Second Annual Cherry Blossom Ride

On a gorgeous, blue morning, 12 members and one guest of the Lake Barcroft Bike Club set out for the 26 mile round trip to see our nation's capital's best show of the spring, the Japanese Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin.

With myself in the lead and Jerry Mendenhall as the sweep, our group enjoyed the cool breeze as we made our way up Beachway and over to the Four Mile Run and W&OD Trails. Here are some photos of our group along the way.

Newt, Lloyd, John and Linda meet up at Bluemont Park

Ellen checks her phone before departure

Jerry and Lloyd 

Newt and Mike installing a wheel on Andrea's bike

Stopping at Gravelly Point, near Reagan Airport, is always a thrill.

Ride leader, Larry (photo by Newt)

Planes swooping directly overhead toward their landing

Guest biker Mark

Arriving in front of the Jefferson Memorial, the group stops to take in the scene and for photos.

Mike, Lloyd, Jerry, Newt, Andrea, Gail and Jim

Blossoms just past peak

Enjoying the scene

Mark and Newt, left, Gail and Cindy, right

View over the Tidal Basin

Visitors enjoying the scene

Cindy, Gail and Larry (photo by Newt)

John and Linda 

Tourists with great hats

The group shot: back row: Larry, Lloyd, Andrea, Mark, Newt, Gail and Jim
Front row: Mike, Jerry, Cindy and Ellen. (Not pictured here: John and Linda) 

After enjoying our morning and the beautiful scene, riders took off for the return trip. Newt, Mark and I lingered a bit and visited the Martin Luther King Memorial before heading back. On the way, a surprise: the Bolivian community was holding it's annual Carnival de Oruro along Four Mile Run Drive. Based on a 2,000+ year-old religious and cultural tradition in Bolivia, the parade featured music and colorful folk dancers from different areas of Bolivia. 

With all this Bolivian culture, we stopped at Cafe Sazon at the plaza at 4704 Columbia Pike, where the bike trail crosses, for an excellent Bolivian lunch. Highly recommended for both food and service. 

Reviews are in and everyone reported a great day for biking and a fun outing.

The next ride of the Lake Barcroft Bike Club will be posted soon.

Opening Season Ride to Vienna, Virginia

The Lake Barcroft Bike Club's first ride of 2014 on Saturday, originally bound for Buzz Bakery in Alexandria, diverted to Vienna, Virginia instead, for a fun but challenging, chilly and windy morning ride. 

Our hearty three person contingent included Rick Uritus, recumbent bike aficionado Bill Cook and me. The newly constructed, but very unwieldy detour on the Four Mile Run Trail (just before the Mount Vernon Trail) led me to make this last minute change to our itinerary. Unfortunately that detour will continue into the summer, and bike riders will need to face it if they want to enjoy rides south into Old Town and on to Mount Vernon. But maneuvering that detour on a recumbent bike would be difficult.

We set out at 8:30 a.m. and faced a tiring and chilly headwind as we pedaled west to the W&OD Trail, through Falls Church and Dunn Loring and then on to Vienna. 

Bill and Rick at Bluemont Park

Despite the relentless wind we finally made it to Vienna under a bright blue sky and warmed up with coffee and bagel sandwiches at Caffe Amouri, a great little local coffee shop on Church Street. Check our their website here: http://www.caffeamouri.com/ .

Rick, Bill and Larry outside Caffe Amouri

On Bill's recommendation we then headed over to the Pure Pasty Company,                         http://www.purepasty.com/, to pick up some Cornish pasties (pronounced "pass-tees") to take home. These baked gems wrapped in a wonderful pie crust are traditional meat and vegetable pies, somewhat like empanadas but with a lot more filling. The wives and mothers of tin miners in Cornwall would make them for their hardworking husbands and sons to help them get through the day. Easy to carry even on a bike, they make a satisfying meal today as well.

Loaded down with our pasties, we headed east down the W&OD trail, with the wind at our backs on the return ride, for a well-earned afternoon of relaxation and Cornish pasties.

Next week, the 2nd Annual Cherry Blossom Ride. Check your email for details.

Spring is coming? 2014 Biking at Lake Barcroft

Hello Lake Barcroft Bike Club! 

It's March 7, time to emerge from hibernation. 

With spring only two weeks away, the Cherry Blossoms predicted to peak a few weeks after that, and still, it's cold? I for one am tired of winter and got very spoiled by my warm weather, sea-breezy and shaded-forest bike rides in the Piñones State Forest and Nature Reserve in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago.

Biking in Piñones is a favorite activity of mine. This 11-kilometer nature trail is located just minutes east of the high rise condos and fancy hotels of Isla Verde, but you find yourself in another world with less crowded and even empty beaches, rocky shores, and mangrove forests. 

