Family Sightseeing #2

(or How to Rent Bikes and Peddle from DC to Great Falls)

Last time, it was a bike ride out to Mt. Vernon. This time, the bike trip during mom and dad's father's day visit was northwest into Maryland to Great Falls. A great 30-mile loop, doable even for amateurs

Rentals at Big Wheels Bikes in Georgetown. Good deal of only $21 per bike, with helmet and lock.

Depart Georgetown 10:30 am
Arrive Great Falls 1:00 pm
Depart Great Falls 2:30 pm
Return Georgetown 4:30 pm

Steadily uphill on the way to Great Falls, but you don't really notice it until the return trip is consistently and comfortably downhill, alhamduallah. Such a scenic trip, I'm embarrassed that I hadn't ever been out there before the bike trip! Great place, especially widewater and the falls themselves.

Family Sightseeing #1

Great way to spend a memorial day weekend with Megan, Andrew and Kirsten. An 11-mile tourism marathon around just about all of DC!

ski weekend

wisp resort in deep creek, maryland is a great weekend trip from DC. a relatively scenic 3 hour drive to the great little resort community nestled pretty close to the mountain. the hill's really nice, has a good variety runs and a nice lodge. best part, of course, a great two nights in a beautiful rental cabin with Darren, Kaitlin, Sean, Andrew, Chris, Al, Barrett and Katie.

How many languages are spoken by that crew of globe-trotters? great question, glad you asked: Arabic, Chinese, German, Farsi, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Tajiki, Telugu, Urdu. Or, when you do the math, an amazing 54% of the world's population...

second half stats

After I canceled on Andrew this morning -- it's not so much that it was cold, but the wind brought the conditions to an unplayable level -- i figure the year's tennis season is over...and the calculations proved tremendous growth in the second-half of the summer since i crunched the numbers last!

Playing only after the calendar hit November means the numbers average to almost three matches a month through October. Of 14 matches, I won two, MY FIRST VICTORIES EVER!!

I still lost 25 of 30 sets, but that happens. More importantly, my game total surged. In the second half of the summer, I won 37.3% of the games i played - a pretty sizable jump over the spring's 30%. Must be I was inspired by Nalbandian...

The growth, and the rivarly, to continue in Hyderabad!

Bull Run Fun

Best part of mid-November camping in Northern Virginia? Not a briefcase of PBR, strangely enough, but rather the campground's commitment to take history seriously.

To lend an authentic experience to camping at Bull Run, the play reenactments of the Battle of Bull Run (first or second, your choice) while you camp.

Oh wait. Never mind. It's just that there's a shooting range right next to the campground...

Old Rag Time

Day hike/scramble to the top of Old Rag, Shenandoah N.P., the mid-Atlantic's most well-known summit. Lots of people do it each spring/summer/fall weekend day. Get there early to beat the crowds, but it's popular for good reason! Beautiful views, easy-to-follow trails, neat rock terrain, fun scrambling, etc. A great way to spend a Columbus Day!

7.4 mile loop, -2,400' elevation gain, 5-6 hour hike

90 minutes Southwest of Washington, D.C.

K. Holtje, rookie adventuress
J. Jewett, under-estimator of amount of water required for hike

Pack It In

FedEx Field is just a metro ride and a stroll from my front door step, so I knew there were no excuses when the Packers came to town to battle the Redskins. Great to cheer alongside Bargey. We both felt unwelcome enough, strangely enough, to move seats.


Less great to lose to first-time fans Gloria and Ken. In overtime. After the last-second game-winning field goal clanked. Ouch.

Learning not to bike to places that start with “Mount”

What better gift for my parents’ anniversary than treating them to the same wondrous adventure that they raised me on: biking to the top of high places.


After two days of DC touring, we hopped onto two rented bikes (~$45 each at the local bike rental joint) and my rusty, squeaky early-summer purchase. Biking to Mount Vernon’s a nice little 15 mile adventure south of the city, almost entirely on paved bike trail. We invited Josh, Amy and little Elena, and set off after the morning rain stopped.


An hour in, about halfway, Amy popped a tire. The mini-adventure of getting it fixed was a nice break on the legs. Moving my heavy, inefficient bike was proving more difficult than I’d anticipated. Josh and I celebrated the crest of the hill, right before Mount Vernon, with a short walk – all the better to enjoy the views.


