Summer – Splattered Brains

From Spring into Summer

I am resolved to get this blog out expeditiously. If not, my current state of mind, which has to do with the weekly visit to the C&O Canal towpath yesterday, will begin to dissipate quickly. If that happens, the resulting blog could take a darker and perhaps more negative turn. The balance will be lost!

The thermostat indicated that it was 63° F outside when we woke up on Sunday morning. It felt very nice for a change. This being the tail end of the Spring season, the temperatures outside are trending towards the hotter side. We have even had some days when the use of the air-conditioner was needed. I was even forced to run indoors on the treadmill instead of outside last week because it was too hot. This Sunday was not one of those days. We opened up the windows early in the morning to let some cool air in. We left home early for our weekly walk on the canal, to try to get there before the crowds descended, and to also hopefully get to walk under cooler conditions. It turned into a very nice morning on the trail.

The flowers of Spring are mostly gone. There is thick green vegetation all around, including lots of tall grasses. Some mowing and clearing-out of the spaces next to the trail would be useful, but nobody knows when that can happen. Normal park services have not yet resumed completely. undefined

There were plenty of wild strawberries beside the trail! We talked about whether these could be poisonous. Wild strawberries and mock strawberries look very much alike, and can be distinguished by the color of their flowers. There were no flowers to be seen! undefined

There were different kinds of butterflies flying around. Here are a couple of pictures. A few of these butterflies would hang around you for a little while while you were walking.

The dragonflies and damselflies have also reappeared.

There were other, less-familiar, insects around. I suspect that if we had come later in day, we might have even been attacked by the gnats that are plentiful in these parts in summer. And after all, summer is officially only a couple of weeks away.

There were a lot of birds making a lot of noise. We thought we encountered call-and-response situations on at least one or two occasions. But I could not get a single picture of the birds, probably because of the dense foliage. Even the egret whose picture we thought we had gotten a few weeks earlier flew away from us.

The parking lot at Edwards Ferry was full. So was the one at Sycamore Landing when we returned after our walk. According to the C&O Canal Trust, there has been an about 50 percent increase in the number of people coming to the park in recent times. We saw both walkers and runners, bikers, a few dogs (running free), and a couple of horses (with people on them). undefined

There were also people in their boats on the river. Some of them were talking quite loudly. We could hear them all the way from the trail, and you could have clearly made out the details of their conversation if you were so inclined. undefined

All in all, we had a good day out in the park.

There has been a lot going on on the political front in our neck of the woods recently. The news from Washington, DC, is even worse than before. The president has finally built his wall, not on the border, but around his fortress (or bunker), a fortress whose boundaries seem to be ever expanding. We have a tinpot dictator doing his worst. Other, cowardly, politicians have willingly abandoned their responsibilities. The protests taking place in the streets of Washington, DC, and in other cities, still continue. It seems like the youth are not going away. We need to find a way to show solidarity, and to help make positive changes happen.

The Kids are Alright – maybe..

Anybody remember this song?

I have put in quite a few miles on my bike on the trail this week. It occurred to me that, remarkably, I was not feeling bored in spite of the repetitive nature of the rides. I remembered a blog I had read from a webpage tracking a couple’s hike on the Pacific Crescent Trail. This particular posting was a guest blog by somebody who was traveling with them for a short stretch. He talks about what the experience of hiking means for him. I could empathize with some of what he was saying – about the silence and the thinking that goes on. You can cover a lot of ground, both physically and mentally, without even being aware of it.

A couple of days back I was cruising in the cool of the early morning, lost in my own thoughts, on a section of the trail near Carderock. Between the mind games and the focus on the act of riding (something that has become more automatic these days) I was having a ball. I was brought back to reality by the sight, out of the corner of my eye, of two older gentlemen who were walking in the other direction. When you are riding a bike at a decent pace people pass by quickly, but I did notice that one of the guys was smiling broadly, looking at me, and giving me a thumbs-up sign with both his hands. He was encouraging me on. I had to smile back. Or maybe I was smiling already, and this was his response. Did I look like I was on a mission and needed encouragement? Or was he simply happy to wish somebody on the trail. It does not matter. He had reached me somehow and raised my spirits even further. Everything was good!

With the distances I am covering, and with the coming of summer, I am seeing kids everywhere on the trail. There are summer camps and outings, with bike rides, horse rides, boating (tubing/canoeing), fishing, swimming, and other kinds of activities to keep the young ones occupied. It is great that the natural resources of the area are being taken advantage of so that kids learn about the great outdoors all around rather than getting stuck indoors staring at the screen of some electronic device the whole day.

But with kids on the trail there is an additional element of caution that is required, especially if one is cruising on a cycle. Sometimes they seem to be completely oblivious to what is going on around them. Last week I was passing a group of kids and everybody moved out of my way except for one lad who basically got on his bike a started riding straight towards me on the wrong side of the trail. I had to yell and brake hard. He finally moved away at the last minute. Who knows where he mind was at.

Then there was this group of kids on bikes who rode off the trail at Whites Ferry while I was trying to get on to it. They did not know enough to even get out of my way. I had to stop and let most of them get through first. Their adult leader apologized once he got them going properly.

A couple of days ago I rode up behind a group of adults and kids on horses. While most of the horses were well behaved and were keeping to one side of the trail, a couple of them were not cooperating at the back of the line. They were wandering all over the trail, standing across it to look at me (maybe they were curious) while their riders were trying to talk them into getting back into line. At one point one of the riders thought that the horses wanted to get in line on the other side of the trail (the wrong side), but that was obviously not their intention. The horses finally cooperated and I was able to pass on the left. On my way back on the trail, as I approached the same group and started passing them from the front, the little kids on the horses started shouting to me. They told me that the last two horses in line were in training and that I should be careful. The kids seemed quite concerned about my safety and they were so sweet about it. I yelled my thanks without slowing down too much. The kids are alright!

During the last couple of days I have run into more issues with people, both adults and kids, on the trail who do not seem to know what to do when a biker comes by. Sometimes people are not keeping to their side of the trail and they get very confused when a biker comes up behind them. I announce myself loudly so that people can move aside, and if at least one person in the group hears me I am usually in good shape. But sometimes somebody darts across the trail into my way at the last minute and I have to brake hard and yell. Just yesterday, a kid almost ran me off the cliff near Anglers Inn. He apologized while I tried to recover my composure.

But I want to come back to the thought I started this blog with, which is that it does not matter how many times you go over the same territory when hiking or biking. The experience simply does not get old. Just yesterday I was riding past a section of the trail that always catches my attention in the early morning light. As I have done several times in the past, I stopped once again to take a picture. Perhaps you have seen this picture before.

Then there are these other experiences from the ride.

And, yes, it is hot as heck outside right now. The folks in the picture below have more determination than I do!

We will see what the next week of riding brings.

Summer Storms and Stories

Summer storms can come up on you quite quickly and silently in our part of the world. This one had been threatening us the whole day. Although the air temperatures had been very reasonable, it had also been quite humid, and the clouds floating overhead looked distantly menacing. The air was unstable!

It was later in the evening that I noticed that it was turning unexpectedly dark in the house. I slid open the blinds in the living room to notice that the sun had finally given up its struggle to penetrate the clouds, and that the sky had turned ominously dark. It was now filled with low black malevolent clouds swiftly scurrying across its expanse to some unknown destination. It had not started raining just yet. It was a camera moment. I found myself standing on the furniture on the deck taking pictures of the drama unfolding in the skies. I can never get tired of this spectacle. Can you see what I saw? There are stories to be told behind these pictures!