cycleMDS: Some Down Time

So, when I left Lexington, VA, I was pretty excited to get to Harrisonburg, VA. I hadn't seen any familiar faces since Americus, GA. Being out of the mountains and all, I was moving pretty quickly and made it to town by 11:00am. I didn't really know what else to do, so I pedaled around town a little bit, then over towards Eastern Mennonite University's campus to find Rudy, another Hesston College Disaster Management graduate from the same class as Alyssa (friend in Americus, GA). After lunch I found a couple more former students to hang out with until supper. During supper, I got a call from the Daily News Register, the newspaper in Harrisonburg. We made arrangements to meet the following day. That evening I made my way over to Clark's place where I would sleep the next three nights.

The following morning I was visited by a reporter from the DNR. We chatted for a while about the trip, Mennonite Disaster Service, and the Disaster Management Program at Hesston College. When we finished, I had brunch with Joe and his family. Joe and I took Probability and Statistics class at the same time in high school. It was a good time. I suppose you just had to be there. Anyway, Joe's family now lives in Harrisonburg and not Henderson, obviously. It was nice to talk with people that I have a longer history with. After brunch I went to an awkward little photo shoot with another reporter from the DNR. That evening I met up with my friends Eric, Beth, and Steve for tea.

The next day I hung out at the farmer's market with Clark, where I found out that the article in the Daily News Register was already out. I did a little bit of sight seeing around Harrisonburg on my bicycle that morning, then watched a little bit of World Cup soccer that afternoon. Honestly, the World Cup was the main reason I took a second day off. It was a little disappointing to see the US lose to Ghana, but all in all I'm pretty excited to see US citizens actually caring about soccer. I watched the first half with Clark, then headed over to my friend John's place. John moved away from Henderson during late elementary school. It was good to connect with him again and reminisce about the good ol' days and compare college stories. That night I watched a movie at Clark's place and got to bed way later than I intended.

The following morning I was moving quite slowly. I reluctantly rolled out of bed 40 minutes after my alarm had gone off, and by now the sun was already up and shining. I had some cereal and grabbed some brownies and cookies for the road, and set out towards Washington DC. I knew it was more than 130 miles to DC, so I had looked for campgrounds between the two locations the night before. I found a few options through Google and decided that the one right before my only moderate climb for that leg of the journey would be the best idea. It would be about 85 miles in, leaving a fairly short day to follow as I entered DC. I got to riding on Highway 11, heading northeast and basically paralleling Interstate 81, and things were going very well during the morning. By the time I stopped for a break, I had covered about 70 miles and it was only 11:15am. At this rate, I would be stopping to camp just shortly after noon. As I thought about it, I only had 60-65 miles left and I was feeling really good. At this point, I decided to just bike until the turnoff for the campground and think more when I got there. Well, the campground turnoff came rather quickly, and it was right at the foot of the one climb I had between Harrisonburg and DC. At this point, it was extremely hot and I was feeling a little rough because I had just started to climb. I started to think about how nice it would be to get off my bike at that point and set up camp and just relax for the rest of the afternoon and evening, with a pot full of beans and rice to keep me company, and how much more work it would be to bike the last 45-50 miles to DC. Then I started thinking about air conditioning and a bed. The air conditioning and bed won out. I got back on my bike and pressed onward up the mountain. I was reminded again of how much I hate climbing, especially when approaching 90 miles for the day. Looking at the elevation change and the number of miles in which I climbed that elevation, it wasn't a bad climb, but it really did take it's toll on my legs. I was no longer feeling as fresh as I had been that morning. The rest of the ride was a lot of the same stuff I had seen all morning: rolling hills with moderate grade. When I got to about mile 100, I ran out of water. At that point I really started looking for places to fill up, but since it was a Sunday, a lot of places were closed. The first place I came to that was open was called The British Pantry and Cafe. I was kind of wondering why there was this little British cafe and store out in the middle of what felt like nowhere, but I was more focused on getting water than I was finding out the history of the establishment. I asked the woman that was working if they had anything in their fridge that was not carbonated, and she pulled out a small $5 bottle of blood orange juice. I'm generally a tightwad, but at this moment I didn't care how much it cost, I wanted it. It was delicious. I ended up filling my bottles in the restroom sink and taking a seat outside to let my legs relax a bit. The woman at the counter seemed to take pity on me and gave me another bottle of the expensive blood orange juice. After a while off the bike, I went back in to refill my bottles one more time and the woman remembered that some energy drinks in the cooler were about to expire and that she would have to throw them out. She asked me how many I could carry. I took 4 of them (and drank all of them by the time the day was over) and thanked her again. When I got back on my bike, my legs had a little bit of renewed energy in them and I was able to make it to the outskirts of the city before stopping for another rest. At this time I knew I was very well hydrated, but my legs felt like they were constantly on the verge of cramping, so I went to a grocery store and bought a large bottle of v8 (Sodium). I drank about half of it and kept on cycling. As I got closer to the actual city limits of DC, I noticed that my GPS didn't really seem to understand that I'm on a bicycle. I had told it to avoid highways, but Garmin doesn't seem to understand the seriousness with which I meant "AVOID". Garmin just couldn't get it through it's head that I was not supposed to be on I-395 coming into DC. I looked for another way into the city, but Garmin was not helpful and I was too tired to bike back and forth looking for a bike lane. This was not a proud moment, and with my actions I probably gave some of the citizens of the area a worse view of cyclists, but I decided to go ahead and break the law and bike on the Interstate. Believe me, if I would have known a better way in, I certainly would have taken it. I-395 also happened to have construction underway, so there was no shoulder. I was on a bridge with a barrier on my right and in the midst of two lanes of traffic trying to get into Washington DC. Survival instincts were enough to get my legs (which had already cycled just under 130 miles for the day) to pump like crazy to keep from angering the drivers into smashing me into the guardrail. The bridge was pretty busy, which was a good thing because it slowed traffic considerably. I was still pumping out just over 30 mph the whole way across this bridge on my loaded touring bike. As soon as I got across I took the first exit I could and just slowed way down to a crawl. I picked a low gear and just kind of putted through town towards my sister's place. Upon arrival, I did some mapping and calculating, and figured out that it had been a 133 mile day in the heat.