Luckily, the tour of George Washington’s manor was well worth the trek. You can see, with a view like that, why the man was content to give up public life in DC and return to the country. I wouldn’t mind the same someday.

South Cornerstone Galore

Word Masteress Emily gave me all the invitation I needed. We can go wherever you’d like, she volunteered, anywhere we go in the city will be new to me, so why don’t we tour around the places you’d like to see?

The South Cornerstone.

Whitney, Katie and I picked the North Cornerstone, back in April, as the most accessible/adventurous cornerstone to target first. With three to go, and knowing full well that East will be tricky and West threatens to be not that interesting, I suggested that Emily and I combine a tour of Old Town Alexandria with a second installment of the Cornerstone Chase. The only problem was that I wasn’t even sure that the South Cornerstone even exists anymore, the maps are a bit ambiguous. But the lady was game enough to agree.

The Old Town’s as delightfully bourgeoisie as a couple of young professionals could hope for. Blocks and blocks of old brick rowhouses gentrified into either charming restaurants, pricey shops or pretty nice places to live. At the river’s edge, we turned south, following a bike trail underneath a sketchy freeway bridge. Strange abandoned vans, mystery stinky trashy bags. Just because we were making jokes doesn’t mean that we didn’t pick up our pace.

The trail led to an underutilized, overgrown park. We walked, optimistically, as far as the park would allow. At the far corner, a historic lighthouse of sorts, trending towards dilapidated. A hunch and a hop over a fence. Emily looked confused.

And there she was, easing into the encroaching Potomac, a cornerstone, framed behind a not-often-used peephole in the seawall ten feet in front of the lighthouse. The South Cornerstone, the very first to be laid down in 1791. (Maybe. The authenticity of the present cornerstone is under dispute.)

Check.

Three Ridges Aplenty

My "Hiking Virginia" book is dogearred with great Shenandoah and Blue Ridge hikes, but only one trail earns the title of Virginia’s newest wilderness area: Three Ridges and The Priest in the George Washington National Forest. Jon, Libby and I set out to hike the hills on a perfect Labor Day weekend. Libby and I escorted Jon half of the way to training in Georgia, then rode Amtrak back from Charlottesville on the flip side. Hip hip horray for three-day weekends well spent!

Two-night loop along Appalachian Trail and Mau-Har Trail
13.8 miles, ~4,000’ elevation gains

Southwest of Lovinston, VA, site of Bargey’s 2006 wedding!

ALPs alumni extravaganza:
L.R. Strait
J.D. Mungen
J.R. Jewett

Day 1

2.5 miles
1,000 ft elevation gain

VA56 trailhead north on AT to Harpers Creek shelter

Stead climb led to nice area with lots of campsites and tent pads, very small creek

Day 2

8.0 miles
2,000 ft elevation gain

Up and across ridgeline, down creek valley to Campbell Falls campsite. Long 3 mile, 2,000 foot gain to start the day. First great view at Chimney Rock. Unfortunately no view from peak of Three Ridges at 3,970’. While there are some campsites in the area, you’d have to haul all your water up the mountain. Hanging Rock (below) at 6.8 miles is as good as it gets.


Nice shelter, outhouse, campsites at Maupin Shelter, would make a decent resting spot instead of Campell Falls. Even smaller creek for water purposes.

Campbell Falls is rugged in and out in both directions. The area's neat, but there's not much room for tents. Two was a squeeze, there wouldn't be room for more than one hiking party...and no good back-up areas around. Swimming hole atop a 20 foot waterfall was a treat! Would be great in hot weather, a bit brisk in early September.

Day 3
3.3 miles to trailhead
1,000 ft elevation gain

Quick uphill, then gentle return to river, parking lot. :-)

Caught in a Wolftrap

One of the best mid-summer DC activities? Wolftrap. An outdoor theatre managed by the National Park Service.

You’ve got your choice, caching a $5 roundtrip shuttle from the far end of the orange line, or a short drive down 267 toward Dulles.

August brought two shows: A Monday night with Counting Crows and Gloria, her sister and Thanksgiving Elli and two weeks later another Monday date complete with Train.

The better show? Train. Not only was Hey Soul Sister – Drops of Jupiter as good a one-two punch as I’ve ever seen in a concert, but you get Meet Virginia as a bonus. They even managed to keep the rain-dropped crowd happy1 While Long December and Mr. Jones were pretty fantastic, Counting Crows deemed it necessary to give too much of their stage time to their rap-aholic friend who wasn’t quite as easy on the ears.

