Thing 152: Bike Tour of the Anacostia Riverwalk

If any of you out there are following my Twitter feed, you'll know I spent pretty much my entire weekend on one tour or another. Yes, it was the semiannual WalkingTown DC, which gives locals and tourists alike the opportunity to participate in over a hundred free walking and bike tours. This event is held in the spring and in the fall, and organized by Cultural Tourism DC, and I urge all of you to take advantage of this opportunity!

I started my WalkingTown weekend at 9am on Saturday morning at the entrance to the Southwest fish market, bike in tow. I was there for the bike tour of the Anacostia Riverwalk, along with about twenty other early birds. This tour is put on by the DC Department of Transportation (or DDoT, or "d.") and was actually led by the head of DDoT, Gabe Klein. Allow me a moment to geek out, but how cool is that? If you read this website, you'll remember that Gabe Klein was a bold and progressive choice for the job, having come off of a four year stint as regional VP of ZipCar, and as an advocate for transportation that might not necessarily begin and end with the personal car. And now here he was, in bike shorts and bright yellow biking shirt, ready to give the twenty of us his own guided tour of the Anacostia waterfront.

After giving us an introduction and an overview of the plan to rebuild the Southwest Waterfront area, we cycled in a pack down to the Titanic Memorial, and then east to the Nats Stadium. At the stadium, Klein, with help from three other DDoT employees, talked about the transportation issues surrounding the building of the stadium, and also the colossal engineering project that was the lowering of the South Capitol Street Bridge.

We continued on to the new USDoT, which stands next to the Navy Yard, and they spoke about the grand plan to connect the stadium all the way through the Navy Yard and beyond with new bike trails, hopefully easing some of the commuting congestion for the 20,000 expected new federal workers in the area. Klein mentioned that he's also looking at remaking the bridges, adding extra bus lines down M Street, and hopefully extending the upcoming street car system into the area, along with encouraging mixed-used developments so that people can live, work and play all within walking distance.

After this stop, I get a little hazy, geographically speaking, on where we went next. I know that we rode along a trail that took us next to a boat house where there were crew races:

And then over some railroad tracks and around and behind RFK Stadium, to what I think was Benning Road, where there was a farmers' market. We took a ten minute pause here to use restrooms and refuel, as needed.

From there, we crossed the Anacostia to its east bank, and then rode for several miles along the river, past a roller skating rink, past playgrounds and picnics and people fishing, seeing the crew races and the Navy Yard and the Stadium from an angle that I've never seen before. We met up again at Poplar Point, where one of the DDoT employees talked about the huge mixed-use development they envision some years into the future, with plenty of park land and new housing, retail and work space, all a few steps from the Anacostia Metro Station.

And from there, we went over the South Capitol Street bridge, and back to the fish market. In all, the ride took three hours, I saw parts of DC I've never seen before (and frankly, I'm not sure I can find again), and got an inside look at the vision behind a lot of the development projects that will shape the future of DC.

From there, I had to zip back home to shower and eat before heading to the next tour...Historic Logan Circle.

Related: Before There Was Harlem and North by Northwest

Thing 69: Apple Picking

I grew up in a place without seasons. In Northern California, you knew it was winter when it rained for a month straight. The rest of the year, it was always a dreamy 75 degrees, sunny, with no humidity. It sounds nice, but it's actually hard to mark time when there are no seasons. Leaves don't change colors in fall, snow doesn't close the schools in winter, and when spring rolls around, you just notice a bit less rain. Most foods never go out of season. California is where those avocados and asparagus you see in the supermarket come from in the first place. It is a perpetual spring time there.

Here in DC, if you're paying attention, you can mark time by the foods that come and go from the market. In the spring, the Boyfriend and I ventured out to Delaplane to celebrate the joy of strawberries, and came home to make the freshest strawberry ice cream I've ever had, warmed in the field that morning, in my dessert bowl the next night. In the fall, it's apple and squash time, as we ventured out once more to rural Virginia to the fields that grow our food.

