Bike DC

Bike DC yesterday was a big success.  The weather was perfect (low 70s and sunny), and the biking was good.  A little bit of miscommunication meant we never met up with Erin's other friend who was doing it, but that's ok. 

We metro-ed down to the starting point.  The ride was supposed to start from 7:00-7:30, but since the first train doesn't leave until 7:00 on weekends we didn't get going until about 7:45.  We had to book it a little since at some point they were going to unclose roads, but there were lots of other people who had done what we did and started a little late, so we weren't in any real danger.  There was also a shorter "family ride" that started at 7:45, so we kind of got stuck with them right at the beginning, but we went around a lot of them and pretty soon they split off for the easier path. 

The route started off in front of the Capitol, and took us up Pennsylvania avenue in front of the Whitehouse.  From there we went up the Rock Creek Parkway, which winds along the creek into Northwest DC.  We turned around right about where you get off for the National Zoo.  Coming back we wound along roads past the Kennedy Center to the Roosevelt Bridge across the Potomac into Arlington. 

From there we were directed up the George Washington Parkway which runs along the Potomac from Alexandria through the entirety of Arlington and up to where the Beltway crosses the Potomac in the North.  There was a big hill we had to work our way up as the parkway gets higher and higher above the river leading up to Great Falls.  Shortly after that crested we turned back and flew back down the hill.  Next we went up some side roads to cross Rt 50, and made a spiraling loop around the Iwo Jima memorial.  Then we cruised along the edge of Arlington Cemetary past the pentagon, to a rest stop that was at the Air Force Memorial.  From there we doubled back to the Roosevelt bridge to cross to the finish line at McPherson Square.  The whole thing reminded me a little of the N64 racing game "Crusin USA" where you race through famous US cities and fly by all the landmarks (which in the game are not at all correctly geographically placed). 

It was pretty crowded the whole way, which meant we couldn't go quite as fast as we might have liked at times, but it didn't hold us back too much.  And it was nice to not have to worry about traffic lights or cars.  If we'd gotten an earlier start we might have been better off since we could have avoided the family riders, but oh well.  You could definitely tell where the family routes were and weren't since the number of kids increased substantially.  Most of the time though we were on at least 2 lanes of road or more that we had to ourselves, but sometimes that included both directions of bikers. 

Still, as a one time (or perhaps once a year thing) it was worth the $40.  I even forked over the extra 15 for a tshirt.  It was cool to see how many people there were out there too (I don't know actual numbers, but at least in the 1000s, if not around 10,000).  Drinks and bananas and chips at the finish line were nice too.  There were two intermediate rest stops we didn't partake of, and I had brought a backpack with gatorade, a water bottle, some fruit, and some peanuts.

On our way up the GW parkway Erin saw the only crash of the day we witnessed as a few people wiped out.  At the very end a little kid ate it too, but that hardly counts.  We also passed a few people dragging boom box playing recordings of spin workouts which was amusing.  There were lots of weird bikes around including a good number of Tandems, both of the two person and three person varieties), as well as some weird bikes with boxes on the front that I had never seen before.  They were like wagons but a rider sat in the back and pedalled.  They were weird.  About 100 yards from the finish line, Erin shouted I'll race you and took off, cutting me off behind a crowd of kids.  Since she thought I was stuck she slowed down though, which I capitalized on after dropping back to take the wide way around, and I zipped past her right at the end.

From the end of the ride Erin and I biked home.  We went down to the Mall, then over past the Lincoln Memorial across the Memorial bridge.  We were able to hop on the Mount Vernon trail from there and then back up the W+OD like I commute for work.  Since Erin wanted to get to 55 miles for the day, we added the Bluemont loop in and went a little further into Vienna than we needed to before heading home.  In total we went 53 miles, and including stops it was just over 5 hours.  We capped it off with a mothers day BBQ that included ribs and lamburgers.  All in all, not a bad day.