Sunday, November 9, 2008

DC 50 States Ride

The "50 States Ride" happened nearly a month ago, but it was a great introduction to DC, and I've been surprised that many more people don't know about it. I had been checking out the DC area bike coalitions and found WABA. The 50 States ride which ends up being about a 70 mile bike ride through DC riding on all of the state streets, covering all eight wards of DC. (Map) WABA claimed that the ride was "unsupported" meaning that there would be no vehicles, but they did offer a lunch option and promised two stations along the way to get water and refreshments.














We met up at the start of the ride in Adams Morgan where they had registration, coffee, bananas, shot bloks,mini clif bars, free water bottles, and cue sheets. There was quite a crowd here, more than I expected for an "unsupported" ride. A little after 8:30am we rolled out and I was reminded of Critical Mass rides in SF, the euphoric feeling of owning the road with a group of cyclists, blocking traffic and drawing the attention of everyone on the sidewalk. Most of the bikers were really friendly and we spent the first two or three miles letting others navigate and following the pack. Once we hit Florida, the leaders of our group got a bit confused, and that's when the real ride began.














From Vermont Street on, the pack started thinning out, dropping a few more riders here and there as we passed the White House through an unmarked detour since the WTO meeting was in town and they were expecting protests on the order of the Seattle (??) riots from years gone by.

After passing through downtown, we headed past Eastern Market, a few blocks from my house, and over the bridge to Anacostia where the ride through the park was nice, but some of the neighborhoods got really depressing. We reached the halfway point for lunch at about 11:15 and were told that lunch (which we opted out of) wasn't coming until 12:30pm, so we found a few other riders that wanted to continue a left in a small pack of four. We kept up a pretty good pace and caught up with three other riders around West Virginia Ave passing Trinidad and Galludet. By the time we cam near Fort Totten and Catholic U of A, were were down to four, and a mile or two later, as we approaced Green Circle, we were at three. We managed to stick together with a guy that was head to toe spandex racing gear, but he was a really good climber, dropped us pretty bad coming up out of Rock Creek Park.
The only water stop we found was hosted by the Cycling Team of American University. They had tons of stuff for us, were taking photos and had great energy, much thanks to them for being there 12 miles before the ride was done. We screamed through the rest of the ride, ending up at the start around 2:15pm. Roughly two hours before the post ride happy hour was to begin. So we biked a bt further, downtown to get some Five Guys, and called it a day.
The ride was a great intro to the neighborhoods of DC, I'd recommend it to anyone who has ridden 30 miles or more on a bike, and if you haven't, you should at least do the 13 colonies, or break up the 50 states ride into two or three smaller chunks. I'll be going again next year, hopefully with a larger group.