Friday, March 23, 2007

Rock Creek Trail

Today's riding was along the Rock Creek Trail, 20 miles of pavement running north from Georgetown. It started with me getting a bit fed up with the misalignment of my brakes and attempting to adjust them. I learned that most of my problems were caused by a broken spoke (my second this year) and I had trouble adjusting the others to make up for the missing one because the nipples had gotten rusted.

The Rock Creek Trail is roughly three sections. The lowest end is along the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. The trail crosses the creek several times, past the National Zoo and eventually gets up to Peirce Mill. The second section is along Beach Road until the DC border. There are some sections that are actual trail but most of it is on the road itself. On weekends and holidays the Park Service closes Beach Road to motorized vehicles which must be nice because I had to share the road with cars. It's too bad because the creek is very pretty along this section and I had to pay attention to the road rather than sightsee.

After 5 miles of this you reach the Maryland border and you're off the road again for the rest of the 14 miles to Needwood Lake. There are a number of marshy areas but no boardwalks like the Mt. Vernon Trail. There was an excellently constructed beaver dam just south of Needwood Lake.

When I got back, H**** and I walked up to Dupont Circle, specifically to look in an interesting bead shop she had seen on our long trek of the previous night. We ate at Zorba's Cafe, the Greek menu, music and atmosphere somewhat diminished by the Spanish-speaking staff.

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