Extra Mile Pointless Prize

[epilsk]

Well done, and at least it looks pretty! Glad you stayed upright and got those miles in. Well done. I tried to get my ride in on Saturday before the snow/ice started, and almost made it. When I got home my bike, tights, helmet, and jacket were covered in a layer of ice. My jacket felt like it had a coat of armor! Luckily to roads were well treated and I had no problems. Sunday I wanted until mid-afternoon and the roads were a bit damp but no ice and no problems.

Stay warm, dry, and safe!

[cvcalhoun]

Proving yet again that I get a bit insane on the scavenger hunt:

Yesterday’s was originally announced as an all-electric car (not a hybrid), with an extra point if not a Tesla, and two extra points if it had a bike rack on it. But it couldn’t be from a dealership.

With icy conditions predicted for morning, I decided to go out just after midnight. I am one of those people with no knowledge of cars at all. The only two cars I recognize on sight are a VW Beetle and a Corvette–and they don’t even make Beetles any more. So the possibility of my actually recognizing an electric vehicle I passed on my ride was nil. But I decided that what I could do was to go to garages that had charging stations, look for whatever was attached to the charger, then look it up on my phone to figure out whether it was all-electric or hybrid.

So I got a map of every public garage in Bethesda that had a charging station. And I went to every one of them. Net finds: Two Volts (hybrids), one Prius (also a hybrid), two Teslas, and a lot of charging stations with nothing plugged into them. None of the cars had bike racks. I then checked one of those guides for electric vehicle owners that shows where there are charging stations, and found a couple more. One of them had no vehicles at the chargers. The next proved to be at Suburban Hospital. So I’m wandering around the parking lot at Suburban in the middle of the night, and a security guard stops me and asks suspiciously whether the vehicle I’ve just been looking at is mine. On the theory that the best defense is a good offense, I told him that I was looking for the charging station and asked for directions. He looked a bit dubious, but told me it was in the garage, and gave me directions. So I headed down there, only to find that there were no vehicles at the charging stations. And on my way out, another security guard intercepted me and told me that the parking garage was private property and that I had to get out of there if I wasn’t a patient at the hospital. He was totally unmoved by my explanation. However, since I’d already discovered that what I wanted wasn’t there, I just left hastily.

When I got home, I posted a picture of the Prius, thinking it was a Tesla. (Did I mention not recognizing any cars?) But fortunately, drevil saw my error, and told me about it, and I had photos of the Teslas I could substitute. (Substitution #1.)

However, I really wasn’t satisfied with just the one point. So I posted on NextDoor, asking whether anyone had an electric car that was not a Tesla, and/or that had a bike rack, that I could photograph.

First response I got was from a woman with a BMW i3. After some back and forth because she wanted to know why I wanted to photograph her car, she told me her address. By this time, it was afternoon, and the roads had gotten pretty bad, but fortunately she lived only a few blocks away and I was able to get the shot and substitute it for the one of the Tesla which in turn had been a substitute for the one of the Prius. (Substitution #2.)

But then someone else contacted me and said someone he knew had an electric vehicle with a bike rack. He gave me the person’s name and the street he lived on, and suggested I contact the owner of the vehicle via NextDoor. So I thanked the person who had contacted me, and sent a message to the person whom he said owned the vehicle.

However, the owner of the vehicle had not gotten back to me by 11 pm, and the deadline was midnight, so I figured I wasn’t going to hear from him in time. So I Googled the name and the street, and figured out the exact address. And I figured I’d go by and at least see whether I could see the vehicle from the street so I could take a picture without needing to contact the owner.

By this time, though, the roads were awful. There were only a few I could actually bike on. There were others where I had to walk my bike. And there were still others where I couldn’t even walk without slipping, and had to sort of use my bike as a walker while shuffling along. The only good thing about that trip was that between 11 and midnight, there were no cars on the road, so I was able to make it where I was going without risking more than just falling over.

When I arrived there, it turned out that my informant had been incorrect. The people had two cars. One was a Bolt (all electric) without a bike rack. The other was a Volt (hybrid) with a bike rack. However, by that time, the rules had been changed so that a hybrid was 1 point, a Tesla was 1.5 points, a non-Tesla electric vehicle was 2 points, and then a bike rack added two more points. So the Volt with a bike rack was worth more than either the Tesla I had photographed the night before or the BMW i3 I had photographed in the afternoon. And I managed to substitute a photo of the Volt with bike rack for my previous photo at 11:52 pm, just barely making the deadline. (Yes, this was substitution #3.)

Of course, at that point, I was out on icy streets at around midnight, still a mile or so from home. But it was snowing, so I wasn’t sure conditions in the morning would be any better. So I decided just to stop my ride and start a new one a little after midnight. Today’s scavenger hunt item was the name or likeness of a planet. I found reference to a new development called The Mercury at Wildwood, and figured that I would get today’s scavenger hunt item out of the way early.

I went to the address indicated, but it was a Bethesda Bagels, not The Mercury at Wildwood. I have no idea whether that development got abandoned, or is still just proposed, or what. I took a photo of the Blue Mercury that was a few stores away from the Bethesda Bagels, but I kept checking around to see whether I could find any sign of The Mercury at Wildwood.

As I was checking, I ran across a homeless guy sitting at a table. He was wearing a mask, and greeted me cheerfully, so I returned the greeting. At that point, he:

• Removed the mask,
• Came over to my bike (getting way closer than six feet) to ask about my panniers (thank heavens I had just hit the 14-day mark after my vaccination!),
• Asked what I was doing,
• Complimented my helmet (which has lights on it), and
• Said, “I like your butt.”

That last (in a deserted shopping mall in the middle of the night) was the point that I decided I was going to be satisfied with the Blue Mercury sign, and really didn’t want to go on looking for The Mercury at Wildwood.

[epilsk]

Oh My God!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[Laurie E.]

Extra Mile 2/24/21 equals about 8 extra miles, that I didn’t get credit for because I forget to restart Strava once I took the pictures. There is a construction site behind my house that I try to go through as much as possible, because if I can’t get through that adds about 8 extra miles to my trip each way. They have been trying different things to block us from getting through and tonight there used a line of trucks. As you can see, I still went through the trucks, but decided to slow down so I could see what they were blocking and how much progress they were making. About 50 feet in, the road was gone. The whole road, good thing that I have two bright lights on the front of my bike and that I was going slow. SMH. Well, I couldn’t get through that and had to go the extra 8 miles, without credit.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24461[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]24462[/ATTACH]

[epilsk]

Glad you saw that! I guess we know why they were so determined to block the road. Well done for the bonus miles and for staying on the road!

Stay safe

[Author]

Posts