June 23 rides

[divingbiker]

Well, I guess I'm the first of the TE-DC group to be back home and on the computer. Today six of us did a bike tour of the memorials and monuments in DC. The weather is perfect today--cool and sunny in the morning, with the temperature in the 70s by the end.

It was great to meet two new people--bike4ever (formerly bikemom, visiting from St. Louis) and Sunnyside (a new TE member who hasn't posted yet). They and Regina, MDHillSlug, Kalidurga, and I started at Union Station and hit all the hot spots:

Supreme Court
Capitol
Washington Monument
World War 2 Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Korean War Memorial
Iwo Jima Memorial (in Arlington Cemetery)
FDR Memorial
the Awakening statue at Hains Point (soon to be moved, so we wanted to see it)

We planned to see the Jefferson Memorial and the White House but had a time constraint, so we rode about 15.3 miles (took a long time because we stopped to see the sights), then headed back to Union Station and stopped for lunch at the Capitol City Brewery before heading back home on the metro.

It was a fun ride. I think in the future we should do the ride when there are fewer tourists in town.

This is the Iwo Jima (Marine Corps) Memorial. This is the first time I've seen it, and it is very large and impressive.



Here we all are looking pathetic standing in line for food at the FDR memorial. Me, Kalidurga, Regina, MDHillSlug, Sunnyside, bike4ever (and our bronze friends)



Here's the group at the Awakening statue. This is a very large statue of a buried body with various body parts coming out from the ground. Sunnyside, Regina, bike4ever, Kalidurga, MDHillSlug



Here's our mess of bikes tied together with a bunch of locks front and back. We were worried about theft, this being DC and all, but we were successful at confounding any potential thieves with our tangled web of bikes and locks.