When I got to Tiffany's (my sister) place, she and JR (her husband) had not yet returned from a weekend camping trip. Lucky for me, she has some kind neighbors. Christina invited me in to her place for a drink and to get out of the heat. We talked cycling for a while because I saw her new cyclocross bike and mountain bike in her living room. When Tiffany and JR returned, we didn't really do much that evening. My legs didn't really want to do much other than sit.

The next morning Katie, one my fellow Resident Directors at Hesston College, came over from Delaware to spend the day in DC. I tried not to show how tired my legs were as we walked around. I also knew it was good for me to be on my feet so that my legs wouldn't completely tighten up. The National Geographic Museum was our first stop after lunch. They had two primary exhibits going: Design for the Other 90% and Da Vinci - The Genius. They were two very different, but very interesting displays. Design for the Other 90% showed some simple yet brilliant solutions to issues like getting clean drinking water and cooking without electricity to providing internet communication to very remote locations for educational purposes. Da Vinci - The Genius had a lot of models of his crazy ideas for inventions that were centuries ahead of their time and some replicas of his artwork, including a section devoted to The Mona Lisa.

Our next major stop was at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. That's always been one of my favorite parts of the Smithsonian. Currently they have special exhibits on Darwinian Evolution and Masterworks of Yup’ik Science and Survival. Apparently the Yup'ik are a group of native people in Alaska. Both exhibits were pretty cool.

I find myself really enjoying the museums in DC when I go to them, but I don't go to them alone. If I'm ever out here visiting my sister and I have down time, I don't generally find myself exploring much, I tend to just wait for my sister or a friend in the area to get off work. Even when I'm cycling on this trip, I come across things that look like they may be interesting to see or explore, but I tend to bike past them, as though the mileage for the day or the destination are more important. Maybe this realization will cause me to take more initiative to explore on my own, even though it's generally more fun with a friend.

After the museum and a little more sightseeing around the Mall area, Tiffany, JR, Katie, and I went to Granville Moore's for supper. Apparently the chef at Granville Moore's bested Food Network's Bobby Flay on a mussel cook-off. Bobby Flay apparently has a TV show where challenges chefs to a cook-off on their home turf. I had the mussels and they were pretty tasty. The evening ended with a visit from my friend Hilary and a late evening of catching up since my last visit to the area.

Tuesday I decided to spend the morning being a tourist again, so I biked around by the mall for a while in the morning, snapping a few pictures that don't have me in them because I was the photographer. I met my friend Jen for lunch after a jaunt on the bike across town to a restaurant/bookstore called Busboys and Poets. The afternoon got hotter than I really wanted to experience outdoors, so I then headed back to my sister's place to enjoy the air conditioning. In the evening, my friends Joe and Jocie came over for a while. Joe has recently moved to the city, but Jocie has been here for a while and I have managed to miss her each time I come out, so I was glad to have connected with the two of them this time out. Due to a work schedule that demands Jocie wake up at 4am, the two of them did not stay late. My friend Hilary ended up stopping in just after they left, and we ordered Ethiopian food from a little place just down the street. I love Ethiopian food. When I was at Hesston I would have the occasional privilege of a kitchen full of Ethiopian students. They repaid the use of my freezer and kitchen with some of the food that they made. I really think I came out ahead on that deal.

Today I slept in. My intent was to wake up and work on my bicycle a bit, just cleaning and making sure everything is running smoothly. I sat around the house and started to write this blog until Tiffany called and invited me to join her for lunch. After eating with her, I called up Jonathan, one of my former RAs from Hesston, and we met for coffee. Now I'm looking forward to going out for Thai food with my friend Veloris who is headed to town from Baltimore this evening. I intend to hit the road early tomorrow morning headed east towards Maryland and Delaware (I should be hitting two states tomorrow!). Another former RA from Hesston has agreed to meet me at the bay bridge to transport me and my bike across, as it is illegal for me to ride across. Probably about as bad of an idea as how I got into DC, only on a much longer bridge. I will try to be better about blogging as my travels continue, but when I actually have people to talk to, I find it more difficult to sit down to write about my travels.