The trail comprises both a paved path that runs along the beach and then becomes a boardwalk as you enter into the mangrove forests. It is mostly flat and takes about 2 hours to go directly from one end and back. But I stop multiple times along the way for photographs, so it can take much longer. 

A Cooperative that helps promote the Piñones area and local businesses, COPI (the acronym comes from it’s name in Spanish), hosts a company, CicloNatura, that rents bicycles. They offer “comfort” bikes (the ones with the fat tires) but I needed something my size, and the only one to fit me was this "rustbucket". If you look carefully, you'll see the rust on the top, seat and down tubes, the chainstays and around the crank.

I shouldn't complain. I was glad to find a bike to fit me, even if the gearing kept slipping the brakes hardly worked and that left pedal was wobbly. I took a risk riding this, with all my camera gear in a pack on my back, but it all worked out.  

Here is a view from the trail.

Here is the first subject that popped into view. He was a really big specimen, and at first glance I couldn't believe that I spotted him, lounging high up in a tree: Iguana.

You can see more of my Puerto Rico 2014 nature and other photos on my photography blog here, as I add them.

Back in Lake Barcroft, we missed the big snows of February, and were glad the roads were plowed so quickly following this week's snow, although shoveling out two cars and a long driveway, as many of you did, was not my idea of how to spend an early March day.

CLUB RIDES 2014

So now, let's talk of upcoming rides. 

Time to get your bike in shape as well as your body. I've been doing studio cycling throughout the winter at 24 Hour Fitness and on my home trainer, so I'm ready, are you? The 10 day weather forecast  forecast is a mixed bag, with temps in the 60s this coming Monday and Tuesday, but still on and off chilly though March 15. Hopefully, the temperatures will start to rise thereafter. See
http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/Falls+Church+VA+22044:4:US

UPCOMING RIDES

The first ride of the season is tentatively scheduled, weather permitting, for Saturday morning, March 29. We'll do an easy ride down to our favorite bakery and coffeeshop just north of Old Town Alexandria, Buzz Bakery, to start out the season. This is a nice, easy ride suitable for any level of rider. Remember that our club is purely recreational, so even if you are wearing your logo-emblazoned spandex, except for those who prefer to move at race pace, the majority will not be racing. You'll be receiving details about the ride soon.

We'll follow that with our 2nd Annual Cherry Blossom Ride. The date could be Saturday morning, April 12 or April 19, depending on the timing of the blooms, so pencil in those dates and I'll give the exact date as we get a bit closer.

Please let me know if any of these dates conflict with community activities so I can reset the dates to accommodate as best as possible. I'll alternate Saturday and Sunday rides throughout the season for those who are working during the week and will sprinkle in shorter weekday evening rides as well. Other rides this year may include rides to Vienna, Virginia, Virginia, Del Ray in Alexandria, National Harbor, Mount Vernon, Reston Town Center and the Capital Crescent Trail to Bethesda. If you have another favorite ride to share with the club, let me know. Most rides have a lunch or coffee stop around halfway through. Rides vary in length and difficulty, so join in on those that you feel comfortable with. A few hills here and there shouldn't really stop you from participating. You can always walk up a hill. Ride leaders at the front and back end of the group watch out for slower riders and help anyone with a flat tire. 

I'll also be starting up once or twice a week (or more), one hour workout rides around the Lake at various times of day. I'll email the membership when I do these. These rides are more ad hoc and last minute, so if you see an email about a lake ride, let me know if you plan to join. Generally, I start at Potterton Bridge if there are takers for these rides. The route is meant to be a workout, with lots of hills, riding up Beachway, down and back on Mansfield, Greentree, Duff/Beachway to Beach 4, Pinetree, and down the Columbia Pike trail to Aqua. From there we cross and do the length of Lakeview from east to west, and return either via the Women's Club Bridge to Crosswoods, or cut through from Whispering over to Sleepy Hollow and up to Malbrook to Crosswoods. It's a challenging ride, but a satisfying feeling once accomplished. Feel free to drop out at any point.

NEWCOMERS OPEN HOUSE 

The Newcomers Club is holding the first of an annual open house to showcase Lake Barcroft's clubs and organizations to new residents of the community. This year, the event will be held on Sunday, March 23, from 1-4 pm at the home of Lark Lovering, 6326 Cavalier Corridor. I'll be there with a table promoting the Lake Barcroft Bike Club. All current and prospective bike club members are invited to stop by and pick up bike maps or other goodies relating to biking and talk about riding. For more info, contact Charlotte Flounders at cflounders@fdic.gov, Open House Coordinator, or Nomi Taslitt at nomitaslit@aol.com, President, Newcomers Club


BIKE CLUB WEARABLES AND DISCOUNTS
I've been looking into creating a bike club jersey for our club. I had already designed and sell a custom printed 16"x20" Lake Barcroft poster and was thinking this design could be on the jersey. 

