Author: JohnMatel

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Washington bike commute post 5

Post 5 – Arlington has lots of quiet streets with big trees and riding through them is another pleasant part of the morning ride. Next is Pershing. You really cannot see on the picture, but there is a stop light at the bottom of the hill. And I know it doesn’t look very much like a hill on the picture, but it is one. If it is red when I get to the spot on the picture, I start down the hill, since it will be green when I get there. If it is green, I wait, since I don’t want to stop at the bottom of the hill just to start again. When you ride a bike, you anticipate things.
 
Next is Hwy 50 looking back at Pershing. This is a very long light, as much as four minutes. I almost always get caught there.

This new bike trail shown in the last picture parallels Route 50 and is a great addition. They built it only last year. I used to go through Fort Meyer, but that is closed off now. The alternative takes you miles away though not as pleasant streets. You could not go down Route 50 on a bike and expect to live very long, so you went way around. This trail takes care of the problem. Sometimes the horses are grazed near the bike trail, giving it a nice farm smell.
 

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Washington commute post 6

Post 6 – The bike trail along Route 50 is wonderful going toward Washington. It is all downhill. I usually sit up straight as I go down in order to pick up more wind resistance to slow down, since the only concern comes at the end, when you have to merge back into the street. As I wrote earlier, the biggest danger from cars comes when they turn. This is especially true when they make right turns. Drivers often just do not pay attention to bikes on the right. During rush times, traffic back up. People get sick of waiting and decide to turn right on the local roads in hopes of getting around the crush.

I cannot say anyone has come close to hitting me … yet, but I have had to be very careful and go much slower than the slope and general conditions would permit. After that, I get to pass the monuments on the Virginia side, such as Iwo Jima or the Netherlands Carillon.
 
 

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Washington bike commute post 7

Post 7 – As you come down the hill, you get a good look at Washington. It is a beautiful city. An unpleasant stray thought crossed my mind as I came down that hill. We think of wars as things that happen elsewhere or maybe not again, but this is fantasy. At some time, Washington might suffer the fate of Berlin or Warsaw, or maybe it will just be neglected and fall into ruin, like those many in the Middle East after the fall of the Roman Empire.
 
Washington is not a natural site for a big city. It is not like New York, Istanbul or London, which are prominent place where you would naturally locate a city. If Washington stopped being a political center, it would decline. Too heavy a thought for a bike rider. I ride around Arlington Cemetery, cross Memorial Bridge and come out past Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington.
 
 

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Washington bike commute 8

Post 8 – This is my current place of work at Smithsonian. That little building is the Ripley Center, portal to a vast subterranean complex that houses my office, among other things. Were I to borrow up, like in the Shawshank Redemption, I would come up in the garden. Across the street are pictured the Capitol Mall and Earth Day Park.
 
 
 

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Washington bike commute 9

Post 9 – I don’t go there anymore but I thought I should include the old USIA. Old USIA is now SA 44 (State Annex 44). I spent more of my career associated with this building so it still seems like home. The neighborhood has improved a lot since I started here. They put in a completely new garden like area with elm trees. This used to be a surface parking area. the picture with the trees is along Constitution Avenue and finally is new construction along the waterfront.
 

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Washington Bike commute 10

Post 10 – This completes my set on my bike Odyssey. Riding my bike to work has been one of the most consistent parts of my work life. Through changes in jobs, offices, success & failure, the biking has stayed more or less the same. I ride from March to November, so I get to see the changes of three seasons.
I arrive at work in much better shape than if I were to drive or when I take the Metro. You get a chance to think when you are riding and the cardio exercise keeps your brain fed with oxygen. By the time I get to the office, I have worked through many of the problems I will face. Beyond that is the sublime experience of mixing your effort with the peace of nature and the changes of the days and the seasons.

Different parts of the evoke memories of thoughts past. I understand that thoughts gestate but they sometimes come out as epiphanies and for me they are most likely to do this when I am on the trails. Biking in the morning calm is conducive to this as nothing else.
For my first twenty years, I rode both ways. Going back is harder than going to work, since it is more uphill and I am tired at the end of the day. Then I discovered that I could take the Metro back. You can take your bike on the Metro after 7pm. This was great for a couple reasons. For one, it extended my bike season. The gathering darkness used to stop me in late September. If I do not need to worry about the dark, I can ride through middle November.

