Category: Cycling

It seems to be done now – as I wrote those words, the sun came out. Perhaps My Run of Bad Luck is over.

Around our neighborhood, in fact, there was mostly very good luck. Only a few big trees went down, and it looks like minimal property damage.

Excellent luck at this address – at worst the electricity flickered last night, and a fair-sized limb dropped onto the back roof. Otherwise, it was just a great evening to watch the forces of nature in action.

Apparently I’m an exception, though, as the rest of the metro area didn’t do so well. There are millions of homes without power, and the water supply in Fairfax County (suburban Virginia) was contaminated after the treatment plants lost electricity (no back-up generators, apparently). Alexandria, as usual, is swimming in floodwater.

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While I think that emergency planning is always a good idea, I think that OPM and WMATA overreacted a bit. The Federal government really didn’t need to close for the full day yesterday, and today I drove downtown with little trouble. On the other hand, erring on the side of safety makes sense. I’m just not sure whether an error of that magnitude was justified.

(Edited to say: It was. Completely. If for no other reason than you really didn’t want to squeeze millions of people who had not had a shower for a day or two into office buildings the next day . . .. The streets of Arlington and downtown DC were filled with thousands of people looking for something to do last night, and there were quite a few you didn’t want to get too close to.

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I went for a walk around the neighborhood early this morning, to see what had happened. Mostly branches and limbs everywhere, but one street was blocked by a tree, and another tree will make some new homeowners quite upset. A giant maple (at least 70 foot) took out their deck and detached garage. The house was just bought a week ago. Ouch.

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I’m making it a point of late to savor every bit of warm and sunny outside time I can get. I have been absolutely sissified when it comes to cold weather, and I’m dreading the coming winter. Anyway, today was f’ing beautiful.

Taking advantage of the last hour or so of daylight, I set out for a ride. Since the trails are mostly abandoned at this time of day, I strapped on my CD player and stuck Coltrane in my ears. The music added energy, and I was soon pumping away. Not just through my legs, but in my mind. I’ve had more than a few comments about my seeming unhappiness lately, and I wanted to know why.

I’m not sure that I got very far on that question, though. Part of the trail runs along a construction site, which is now a wide area filled with rocks and dirt. Some of it was packed dirt, so I decided to make use of those knobby tires I had.. It was a lot of fun, little hops off of rises, or scrambling up a pile of dirt. I didn’t think about much of anything- just focused on the simple pleasure of it all. But I soon needed to move on, before I was caught out without a light.

So as I headed farther along the trail, on a downhill stretch, I saw a packed dirt mound off to the side at the bottom of the hill. Absolutely perfect to launch a boy and his bike from. As I got closer, I decided to do it. I thought about how it felt when I was the only 8 year old who jumped the BMX ramps the teenagers did. Or about the time I pulled the guy from the flaming truck. Or the time I just grabbed her hand and went with it. All the times I just did it- when it felt just as exciting as this jump was going to feel. All these thoughts were in my head as I rushed up to the mound.

And at the last second, I turned back to the trail.

I’m still not sure what that says.