Twilight comes late enough to feel like summer, but the waning daylight is evident, and it’s dark when we put the kids to bed. The transition from summer to fall, however, hasn’t been so much a cross-fade as a knife-switch. It took a while for summer’s dog days to arrive, finally coming in August, but in the span of the last 3 days, it’s gone from sleeping-on-top-of-the-sheets hot to it’s-a-great-day-for-football mild. I half expected to come outside this morning, watch every leaf on our street turn red in thirty seconds, and crash to the sidewalk all at once.

This year’s three-month bivouac at the pool is winding down, and once again the last days inspire both panic and relief. The pool itself is a delight, but it’s the grounds and the community that keep us in its orbit all summer long. We let the kids off leash to run with their toddler cohort, cook on community grills while our kitchen remains cool and un-thrashed, get to enjoy a beer (and sometimes more than one), and mingle with our friends in a pleasant meadow. We don’t even have to arrange to meet anyone. I mean, where else are they gonna go?

On the other hand, it tends to dominate the season. In early June, The missus was frantically trying to get the kids and I out the door. I hesitated, looked back, expressed my need to do something about our unfit-for-habitation living room and said I’d meet them later. “What are you talking about?” she said in disbelief, “The pool’s open! We’ll clean in September! Let’s go!” So, in that sense, we’re looking forward to blowing the dust of our project list and seeing what else there is to do.

One big project did get off the ground, though. The Wife’s other gig has been kick-ass this season. We’ve been blessed with berries and peaches and bread and all sorts of delicious local produce. She also came into this season hell-bent to realize a vision, a bike clinic, staffed with volunteers, who’d teach people about bike maintainence, do some repairs, and generally encourage people to get their bikes on the road. I have to admit, I was skeptical that it could work (and leary of being sucked into it since I already take over the kids on Saturday mornings while she’s market-managing). But lo and behold, smart, motivated people jumped right in, got folks signed up, and the results have been stunning. I worked one Saturday with 2-4 other volunteers, and didn’t stop from the opening bell until an hour after market closed. We’d helped over 30 people tune their bikes, and several of those folks have turned around and become volunteers since then. Meanwhile, some enterprising yoots down ’round the Bloomingdale Farmers’ Market have started up their own bike clinic, which we stopped by on Sunday morning, and it was totally hoppin’.

I gotta say, I’d be proud just to know my wife if I wasn’t lucky enough to be married to her.

Cledus and I had an incredible summer together, logging over 1700 miles and climbing almost 60,000 feet since Memorial Day, bringing my totals for the first two-thirds of the year to over 3100 miles and over 100,000 feet of climbing. Our many miles together culminated in my first ever century, which was far and away the baddest-ass thing I’ve done this year, and raising money and riding for Team Fatty made it even more meaningful. I’ll likely do more centuries, but I’ll always regard that one with a special fondness.

So into fall we go. With school starting, children to transport, backpacks to haul, and layers to carry, the swift-strike of a commute I make on Cledus will be replaced most mornings with the happy rolling melody of Nigel’s fat, creamy tires chewing up bricks, asphalt, and gravel with gusto. To tell you the truth, it’s hard to be sad about the transition when they both put such a big grin on my face. And while I’ve certainly enjoyed racking up road miles, the completion of the big ride and the crisp shift in seasons will mark a return to a more balanced palette of adventures. I’m itchy to throw plastic at metal, which I mostly gave up for training, and longtail camping trips up the C&O are definitely in order now that mosquitoes are no longer part of the experience and there’s enough snap in the air to make the first cup of coffee extra awesome.

Speaking of longtail projects, we’ve convinced more of our friends to take the plunge! They asked what it would take to make it happen, I pointed them towards a beautiful mid-90’s Trek 930 being sold nearby, they wisely jumped on it and pulled the trigger on an Xtracycle kit. And, get this, I’ve got the green light to make an appointment with the powder coater to make the whole rig Taxicab Yellow. (I’m trying to track down checkerboard decals, too, let me know if you’ve got a line on ‘em.) It’s going to be beautiful, and hopefully we’ll get it on the road quickly so we can get them out on the trail sooner than later. They’re excited. I’m excited for ‘em.

All this makes it sounds as if I’m done with road miles. Not so! In fact, another transition is in store as we ride into autumn. I had to face the fact that it’s just not the time or place for me to own a kick-ass single-speed mountain bike. I don’t ride singletrack here, as much as I think I’d like to, so the 4one5 has been relegated to the occasional urban assault, which consists mostly of delighting myself with bunny hops off speed bumps and tearing up the neighbors’ lawns. It needs to be on real trails, wearing knobbies, eating dirt. Meanwhile, I’ve developed an itch for a real road bike. Nothing too fancy, mind ya, but something a little more lithe and a little less linebacker than the Cledus. We’ll have to see what happens.