This time, we found ourselves at Stribling Orchard in Markham, Virginia. About 60 miles due west of the District, we set off before noon and drove about an hour and a half. Upon arrival, they hand you a brown paper bag and a long wooden clawed apple picker and point you towards the orchards.

Acres of long rows of apple trees, some hanging with little red orbs, some already asleep for the winter, were ours for the picking. I stuck to the lower branches, reaching up on my tippy toes to capture a ripe apple. The Boyfriend demonstrated his hunting and gathering prowess by wielding the apple picker, refining his technique until he was able to capture four or five fat apples at a time from the highest branches.

As we wandered through the orchard, sliding on fallen apples and getting poked by the occasional stray branch, I overheard a brassy matriarch telling her brood not to bring her back any bruised or damaged apples. "I'm not paying for damaged fruit," she kept repeating. I smiled to myself. Nearly every apple was imperfect in some way -- bruised or scarred or wormy. These are late season apples, the fighters of the family, and they have seen some things and have the scars to prove it. I knew I was just going to can mine as apple sauce and pie filling, so I had no problems with their beauty marks, but these aren't grocery store apples. They don't look uniform, but they are sweet and firm and natural. I can tolerate a bruised fruit here and there.



Eventually, I had to call the Boyfriend off before we could no longer carry our treasure back to the weighing station. We hoisted our heavy brown sacks to our hips, and walked back through the orchard to the country store where they weighed your apples and took your money. At $1.09 a pound, we had picked $40 of apples -- yup, we are now the proud owners of 35 pounds of staymons. Already last night I got out the mason jars and made quick work of seven or so pounds into a spicy, chunky apple sauce.

Before leaving, we made one last tour of the store, through the shelves of sweet vidalia BBQ sauce, peach butter, apple jelly and blueberry preserves. Apple cakes and turnovers scented the air deeply with cinnamon, our mouths watering. We bought a pumpkin for dinner that night, and a half gallon of fresh cider and called it a day. The car was heavy with the fruits of fall as we drove east, back to DC.

Thing 37: Spy Tour

Thing 37 marks one tenth of my quest to do 365 fun DC things. It's taken me about three months to get here, and in that time I've pushed and stretched myself to look for things I might never have done. Favorites include the National Building Museum, Ceiba, a Wizards' game, and Urban Dare. As always, I encourage any of you out there to leave a comment with suggestions of things to do next -- what are your favorite activities or places that I might not know about? Send them my way! Readers have already suggested an Argentine gelato place, the revolving restaurant in Crystal City, and Famous Luigi's. They are all on my list, and you'll be reading about them in the coming months.

Sunday afternoon, I met up with a small group at the corner of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, across from the National Cathedral, to take a spy tour of the neighborhood around the Russian embassy. Presented by the Spies of Washington Tour company (and by "company" I mean "one woman"), this particular tour of Glover Park is named the "North by Northwest" tour. It is led by the one and only tour guide at Spies of Washington, a retired Air Force intelligence officer named Carol Bessette. Something of a pioneer herself, Carol originally joined the Air Force for what she thought would be a three year tour. Then, when she decided that her future was in Air Force intelligence, she was told that women could not be intelligence officers. She ultimately found a way around that by having the air force send her to graduate school, and served over 25 years as an intelligence officer. Which means she knows a lot.


Unfortunately, she can't divulge most of it, only that which is available in the public record. But there is some pretty interesting stuff out there, and it is great fun to learn about intrigues and espionage that occurred in regular old apartment buildings. Take, for example, the Alban Towers apartments, which Carol talks about at the start of the tour. In the 1930s, the Japanese embassy kept an apartment there as a residence for the Ambassador. American intelligence wanted to rule out that they had a secret radio in the apartment, and set up a long term operation where they would flick the lights or cut the power briefly over the course of several months. Then one day, they cut it entirely, and sent two agents dressed as repairmen to seek out the problem in the apartment. After a thorough search, they learned that there was no radio in the residence, and it had to be located in the embassy itself.



