Comrades Joe, Scott, and myself gathered for a ride on the Memorial Day holiday, meeting at the Vienna Caboose in the (already hot) morning. We rolled out the W&OD Trail for a little while, until exiting for the surface roads which would take us into McLean, Great Falls, and Reston. Scott showed us his latest road rash from Bike Jam, and described the non-stop carnage in his race. For those of you keeping score, that’s three crashes in Scotty’s last three races (through no real fault of his own... recent intelligence by Racing Union operatives within District 20 points to a possible sinister conspiracy, using aggresively poor bike handling against Comrade Scott, to quell the inevitable revolution which the Union proudly and boldly represents -venceremos, Scott, venceremos!). As a result of Scott’s newest wounds (on top of other wounds!), and because of the heat, it was agreed that the revolution would ride at a slower pace on this holiday.

There is some good riding in those there parts of Fairfax County. Shaded roads with gently rolling hills and not much traffic were a nice change from the crowded and unshaded W&OD. In places, the shade trees give way to spindly trees in sticks on clear-cut lots with new McMansions for the newly-landed gentry. Five car garages, circular driveways, piazzas, fountains, gilded fencing, electronic gates, tennis courts, security cameras, cherubic statuary, and gables -lots of gables- no expense spared. We even passed a replica of the White House. As humble foot soldiers in the cycling revolution, we thought of alternative uses for these behemoth houses... such as for new Racing Union Youth Academies for Bicycle Handling Skills, to replace our recently demolished academy:

Shortly into the ride, though, I started to feel the humidity. So far this spring, glorious weather had accompanied the glorious days of our nascent revolution, but now it finally feels like late May in DC. Although it’s not nearly as hot as it will get, I have not yet acclimated to the humidity. Try as I might to give my all for the revolution, I was having trouble keeping up with my comrades (try as he might, Comrade "Youth Movement" Joe does not know slow... watch for his dominance of D-20 soon), and was feeling semi-dehydrated. Scott kept me going with a Clif bar and a Rice Crispy treat, until he and Joe were able to dispatch me towards home via the W&OD.

Under orders from Comrade Scott, I stopped back at the Vienna Caboose (where a Memorial Day festival was taking place) to get some food. The choices were many: soft serve ice cream, funnel cake, cheese fries, barbeque, gyros/falafel, hot dogs, slushy drinks... I’ve seen a million snack foods, and I’ve rocked them all.

So, after a brief respite with food and drink under a shade tree, I was recharged enough to make my way to the East Falls Church Metro station. Yes, I Metro’d the rest of the way into town in air-conditioned, earth toned, dimly-lit splendor. Awwwww, yeah. I alighted at Farragut West before riding a few blocks more to get home where, after showering, I was quickly enlisted to assemble a tall Scandinavian cd rack.

- - - posted by josh