water depth. No problem. As a note, conditions were quite different a week later after our crazy windstorm. When I biked down the Mount Vernon Trail on my way to Kitty's Sushi Roll ride I was amazed at how the persistent Northwest wind had blown the water out of the river. The outermost spans of Memorial bridge were dry. The southern tip of Roosevelt Island extended half-way to Memorial Bridge. Rocks I had never seen before poked up above the surface. A little farther downriver it even made the news. But no problem today. Variability of conditions is one reason I never get tired of kayaking the same stretch of the river.

I basically did the Thursday night Pirates of Georgetown paddle, going up around Roosevelt Island. My only time on the river proper was coming back down the east side of Roosevelt; however, conditions were glassy calm and so I wasn't very concerned. Once down at the bottom of the island I ducked back into the protected waters of the Boundary Channel. Because it's usually navigable only at high tide it's rare to be able to take it both out and back.

It felt great to be back on the water!

Judd's Presidents' Day Ride

Monday I participated in a Presidents' Day bike ride led by my bike friend Judd. Last year's ride apparently was very long with many stops. This year he kep the number of stops down by focusing on a theme: Presidents with a Connection to Illinois (which happens to be Judd's home state).

While the ride was not scheduled to start until 10:30, there was a pre-ride plan to meet up for breakfast at 8 AM at the regular Monday cyclist breakfast meetup at Lazy Mike's in Falls Church. However, the day dawned with a passing band of rain - drizzly and grey. I wasn't really keen on riding several miles in that stuff and then being wet all day, so I decided to skip breakfast and wait out the rain - Judd decided to do the same, by the way.

So, having gotten up in time to get to breakfast at 8 AM, I found myself with some time on my hands. I got involved in working on my taxes and before I knew it I was running a little late getting out the door for the ride. As I hustled down the Custis Trail towards DC a convoy of more intrepid riders who had decided to do breakfast despite the rain caught up with me. This put me at ease about getting there on time, and we all rode together and made it downtown on time.

Getting ready at the Lincoln Memorials

Our meeting point and first stop was the Lincoln Memorial. Illinois is, after all, the "Land of Lincoln". From there we continued to the site of the original building of the Veterans Administration, which Judd (a VA employee) told us was founded in the wake of the Civil War - and thus has a connection to both Lincoln and Grant (who apparently lived in Illinois at some point in his life). I suspect, though, that this is some sort of Fake News, since the Veterans Administration web site says that the various agencies which ultimately were consolidated into the VA weren't founded until much later.

From there we continued to the spot where John Hinckley, Jr. attempted to assassinate Reagan, who apparently also lived in Illinois for a time (why do people shoot all these Illinoisians?). We learned the term "erotomania", which refers to a delusion where a person (say, Hinckley) believes that another person (say, Jodie Foster) is in love with them - or will fall in love with them if they, for example, assassinate the president.

The weather had remained cool and misty so we took a needed snack/warm-up/bathroom break at Glen's Garden Market, after which we continued on to Grant Circle, a rare circle in DC which has no statue (and which intersects with Illinois Avenue!).

Hey, get out of the middle of the street, you idiot!

We attempted to ride by the Obamas' home in the Kalorama neighborhood, but the street is blocked by the Secret Service. We could get only to the end of the block and peer down the street to see the house. By the way, it turns out that the Obamas, Jared & Ivanka, and Jeff Bezos all live in the same neighborhood. That must make for some fun block parties!

The group at the Lincoln Cottage

Our final stop was the Lincoln Cottage, which served as President Lincoln's summer getaway while he was President. Some folks were going to tour the museum there (which turned out not to be possible that day) and then go out for lunch, but others headed home. I rode home with three other riders - Anne, Nadine, and Cynthis - who were all going approximately to my neighborhood. Safely back at home, I had a bowl of soup to warm myself up and reflected on a nice ride.

Communities of Weirdos

I took up most of my outdoor activities for the simple enjoyment of doing them, and I still enjoy doing all of them solo; however, an unexpected benefit over the years has been that I've become part of communities of similarly obsessed people: kayak weirdos, bike weirdos, and so on. If drinking in a beer garden counts as an outdoor activity, then add my friends from Westover ;) I got to appreciate the community aspect of my activities several times this weekend.

Sunday morning was the first Lee District pool kayak rolling session of the year. When the kayakers show up at the pool in January we usually haven't seen each other in a while - group kayaking trips usually taper off after October, and right now the river is too frozen for any paddling at all (I suppose the Bay is still kayakable, but the launches may be iced in). So, the first pool session is something of a reunion of sorts with as time spent floating and catching up as rolling. This year was particularly poignant for me since it was the first time I tried any rolling since my surgery and there were lots of people cheering me on. A similar thing was true for Alison, who was back in the water after shoulder surgery. Of course, Alison's self-professed rustiness was a little different than mine - a past competitor in the Greenland kayaking championships, she was in the pool ticking off one roll variant after another (the Greenland championships include thirty-five different rolling-related moves) with balletic grace. I was thrilled to be able to do three kinds of rolls/braces (at peak I'm good for five - and only on one side).

Hey, I can still do this! (photo courtesy of Tall Tom)

The good news is that I had few problems with anything I did in the pool. My chest was mildly achy when I did chest sculls, but nothing that bothered me afterwards. My only significant concern is that on rolls where I went all the way around (+360 degrees as opposed to +180 followed by -180) I did experience a little lightheadedness (probably from the blood pressure meds I'm on these days). When I do a 360 degree roll I drive myself hard into the water to get upside down and around to the rolling setup position (a little more than the first 180 degrees) since I'm pretty light and have to overcome the buoyancy of the PFD. I hope that if I learn to slow that part down it might reduce the head rush effect I'm feeling.

It was cold enough that my kayak seat froze on the drive home

Monday morning I joined some cycling friends for breakfast at Lazy Mike's in Falls Church. While there's a cyclist breakfast meetup at Mike's every Monday, it being a holiday today's gathering served as a gathering point for a group ride. It was super cold (teens) and so several of us opted not to do the ride (35 miles or so) - but still showed up to socialize over breakfast. And so, a day after socializing with the kayak fanatics rolling in the swimming pool, I found myself having breakfast with 15 or so my favorite cyclist fanatics bundled up to the hilt for winter riding. Chemical hand-warmers. Multiple pairs of socks and gloves. Ski goggles. The other people in the restaurant probably thought, "why don't they just drive like normal people?" just as my neighbor said, "are you crazy?!" when she saw me loading my kayak in similarly cold temperatures yesterday (she assumed I was going paddling outside somewhere). Sorry, but doing crazy stuff is the nature of being part of a community of enthusiasts.

Boomer's selfie - getting ready to ride (I'm fourth from the left)

Chris' selfie during breakfast

As a coda to all of this I'll add that Saturday night we had about a dozen people over to our house for a pot luck dinner followed by what could be described as an elementary school style art session - coloring and painting. These are all friends from our synagogue (the coloring pictures were Jewish-themed), with whom we periodically do a pot-luck/activity dinner like this. Some might consider people from a "faith community" to be weirdos every bit as much as the people kayaking in a pool or biking in the freezing cold. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with them - is following Bronze Age commandments any less odd than trading suggestions on how to avoid "blue tip" (I will not explain what this is - suffice it to say it's a cold weather problem of concern to male cyclists)? The fact is, shared passions and beliefs lead to shared communities, and I'm grateful to be a member of several such communities.