Biking DC

Biking possibilities are endless around the big city and with a bit of fall color in the wind, it’s a great time to explore new parks and neighborhoods.

Fall is for Lazin’

When you’re a cute, 18-pound furball named Fuji, you laze away the cooler fall days by increasing your quotient of lap time, or if those laps have left the apartment for awhile, you can always cuddle up with a rug.

Arizona to the North Cascades

 

Diablo Lake.

At the end of September 2012, I headed back out to Arizona to see my dad, still struggling to recover from surgery.  Or so I thought.  Though he tried a bit of physical therapy for a few weeks to get back on his feet, I learned later his heart wasn’t in it and he was slowly giving up hope.  I tried to encourage him.  A lot of things were looking up, I said, even if it had been a long, difficult haul.  The doctor and nurses agreed.  He would get on his feet and inch along with his walker, but the pace was too slow and he felt no sense of optimism that he could ever really walk again.  After a few days, his attitude did improve slightly, the pain diminished a notch or two and it seemed he might finally be putting the worst of the recovery process behind him.

I left him there for ten days and headed up to Bellingham for most of a week, where I managed to get back in the hills for a few short strolls along Canyon Creek, Happy Creek and the Happy Panther Trail.  I joined old friends briefly for a volunteer weeding party at Diablo Lake, then spent several more days getting a little work done on the rental.  Next came Oregon for a three-day conference and more short rambles around the base of Mount Hood in perfect October weather.

From there, I zipped over the clouds back to Arizona to check on my dad.  This time it wasn’t good.  In fact he had given up altogether, wouldn’t eat and decided he just wanted to be done with it.  He’d lost his wife in March and without any real mobility, and not much sensation left in his hands, he felt no need to carry on.  So I stayed with him until he slipped away on October 28, 2012.  My brother from PA joined us there while our dad still knew who we were.  Amazingly, just three days before he passed, he was still telling stories of places he used to sail, rattling off the names of classic wooden boats he built or helped build, most of which are probably long gone by now.  I’ve posted below a photo of one he designed and built in the early Sixties—a 40-foot schooner, Destiner, that was the pride of the fleet.  Rest well, dad.

Mount Hood, OR.

 

Billy Goat Trail Redux (MD)

 

Mather Gorge.

Kris and I checked out this local favorite near Great Falls in 2011.  On September 23, 2012, I saddled up and pedaled my old Giant bike down the hill through Georgetown and out the C&O path to Great Falls, stopping at the northerly trail junction for the funner part of the Billy Goat Trail.  The hike/scramble leads along the rocky shore of Mather Gorge, on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.  Since the route is on rock much of the distance, paint daubs lead the way.  The cruxy part involves a light scramble along a diagonal ledge.  Just to see how my middle-aging sense of balance was faring, I went up without using any hands.. piece o’ cake.  The only bad thing about the hike is it ends too soon, so plan to sit on the rocks and read or pig out or something to really enjoy it.  I trotted back up the C&O to retrieve my bike and pedaled back to town—a perfect 35-mile day split by a lazy two-hour walk, leaving time for a couple of chores back home.

Go Nats!

September 21, 2012.  Ken and Kris go to the ball game, right field bleachers.  DC’s Nationals leading the league, goin’ all the way to the World Series, right?  Great game, expensive beer.  Turns out they shoulda stopped in the eighth inning while they were still ahead.  Despite the setback, they had already made the playoffs one day earlier—when the crowd went wild, as someone once said.

Chimney swifts

An alley behind our previous apartment offers a great place to watch a thousand or more chimney swifts barreling in herds into a tall brick chimney attached to an older apartment building.  They gather around dusk and circle a few hundred times in swirling clouds of birdity, seeming to wait for the light to be just so before entering.  Or maybe they wear watches so they can turn in at a respectable hour.  How they all nest and/or roost in there is a major mystery.  The event seems to be most observable later in summer, before the colder weather comes, and the fledglings are flipping out with the whole flying thing.  I just hope no one lights up the building’s boiler before the birds move south to friendlier climes for the winter.  This terrible photo is no help at all in conveying the coolness of the occurrence.

Signal Knob (VA)

View from Signal Knob.

In my rummaging for a new hike in the Blue Ridge, I came across Signal Knob, another ten-mile round-trip, not too far from DC.  In mid-September 2012, Kris and I mustered an earlier start than usual and headed out the 66 to enjoy some rays on a late-summer day.  This straight-forward ramble in the George Washington National Forest leads to the northerly summit of Massanutten Mountain, passing several viewpoints on the way.  Those views are probably a little better than the one at the end.  We suspect the views atop were better (and the trees sparser) when the Knob served as an observation station for the Signal Corps during the Civil War.  The Confederates had it for a couple of years, but were outmaneuvered by the Union army who took control of the site in 1864.  The signals from the site today, though not of the lantern and mirror type, are controlled by a hefty communication tower, but the thing set back from the vista just enough to be, well, tolerably distracting.