President’s Day History Ride – Monday, February 19th

[Judd]

I’m hosting a President’s Day Ride again this year. In recognition of the bicentennial of the Great State of Illinois, this year’s ride will visit sites associated with the four Presidents who have called Illinois home: Lincoln, Grant, Reagan and Obama. I’m planning just 6 stops this year. At each stop I’ll share some history of the site or individual. I’ve tried to pick sites that for the most part you probably haven’t visited. (I’ve only been to two myself). I’ll once again try to tie historical events to the present.

The official ride will meet at the Lincoln Memorial at 10:30. I plan to get rolling by 10:45. The ride will end at the Lincoln Cottage, which has a museum and also does tours of the cottage (tours are $15). I’m planning on visiting the museum. Scheduling a tour of the cottage with an unknown number of folks arriving at an unknown time will be too unwieldy, so I opted not to include it as part of the ride. If the weather is nice (it was awesome last year) I may do a half DC loop back to Virginia.

I’m planning on starting the morning by having pancakes at Lazy Mike’s in Falls Church at 8 a.m. There was a great crowd there last year.

Hope to see you one the ride.

Full Details:
Pre-Ride Pancake Option: Optional meet up at Lazy Mike’s in Falls Church for pancakes
Ride Meet: 10:30 in front of the Lincoln Memorial steps (look for the tall bearded white guy and the short Asian lady with bikes that look like this: https://i0.wp.com/www.waba.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Judd-and-Josephine-quote-1.png?zoom=2&resize=581%2C305)
Safety Brief: 10:45 I’ll give a quick safety brief (intro of the marshal team, hand and voice signals and ride overview)
Roll out: Lincoln Memorial is the first stop. We’ll roll out afterwards.
Bathroom Break: There will be a bathroom/snack break after the third stop at Glen’s Garden Market
Route: Approximately 9 miles all on DC streets, with heavy use of low traffic streets, bike lanes and cycletracks
Stops: There will be 6 stops on the tour, all related to President’s who have lived in Illinois
End Point: Lincoln Cottage – There’s a visitor’s center with exhibits to view. They also have a bike rack, though we will likely exceed it’s capacity and need to lock bikes to each other. There’s a tour of the cottage as well that costs $15. I’m not expecting to do the tour since space is limited and our arrival time is uncertain.
Bring: Bike lock, money and any snacks you need
Optional late lunch: For anyone that wants to grab lunch afterwards, we’ll pick a place after the Lincoln Cottage

Watch Bobco’s video of last year’s ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mLL8wkM6Ew

Topic

[LhasaCM]

On top of the great job Judd did in organizing this and all of the marshals did in keeping things together, I also wanted to say my own “thanks” to everyone for their patience in giving the trailercycle a wide enough berth to stay in line, the warm welcome when we stumbled across the group near Grant Circle, and most of all, a special thanks to Boomer (at least I think it was him – I’m terrible with names/faces the first few times I meet folks) for the Lindi retrieval early on during the ride.

[Judd]

Bonus footage from the National Portrait Gallery. The new Obama portrait is worth a visit.

[Author]

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