Carol takes us down Wisconsin to the Russian Embassy, an enormous compound about three blocks wide and three blocks long, its white, imposing block building towering over an iron gate. The tour comprises primarily of a walk around the perimeter of the embassy, with stops at mail boxes or storefronts to tell various stories of espionage or failed spying. We learned briefly about Robert Hansen and his signal site -- a mailbox in Georgetown he would make one single chalk mark on as a signal to the Soviets that he would be making a drop at a prearranged time and place. The Soviet diplomat would then stroll the .8 miles down the hill, check out the mailbox and report back to his superiors. Secrets would be spilled.


There's the story of Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB officer who defected to the US during the Cold War. The hypochondriac Yurchenko thought that he had stomach cancer, and wanted to die in as a hero in America with top quality medical care. When it turned out he was perfectly healthy, he escaped his CIA handler while dining at the now defunct Au Pied Du Cochon in Georgetown, hoofed it up Wisconsin Ave, and redefected back to the USSR.


She tells us the story of a mysterious package, thrown over the wall of the Russian Embassy containing classified documents and instructions on how to get more where that came from for $30,000. And she speculates on where the tunnel below the embassy may lie, which Robert Hansen warned the Soviets about when they were constructing the embassy. The Soviets had already discovered that Americans had built a tunnel beneath their embassy in Berlin to tap into their phone lines, so it was not out of the realm of the possible. Then again, the tunnel was never found, so it may simply be a spy myth.


Carol is extremely knowledgeable and well read on the material, she is friendly and grandmotherly, and she relates many of the neighborhood's stories to her own experiences with colleagues or giving tours. She refers to young women "entertaining" men in their apartments or hotel rooms, with a sort of faux modesty that is very endearing. Mostly, she tells a good story, and with such a juicy and romanticized topic as spying, it is great fun to listen to.

Carol will resume her walking tours in the fall.

Thing 33: Ride A Horse

You could probably guess this already, but I'm a city girl. I'm more Urban Dare than Survivor. But every now and then, a girl's gotta leave the confines of the city, get a little dust on her sneakers, and ride a horse.

The Roommate found the Woodland Horse Center in Silver Spring because she is seriously considering taking riding lessons and was researching places to do so. The appeal of Woodland is that they give a free, one hour introductory lesson every Sunday afternoon. The Roommate had never so much as been on a horse before, and before she committed several hundred dollars to the thing she wanted to be sure she liked it. She asked me to come along because she knew I wouldn't say no. And the Boyfriend came too, because he just likes to ride horses.

Which is how we found ourselves speeding out to the suburbs in a zip car Volvo last Sunday. Now, you fellow city dwellers may be like me and think, "Silver Spring? That's not so far." Well, as it happens, Silver Spring goes a lot further north than I had thought, and gets a lot more country. As we drove down on Colesville Road from downtown Silver Spring, apartment high rises gave way to large, single family, suburban homes. Then, once on New Hampshire Avenue going north, the suburban homes gave way to...nothing. Country roads.

The Woodland Horse Center is beautiful. When you turn onto the dirt driveway off of New Hampshire you drive under a huge, drooping willow tree and come up on a large barn. Not surprisingly, horses peek their heads out of the barn windows. A large field extends south of the barn. To the north of the barn is a dusty, fenced in corral, where our practice lesson will be held. Behind the barn there is an idyllic scene behind a wooden fence - green hills, leafy trees and a small stream, two horses quietly grazing on the grass. (I have the distinct impression that I made up the bit about the stream, but I'm pretty sure the rest is accurate and not subject to my fantasy of what "the country" is supposed to look like.)

We arrive just a bit late, and the introductory lesson is already underway in the barn. Although Woodland accommodates all ages with its lessons, the vast majority of the dozen people attending the free introductory are under the age of ten. The Roommate, the Boyfriend and I significantly up the average age of those participating.

