Thursday’s iconic waypoint was the work place of the most powerful and influential people in the world – Washington DC.
“Taxation Without Representation”
…and what a beautiful day it was too, with blue skies, wide streets and lovely architecture, it was all very easy to ride around and well worth the visit.
Well, it was ‘on the way’ anyway 🙂
The past few days haven’t involved much riding really – low mileage and frequent coffee stops in heated cafes or, more often, Internet-enabled Mc Donalds ‘restaurants’. The upshot of this cold weather is that I’ve been staying in motels, which come with beds, showers and all manner of facilities. Pure luxury. Well, not too much luxury – these have been cheap motels! 🙂 In fact, after tonight’s motel-featured slumber, I’ll have been an entire week without a camp fire or a sleeping bag.
I’m missing the camp fires.
I’m NOT missing scraping ice off the tent in the mornings.
I’ve seen Washington DC a few times now so I didn’t need to visit the classic sights but I really wanted to get a photo* of The White House with the bike in the foreground.
…but there was far too much security for that to happen.
I tried – I asked some policemen if I could push the bike into the park for a quick photo but their retort was a polite, simple, and firm, ‘no’. Oh well. Party poopers 🙁
After getting lost while heading out of town, and then rediscovering Route 29 North, I’ve arrived in Baltimore. Next, I’ll either pop into town and check it out or, more likely, head north to Philadelphia. I’d like to see the old part of Philadelphia – is that where tasty steak ‘n cheese baguettes come from?
After Philly, I’ll be heading north after taking the decision to bypass New York City. Although it ranks as an uber-iconic location, I foresee much traffic and concrete and I’ve been missing the open roads, The weather is going to be much warmer today and tomorrow so I have a camping night tonight and then a final day of riding tomorrow in the push up through Massachusetts and on into New Hampshire.
Sorry if I’ve used too many commas in this blog post, but I’ve been reading, much to my joy, the celebrated Charles Dickens, master of multi-comma long-sentence prose. I guess it means that the next few posts won’t include any swearing though 🙂
* I was going to use the word ‘shot’ instead of ‘photo’, but ‘shot’ and ‘White House’ in the same sentence in a blog post would probably trigger some form of NSA-funded badness in my future. That sounds best avoided to me.
Rats – I’ve used the word ‘trigger’ now too. I think it’s time to stop typing.