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.

An Ill-Advised Bike Ride

I probably shouldn't write this post, because as soon as V reads it she will come downstairs and whack me in the head with a 2x4, and right now I'm not able to outrun her.

I will not bore readers with the details of my recent health issues. The short summary is that since last August I had been having symptoms while exercising, which turned out to be caused by blockages in my coronary arteries. By the time the cause was identified my arteries were really, really blocked - it was serious enough that they scheduled my surgery for the next morning, bumping someone else off the surgical calendar because of the urgency of my surgery. The conditions were there for me to have a fatal heart attack and I'm lucky that it didn't end that way. So are you, because you would have been deprived of my deeply entertaining blog posts forever.

For most of the seven months it took to figure the issue out the doctors were pursuing both pulmonary (breathing) and cardiac (heart-related) causes. A cardiac stress test in 2015 (I actually had brief episodes of symptoms in 2014 and 2015, but they subsided on their own) revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and I'm a pretty healthy guy, so my doctor leaned more towards pulmonary - asthma, or something like it. The problem is, all the asthma and lung function tests kept coming back normal. Finally, I convinced the doctor to send me for a CT scan of my lungs (I was concerned about lung cancer, since that's what killed both my dad and my grandfather). My lungs were normal, but the CT did reveal calcification of the coronary arteries. This was a very significant finding, but was written up in a very ambiguous way by the radiologist who read the CT and consequently went unnoticed by the other doctors. Fortunately, I read the report on my doctor's patient portal and we brought the calcification to the attention of my primary care doctor, who said she'd talk to the radiologist about it.

At this point, two weeks elapsed without my hearing from my doctor until she called me late one afternoon. Just the fact that the doctor called me herself rather than have a minion convey the message got me concerned - it meant something serious was going on. This was confirmed when she advised me to Immediately Cease All Exercise and Go See A Cardiologist. Needless to say, this kind of freaked me out.

The part of the story which hasn't been told until now is that when she called me I had just finished changing into cycling clothes and was about ready to walk out of my office and go bike riding. I have an awful commute, which I mitigate by exercising after work, letting rush hour pass by before I take on the 50 mile drive home. Well, there I was, ready to go cycling - excited, in fact, because this was going to be my first time mountain biking in a long time. And so I was faced with a dilemma: I was all set to go biking, I needed to do something to kill time before heading home, but I was now under orders to not exercise.

In retrospect, I could have found other ways to kill time. I could have watched Netflix at my desk. I could have put in extra time working. I could have gone outlet shopping in Clarksburg. I could have had a long, leisurely dinner. Probably the least advisable course of action was to say to myself, "Hey, if the doctor waited two weeks to call me, then it can't be all that urgent - I can wait two hours to put her advice into effect," and do my ride in Little Bennett Regional Park as planned. Oh, and it was a really pretty evening.

I will give you a chance to guess which option I took. As a hint, here's a link to my Strava track. I will say in my defense that I rode exceptionally slowly - no bombing down the single track, just a short, gentle ride through the woods at a pace no more taxing than a brisk walk. I've got to say, I had forgotten how much I enjoy mountain biking. Riding a bike through the woods is a very cool combination of, well, riding a bike and being in the woods. It's like a faster and more exciting version of hiking. I had a big grin on my face the whole way and thought to myself that if I did keel over, I would die happy.

Biking Little Bennett Regional Park w/ a bad ticker

The happy ending is that I did not die. I returned home and did indeed put the "No Exercise" prohibition into place. Four days later I wound up in the hospital, on a trajectory that shortly took me to surgery. Right now I'm not allowed to pick up anything weighing over ten pounds (and contrary to what you might take away from this blog entry, I actually am a compliant patient - if I know I'm sick) and so I can't even pick up any of my bikes off the rack. But I'm counting the days until I can!

A few days later (that's decaf, BTW)

"... 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

It turns out there's at least one cyclist who doesn't suck!

In the cycling world there's something called the Velominati rules. This set of rules for cyclists started out tongue-in-cheek but over time has been taken way too literally by cyclists. I previously slipped in a quick bitch about these rules here. Kudos to Peter Flax for writing an article-length rebuttal.

Covered Bridges Ride in Thurmont

Desdemona* is the reason my job exists. Well, not Des in particular, but people of her ilk. She's a super-smart, highly accomplished Ph.D. who directs millions of dollars in medical research, but clearly, sometimes organizing isn't her strong suit.** I emailed her shortly after I started working in Frederick (where she lives) last November, and apparently she wrote a response at the time but somehow it never got sent and it took her until February to realize that something was amiss.

