One Less Burley

Last night ended my noble but failed attempt to put gears on my trusty Surly. With no more cross racing on my calendar, I just didn't see the point. I spent an hour stripping away the deraileurs and rear brake, putting back on the Nitto mustache bars, the fixed cog-- just coddling my bike, whispering how sorry I was for ever subjecting it to the humiliation of being ridden around the neighborhood with that ugly LX derailuer, and Shimano integrated shifter.

The next day brought more warm December weather and Christmas holiday leave... a perfect time for another one of those DC rides with Gina and Sagada. This time we let Sagada do all her own pedaling. We started with a picnic at DC National airport and rode to the Jefferson Memorial to snap some pics:



Then it was off to downtown to visit the Air & Space Museum. We did a lot of the demos in the "How Things Fly" section and then headed over to the "American Treasures" exhibit where we saw Coltrane's musical sketch of "A Love Supreme" and Prince's "cloud" guitar, complete with "When Doves Cry" soundtrack. Brought a tear to my eye (sniff). Sagada's an old pro when it comes to museum stuff like this. She'd seen all this stuff before from her days at Smithonian pre-school and kindergarten. Before we knew it, the sun was going down and it was time to pedal over the 14th St. bridge and back to the cars.