The lesson begins with a short lecture on staying safe around a horse -- don't walk behind the horse, don't make any sudden movements, don't approach the horse if its ears are flat against its head. Then one of the more advanced students demonstrates how to get on and off the animal, making it look, of course, effortless and easy. Just place the reigns behind the neck, lower the stirrups, grab hold of the mane, and swing your leg over the beast. Easy!

Having been shown the basics, we are ready to ride. Since we'd arrived late, the three of us don't have helmets or horses yet, but the staff gets three horses ready as quickly as it takes for us to read and sign our waivers and pick out helmets.


Our three horses are waiting for us in the corral, while the others are already on their horses. They are walking slowly in a circle on the outer edge of the ring while our horses stand in the center, waiting for us. My horse is named Tonka, and she is a white horse with a light caramel color on her ears and the sides of her face. I am entirely too short to mount the horse, which is not quite as simple as they made it look in the introductory lecture. I can't even lift my leg high enough to get my foot in the stirrup and I need to use the step stool and feel like a total wuss. Once I'm actually on the horse, my helper adjusts the stirrups to the proper length, shows me how to hold the reigns, and then walks Tonka, with me on her, to join the group as their horses walk in a circle.

Every person gets a helper who is an experienced rider, who holds the reins while you're on the horse, and gives you tips about your form and technique. My helper turns out to be the manager of Woodland, a middle aged woman named Tammy. I ask her how long she's been riding, and she tells me that it's since she was a little kid. She gave it up when she had children of her own, but came back to it just as soon as she could because she missed it so much. She is very patient with me, giving me good pointers about how to sit correctly and how to interact with the horse.

Once we've gotten the feel for riding the horse while it's walking, we practice "posting," which is the motion one makes while the horse is trotting. This is where it gets hard. You have to thrust your hips forward, basically causing your entire body to rise until you are almost standing in the stirrups, then lower your body back down, all while keeping your knees turned out and without pulling up with the reins. It's hard because the motion is very awkward, and your natural instinct is to lift up with your hands to balance yourself. Unfortunately, that tugs on the reins and pulls the horse's head back, which is uncomfortable for the horse. So you need muscle control and exceptional balance, which anyone who has seen me walk in high heels knows I do not have.

We practiced posting while the horse was still walking, then one at a time we had the chance to actually try it while our horse trotted. In addition to the difficulty of the hip motion and the balance, you have to time it with the rhythm of the horse's trot. If you lose control of your body, it is called "bouncing," which is exactly what it sounds like. Needless to say, I did my fair share of bouncing. But I began to get the hang of it just a bit, and I can see why lessons would be both necessary and fun.


Our introductory lesson was over after the attempt at posting. The helpers would return the horses to the barn while we returned our helmets to the office...which was coincidentally where you could sign up for lessons! The three of us snuck off without signing up for anything, but the Roommate liked it enough to make some follow up calls regarding pricing and scheduling.

We came back to the city, returned the zip car, and then immediately took naps when we got back to the apartment. Horse back riding is exhausting! But what a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon -- an idyllic country setting, a magnificent animal, fresh air and sunshine.

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Thing 27: Urban Dare DC

I spent my Saturday on a mad dash across the city solving clues, performing dares and yelling at the Boyfriend, in an Amazing Race-type activity known as Urban Dare. Apparently, some guy goes around the country organizing scavenger/treasure hunt races, and Saturday he came to DC, in time for the best day of spring weather yet.

Who else to do this with than GFD, whose knowledge of obscure DC sights and trivia rivals only my own? In addition, I had the Boyfriend stationed at his house in front of the computer, so we could call him with help solving the clues and looking up bus schedules (phoning a friend with access to the Internet is both allowed and encouraged).

GFD and I arrived at Pershing Square, on 14th and Pennsylvania for the start of the race. Clad in shorts and sneakers, with one digital camera, two cell phones, a treo, a laminated map of the city and a wax pencil for easy marking up and wiping off, and a protein-heavy breakfast, we felt ready. We were in it to win it.

