Great Pumpkin Ride in the Rain

It seems I mention rain in every post, and this one won't be an exception. The Backroads Century was canceled earlier this fall because of a hurricane. Two weeks ago, I canceled the Ashtabula, OH ride with Laurie, Scott, and Denise because of torrential rains that spanned from Lake Erie all the way to Virginia that Saturday. This past weekend, the Great Pumpkin Ride was almost a flop because of a Nor'easter. Could we at least arrange for the extreme storms to arrive mid-week so we could have a sunny Saturday or two!? 

For the pumpkin ride this past weekend, however, Katie, Chris, and I persevered. The forecast was rainy and cold for the morning, but it offered the promise of improvement as time went on, so we headed out to take our chances. It was so dismal early on that I don't think I would have motivated to go alone.

Katie and Chris were nice enough to drive me. 

The three of us at the start. No rain!

Things started out promising, but after 30 minutes or so, a fine mist began to fall that gradually turned to a drizzle, and eventually something we can only call rain. I'd thought I'd be stripping off my rain coat once I warmed up but that didn't happen. Warm and wet inside the rain coat was much more comfortable that freezing and wet outside of it.

I have few pictures of the ride because my phone was sealed up in a plastic bag, but the rain had returned to the fine mist category when I passed this house, so I stopped. I get so annoyed with all the blow-up plastic halloween yard decorations. An over turned car is something altogether different!

From this angle, you can't see the side door of the house which has plywood over it and a spray-painted message "Keep Out!"

The first rest stop with food was at mile 26 (remember I said in my last post that never before in my history of riding had I waited so long for a rest stop? Well I suppose I stand double corrected). We had to wait for it, but it was so worth it. Hot cider, delicious pumpkin soup, decadent pumpkin whoopie pies, and creamy pumpkin pie. It was a feast. And it was so warm in there!

Katie eating her pie. 

The down side - it was so warm in there. After getting really comfortable with my pie, someone opened the door and I felt this "breeze" from outside. Somehow, we had to return to the cold and wet.

We prepare to head out. Katie is unsure.

 As we pulled out from the rest stop, Chris chanted to himself, "I think it's fun. I think it's fun. I think it's fun."

After the rest stop, I felt really cold. The only way to remedy that was to ride harder and warm up from the inside. So I took off by myself for a bit to get my blood pumping. Eventually, I was back in the groove and stopped to wait for Katie and Chris. When they didn't show (Katie had stopped for a foot problem) and I felt the cold creeping back, I forged on alone.

By now, however, the weather cleared and no more rain fell on us. It was just the wind we had to contend with. But without the rain, the jaunt to the second rest stop (which was only 13-14 miles) went quickly, and before I knew it, I was at Busthead Brewery where Deidre and Christian waited at a cozy table in the corner. I had a quick snack and a beer sample and hit the road again, however. I didn't want to set myself up to be so cold again. There were 13 more miles to go before the finish and I remembered from last year they were mostly up hill. Time to get that over with.

Katie was still having foot trouble, so she and Chris stayed at Busthead while I rode to get the car.

In the parking lot, there were still quite a few cars, but no people, so I stripped all my wet stuff off right there in the field and put on very welcome dry things. Then I hopped in the car and cranked up the heat. By the time I got back to Busthead, I was warm and sleepy. But not so much that I couldn't enjoy a few pints and some fish tacos.

Our cozy corner table.

Thanks to Chris for driving home. Don't think I could have stayed awake to do that myself. At home, I took a wastefully long shower, put on my warm lobster socks, and laid down on the couch to read A Hole in the Wind--something I'd been thinking about doing all day! It was so comfy I think I only made it through one page before I fell sound asleep!

Here's our route. It started/ended in Warrenton. I just forgot to turn on the Garmin. Of course.

Distance: 54
Avg. Speed: 14

Ride for the Reserve - Never before in the history...

On a last minute whim, I drove to Poolesville, MD today to do the Ride for the Reserve. The ride is put on by the Montgomery Countryside Alliance to raise money to maintain an agricultural reserve in the area. It's 93,000 acres of farmland and forests (at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain) and is just 30 minutes from D.C. Planners in the county established the reserve 30 years ago. Hootyhoo!

It was forecasted to be a beautiful day (and it was!), so I wanted to take advantage and get some miles under my belt. The last month has been raining almost every day. It's been hard to motivate to ride! Anyway,  I heard about it from the WWO women. No shock because many of them live in Poolesville, so these are their stomping grounds.

I got their early and discovered immediately that this would be a small ride. That meant not only would I be alone (without a buddy), but I would be alone (without a pack of strangers who are at least, fellow riders). Even a few hundred riders thins out quickly on a 60 mile ride, and I knew many of them were probably not even on my route.