How To: Tickets are reasonable. Gates open at 6:30. For the better shows, you’ve gotta be there ahead of time in order to be one of the first to get through the gate and stake a claim to a good lawn spot. Show up late, and you risk sitting on concrete or a seat at one of the far edges.

Legg Mason

Andrew and I treated the quarterfinals of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic as a costumed activity. Surely hob-nobbing amongst the DC tennis-playing elites requires sweater vests, no?

As for the tennis action? Pretty cool to watch. I don't claim to know a whole lottabout tennis, but i think i'd heard one of the four names before, so i suppose that's a good sign. Wikipedia filled in the rest.

Nalbandian (ARG) > Simon (FRA)

3-6, 6-2, 6-3

Cilic (CRO) > Tipsarenic (SRB)

7-6(4), 6-4

Nalbandian went on to win the whole darn thing, the first time he's done that in a while. I figure it was at least half due to my cheering efforts. Viva la argentine.

how to backpack from DC via public transportation

Appalachian Trail

Out-and-Back South of Harper’s Ferry
July 30 - Aug 1

Harper’s Ferry – David Lesser Shelter/Cooper Spring – Harper’s Ferry
approx 18.8 miles

FRIDAY: Union Station → Harpers Ferry

4:05PM – 5:16PM AMTRAK
4:55PM – 6:16PM MARC
5:40PM – 7:15PM MARC
7:15PM – 8:42PM MARC

SUNDAY: Harpers Ferry → Union Station

11:25AM – 1:10PM AMTRAK

FRIDAY:

After Gloria had to back out of a weekend trip, raced to Union Station, desperate to get outta town. Bought ticket on train, $14. Commuter train stopped at about a dozen little towns along the way, some barely more than crossroads. Pleasant scenery, train wasn’t all that crowded.

Hopped out at Harper’s Ferry with an hour and a half of daylight to spare. Such a cool little spot. No stores seemed open on a Friday evening, don’t count on finding anything there. Followed Shenandoah Street through National Park buildings, rather than hiking Appalachian Trail up the hill into town. Rejoined the trail at 370, crossed Shenandoah River and hiked a mile so up the bluff towering over the river. 1000 foot elevation gain in the first mile after the river. Didn’t make it all the way up before dark, set up tent with headlamp and bivouacing at a quasi-site still inside Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park – no camping allowed – and not quite to the Appalachian Trail N.P. – camping allowed.

SATURDAY:

Crested the bluff after twenty minutes of morning hiking, and crossed into national forest not long after. Largely level terrain once you get to the top, but unfortunately there aren’t any views, at least during summer. Long stretches of leafcovered rockfields. Several nice established camping options (no water, though) in the ~2 mile level stretch between park boundary and powerline cut.

A mile after powerline cut, trail crosses VA7. A pleasant 3 miles south of the highway, a side trail leads to the left (west) toward David Lesser cabin. Complete with nice shelter, covered kitchen, and five camp sites. The real treat’s the spring. Clear and cool, a little hike below the campsites. After filling up (had to boil, don’t have a filter yet...) started the return trip. Crossed VA7 and stopped at the first campsite after the powerline cut.

SUNDAY:

Hiked downhill back to Harper’s Ferry to catch morning train. Made quick time, with ice cream and stroll through the historic district as a reward. AMTRAK train apparently isn’t time-reliable. Train an hour late, but comfortable when on-board. Tried to buy a ticket onboard, but conductor let me off with a “Happy Birthday” and a wave. A few fellow Midwestern hikers suggested a three-day trip, north to south, starting at a commuter bus stop along the train 30 miles south of Harper’s Ferry. Would be a good way to do it.

See also:

Map 7 Appalachian Trail in WV and NOVA

Hiking Virginia (Falcon Guide) p. 318

Dog Days

The dog days of summer are here. DC's hot and a bit stagnant. Guess that's what you get for building a capitol city on a swamp...

Even worse, though, an entirely predictable problem: All my diplomatesque friends are leaving for exotic adventures. The photo albums streaming through my facebook newsfeed are dishearteningly more exotic than my day-after-day plodding progression through Telugu verb tenses. Friends, once a bountiful commodity, are dwindling as departure dates come and go; as we say farewell to even goodbye parties.