When we finally did get in touch we decided to go for a bike ride after work. She arrived slightly late and we set off. She's done a lot of riding in the area and I assumed she had a particular route mapped out in her mind, but it turned out we were doing some degree of wandering.

It was quite a nice ride. We first headed south, hit our first covered bridge and the "bike barn", then made a major northward trek though farms on Old Frederick Road. There are a lot of cyclists in this area and so most motorists were very considerate - just an occasional few honked or gunned their engines at us (mostly when we were riding 2 abreast, taking up some of the road). It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm February day (borderline shorts weather) and I had a great time cruising along taking in the scenery. We took a quick stop at a second covered bridge, then headed on. As we turned west onto Rocky Ridge Road I mentioned that our daylight was fading and that we should probably think of heading back.

First Covered Bridge

Well, first we missed a turn Des had wanted to make, and apparently she's vehemently opposed to ever backtracking, so we continued onward. The good news is that we wound up intersecting with the road we had started out on and we started to head back south on that road. It was dusk at this point. Fortunately I had front and rear light with me. Des, who is, again, a highly intelligent scientist, apparently hadn't thought about the fact that this might be one of those days when the sun sets and so hadn't brought any lights.

When had about four miles to go Des decided to turn right at an intersection to avoid having to climb the big hill up Hessong Bridge Road. This added another 2-3 miles to the ride. It did take us over to Cunnigham Falls Park and Catoctin Furnace, but really these were the only unpleasurable miles of the trip, seeing as how we were riding in the dark down a commercial street alongside a major highway. I'm not sure that this was a better choice than the hill would have been.

We finally escaped exurban sprawl with our eastward turn onto Blacks Mill Road. The rest of the ride was exhilarating if a little unnerving. Quite dark, few cars, no illumination but my headlight. Fun riding, but (since I can always think of the worst) the whole way back I was picturing hitting some unseen pothole and pitching out over the handlebars.

Fortunately we made it back without incident. This was a really nice ride, and I smiled all the way back to Arlington.

total Miles: 20
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/876363738

*Not her real name. She's one of those people who is prickly about Internet privacy.

**I will say in her defense that she does manage to organize a rather large and complex annual kayaking event.

Doughnut Ride

I don’t participate in a lot of organized bike rides because most of them are too darn long and fast. Plus, if you want to know a secret, I’m not that jazzed about riding for the sake of riding. However, I do like the “social” rides, which are more about fun than miles. Last weekend I went on a Doughnut Ride, organized as part of Freezing Saddles.

I will say this about the bike community – they’re much better about organizing events around food (and drink) than the paddling community. Despite the oft-quoted (and stupid, IMHO) slogan of “we paddle to eat”, in fact, most of my kayaking meals are at the level of canned tuna eaten sitting on a driftwood log on a muddy beach. I guess the water vs. land thing is the root of it - it’s easy to organize bike rides around restaurants. In contrast, many of my kayak trips start and end at desolate boat ramps miles from any food except for maybe a creepy general store staffed by an extra from Deliverance, and there aren’t many brew pubs to visit in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.

The ride started in Bethesda, so I had to do a pre-ride ride. I rode into Rosslyn on the Custis, then over into Georgetown. As I passed the former Jack’s Boathouse I felt melancholia for paddling days gone by. I stopped to use a Porta-potty by Potomac Boat Club and let me say: I have camped at some nasty campgrounds and visited many a neglected boat ramp – but never have I seen a Porta-john like that. ‘Nuff said.  As I climbed the continuous uphill grade of the CCT at Jesse speed (that means slowly) a couple of people I recognized whizzed by me. On my “To Do” list – get faster! As I got into Bethesda a woman, seeing my Freezing Saddles hang-tag, called out to me and we rode the last couple of blocks to the meeting place together. 

At the Start

The group met at 202 Donuts in Bethesda. In the online discussion before the ride people realized that with six stops this trip was going to offer the opportunity to eat more donuts than anyone (except maybe Homer Simpson) was going to be able to handle, so we agreed to share. At Bethesda I got a taste of someone’s basic vanilla frosted donut, and it was generally agreed that this was a pretty poor product, to the extent that there was debate over whether it was better or worse than packaged donuts.

The group next headed into Georgetown - right back where I had come from. The Cap Crescent Trail is straight downhill in this direction – a pleasure! We stopped at District Doughnut at Cady's Alley, where I got a maple pecan doughnut and a cup of coffee. This was a distinct improvement over 202, but still nothing to write home about.