At noon, the race began. The organizers handed out sheets with 12 clues or tasks, corresponding to each checkpoint or photo that we had to accomplish. The start of the race is staggered to avoid a mad crush at the beginning. They stagger the start by asking a multiple choice question at the beginning. Depending on your answer, A, B, C or D, you move to a different quadrant as demarcated in the square, and then the correct answer is allowed to go first. The question in our case was a geographic one: “In what modern country is the ancient Nubian city of Kerma located?” GFD’s eyes got really big and I knew he knew the answer even before the choices had been revealed – D, Sudan. We moved into that square and when it was confirmed that we were correct, we were off.

Before we could leave the square, we had to find a tennis ball with the last two digits of our team number written on it. One hundred or so tennis balls lay strewn around the east side of the square, and there was a scramble to locate your team’s ball. Once we finally found ours, we ran to the outskirts of the square, took out our map, called the Boyfriend and started barking clues at him. “Moai statue, bicycle parts, World War II, CALL US BACK!” and we were off and running towards the Mall.

We decided to head towards the first clue we knew right off the bat, and we would solve others on our way there. “In the view of two sculpture gardens” read the clue, and we knew immediately we had to go to the Mall, where the National Gallery's sculpture garden is across the way from that at the Hirshhorn's. We jogged over to the Mall, and sure enough, there were the telltale light blue Urban Dare tee shirts, indicating our check point. For the dare at this location, our team had to navigate a short course as a ‘wheel barrow.’ GFD go on his hands, while I held his legs, and steered him around four cones and back. The Urban Dare staffer stamped our ‘passport’ and then we were free to go to the next checkpoint.

I did not want to leave the Mall unless we were sure there were no other checkpoints in the vicinity. We called the Boyfriend back, seeing if he had any progress on those clues we couldn’t figure out. Not much progress. Rather than waste time, we started jogging towards the World War II Memorial, where “Dirty Harry made two movies about this last year.” We arrived at the memorial, and there was nothing. We encountered another blue-shirted team and asked them if they had found the checkpoint there. They hadn’t either. “They couldn’t possibly expect us to go to the Iwo Jima, could they?” said one of the members from the other team. David and I looked at each other. Yes, yes they would. We would have to go to Virginia. And we were off and running to the Ellipse to take a picture at the Zero Milestone.

After the picture at the Ellipse, we headed down Pennsylvania Ave to the Edward Murrow Park at 19th and Penn, where we had to play a game of “hide and seek.” An Urban Dare staffer gave us a slip of paper with a word on it (ours was ‘discombobulate’), and we had to find the numeric value for the word. Each letter had a numeric value, and the values were hidden around the park, little slips of paper taped to benches or trees or stuck to small posts sticking out of the ground.

We added up our letters with only one small set back – a homeless man was sitting on a bench and covering the letter M’s value. Once our word’s value had been approved and our passport stamped, we raced west to the GW campus to take our picture with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one in the Western, according to a very random and unclear meridian marker at the corner of H and 24th, NW. Then we ran the two blocks to the Foggy Bottom metro, to ride the line one stop to Rosslyn.

While waiting for the train, we had our map out and were both frantically making calls, trying to figure out a couple of the remaining clues. By luck or divine intervention, we sat next to a young man who, upon overhearing our phone calls, mentioned that the “confectioner’s shop named for the Big Hurt or a Supreme Court Justice” was probably Thomas Sweet’s in Georgetown. Of course! And while he was at it, could he solve any of the other clues? “Two consecutive quarters of negative growth probably refers to Recessions. It’s a small bar in the basement of the Quincy Hotel, next to Mackey’s, on L Street.” We thanked him profusely for his help as the train pulled in to the station.