There’s one more big sunny barbecue left before it’s time to get the long sleeves and hoodies out (or, in the case of my San Francisco brethren, to put them back and get ready for things to warm up). And then it’s harvest and costumes and turkeys and reindeer from there on out.

So whatcha got planned for the end of summer?

Here’s some images from the weekend’s bike camping expedition up the C&O Canal Towpath.

It was a great trip. We loaded up both longtails and Clovis with 3 adults, 3 kids, gear, water and food. Then we rode about 7-ish miles through DC, another 16 and change up the path to the campground at Swain’s Lock, stopping at several amazingly beautiful spots on the Potomac along the way.

The campground was great, nestled between a canal lock and the river with a rushing waterfall nearby. There were about 60 Boy Scouts and parents next to us with their tents and bikes, they’d gotten on the trail about 18 miles north and were headed the rest of the way to Georgetown.

There’s much more to be written about the experience, we had a great time, it was a great shake out for our gear and an opportunity to see how the kids would handle a longer ride. But I’m busy. Busy, busy, busy. So for now, grab some popcorn, enjoy the slide show, and I’ll share more impressions when I get a moment to breathe and blog.

Bikegame update: so far 2009 is lookin’ like 58 rides for 418 miles, and this morning I knocked off Level 2 with an early morning ride out to College Park and back. Despite the 25-35 mph winds I hit coming home, it was awesome. I’m trying to think of this little run of days in the 50’s and 60’s as a wonderful gift instead of an excruciating tease, we’ll see how I feel about it Saturday when it heads back into the high 30’s.

Also, the Nitto Noodle bars I put on Cledus are far and away the most comfortable drop bars I’ve ever laid hands upon. Until I’ve established a gear review category, I’ll just have to highly recommend them. I do.

My favorite moment during yesterday’s festivities came while watching the swearing-in and post-swearing-in speech, I realized I was needlessly bracing myself for cringes that weren’t going to happen. There were no ‘Nookyuller’ moments, nothing about putting food on my family, and I realized that I could relax a bit. Then, a little while later, I realized (again) that President Obama is not simply an adequate speaker that won’t embarrass us with his grammar and pronunciation, but that he’s an excellent speaker that leaves one feeling better than they did before he delivered the speech. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve enjoyed seeing a presidential speech delivered, that was really nice.

And you know, I thought my farewell feelings for Bush would have been angrier, but they weren’t. I just can’t attribute as much evil to the guy as I can to someone like, for example, Kissinger. There’s a lot of people in Washington that are sharp, informed, and experienced enough to know what kind of evil they’re unleashing on the country and the world, after 8 years I’m not convinced that George W. Bush is one of them.

Cheney, by contrast, I expected to be sent back to wherever he came from via a circled pentagram drawn with magic powder on the floor of a red-walled room in the White House’s deepest basement room. Ya know what I mean? Like the kind of room where the door is made with 8″ oak timbers, and has a small window with thick, wrought iron bars and a message carved into it in Latin?

But now that they’re gone, I wish them a pleasant retirement and beseech them both to resist any temptations to come out of it. For anything. Neither of them should probably do any vacationing near The Hague, for that matter.

So, the first real ride of this glorious new America, a seemingly routine commute in to work this morning, was in the 20 degree range, but the wind was light and the sun shone brightly. After I made egg sammiches for the family, Rebbie and I rode together to drop Ruby off at school, which was a rare treat, and then I headed in to work solo. I did add a quarter mile to the trip finding out why North Capitol was completely closed off south of Washington Hospital Center in both directions. Evidently there was a fire on the west side of North Capitol, just south of Adams, that required a bunch of pumpers and a lot of water. And you know what happens when you spray the street with a few acre-inches of water in the early morning hours of a 20 degree day? You guessed it, a sheet of ice between a quarter-inch and an inch thick for about 3-4 blocks, but with formations like you’d expect to see close to a recent lava flow. So if your north-south or south-north commute this morning seemed way, way worse than usual, don’t blame the out-of-towners.

After that, the ride was wonderful. Not just wonderful like, zippy and without confrontation. Wonderful like, just this side of Sister Maria running and singing across Austrian mountain meadows. You see, last weekend I replaced my old drop bars with Nitto Noodle Bars, and my first impression after riding them for more than two test blocks is that these bars are alive with the Sound of Music. They’re nice and wide, and the top section is swept back a bit, about as much as my wrists need to feel perfectly natural. The ramps behind the brake levers are almost flat and super comfy, and the drops are dreamy. Every place on them is a usable hand position, and all the ones I’ve found so far have been really comfy. Seems like something I should review after I’ve had more time with it, more on that later.

