We arrive in our nation's capital

October 14th

Getting out of Laurel, Maryland is a little hectic. We have a "cycling" map that we picked up at Patapsco Valley State Park. It has multi-colored lines indicating bike routes and bikes paths. No streets are labeled, so we have no idea where these bike lanes and paths are--except the Pulaski Highway. We decide to just leave the map at the hotel.

Traffic continues to increase as we get closer and closer to "the Beltway," that ring of suburbs within I-495. The shoulder on Route 1 disappears and Nicole and I are forced to ride on the sidewalk. At one point, we start getting air on some of the steep slopes! The side roads are worthless because they are all recently built subdivisions--only one way in and one way out. We have to keep riding.

Once we reach College Park, we find a bike shop that has a D.C. area map. It's clearly a wise investment. This map actually has roads and bike paths labeled. We find a bike path and before we know it, we've entered a residential area on the outskirts of the District!

D.C. has a Chinatown--who knew?

The bizarre maze of streets in Washington are disorienting, even with the map. Avenues have names, streets have numbers. Or letters. And there is no comprehensible logic behind them. We find ourselves riding through Chinatown (yep, even D.C. has one) before we arrive on Pennsylvannia Avenue. It is done!

We ride towards the capital, then ride through the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. As always, it's a beautiful sight. The mall never fails to inspire, and for the first time I feel like I've really accomplished something on the bike.

No trip to the Mall is complete without viewing the respective memorials. We park the bikes and proceed on foot as we tour the respective memorials.

3 decades after its construction, the memorial draws new visitors.

The emotional power of the Vietnam Memorial has not diminished with the passage of time; it is just as moving to all who see the names etched in stone. When it was first built, many mistook it's simplicity as weakness, rather than strength. It's very powerful, and I recommend everyone visit if they have not done so already.

Lesser known but equally important is the Korean Memorial, which flanks the the south side of the mall. Unfortunately, the memorial is much more powerful at night. It's designed to give you the viewer the perspective of walking with a platoon, somewhere in Korea.

The World War II Memorial is at the foot of the Washington Monument. There was some controversy over the memorial's location because it would allegedly "interrupt" the sight-lines between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument (it does not). On the one hand, if anything should disrupt the sight-lines of the mall, it should be a memorial to the people who fought and won the greatest war in the history of the world. Just my opinion on that.

As the sun sets, we head towards Columbia Heights to visit some old friends, Jon and Sylvia. I haven't seen them in far too long . . .