Obligatory bike pic. My water bottles froze solid on the way in, got some water in DC but I was seriously dehydrated by the time I got back. You do sweat when you’re otherwise cold and your body works hard to stay warm requiring more nutrition, another area that I neglected.

When I get to Needwood Lake where the trail starts I find the entrance gated and this sign indicating the culling of the deer population. Says they open at sunrise and as you can see the sun is indeed up, so I go try and find another access point then come back, still gated. I park at another park down and across the road, there’s a trailhead and I assume (wrongly) that it will meet up with the main trail. After “mountain biking” in the wrong direction I come out to a highway. Didn’t want to be on the highway because of ice but no choice so I ride with some crazy traffic on icy shoulders until I find the trail. This will be the theme for the day, deciphering where the trail is.

When I finally made it out of the black hole that is the MD section of the Rock Creek trail I got on Beach Drive as planned and it was great, no traffic with some sections closed to traffic as is the case on weekends and holidays. Smooth sailing into the district from here. I shared the road with a few other cyclists, a few looked like they were heading to the event but some such as these guys looked to be out for a training ride. I didn’t try and catch them as I was riding my slow 520 with twenty pounds of extra shoes, chemical warmers, lights, etc.

I’m sure this is the first inaugural where free valet bike parking was available. Part of my reason for going was that WABA was providing bike parking, had posted Google maps showing what streets were blocked, where the bike paths were etc. Pretty cool and hopefully signals a new era of accepting alternative forms of transportation.

Heard somebody shout “yah, it’s Amsterdam on the Potomac!”

Been taking pics of trash lately. I like the composition, random, but this is constructed.

On our way to the mall we were stopped to allow a convoy of buses to pass, must have been a hundred. I started to grumble and realized something, nobody was complaining. Normally people would be bitching left and right, not today, even later when we were packed cheek to jowl, nobody pushed, rather they helped each other over obstacles or shouted “curb” when we were shuffling forward. I’ve never experienced this before.

The crowd grew as I came over the hill behind the Washington monument. It was a very dreamy kind of feeling that I had for a few brief moments, things sort of went slow motion. There was a jumbo tron screen in front of me and one off behind and the sound was delayed between them so the roar of the crowd just sort of rolled across the grounds. When the crowd wasn’t roaring there was dead silence and I think that’s when it was really emotional, millions of people standing rapt. I wandered up towards the monument and into the crowd, again no pushing or jockeying for space. I spent a lot of time just looking at the expressions on the faces of the people. It was incredible, and for me incredibly brief as I knew the trail would dish up more surprises on the way back and surely did not want to be caught lost at night. Sure enough I got turned around a few more times and barely made it back to my car before dark. I was exhausted and incredibly thirsty, only 58 miles or so but I was trashed. It’s very frustrating when you need to drink and your water is frozen. Thawed them on the heater in the car as I drove home. Glad I did it. Looking at my track on the gps after returning-kind of humorous, not so when I was out there.

This was a particularly vexing section of the trail when I headed north bound. Funny in retrospect but not so much when I was trying to figure it out. Looks so simple and I suppose if I was more familiar with my gps unit I could have avoided some of this.