The most telling moment was birthday week. In one moment, Kaitlin, Richa and Barrett, three fantastic friends -- all within walking distance -- checked out of Foggy Bottom for South America and China. All within two days of each other.

I'm trying a few different strategies to cope. Chief among them, strangely enough, is utilizing my newfound purchasing power.

an iPod Touch, ostentatiously for Telugu flashcard purposes. But it also allows neat features...like checking out the forecast in Hyderabad. A year from now it'll be monsoon season. A welcome reprieve from the heat of April, May and June. But awfully wet:


And another splurge? A trip to REI...to become a big boy! Finally getting my own membership -- and requisite backcountry gear -- after years of mooching off my dad. A new backpack, super light under 3 pounds, stove, cookset, etc. All the little things you need to dash off into the woods, which is what i desperately need after being couped up in this sweltering city too long.


Look out trails. Here i come! With or without friends...

Bastille Day Birthday Bonanza XXX

it started as a wednesday night trip to the french-maid-dress-race, but it devolved instead into just a wonderful evening with the perfect kalaidoscope of friends.

rj the father-to-be from the hometown, from the freshman year of college.

childhood friend amy and her bridesmaid demetra

Thanksgiving Elli, still alive after Hungarian/Romanian adventures

Four Winds Amelia, a Washington Stater turned Washington Districter

Lilly, Melanie and Lara, Wisconsin Law ladies

diplomats Richa, Alison, and Anne dropped by, not an unreasonable turnout as our numbers slowly dwindle

and of course Andhra Andrew and Goppadi Gloria

Thanks friends. :-)

eyes in the cupboard

It has taken me 29.98 years to learn that you CANNOT store potatoes in a cabinet longterm... Maybe this time the lesson will stick?

Temperature today? Rumors of 102.

Number of pool visits in the past five days: 3.

Currently Reading: In Light of India, Octavio Paz. What happens when you cross a Nobel Prize-winning poet with Mexico’s mid-1960’s ambassador to India? Hopefully a good read.

Five most recently completed homework assignments:

నా ప్రియమైన భోజనం (My Favorite Food)

నా ప్రియమైన నాయకుడు (My Favorite Leader)

నాలుగువ జులై (The Fourth of July)

నా హోమేతౌన్ (My Hometown)

నా ప్రియమైన సినిమా (My Favorite Movie)

Most recently learned awesome thing: Transliteration in gmail!

Gmail offers an automatic transliteration option that converts Roman characters to the characters used in...Telugu... This feature lets you type these languages phonetically in English letters, but they'll appear in their correct alphabet. Keep in mind that transliteration is different from translation; the sound of the words is converted from one alphabet to the other, not the meaning.

To enable transliteration, follow these steps:

1. Click the Settings link in Gmail.

2. On the General tab, select the checkbox next to 'Enable Transliteration.' If you don't see this option, click the Show all language options link first.

3. Select the language you'd like your messages to be written in from the drop-down menu.

4. Click Save Changes.

Now, when you compose a message, you should see a new button on the left side of your Gmail toolbar, and you'll be ready to start typing your message.

What good does an old bike do

For the first time ever, I just bought a bike.

Sure, I got a bright orange bike for my 13th birthday, but that doesn’t really count. It was an awkward half-kid, half-adult brute, although 8th graders deserve little better. Every other bike that I’ve owned has been a parental hand-me-down. The latest, two-wheeling the last few years of law school in Madison, was my mom’s 1960s gitan. About three parts on it worked after all these years. Two wheels and one brake.

Kickball league with the law ladies is a difficult distance away. It’s walkable, but it takes 12 phone calls on the return trip to get from the park home, just a bit longer than my attention span. There’s no subway between here and there, so I turned to the bus system. It shaved a few minutes off, but wasn’t too reliable, and cost $3 bucks a round. So I set out, as I tend to do when I set out, to look on Craigslist.

Turns out Craigslist is good for a ride. I found ‘er on my first try. $50, all mine. I had to ride out to Silver Spring, Maryland to take a look at the White Whisper, but I bought her on the spot. I rode 15 miles down the Rock Creek Parkway, smiling the whole way, to get her back home. She’s got a bit of a squeak, but she rolls just fine on nearly bald tires.

