Never Enough Fun

Don’t you hope you’ll look this happy on your 89th birthday (:-}.

Actually, she was quite alert, but didn’t eat much of the birthday dinner we brought.

And nobody does it better than Grandma Geri

• Another first last week–20 minutes out of Salt Lake on Delta Airlines, the plane took a quick dip to the right and then down dropped all the oxygen masks — yup the unlikely loss in cabin pressure the attendants are always warning you about at the beginning of a flight. I suddenly wished I had paid closer attention to those demonstrations at the beginning of each flight on how to use those things. The flight attendant even said she has been on hundreds of flights and never had that happen. Anyway, we went back to Salt Lake, where we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . and finally got on another plane headed for L.A. and onto the Mexican cruise. It was “smooth sailing” after that, but it did add to the excitement of the trip. By the way, in case you haven’t paid attention either, be sure to yank on the clear tubing to get the the oxygen flowing. I had my mask on, but just about sucked myself inside out because the oxygen wasn’t flowing. No harm, though, just a headache. — Geri

Trip couldn’t have been better. Lucked out with the nicest Compfort Inn I’ve seen for $99 in Gathersburg, MD — great breakfast and only a 15 minute walk from the Metro. Weather was perfect — cool, but no rain. Began with three days seeing all the tourist things in DC. Some highlights worthy of photos (we went to all the museums) were:

Washington monument

Lincoln Memorial

Inside the Memorial is pretty plain, but looking up at the statue, just couldn’t help thinking, “Here is a great man.”

Arlington Cemetery

The guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Changes evey 30 minutes in a very formal ceremony. In between, these guys march back and forth about every 5 minutes, again very stiff and formally.

Drove down to Bob’s for the weekend and on the way back we stopped at Fredricksburg, site of one of the big Civil WarBattles and where some 2000 Union soldiers are buried (13,000 casualties to 5000 for the Confederates, who were clear winners).

Union General Burnside kept sending wave after wave of Union soldiers across a large open field against Confederate soldiers with rifles and cannons behind a wall. Before he finally called it off, the Union soldiers were piled three deep.

On the way back, we also stopped at Mt. Vernon, estate of George Washington. Lot’s to see, but we didn’t have enough time, so we’ll definitely plan to give it more time another trip.

So, now on to the big bike adventure on the Blueridge Parkway for which Larry has been training all summer. It starts about 80 miles west of DC in a place called Front Royal, VA. So, here we are:

(my friend Alan and I) ready to go

with our trusty support crew cheering us on.

The first 20 miles had us climbing 3000 ft, but it really wasn’t bad, given that I’d been training all summer doing 2800 ft in 10 miles. So, here we are at lunch time, feeling pretty good.

Did about 50 miles a day, which was about all we wanted. But, when ya got this kind of stuff:

consantly overlooking the Shenandoah valley, life can’t be too hard, can it?. Meanhile, as we’re rolling up the pavement, out support team is

playing with some new friends and

getting some much needed rest from the hard work of support (:-}.

We rode W,Th,F (50 miles each day) and decided to take Sat morning to see some stuff around Lexington, VA (e.g., Stonewall Jackson Museum,

campus of Virginia Military Institute,

and then the Parkinsons (our friends) drove down to see their daughter in Chaple Hill, NC, coming back on Sunday. Meanwhile, we drove over to Charlottesville, went to Church, and then out to Thomas Jefferson’s Estate, Montecello.

Very beautiful grounds, including a hill, overlooking his estate and home (the white structure in the middle),

and the home itself (which is what we’re looking at).  We didn’t remember this, but this back view of Jefferson’s home is on  one side of a nickel.

Biked again on Monday down to Roanoke, which gave us just over 200 miles, where we decided to give it up and spend some more time enjoying some of the surrounding attractions.

Lest some of you think, “Well, 200 miles in four days is nothing,” according to the Shenandoah National Park map, we climbed a total of 20,646 feet in those four days. Glad I had trained as much as I had (guestimate I spent well over a hundred hours on my bike before the trip).  I became very intimate with the Alpine loop in American Fork Canyon, just 2.5 miles from our house.

On Tues we drove all the way back up (north) to Antietam National Battlefield (another Civil War battleground), because we had to take our rented bikes back to Leesburg. Antietam was another very sobering place. It remains the largest single day loss of American solders in US history (total of 23,000 soldiers killed on both sides). It resulted in a stalemate, but was considered a Union victory, because it stopped Lee’s advance toward Washington. This is a shot of the cemetery where most of those solders are buried.

All around, don’t know how we could have had a better trip.