It is sad to think that this will soon come to an end. It will be almost like the ending of a long and happy relationship.

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Moment of Zen

You find those moments of zen in obvious ones and some that do not make much sense. I had an unobvious one yesterday, as I was sitting waiting at the rental car place for Chrissy to pick me up. The view – below – just made me feel good.


My other pictures are just left over from the tree farm visit. It started to rain hard as I got to the CP unit. But since I did not want to waste the trip, I walked across the property anyway. The rain was warm and once you get soaked you don’t get any wetter by staying out. The first picture is one of the feed plots, a bit overgrown. It has been a good place for quail. The middle is one of the streams. I was happy to see that there was little mud in it despite the torrential rain. Last is my sycamore grove. It is natural regeneration, but I have been trimming out competing vegetation and trimming down the lower branches.

BTW – I had to rent a car to go down to the farms because Chrissy needed the car and Alex is took the truck to his National Guard service. I got a Dodge Charger only around $15 a day – good deals to be had at Dulles.

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Harvest 2015

I decided to cut 45 acres a little earlier than the prime time because I am eager to replant. I will not live forever and I want to have a reasonable chance of seeing my trees mature at least a little. I am looking forward to watching the forest grow. We have about 90 acres of 28 year old pine. Usually, we would let them grow another five years or so. But I cut half for the reasons above. I will let the other 45 acres grow another five years.

In September we are going to plant red clover to cover the ground and provide some nitrogen and biomass. I thought of doing sweet clover, but that can get five feet high in its second year and I don’t want it to top out my little trees. Red clover only gets a couple feet tall. I have never done this before, so I figure there will be some mistakes.

I have more or less settled (after some internal debate) to plant around ten acres in longleaf and the rest with good genetic quality loblolly. I plan to plant the loblolly far apart and count on natural regeneration to fill in the blanks.

I also put my land on the list for biosolids. It will probably be a few years before I get any.
My pictures show the harvest in process. We have had a lot of rain too. That turtle is NOT in a pond. He is swimming in my road. The last picture shows my sycamore grove. I just like those trees.

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Las Vegas

Just a little out of sequence here, since we are back in Washington.

I took the Las Vegas Monorail to the end of the line, which is the MGM Grand, and walked back along the strip. Since I started at about 8:30, it was hot but not too hot.

Las Vegas has ersatz versions of almost everything. There is Paris, New York, Venice, among others. I passed a store that just sold M&Ms and M&M products and a Coca-Cola store. Neither was open at the time I passed. Good things too. The M&Ms would have melted in the bag. I did get a Coke Zero at the nearby vending machine and managed to drink it before it assumed hot air temperature. You have to stay hydrated in the hot, dry weather.

I can understand why some people like to live in Las Vegas and even more like to visit. It is built to entertain. I liked to visit, but I would not want to live here.
One of my favorite commercials is the Dos XX, with “the most interesting man in the world” I am not a big fan of Dos XX, but I am sometimes moved to buy a bottle just by the advert’s influence. I saw a poster parodying the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” slogan. It has the most interesting man with the caption, “What happens in Vegas is reported directly to him.”

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Transition zone at Zion 1

I just love to look at relationships in living ecosystems. Zion is a great place to study them, because the canyons provide micro climates and the whole thing sits on the ecological transition zone between the Mojave Desert and Colorado Plateau. Some of the rocks “weep” as water from above filters down. They keep the otherwise dry area perpetually moist.

Cottonwood ecosystems are among my favorites. Cottonwoods are just tough and resilient. They sink their roots into the moist river bank soil and grow up into the deserts. Cottonwoods do not live long, by tree standards. If you plant one for your newborn child, there is a good chance the kid will outlive the tree. They grow easily from cuttings, and many spring from sticks that just get stuck in the mud and set down roots. Subsequently, they often spread by vegetative means, i.e. not seed. This means that the trees in a grove may be genetically identical and about the same age. That is why they sometimes all die about the same time.

My pictures show cottonwoods at various places in Zion. The sign says that they are Fremont cottonwoods. I really cannot identify cottonwood sub-species, so I take their word for it. Notice the ecological importance of the cottonwood. In the top picture, the protection provides shelter for other plants. In my other picture you see how cottonwoods are sometimes half dead, but they just do not die off. I also included a picture of some mountain goats. I do not know enough about them to write a whole post, but I wanted to include them.