Suzanne and Margo

Margo works for Danita at UMBC. Margo and Suzanne have been together for over 15 years. This year, MD liberalized their marriage laws. Margo and Suzanne got married today (Saturday). it was a very nice wedding. The ceremony was outdoors in brilliant sunshine. It was followed by a very nice reception at a building on the grounds. One advantage of getting married after being together for so long is that the principals can be themselves and have fun. Because I am married to Danita, I got to sit at the “power table” with Ray Hoff (who used to be the director of the research group), and Jan (who is currently the director of the smaller of the two groups Danita runs).

Painted Shoes – Birds that Mate for Life

If it had rained, the ceremony would have been in the barn. Then I would have been able to use my line about how gentlemen used to wear a tie when going to church and overalls when going to the barn. But it was sunny, the ceremony was outdoors, and I can’t use that line. The wedding had a lot of personal and hand made touches. The ladies painted their shoes. Suzanne’s theme was birds that mate for life. Margo’s theme was flowers, combined with the tree of life.

Our week was bookend-ed with rain. In between, we had great weather (as we did today), and I rode my bike. To do something a little different, I drove down to Northern Virginia. Most of Northern Virginia is what I call “Suburban Desert”. There’s not much reason to go there. But when I did the MS Cure ride two years ago, I discovered there is a section west of Dulles Airport that is beautiful country — farms, fields, and gently rolling hills; with the Blue Ridge Mountains occasionally defining the horizon. The ride was a victim of it’s own success. There were too many  bikers on two few roads. They don’t do that ride any more. I don’t have the routes I rode two years ago. But I found a promising route on the Internet. Wednesday, I decided to go down and try out the ride. Google said it takes an hour to drive there. Allowing 90 minutes with traffic and 7 hours for the ride, I should beat Danita home.

The ride was less than totally successful. The “best” route driving down took the Dulles Airport toll road. I drove through the toll booth and noticed they were charging my E-Z Pass $1.75. I judged that was a fair fare. Virginia got the drop on me, though. A few miles before I was to exit, I went through a second tool booth — $5.10. By the time I saw the sign, there was no option but to pay the toll. That was an outrages rip-off. Going home, I drove around the other side of Dulles Airport and paid no tolls. The second half of the bike ride was all Suburban Desert. It was simply miles I had to do to get back to the car. Not knowing the roads in the area, I decided to follow the plan and not try to find a shortcut. Finally, the drive back was a much slower than the drive down. It took 3 hours to do my 1-hour drive. I should have known.

But the first part of the ride was perfect. Perfect weather. Perfect country. Perfect roads. I started out going past a new wealthy area. These houses were so large, the 4-bay garages didn’t look at all out of place. I never got close to one of the houses, but it certainly looked like they were built with real stone. It also looked like the lots were about 10 acres. These people are not pretenders to wealth. Then I went through an upper class neighborhood. The “better” houses still had 4-bay garages, but the stone was fake, and houses were separated by 50 or 100 feet. It seemed to be an open-minded neighborhood. They allowed people in even if they could only afford a 3-bay garage. Sidewalks were everywhere and flowers were plentiful. After that, it was 35 miles of gorgeous country.

Antioch Baptist Church

I rode by Antioch Baptist Church. I didn’t take notes from the historical placard, and I couldn’t find the history on the Internet. But from memory, the church was founded “way back” in a log cabin (which is still standing). Then they built a stone building, but it was so poorly built it fell down from its own weight. (Maybe the placard didn’t use these exact words.) The building you see here is their third. The church was closed due to lack of members, but it opened up again in the early 1990s, and is active today. I don’t understand what it is that makes the past this important to some people.

Another placard noted the importance of the general area. Some Yankee soldiers, who had been soundly whooped by Johnny Reb, snuck out through this area to avoid capture. Also several Confederate generals bravely marched through the area, including J. E. B. Stuart, who started his “controversial” ride to Gettysburg here. I think this last point is funny, because most people would say that Stuart’s ride to Gettysburg was “disastrous”. The cavalry’s main job was to scout for the enemy. But J. E. B. got sidetracked and went up an adjacent valley while Lee was marching up the Shenandoah Valley. Lee knew he couldn’t win the war in a military sense. His objective was to win a major battle in the North’s territory and convince a dispirited enemy to give up. If J. E. B. had done his job, Lee might have been able to control the ground of that engagement. He might have had the high ground, instead of giving that advantage to the Union, and the US might be a very different country today. Only a Virginia historian could call that “controversial”.

Where do you think all these stones came from? I’ll bet they weren’t imported from Italy.

There were miles and miles of stone fences. It seemed to me that in places they built stone fences not because they needed the fence as much as they needed some place to put the stones. The fences were in excellent condition. I couldn’t even conceive of how much work it was to clear these stones, move them to where a fence was needed, and build the fence. There were incredible examples of extraordinary stone work. Unfortunately, I was having so much fun riding, looking, and thinking that I didn’t take pictures until near the end of the first half of the ride. The next picture shows an example of building a stone fence right into a tree. It is far from the best example of fancy stone work. Besides trees, I also saw incredible stone work around ditches, gulleys, and such.

Is a tree in the way of that stone fence? Just build the fence into the tree.

Long stretches of the ride had undisturbed woods on both sides of the road. The Cicadas were at their peak. (This brood doesn’t live in our area. We’ll be getting our Cicadas in 2021. Or so they say.) I didn’t see very many of the insects. (They hadn’t started dying off yet — they were staying in the woods and doing whatever it is they do during their short season.) But I certainly heard them. At times they were so loud that I couldn’t hear whether a car was coming up from behind. After the ride, when I was driving around behind Dulles Airport, it was a different sensation. I was going faster and the wooded areas near where I was driving weren’t as large. I would hear no insect sounds, then the Cicadas would quickly get loud, then quickly get soft, fading out to nothing.

One of the few things we just don’t have in Columbia is good Greek food. Considering how many Greeks live in Baltimore and how easy it is to get great Greek food up there, I’m at a loss to explain how one can go to a “good” Greek restaurant in Columbia and find that all Gyros are made with beef (there being no lamb anywhere on the menu). Thursday, Danita and I decided to go up to Baltimore and eat at Ikaros. We didn’t know this was the first evening of the annual Greek festival. Fortunately for us, the end-of-the-week rain had started, turnout for the first night of the festival was light, and we were able to find a parking spot. We had a very nice meal with good Greek food.

We have only one more party this week. Our neighborhood is having its strawberry social tomorrow. Last year, they forgot the ice cream. That certainly put a bit of a damper on the evening for Danita and me. We have it on good authority that the ice cream was missed by many. The forecast for tomorrow includes a 90% probability of ice cream.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.