This is My Life

307 E Capitol SE, Not Beechwood House

31 May 2015

Jack and I have been together since 1986.  When he was in grad school, Jack started traveling to conferences and to various cities for library research that would stretch to weeks at a time. When he was staying somewhere interesting, I'd follow along, or show up towards the end of his longer trips.

Last year, he decided to apply for research fellowships.  Figuring he might get one or two, he applied for nine.  He got seven of them. Three were traveling fellowships; all told, he'd be away from home close to five months in the space of about a year. 

The first stint was for four weeks at Harvard's library; he spent two weeks there last August, and I joined him at the end.  Next was his semester in Oxford, where I visited for two weeks in November. Last week began his month in Washington, DC. I decided that enough is enough, and made plans to visit on weekends. 

It's faster to take Amtrak than to drive, and, when timed the right way, relatively cheap.

I arrived at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday evening. We walked from Union Station to the house that the Folger Shakespeare Library is putting him up in. Comparisons with his room in Oxford are inevitable, down to the bathroom across the hall, the odd arrangement of stairs, the shared kitchen at the other end of a common room, and the grand facade of the building.  Markedly different is the weather. It's merely warm and sticky out; I can handle that better than day after day of chilly rain.

Here's the neighborhood that Jack is staying in, a few blocks from the Capitol Building, around the corner from the Shakespeare library and the Library of Congress buildings:

We walked to the Eastern Market, which is an indoor farmer's market with outdoor crafts and crops on weekends .  I bought coffee beans, because of course I did. Here's a used bookstore in the area.  The foreign language books are in the bathroom:

The outdoor part of the Eastern Market:

I think Jack looks cute in his bucket hat.

We hopped the Metro to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.  We were looking for moose, of course.

Jack with his cousin, Moose.

A drowsy and content pussycat: out of view is a carcass draped over the branch.

Creepy-crawly beetle sex, live!

In search of more moose relatives:

Mouse deer (not moose deer):

Mouse mouse:

Pocket mouse, because you never know when you'll need one:

Carved aquamarine:

We paid an exorbitant price for lunch in the cafeteria, which would have pissed me off but for the fact that the museum is free. We attempted to plan where to go next, only to find that half of the museums we wanted to see are closed for renovations.

We decided on the very politically incorrectly named National Museum of the American Indian. To get there, we had to detour away from one of the gardens we wanted to see because a huge chunk of the mall is under construction:

If I'd been on a bike...  (No, not really; this picture was taken between the gaps of a chain-link fence.)

The Capitol Building is under scaffolding:

I shall refrain from the obvious metaphors.

In front of the American Indian museum:

Something disturbed us about this place from the minute we walked in.  We were bombarded by the image of the noble savage.
The museum is four floors.  We started from the top.  It wasn't until somewhere on the next level down that there was even a mention of the reason we need to preserve Native American culture in the first place.  I'm sure I didn't even see the word "smallpox."  That these cultures were nearly massacred to extinction was glossed over.  That these people fought amongst themselves, as every group of humans has since we climbed down from the trees, was not touched upon at all.  Instead, one could buy any number of hand-made trinkets in the gift shop.

We headed for home, walking through part of the U.S. Botanical Garden as a shortcut.

We exited at the bottom of Capitol Hill and walked up (maybe with more elevation gain than on Tom's ride yesterday).  Tomorrow's rainy weather was moving in:

The Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress:

The sinister Madison Building of the Library of Congress:

Threatening books for the doorway:

Down here, Goose Island is a brewery.  Back home, it's a goose- and island-free Hunterdon County road.

In the evening, we walked again, past where the Eastern Market was, to a Turkish restaurant, where diners and staff alike were smoking from hookahs.

On the way back to the house, we saw a few fireflies and giant magnolia flowers.

A train at 8:10 a.m. tomorrow will return me to the real world, but I plan to be back here next weekend.

Tom's Southern Safari: High Points, Low Points, a Dirt Road, and an Oversized Gorilla

7 Miles from Pilesgrove, Salem County

31 May 2015

Tom promised us a long day.  Mine would be even longer.  After his Southern Safari high point ride, I'd have just enought time to de-grime before hopping onto a DC-bound train from Trenton.

I'd packed and prepped everything the night before, and woke up early, but it wasn't until I was loading Kermit into the car that I noticed the frog's feet hanging unusually low.  For the second time in three years, after one rough road too many, the plastic clip holding the saddlebag to the rail had snapped clean off.  There was no time to swap bags.  I do, however, keep a stash of tiny elastic cords in my biking backpack.  I bought them in my earliest cycling days, the reason lost to the sands of time. In the parking lot of the elementary school in Bordentown, where we met to carpool to Salem County, I had time to strap a couple of cords from the rails to the bag.  I slapped on some duct tape for good measure.

