Next time I will bike

Saturday I had to ride from Wheaton to Alexandria to take care of business with a bike shop. My plan was to take Rock Creek to Capital Crescent. On the way, I passed two bikers. When we stopped at the traffic light,one of them, Santiago, thanked me for picking up the pace. I decided to have some fun and pace behind them. I learned that the two of them,try to ride together on weekends. Santiago who was headed to Haines Point, told me he can show me another way to Alexandria, so I followed them. It was a beautiful route in Rock Creek that I have never done before with some hills. I was very thankful that they showed me another route. Tom had to turn back but Santiago and I continued. We made a rest stop at the Boat House in Georgetown and filled up our water bottles.

Here is Santiago. What a coincidence that he has a Fuji Roubaix and is a Realtor.


We continued until we were on the 14th street bridge and then said good bye to each other. I had a great time and was glad I got the chance to do a new route and meet new people.

I continued my journey to the bike shop to pick up a check. My nearest bank, TD Bank, was on Van Dorn Street, so I pedalled there to cash it. The bank was closed for walk-ins, however, the drive through was opened. So here I am at the drive through with my bike which I have never done before.

After cashing in the check, I pedalled to Subway for lunch on Duke Street. I conducted some business afterwards and given the time, I decided to take the metro back. What a mistake that was. There was track maintenance work on the Yellow/Blue line and it was chaotic again.

So many people boarded the train at every stop that it was full. I was in one car with another biker, when an oboxious lady passenger boarded and started screaming, that bikers shouldn't be here, there's no room, we are taking up all the space, it's still rush hour.

Eventually people started calming her down, letting her know that bikers were aloud on the train. At L'Enfant Plaza, that's when it got chaotic and fustrating. The doors wouldn't shut and we stood there for 10 minutes while they were telling people to move away from the doors. Some door wouldn't shut, so we all had to get off the train.

Here is the chaos

I finally was able to board another train on the yellow line to Fort Totten, but realized I was having to deal with another chaos. The ongoing investigation on the Red Line, where you can not go any further than Silver Spring and have to take the shuttle bus which takes forever. 6:45 pm, and I thought I would never get home. A train pulls in and no one knew what was going on because it was heading back from where it came from. There was a total lack of communication from the metro employees.

So here I am in Fort Totten trying to board a train. I ended up being lucky then the next train came a little bit after 7 pm, the time the investigation was over for the day and the train went to Glenmont. In Wheaton I pedalled about 2 miles to the house and after 43 miles total was glad I finally made it home. I think next time I will ride home.

Want to take your bike on the metro? Here is some information to help you