When I was checking in, I heard someone ask if the route was marked. "Novice," I thought. All routes are marked! But then I was surprised to hear the answer: no.  "Oh!" I thought. What the heck? Never before in the history of all the rides I've done, have I come across one with an unmarked route. How can you have a ride without marking the turns? So when I say it was a small ride, I mean small. This meant I would have to follow my cue sheet for every turn. I knew I couldn't count on riding with others and simply following. It's not that I mind so much following a cue sheet, but I didn't bring a clip to attach it to anything, and usually, that's one of the nice things about these rides: you don't have to pay so much attention.

Then I looked at the cue sheet. Twenty-five miles before the first rest stop. What? Never before in the history of all the rides I've done has the first rest stop been so far into the ride. I usually try to drink three water bottles in 30 miles, so this meant I'd have to conserve a bit--and worse, I'd drank part of my first bottle on the drive out. Also, I drank a half of a shake before leaving and didn't bring any of my own snacks.  Never before in the history of all the rides I've done, have I failed to pack something to eat, just in case. Now it had been an hour since I'd eaten something small, I had nothing with me, and almost two hours of riding to do before I'd get fed. Never before in the history!

I was not swayed. The sun was coming out, the countryside was waiting.

The photo loses the effect: the corn rose above us.

When I first looked at the cue sheet, I misread it and thought there would be 10 miles of gravel! Never before in the history of me doing these rides have I experienced 10 miles of unannounced gravel (meaning, they didn't let us know ahead of time). But thankfully, it's still never before, because the gravel was simply a gravely spot at the intersection. Almost smooth roads after that! Phew!

I made it to the first rest stop without expiring and rode into Rocklands Farm hungry and happy at mile 25. PB&J, cheese crackers, granola bars, honey crisp apples, fresh pressed cider, Gatorade. Yes, I had all of that! Actually, I packed the crackers and granola away for an emergency. The next rest stop was another 25 miles.

Rockland's Farm is also a winery. It looked pretty fun. There was a stage with picnic tables and a tasting room down the way.

Folks milling around snacking.

How did I get this skinny picture?

We stopped at the Kingsbury's Orchard for lunch. We had a rest stop just 4 miles before. Never before in the history of riding, have I had a rest stop 4 miles before a picnic lunch. So strange! Even stranger, this lunch stop was at mile 54. So after eating all the good food, I would have to get back on my bike and ride 4 miles to the finish. Never before in the history of these rides, have I attended an after party that wasn't actually after.

The orchard is also a farm. There were goats and cattle. And apples, of course. Many of us (including me), leaned our bikes against this goat enclosure. When I came back later, the goat was trying to eat someone's saddle bag. Never before in this history of my rides has a goat tried to eat bicycle equipment.

Lunch included a grilled veggie wrap, roasted potatoes, tomato salad, and brownies. I ate it all. While I ate, I listened to the last few songs of this bluegrass set, which was good. When they took a break, I figured that was my cue to get back on the bike and finish the thing up.

The cows came to the fence to say goodbye as I headed out for the last few miles.

I got back to my car in one piece, happy to have a sunny day of riding under my belt. And happy that all of my gadgets held out. My phone has been acting up, so I was afraid it would lose it's charge (which it didn't). But also, my Garmin was out of batteries, and I realized my odometer is fading out. Never before in the history of me riding, have I had so many gadgets threaten to die on me on one ride!

Distance: 60 miles
Avg speed: 14mph (ugh, so slow compared to last year)

Purce-hell

Laurie and I were supposed to ride the Potomac Pedalers Backroads Century in West Virginia this past weekend but it was canceled because of Hurricane Florence, which was threatening the mid-Atlantic. I don't know if Shepherdstown had bad weather in the end, but Sunday in VA was actually sunny--a rare event these days.

Rain canceled our planned ride in Ashtabula, OH in July (hoping to try again on that one in October), and has impeded my riding schedule (in addition to the trip to Alaska) in the last month I've been struggling, and often failing, to get my 60 miles in each week.

So Laurie and I planned a ride in Purceville to make up for the canceled Backroads Century. We planned to use the cue sheet from a WWO ride she did earlier in the summer. Then I had a bad IBS attack Saturday night. I should definitely have stayed home, but I couldn't stand the idea of canceling because that seems to be all we do lately with our bike rides - cancel them. So I went to Purceville anyway. Which was a little stupid. Laurie, for her part, woke at 5am and couldnt' get back to sleep. She'd had a stressful week and needed that sleep. Plus she hadn't ridden in two weeks. So we were not feeling 100%.

We met at Bicycles and Coffee in Purceville.

We are sad to start off feeling under the weather on a day when we finally have nice weather to ride!

The ride starts out for 4 miles on the W&OD, a nice flat, shaded spot to get warmed up. The bumps in the trail were jarring to my sore gut, however, so I was ready to hit the smoother road.