Because I'd be driving straight home after the ride, I didn't carpool with Tom.  Instead I took Jack H and his front wheel.  Tom took Ken and everyone's bikes but mine.  We left Bordentown on time and got to Medford Park faster than expected.  Tom had figured on leaving the park at 9:30.  We left at 9:15.

Straight into a headwind.

In short order we passed through downtown Pilesgrove:

From then on, we were on tiny rollers between open fields. One road we were on used to be called Nimrod, but the name was changed.  Someone suggested that's because the signs kept getting stolen.

East Lake, connected to the Salem River, south of Pilesgrove:

Our first rest stop was early, at 15 miles, in Alloway.

We sat on the porch of a shuttered building next to Bud's Market.  I took this picture as we were ready to leave.  The dark spot near my rear wheel is my sweaty butt print.  You're welcome.

Somewhere after the rest stop Tom got stung on the tongue.  He said he was fine, but he took up my offer of an antihistamine just in case.  Hith thpeech wathn't thlurred much, tho we didn't conthern ourthelves.

Somewhere after that I wound up with a flat.  This was no big deal, except that I had to undo the cords around my saddle bag to get to my tube, levers, and CO2 nozzle. There was some of our bonus 15 minutes gone.

Somewhere after that I took these pictures:

In Bridgeton we took a detour to the Cohanzick Zoo.

There was no admission fee. Visitors are kept in line by, apparently, attack peacocks.

We walked our bikes through the wooded zoo. There isn't much to it.  This warty-beaked bird was outside of any cage.  I have no idea what kind of bird it claims to be.

A white-footed tamarind eats an orange, because of course it does because it's in a zoo cage and zoo cage primates eat oranges.  At least that's how I remember my visits to the Philadelphia Zoo.  That was a long, long time ago.

Here, kitty kitty!

If this Bengal tiger can't see us, then we can't see it.  That's the way it works with cats.

Meanwhile, the attack peacocks did their best to rival those at Grounds for Sculpture.  The Hamilton peacocks win. They're not as ratty-looking.

By Tom's GPS, we were at all of 37 feet above sea level, so, naturally, this was where he chose to take the group high point photograph.

I should explain, brecause Tom hasn't yet even though Tom has just posted
his pictures, that the group shot involved me sitting in the palm of a larger-than-life fiberglass gorilla.  Jack H was to my left and Ken was on my right.  I dared the two of them to grab some gorilla boob, but Jack said, "This is going to be on the internet!"  I could hear Jack tickling the gorilla's chin as Tom focused his camera.
So, while we kept the picture clean, we did supply ourselves with off-color gorilla-themed insinuations for the remainder of the ride.

Our second rest stop was in Centerville.  We'd gone 42 miles, but it felt like a lot more. I remembered to take a picture of my saddle bag, which was holding position quite well. You can see where the plastic pieces snaped irreparably.  The red cord is attached to the rear brake cable on one end and the bag's zipper on the other.

Centerton:

With 24 miles to go, we had yet to reach the Cumberland and Salem County high points.  We weren't far from the end of the ride, still in Cumberland County, when we saw what looked to be something that might pass as a high point.  Tom read off the elevation from his GPS as we approached the top.  We got to all of one hundred thirty-something feet.  Here's a look back down the road.

Jack H wasn't so sure, though, because the road ahead looked like it might be higher. It was, by a few more feet, so Tom stopped again to get a new picture of his GPS reading.

Then we were back in Salem County, at what was purportedly the high point.  It was so not obvious that we all missed it, except for Tom, who stopped to get a reading.  He's up there somewhere:

And what's a Tom ride without a dirt road?  Even better, it's called Compromise Road. This one must have been a mile long.  When I got to the end of it, behind Jack H and Ken, I noticed that Tom, who had been right behind me, was far back, walking his bike.  Jack looked back. "He probably busted an axle," he said.

Pinch flat, front tire.  We waited under a cherry tree.  I stretched my back by haging from a branch.  I took a couple of pictures.  This is the view from our side of the street:

And across the street:

Kermit, under the cherry tree:

We got back to the park at 3:00.  By 3:11 I was on the road.  By 4:20 I was home.  By 5:25 I had showered and uploaded the photos, and at 5:30 I was in the back of Sean and Dale's car, on my way to the Trenton train station.  At 6:04 I was on the train.  The wifi was too slow for blogging. I read about wheel building instead.  The train arrived in Washington, DC, ten minutes early.