Finally, it felt like summer. A new way to transport and recreate. But turns out its good for more than that. As I was locking (new kryptonite u-lock? $55.) her up after one kickball game (a loss), a saw an unfamiliar face, opening the upstairs door, eyeing my bike enviously. We took to chatting, and he admitted he’d considered Craigslisting a bike, too, during his two weeks in DC to visit his wife, my upstairs neighbor. I offered my key, with a warning that I didn’t have a helmet yet, but he gladly accepted the offer.

The next day, he came back down to my seldom-used door and invited me to dinner, to join his wife and him Saturday. I was quick to accept.

Five and a half hours later, I was aglow with the warmth of meeting new interesting people. They’d invited another couple – I was the fifth wheel – and way enjoyed bottle after bottle of wine and topic after topic of conversation. A Fiji-raised Indian. A Trinidad-born P.O.I. American. A Vietnamese-American. A small town Illinois girl. And me, content to be labeled "interesting...really really good type of interesting." As diplomaticesque an evening as can be, practice of sorts for evenings ahead.

I smiled all evening long. I particularly liked one moment in time, late in the evening, smiling to be surrounded by two contented couples. Both ladies, sundressed and barefooted, had kicked their barefeet onto their respective manfolk’s lap. Laying a claim of peaceful ownership, comfortable in the contentment of belly and self and another, just enough subtle contact to heighten the savoring of a conversation and an evening delightful.

Ride's Here

Uhh, maybe it's a bit hard to make out from my MacBook-held-in-reverse picture, but there's a gigantic limo in front of my house right now. My guess is that it's either for me or for Dmitri Medvedev. He's in town, you know.

DC Urban Adventure: Tubing the Potomac

I've been in the city too long. I hadn't left DC since I got here in February, excepting an overnight to West Virginia for a bit of the 'ole teambuilding. So i figured it was time to break out for back to back weekends. Last weekend it was a bluegrass weekend at BPV's in-laws horse ranch up the Shenandoah. This weekend? Tubing down the Potomac.

Harper's Ferry as quaint as it gets in these parts, an easy one-hour drive or Amtrak ride from DC. Rivers, hills and history converge at a picture confluence.

For $30, Butts Tubing will give you a tube (some with coasters!), haul you two miles upstream and pick you up when you've had your fill. Double meaning, of course, floating coolers are allowed. We were unable to confirm the rumor that the buses will take you back to the starting line as many times as you'd like...instead we squated on some exposed rocks and sunned ourselves for hours.

Note: It is important not to miss your exit. We did. After you pass under two bridges, the river will curve and you'll enter a boulder field. Take that opportunity to get to the right bank. Sooner rather than later. This is not bushwhacking country.

the loser

Last Friday night, I found a purse on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. Being a good Samaritan, I safeguarded the purse and vowed to do my darndest to get it back to whatever unlucky Loser lost it. I opened it up, I had to figure out how to get it back to the losing lady. This is what I found:

The Inventory:

one (1) Couch purse, gray speckled with black infinity signs (dubious authenticity)

one (1) Maryland Class C Provisional Driver’s License (birthdated 1990)

$1.33 in change (4 quarters, 3 dimes, 3 pennies)

$35 in cash (one $20, one $10 and five $1 bills)

one (1) pack Extra Peppermint gum (approximately 2/3rds full)

one (1) Metro Farecard (remaining value $2.55, which means that Loser spent $2.45 on her trip into the city)

one (1) eyeliner pen (blue)

one (1) key (house, if I had a guess)

My only clue was the name on the driver’s license. It’s a unique one, so I punched it into Facebook later that night. Boom, there she was, a student at a local university. Her privacy settings didn’t allow a stranger to send her a message, so instead I friended her, and included in the request a message that I’d found her purse. I offered my telephone number, so she could tell me what she wanted me to do with the purse.

By Sunday, on my return from the Cassique horse ranch, she still hadn’t called. I logged into Facebook. She had accepted my friend request...but hadn’t messaged back! Undeterred, I checked her profile for a telephone number. I called...and got her voicemail. I re-explained the situation and asked her to let me know what I should do.

It’s Thursday, and I’m still waiting to hear back from her...

The story’s best, though, when you interject her recent status updates into the equation:

Friday 5/21/9:19pm “Some ones getting lost tonight”

Sunday 5/23/3:34pm “I am the laziest person ever”

Monday 5/23/7:34pm “I hope the beach is excited to see me as I am it”

Awesome.