Here's what it would look like:

Let me have your thoughts on this. The jerseys would run anywhere from $35-$60 depending on the supplier. Keep in mind cheaper may mean cheaper quality. If I can get a good number of people to place an order, I'll choose a quality supplier and we can have these in a few weeks.  

I am also looking into getting discounts for club members at local bike shops for equipment, accessories and repairs. It may involve printing membership or discount cards. I'll let you if this works out.

See you soon out on the trails!

Larry

 
The Lake Barcroft Bike Club is an informal club of bike riding enthusiasts and their families and friends who reside in or near Lake Barcroft. There is no formal membership application or dues. Anyone interested in club activities is welcome to send me your email address and I'll add you to the mailing list. The mailing list and this blog keep members informed about upcoming rides, display photographs of rides, and provide general information and tips about biking. Send your comments, ideas, and/or complaints, via email to me at larrygol@yahoo.com or follow me on Twitter at @larrygol1.

Map My Ride App; Fall Riding this Sunday, Sept. 29

Map My Ride for Iphone

So I installed "Map My Ride" on my Iphone, and when it works, it's pretty cool. It will record your ride and give you a map and plenty statistics about it. You can also view your rides on the web after your register with mapmyride.com. (When it doesn't work, I think it's because of the spotty cellphone service around the lake.)

Below is the recorded map of a recent ride that I've set up as a one hour workout ride around the lake. That blobby area in the center left is where I started at my house on Stoneybrae. See if you can figure out the streets that I went on for this ride. This route took me across the bridge at the Women's Garden.

I've since expanded the ride, riding beside and behind that home where Whispering and Lakeview meet, on that gravel path between the houses that takes you up to Bay Tree and Sleepy Hollow. I have to walk some of it because my road bike won't make it through the rough gravel there. 

From  the top of Bay Tree, I fly down the hill on Sleepy Hollow, crossing Dearborn and then trudge up the hill to Malbrook, turning right and again fly downhill to Crosswoods and go left. Then depending on how much energy I have left, I may do a few more hills on Fiddler's Green or Rustic or Waterway, and head home after. 

Anyone who wants to join me is welcome. I try to do this around 615-630pm evenings.

Bike Ride this Sunday!

Sunday, September 29, should be another great weather day for riding. If anyone would like to join on a ride to Reston for lunch at the Community Canteen, let me know. It's a longer ride, about 15 miles each way, but it's on the W&OD Trail, so there's a few hills and inclines in each direction, but nothing like riding around the Lake.

Let me know if you'd like to join.  I plan to leave from the Bluemont Park Parking lot at N. Manchester around 11:30am to get to Reston between 12:30pm and 1:00pm. 

Happy riding!

Larry

Ride to Alexandria; Daily Rides; Club Shirts/Jerseys

We finally got a group together for our 10 mile ride down to our favorite Alexandria pit stop, the Buzz Bakery. (an easy 20 mile round trip that anyone could do.)

The weather was grand for the 10 of us who met at the Potterton Bridge. Most riders rode from the Bridge to meet up with a couple others at Bluemont Park at the end of North Manchester. Some new faces participating on a bike club ride for the first time were Rick Uritus, newcomer to the neighborhood Brian Bates, and Marjorie Deutsch.

You'll see that I am in a number of the photos. That's because Lake resident Jan Castro of Beachway Drive was coincidentally at Bluemont Park at the time of our departure, and being a photographer, he shot several of these photos with my Canon DSLR that I had brought along. Thanks Jan!

Here are the club members ready to roll:

Fernando Milia, Bill Cook, Alicia Agnese, Rick Uritus, Brian Bates, Newt Simmons, Mike Stueben, Marjorie Deutsch, Larry Golfer, Allan Mostoff

Bill, with his self-designed Barcroft recumbent

Newt, below, checks messages while Rick checks a wheel. Brian and Marjorie are all ready to go.

Mike, with Newt, Alicia, Bill and Marjorie -- enjoying coffee and baked goodies in the shade at Buzz.

Allan Mostoff, former Lake resident, with Marjorie.

After socializing and great conversation, we mounted up for the return trip back to the Lake and arrived around noon. All had a great time.