The W&OD

We entered the town of Waterford, which is quite lovely. It was founded in 1733 by Amos Janney, a Quaker from PA who built a mill on the Catoctin Creek and called the place Janney's Mill. The name changed to Waterford in the 1780s. After we got done with it, Laurie and I were ready to rename it the Bermuda Triangle. We could not find our way out of that place!

Laurie rides ahead through town.

Looking down this hill reminded me of the villages in France.

I thought this was so funny, a door on the 2nd story leading nowhere.

This is Laurie leading the way on our first pass by this house. We'd go by at least one more time as we circled around trying to figure out the cue sheet and wondering if this was where the "one missing turn" we'd heard about was located.

I just love old cabins like this because they remind me of our vacations in Canada.

Eventually, we escaped Waterford and set out into the country side. Most of the ride was relatively flat, so there were no spectacular overlooks or anything, just rolling fields dotted with round hay bales.

We knew we'd entered Taylorstown because there was a sign and an out-of-business general store. It's sad to see these places close up.

We stopped on Lovettsville road to eat our snacks. Dry saltine crackers for me. A luscious looking PB&J with banana for Laurie--but this was the first thing she'd eaten all day. I hadn't eaten anything but a few of these crackers, so I knew my energy was going to drop out at some point.

See Mr. Cow looking at me from under the tree? How now brown cow?

After our stop, we came to Lovettsville. By now, we are both hurting. The lack of rest, lack of nutrition, and my illness (I would discover I had a fever when we got home), were all taking their toll. I didn't take any pictures of Lovettsville but should have. What a weird little place. It looked like someone decided to start a town and dropped 5 or 6 pre-fab neighborhoods into the middle of nowhere then threw in a gas station (with a nice bathroom, btw), and a few other retail outlets. It looked like the suburbs in the country. Completely devoid of personality.

So, I just looked it up. It was settled by Germans in 1836, so I guess there is an historic downtown somewhere, our cue sheet just didn't take us through it.

By now we are at mile 24 and we're ready for home. Then we finally came upon the missing turn. Thankfully, this didn't take us out of our way. We realized it was missing immediately and had to stop twice to look at the map. Not too bad.

Then we were back on the W&OD! Almost there!

Here's the image of the whole ride. I'm surprised to see Lovettsville looking like it's right in the middle. It felt like it took us forever to get there.

And here's part of the reason why. We went in circles in Waterford, tried one way out, realized it was wrong, doubled back and did another circle through the town and finally headed out the right way!

In the end, we rode 39 miles (should have been 36). At 13.2 mph. Slow but not too bad for two miserable old ladies who didn't feel well! :)

I came home, showered, and went to bed. Didn't get up until 7:30 pm!

Capital Crescent Trail - Finally!

For all the years I've lived and biked in the DC area, I have somehow never ventured onto the Capital Crescent Trail. This is a 7 mile paved trail that connects Georgetown to Bethesda. Marcelle has ridden it many times so she agreed to be my guide. 

On Fridays, I usually try to finish my work early so I can ride in the late afternoon, but I flipped it today to avoid the rain forecasted for late in the day. Ironically, the rain came early. When I parked in Vienna, it looked there had just been a downpour. I rode through spitting rain from the Vienna caboose to the Bluemont caboose on the W&OD (about 8 miles). 

Marcelle had fun on snapchat while she waited for me.

Bluemont

From Bluemont, we cut over to the Custis Trail and rode into Rosslyn then over the Key bridge. I love riding over the Key Bridge because the railings allow you to really see the river.

Once over the Potomac we turned right on M street and rode down to Wisconsin where we took another right toward the water. And then another right on Water street.

Water Street dead ends at the Capital Crescent at the ivy covered overpass, just after Thompson's Boat house.  

The trail is paved, wooded, and flat - except there is an invisibly slight incline when riding north, which makes for a fun ride back!

In a blink, we arrived in Bethesda.

The trail ended in front of Paul's - a cute little bakery/cafe filled with beautiful things to eat.

We sat outside for a quick rest. Marcelle enjoying her passion (a cup of coffee) and me scarfing down a salmon and mushroom quiche that came in a wonderful flaky tart-like crust.

Marcelle's libation

It hadn't ever really rained on us, but it was humid and sometimes misty. And overcast. So after sitting in my damp clothes for a bit, I began to get chilled. In July! The world is going crazy. Anyway, we packed up and headed back down the trail--even faster than we'd come since it's slightly downhill going south.

We caught a glimpse of the Washington Monument with the Key Bridge in the foreground on our return trip.

Just a quick pic of the old canal in Georgetown.

Georgetown was lined with hanging baskets of pink flowers - the kind that wouldn't survive a week in my yard with my inconsistent watering habits.

And back over the Key Bridge toward VA and the W&OD.

What great fun to ride from Vienna to Bethesda without really ever leaving a bike path!

43 miles
11.7 mph