Under the river one stop and we rushed off the train, eager to leave behind the other teams that were in our car. GFD made me walk up the entire escalator at Rosslyn (no small feat, for those who know how long it is), and then we ran the couple blocks from the metro to an art installation called the “Bike Oasis,” the answer to one of the clues solved by the Boyfriend, thanks to Google.


Then we headed over to the Iwo Jima Memorial, where our dare consisted of dropping and giving the staffers 20, and then making up our own “I don’t know but I’ve been told” chant. As our passport was being stamped, an airplane flew over head – one of the tasks was to get our team’s picture with an actual airplane flying in the background (no paper, no models). We scrambled to get our camera turned on in time, and the staffer took our picture with a very tiny dot of a plane in the sky behind us.

From Rosslyn, we crossed the Key Bridge (GFD wanted to run, I was done with running at this point). Once in Georgetown, we hustled down M Street and up Wisconsin to Thomas Sweet’s chocolate and ice cream shop. The line was out the door on such a sunny afternoon, but the Urban Dare staffers waved us over and brought us into the shop. Our dare was to eat a chocolate-covered pecan candy, which we wolfed down (despite it being incredibly sweet and my dislike of pecans), got our passport stamped, and then ran out the door to catch the 32 bus across town. One was just passing us, and we ran after it and caught it at its next stop. We sat down and enjoyed our brief period of rest.

At this point, we felt pretty good. We’d figured out all the clues, we knew where it was we had left to go. It had been about three hours up until now, and we felt confident that we could finish in three and a half – perhaps not fast enough to win, but a very respectable finish nonetheless. We would take the bus to 7th and Pennsylvania, run up 7th to the National Portrait Gallery and take our picture in front of the statue of Daguerre, inventor of the daguerrotype. Then we’d hop on the red line two stops to Farragut North, go to Recessions and perform the dare (which was to hit a bullseye throwing darts), and then on the Chilean embassy at 18th and Massachusetts to get our picture with one of those big head statues from Easter Island. Then straight down Mass to Dupont Circle and the finish line, at Buffalo Billiards.

And our plan worked beautifully, until we got to the Chilean embassy and there were no statues there at all, Moai or any other kind.

The task had been problematic from the start. “Take a picture in front of an authentic Moai statue.” It seemed simple enough, except that when the Boyfriend googled it, the only one he pulled up was located clear up north on the American University campus. That was so far off of the course of everything else, that we just didn’t believe that that could be the only one. Upon further research, the Boyfriend found that the statue had been given to AU by the Chilean embassy. Aha! We guessed that another statue might be located at the embassy at 18th and Mass. Before going all the way over there though, we decided to have someone scope it out, to make sure we were right. We called all our friends who live in the area, finally one of them picked up and agreed to swing by the place and see. About ten minutes later, he called back. “I have it on good authority that there is an Easter Island statue in front of the embassy.” Yes! Which is how we found ourselves in front of the decidedly statue-free Chilean embassy.

I called my friend: “WHERE IS THIS STATUE YOU PROMISED?!” He explained that by “good authority,” he had asked some guy on the street who had assured him there were several Easter Island heads in front of the embassy. I hung up on my friend.

We called the Boyfriend back, who hit up Google one more time, and said that there might be a statue at the Natural History Museum, but he couldn’t be sure. David and I looked at each other, dejected, exhausted, defeated. We had been at this for more than four hours at this point. There was no way we would win. There was no way we’d come in the top ten. There was no way we’d come in the top anything.

We discussed whether we should retrace our steps to the Natural History Museum, or even make our way north to AU. It was all just too much and we were so tired. We posed for a photo in front of a random statue at the embassy of Zimbabwe, and headed to the finish line at Buffalo Billiards.

At Buffalo Billiards we had to complete one last dare, to score a three at shuffleboard, and then we were free to drink a beer. All told, we had spent four and a half hours running frantically around, we were sunburnt, sweaty, with a crust of salt on our foreheads, our legs completely stiff. We drank several waters and a beer, scarfed down a plate of nachos, and hobbled back to our respective homes.

And we can’t wait to do it again next year!