A backroads (metric) century

(Apologies for this post being months late at this point! Better late than never?)

One sunny Saturday morning, I groggily arose at dawn to drive out to Berryville, VA for the annual Backroads Century. Well, the process actually started the night before, when I bought lots of bungee cords and cables and twine at the local hardware store and proceeded to immobilize my bicycle on the back of my little civic.

I am happy to report, the bike and I made the trip uneventfully (although I was nervously glancing in my rearview mirror and driving like an old person on the beltway). I parked at the fairgrounds in Berryville, undid all my careful rigging, and suited up for a nice ride. It is an uneventful start: you say hi, get a cue sheet, and go. I was riding alone, as the ride sold out before I could convince my skeptical friends. The roads were indeed "back," with no need to shut down traffic. The hoards of neon lycra wielding, gel devouring, cleat snapping, exhausted cyclists were gracefully spread out across the course, so it was rare to see more than 5 riders in a given stretch.

The ride came with pit-stops, and the first was particularly memorable. There was a music group, comprised of a harp, lute, and weird hitty-stringy-thing that serenaded the mass of potato-munching roadies.

The roads were gorgeous. Such a pleasure to ride.

I do want to mention the hills.

There were hills.

I am NOT used to them.  While they make everything uber-picturesque, they also make my quads scream in rebellion while I slowly plod up them with very little grace (or dignity).  The ride was along the Shenandoah river, meaning that the course took us down to the riverbed and then back UP in the last miles.  There was also a stellar hill as part of the 65-mile route that no other routes covered, so I felt particularly bad-ass despite not doing the full century.

I made a few friends along the way.  A group of police officers rode with me during the special 65-mi route  segment, and it definitely made time go faster to hear about their other riding experiences: one guy does the massive police bike ride from New York to DC, where hundreds of officers are accompanied by police cars with sirens flashing as they pass through small towns and big cities to honor fallen officers.  In the last 5 miles I rode with someone riding expensive carbon fiber and wearing a "Team RadioShack" (aka Lance Armstrong-phile) jersey that probably cost more than my bicycle.  He was part of the zippy peloton I had been passed by earlier (at an alarming speed and distance), but his leg cramped up so in his injured state he was more my kind of rider.  We finished the ride together, with each little rise in the road making me grimace.  He somehow tricked me, using his stories of climbing Mt. Ventoux after le Tour went past, to get me to keep up with his pace.  I finished the ride fast than I started.

Then I collected my free shirt and waterbottle, ate some snacks, and slowly returned to my car where the re-rigging process could begin.

Fantastic experience, and I'm quite pleased I pulled off a good 100k ride without much prep.

Taste of Bethesda

Some pictures from a nice day wandering around food stalls in Bethesda with my friend Elizabeth. Bethesda is unofficially the (a) restaurant capital of the East Coast, and there are hundreds in town that were all out to cater to our changeable and discerning wandering palates. Good weather, good food for not too much money, and ultimately a very successful day. Aw, Bethesda, you've grown on me in the last year!

Dave in America!

In the midst of thesis panic and impending deadline doom, Dave planned a trip to come to Bethesda and talk me back to sanity.  Then I got an extension on my thesis (heh, who *didn't see that coming?) and his visit could be a giant sigh of relief and a much needed pause in my mad dash to the D.Phil. finish line.  Unlike his first visit to our great nation's capital city, we did NOT make lots of plans to do and to go and to visit (and to get strep throat).  We still ended up doing a lot of going and visiting, but it was relaxed and wonderful.

The first few days were spent doing absolutely nothing in particular.  Then we graduated to dinner with local friends (and family, yay Emily!).  The second weekend we advanced into a slightly impromptu road trip up to New York.  En route we picked up Dave's friend from Oxford, Tom, who's working on a very impressive doctor of philosophy in philosophy at Rutgers.  We left the turnpike--never a bad thing--and detoured into New Brunswick to collect Tom and get some tasty falafel before getting back on the road to Long Island.

Dave and I at new Citi Field, following a (gasp) Mets Victory.  The Mets are like the French of Baseball.

On the way, I managed to put a philosophical foot in my mouth (so, Tom, my one experience with philosophy was in this class at MIT where we repeatedly tortured a rather silly thought experiment about grains of sand and heaps and so forth and I thought it was the most ridiculous and irritating experience during my undergraduate education... oh, that is what your undergraduate thesis was on? right.  I'm sure it was me then.  ), get lost in Staten Island (I am not good at crossing umpteen lanes of traffic post toll-booth) and find absolutely stunning stop-and-go traffic from the Verrazano bridge to La Guardia Airport.  But we eventually made it to Citi Field, where I got to help the two Brits understand the finer, or at least more specific, points of our great national pastime from the nosebleed section.  And then the Mets won, which confused us all but made the crowd leaving the stadium a little more "enthusiastic beer-infused" rather than grumpy drunk.  We inched out of the parking lots and meandered into Jackson Heights for a rather incongruous dining experience at an affordable but swanky South American restaurant serving gargantuan portions and a one-man karaoke marathon.  Stuffed, sleepy, Dave and I said goodnight to Tom and made the drive out to Bayport where my parents were still awake to greet us.  

Tom looks quite content with his portion size.  I did have to remind him ahead of time that he should NOT order paella as Pie-Ella.  Aww, Brits.

Dave and Elizabeth at Guapo's mexican restaurant in Tenleytown.  The food was good, the margaritas were plentiful :)

 Being home is always wonderful, and I was really happy that my parents had another chance to get to know Dave a little better.  Dad drove us out to the vineyards on the North Fork, and I think both he and Dave could share an eye roll at my mother and I kvetching after a few tastings.  My mother convinced us all that the cloudy day just made the vineyards more dramatically beautiful, and we left the last vineyard feeling very happy, a little tipsy, and carrying multiple bottles for later.  

Monday we returned to DC via Annapolis, meeting up with Manus for a crab feast at Cantler's restaurant.  While the boys shook their heads and dived into it, I took the waitress's offer of a crab-dissection demo.  I will NEVER enjoy the green goop being anywhere near things that I eat, but I did manage to improve my crab eating skills by several orders of magnitude.  There was so much seafood (covered in so much Old Bay) that Manus spoke for us all when he finished his last shrimp and said "I feel like the bottom of the ocean."  It was great to see him before he and his family move down to Nashville for his next big job adventure at Vanderbilt University.  Dave and I had an espresso in the charming local coffee shops of Annapolis before finally making our way back to Bethesda.

A few days later, I had to drive him to the airport and say good bye, again.  In some ways, I'm getting better at all of this, but it really is quite hard to do.  It was a fabulous visit.   And now I feel quite refreshed and refocused for all the things I have in front of me this month.