Blue Boat Home

I left the hostel just in time: the cold that had been lingering in my throat for several days moved into my nose.  The hostel has no soap or towels in the bathrooms, and it's easy to forget to bring one's own, which is probably why I got sick, but had I stayed an hour longer I would certainly have passed it on to other people.

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on April 8, 2005]

Hello again! I'm still in Washington, getting ready to move back into the Gallaudet dorms for a second weekend after spending the week in a hostel. I apologize for the length of this message, but I've been busy!

This morning I rode the Metro to the Air and Space Museum and caught a shuttle bus from there to the museum's new annex near Dulles Airport, called the Stephen F.

This morning I biked to Shaw Ecovillage.  As an urban nonprofit organization, it has more in common with the Rhizome Collective I visited in Austin than the ecovillages I've visited in rural areas.  The basic idea is that the adults in the organization raise money and the kids -- teenagers -- decide how to spend it to improve the neighborhood.  They've created community gardens, painted murals, and started a community bike shop.  Because I visited during the school day, there were no teenagers at the shop, but the college-grad day managers, Max & Wakeel, were eager t

Today was forecast to be the only truly glorious day of the week, so I took my bike out for a spin.  I followed about 3/4 of the Rock Creek Park bike trail, all of the Capitol Crescent trail, and the very end of the C&O Towpath -- that's the trail that Granny D covered on cross-country skis when she was running late for a press conference and an unexpected snow fell.

I tried to sleep in after staying out late last night, but I'm so used to waking up at dawn I couldn't help myself.  I packed up and left Gallaudet for All Souls Church, riding through the neighborhood Marisa had warned me against last night, and I have to admit it looked pretty questionable in the daytime, too.

Late this morning I rode the Metro to the National Mall.  I checked on the cherry blossoms, but most of the trees are still a day or two from full bloom.

Today's weather was just miserable: cold and rainy and windy.  I stayed indoors as long as I could stand to -- Marisa let me use her computer while she was in a study group all afternoon -- but then I insisted on going out.

Marisa thought I was crazy, not only because of the weather, but because the neighborhood is considered to be very unsafe.  I figured I had seen worse weather and worse neighborhoods, but I didn't make it off campus.  By the time I got back to the dorm, my pants and shoes were soaked with shockingly cold water.

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on April 2, 2005]

Hi, folks! I'm safe and sound at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC! It's hard to believe I've completed my three months in the South and crossed Virginia in less than a week!

I only had to ride about 2 miles on the highway today; near Mount Vernon I picked up a bike trail that parallels the Potomac River all the way into town.  I stopped at a place called Gravelly Point for a first view of the Washington skyline, and I wound up watching a mother trying in vain to get her son as interested in the airplanes at Reagan National Airport as she was.