Rides around the Lake
I've been doing a one-hour ride around the lake several times a week in the evening as a workout, leaving around 6:30-7:00pm, and plan to continue to do this until later in the fall when it gets too dark to ride. I was thinking that if folks want to join me, it may be useful to use Twitter as a way to quickly communicate about such spontaneous rides. I set up a Twitter account for the Bike Club (@BikeBarcroft) and will be sending tweets and following a few of you who have Twitter accounts. I would encourage others in the club to set up their own Twitter account (www.twitter.com) and follow @BikeBarcroft for notices about last minute rides.

Jerseys and/or T-Shirts for Club Members
I've also been looking into ordering club bike jerseys and T-shirts. Jerseys would cost $38-$52 each, depending on how many are ordered. There are now 57 members in the club, and non-club members may also want to buy one. T-shirt prices are considerably less. I'd prefer the jersey myself. Here's a design I'd like to propose, on a black shirt (without the © symbol):

Let me know if you'd be interested in ordering a jersey or a shirt, and I'll put some prices together based on the number I would order.

Happy riding!

Larry

Ride to National Harbor (almost)

Saturday was the perfect day for biking, and  I led a group of 11 bike club members to National Harbor, a commercial destination on the Maryland side of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

The ride took place in two tiers. One group left from the Potterton Bridge at 9am for the full 26 mile round trip ride, via the W&OD, Four Mile Run and Mount Vernon Trails. About an hour into the ride, that group met the second group at the parking lot at the Washington Sailing Marina at around 10am. Second group participants had transported their bikes on bike racks, in a hatchback and in a pickup truck. From there, those riders who wanted a shorter ride would cover about 12 miles round trip.

Here's some of the group getting ready to depart:

Dave Snyder, Nomi Taslitt, Karen Snyder, and Susan Michels look on as John Estes pumps up Lark Lovering's tires.

Ken Kastner checks the departure time with Phil Kemelor as Ken Ackerman looks on.

We left from the Marina for the ride down the Mount Vernon Trail, along the Potomac River and into Old Town Alexandria for the ride down Union Street to the entrance to Jones Point Park. Formerly, before than entrance and trail were complete, one would have to continue on the streets of Alexandria to get to the Wilson Bridge. The opening of the Jones Point Park portion of the trail eliminated that street riding with a beautiful ride under the magnificent structure of the Wilson Bridge.

View from Jones Point Park under the Wilson Bridge

Here's the group coming under the bridge:

Lark Lovering leads the pack under the Wilson Bridge at Jones Point Park.

Lark, Pancho Kinney with Nomi Taslett in the rear.

The ride at the bridge involves an uphill climb along the south side of the bridge to North Washington Street, and taking a 180 degree turn back onto the bridge for the 2.05 mile ride across the bridge on the Wilson Bridge Bike Trail. A long slow climb takes you two scenic viewing points looking out onto the vista of Washington DC with all of its monuments, memorials and major churches.

Then an equally long but easy downhill ride wound down the bridge path towards National Harbor. The group stopped for a picnic lunch on the grass at the river's edge, just short of the Harbor itself. Because the last 1/10 mile approach to the harbor comprises a crushed oyster shell path, it was the group's consensus not to ride on that path to avoid potential flat tires. I had taken a test ride the week before and chanced riding on that path, but as luck would have it, after my warning to the others about potential flat tires, I was the one who started losing tire pressure, likely due to those sharp oyster shells.

Here we are after lunch and ready for the return ride. Pictured, back row: Ken Ackerman, Susan Michels, Veronica Angulo, John Estes, Nomi Taslitt, Lark Lovering and Karen Snyder; front row: Phil Kemelor, Dave Snyder, Ken Kastner, and Larry Golfer. Not pictured: Pancho Kinney.

Lake Barcroft Bike Club riders

Some History

The Wilson Bridge Project was a massive multi-year construction project that involved demolishing the original Wilson Bridge. The former bridge had a drawbridge to allow river traffic to pass through, but each opening of the drawbridge caused massive traffic jams. Read about the history of the bridge and the replacement project here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson_Bridge .

When the new bridge opened in 2009, it included a new bike trail across the north side of the bridge, with two viewing points looking over the vista of Washington, DC, where one could see all the national monuments and memorials, as well as excellent views of Old Town Alexandria.

On the opening day of that trail, I rode it with my granddaughter, and took these photos.

Bridge abutments and the unfinished Jones Point Park, 2009

View from the Bridge of Old Town Alexandria 

View of the Wilson Bridge Trail

Returning from the Maryland side of the bridge (Granddaughter Shayna) 

Another view of Old Town Alexandria

Ford's Landing, a residential community on the Potomac

Wilson Bridge Control Tower

More rides are coming this spring and summer, so stay tuned for announcements. 

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