All in all, I gotta say, it’s been a great weekend, great couple days, and it’s so good to wake up in Obama’s America. I’m not a fanboy or anything, but at some point early in Bush’s second term, I kinda started believing deep down that it was never going to end, and that this day would never come. It’s here, and it brought Noodle Bars with it. Rad.

How were your Inaugural Festivities?

I haven’t really had a bad ride yet this winter, which I often force myself to remember on mornings like these.

It’s not the cold, in fact it’s not really that cold and the miracle of technical clothing means I’m typically warm and cozy, kept dry from the outside and even from the inside. We haven’t even gotten snow yet. I’m hoping we do see at least a little winter weather so I can make and try out some of the homemade studded tire recipes on the internet. And after all, this is the Mid-Atlantic, it’s not Buffalo or Chicago or Minneapolis or even New York City winter. This is pretty easy as far as winters go.

But on mornings like this, 33 degrees and raining, I take a look outside and my first thought is, “maybe today’s not such a bad day to take the Metro in to work.” Thankfully, riding the Red Line is only a little more pleasant than hopping to work in a gunnysack with my shoes on the wrong feet, so that thought didn’t have long to live.

Rain that’s just this side of freezing initially gives me the kind of anticipatory dread one usually associates with a dentist holding a hypodermic needle. Of course, that wouldn’t get Ruby to school, we’d have to walk, though that might be nice too. I also haven’t ridden the Metro in something like 11 months, and that streak is starting to mean enough to me to stand up to my initial resistance. And without fail, every time I get to pedalling my trepidation falls away and I’m fine with it.

But Nigel’s still without fenders, which means we’re puddle stompin’. Yes, I ordered some. But, no, 26″ 60mm Planet Bike Cascadia ATB fender won’t fit over 60mm Fat Franks no matter how much you want them to. Frank’s Fat, and that’s that. 29’s have been ordered, but it didn’t help this morning. Sylvie’s got fenders but I didn’t want to leave Rebbie without them for the day, so Nigel it is and Nigel it was and I knew it was going to suck but I figured what the hell let’s go.

And it was great, it took all of about 3 minutes before my inner voice was chiding me for even considering taking the Metro behind a little rain. Wool is magic. Capilene is magic. You put the two of them together and it’s twoo wuv. I couldn’t help but get soaked down where the action is below the knee, but the magical wool socks and shpants joined forces with the magical Capilene long johns and I was never even chilly.

It is also double-plus-thumbs-up to have warm slippers and a change of pants stashed in the desk, I hope I don’t have any meetings today.

Well. I hadn’t noticed at the time, but now it’s obvious.

Can it be a coincidence that it’s now dark out no matter what time I escape from work, and that I just posted In The Dark last Friday? Believe that if you’re less frightened by the implications, but in my experience there are no coincidences. Clearly, my shamanic use of Billy Squier has accelerated the shortening of the days. Thankfully, that shortening has zero trans-fats.

I left the office last night in late twilight, it was 46 degrees, blowing 15-25 mph, and the ride home was really and truly delightful. There were two stretches where the wind and I were headed the same direction at the same speed, and I had that rare experience of moving fast in still air. All the buffeting in my clothes and exposed hair just stopped, the roar in my ears got quiet, I could hear tires and derailleur pulleys. Pretty neat.

Commuting D.C. in the summer didn’t give as many opportunities to review gear, it was light out most of the evening and any clothing, no matter how light, soaked through with sweat about 3 blocks into the ride. There’s only so many things you can review, positively or negatively, based on their ability hold and dispose of 3 gallons of perspiration in 90% humidity.

But now that it’s getting dark and cooler (I wouldn’t say cold, this is cold), there’s some items that are significant contributors to making any time a good time to ride. I intend to write ‘em up, if for no other reason so that someone Googling “Planet Bike Superflash” will come upon one more post about how awesome they are at blinding people who try to draft you.

After all, product isn’t just something you failed to put in your hair again this morning, you slacking hippie slob. It’s our shared enthusiasm for certain brands, items, and ad campaigns that passes for something like culture, or more accurately tribal affiliation, in these modern times. And if I don’t give the thumbs up or down on a select set of products, how will you know whether or not I’m one of us, or one of them?

Don’t even get me started on your stupid Mac. Just kidding. Not really. Kidding. Not. Stupid Mac.

Anyway, I hear that it’s getting darker and colder ever’whar, how’s your ride been?