At District

Next we crossed Key Bridge and took a rather circuitous and confused route (including some backtracking) down to Sugar Shack on Columbia Pike in Arlington. This place, in my opinion, offered the best doughnut of the day. I bought a blueberry cake donut and went beyond taking a taste - I ate half of it. I texted home at that point and Valerie asked me to pick up a doughnut for her, which I did. I had been peeling off layers as I rode and was low on storage space – I wound up carrying the doughnuts in one of my water bottle cages.

The group was continuing on to additional stops as Astro in DC and then two more stops in Maryland, but I was out of time and close to home, so I said goodbye to the group and headed home.

Calories consumed might have exceed calories burned, but it was fun!

A Successful Frederick Ride

I've got a problem right now in that my home and my office are separated by fifty traffic-clogged miles of highway. Fortunately I don't have to go to my office every day, but on the days when I do I try to avoid coming home during rush hour, because it adds half an hour and a lot of stress to the ride. Some days I've just worked late. Others I've run on the track at Ft. Detrick (I find running on a track really boring). Unfortunately we're not allowed to use the gym on post (I even tried to scam my way in once - to no avail).

One idea with which I've been experimenting is bike riding - however my initial experiments weren't too successful. Actually, my first ride (in the morning, before work) wasn't bad. I started right near Ft. Detrick and rode out from there, past the EPA Superfund site of Area B and up toward Gambrills State Park. I had mapped out a loop ride. The problem is that I was riding my junker bike and the route turned out to be longer and much more vertical than I expected. After five miles of non-stop climbing I turned around at the wonderfully named Akers Acres and zipped back down. Still, the ride has potential. I will try it again with a better bike and with more time.

My second ride was in the morning as well and I didn't actually get much riding in. The route turned out to be further off the beaten track than I expected, and so I lost fifteen minutes getting there. Then, I had planned to park at a nature preserve but it turned out the parking lot was gated and locked. This led to more wasted time as I drove around looking for a place to park. I wound up parking in front of a church on Main Street in the small town of Jefferson, MD (Maryland apparently doesn't have any "local sons" to be proud of and so names their towns after ours). Once again I had a loop ride planned out but being short on time and parked in a different place than planned (plus it started drizlling) I just wound up doing a short out-and-back ride. Pretty scenery, though - I could see going back there.

Crossing a stream on ride #2

The days are starting to get a little bit longer, which means that if I shift my hours early and leave at 4 PM (which would have been unthinkable at my previous job but is perfectly normal at my new job) I can get some riding time in after work. I mapped out another loop, this one from the Urbana, MD Park-and-Ride lot. The beauty of this location is that, unlike the other two, it's on the way home - when I get to Urbana I've already knocekd off the first 15 minutes or so of my drive home.

I figured that I had about one hour of riding time before the end of civil twilight (that's the time after sunset when it's still light enough to do activities without artificial light). Again, I had mapped out a loop to do. I really need to get some way to do turn-by-turn directions, via a phone app or via a bike GPS. My method for now is to create the route on Google Maps but mostly use a hand-written cue sheet ("go 2 miles then turn right onto Dr. Perry Road") for directions, occasionally checking my position on the phone against the route on Google maps. 

I parked the car and hopped onto my bike. As expected, the first little bit, on a fairly busy road, was a little nerve-wracking. Mindful of a recent bicycle fatality just a few miles away I had my high visibility jacket and blinkie lights on. After a mile or so I turned onto a smaller road and from there on out traffic wasn't much of an issue. I rode down Roderick Road until it dead-ended at a creek. From there I took Peters Road and Thurston Road, which follow the creek.This part got pretty rural feeling - the road was even gravel for a bit in the back part of the ride. I got to enjoy a pretty sunset as I rode past farms and countryside.

I rode past a field with six grazing deer. All six took notice of me, following me with their heads as I rode past.   

At this point the light was starting to fade a little bit and I stopped to switch on an additional blinkie and switched my headlight from blinking to steady on. A left turn took me onto Dr. Perry Road, where I came across some magnificent homes and then a golf course. This was not exactly the rustic back country, but was still quite pleasant. 

From there I turned north onto Dixon Road, which began my return to the parking lot. I was starting to get a little nervous at this point about the fading light, but figured I still would just about make it. Dixon is another nice quiet country road and includes a bridge over another creek. Dixon runs back into Thurston, and from there it was a quick jaunt back to the parking lot - and I made it before the light was completely gone. 

Just about ten miles, with some gravel roads and some nice but not crazy hills. This route is definitely a keeper!