Riding down a covered sidewalk in DC

I just got back from the latest first ride of the year I’ve ever had. Spring was wet, the summer has been brutally hot and muggy, and this is the first Saturday it was cool enough for a morning ride.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

It makes me a bit crazy that I live two miles from work and drive to it every day, but I’m pretending to be a grownup, wearing suits and ties and all. Not that anyone (except EJ) cares. Granted, I’ve abandoned ties for the summer, except for special occasions.

The part of the future I’ve always been sad that never arrived is future clothes. Granted that my Permanent press dress shirts and microfiber stain resistant slacks have perfectly good tech in them, but my favorite gear clothes are my zip-off nylon cargo pants. They’ve been to the Mojave to watch Spaceship One launch, along on my Route 66 expedition, are a regular feature when I go to do event network setups with Alex and the TechKnowledge crew, and the only thing I’d wear to do bushwhacking at Paul and Gayle’s in the summer heat.

Even on casual friday though, they don’t make it to work much. They’re just too geeky.

Which is to say that they’re functional and practical, something clothing evidentally isn’t really supposed to be. Jeans are a statement of solidarity with the working class, as well as a of the refusal to leave our childhood playclothes behind, but they’re not all that nuch more functional than dress slacks.

I do love mine though.

Back to biking.

EJ wanted to get her bike out to go rowing on the Potmac, riding up to the Thompson Boat Center where she rents a scull. I gamely accompanied her the first year because I’ve always liked rowing, but getting in and out of the little things wasn’t nearly as much fun for me as for her.

Since her bike has been laid up for the better part of the summer heat as well, I knew it would need air in the tires, which is my job, and as long as I had to go down and pump her bike up at 6:30 am…I might as well drag mine down the three flights of stairs as well.

THere’s no exercise to be had in pumping up our tires, since I’ve got a $10 air pump that runs off my car’s 12v system. It’s pretty sweet, if not especially quiet.

EJ followed me north up the Washinton Bike trail, which actually runs through our parking lot, until she couldn’t take it anymore, then zoomed on ahead with all the other speedy bikers with their drop handlebars and zoomy ways. I’ve never been so much a zoomer, as a noodler, cranking along in my own space, poking into places to see what was there, dropping my gears low on hills.

I’ve thrilled to speed on a bike, but have now fallen off enough, broke enough things, and lost enough vison, that noodling works just fine for me.

I noodled my way up to the fourteenth street bridge, across to the Capital, west past the tidal basin and the Jefferson monument, up almost to the Lincoln, and then down the mall to Air and Space. Somehow there seem to have been a number of monuments added to the mall when I wasn’t looking, and I’ll have to go back with my camera to get some of them. Back from Air and Space and across the 14th the other way my legs weren’t aching at all…but despite my shock absorbing saddle…

Back at the parking lot I pulled the front wheel off and slid the bike into the back of the wagon under the delusion that I’m going to take it places and do biking.

All in all I biked for about an hour and a half, which I could fit in before work in the mornings, but there’s no way to hang a suit on the back of a bike. Well, we’ll see.