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Ash Grove Wormhole Complex

Southwest of Tysons, the Ash Grove Wormhole Complex connects the Vienna/Wolf Trap area to Tysons through neighborhoods and avoids the narrow, high-traffic climb up Old Courthouse Rd. It is part of an official signed bike route between Wolf Trap Park for the Performing Arts and the Spring Hill Metro Station (via Bois Ave. and Montmorency Dr.).

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Dora Kelly Hyperspace Junction

Otherwise known as Dora Kelly Nature Park, this nexus includes several useful wormholes including a dry crossing of Holmes Run. It connects Bailey’s Crossroads/Skyline, Alexandria West and Lincolnia Heights. As befits such an intense concentration of spatial anomalies, there is a strong gravity well. So you will need good brakes for the approach and good climbing legs (or a granny gear) to escape.

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@david.balick 203463 wrote:

BAFSers:

You are invited to a BAFS Happy Hour and 2021 Team Reveal Zoom meeting.

When: Jan 7, 2021, 7:00PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

So that we can screen for Trolls and Spammers, you must register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0…1K8_26KguIspsV

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Using the same email address that you used to sign up for the BAFS and making sure your display name on Zoom is either your own personal first and last name, or your forum name, will help us assign break-out rooms for the teams.

Thanks all, and see you on the 7th.

Henry & David

Link is broken. Looks like it got abbreviated.

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I will once again be awarding the Loopy for Arlington Pointless Prizes for completing the most Arlington Loops (for the uninitiated: the Arlington Loop consists of the W&OD Trail from the Custis intersection to its eastern terminus at Shirlington Rd., 4-Mile Run Trail from Shirlington Rd. to its eastern terminus, the MVT from DCA to its northern terminus at Roosevelt Island, and the whole Custis trail).

There will be 3 prizes: Most Clockwise Loops (for those who need to unwind), Most Counter-Clockwise Loops (for those who need to get wound up), and Most Matching Loops (for those seeking balance in life, or who simply like to go both ways).

How do you play?

Unlike Hains Point laps, the Arlington Loop can actually get you to useful places, therefor the game is designed so you don’t have to literally ride the entire trail route to count a completed loop, and you don’t have to do a complete loop in a single ride, or even a single day, either (for example, you can do half the loop on your morning commute, and the other half on your evening commute the next day). A loop is counted each time you collect all of the short segments located near the trail intersection points. So collect loops while coffeeneuring, beerneuring, doughneuring, errendneuring, quaxaneuring, or Calvinballing. For those who played last year, there are no changes to any segments. The segments on the MVT are configured so that if the north end becomes prohibitively icy, you can cross over to DC and back via the TR and 14th St. (or Memorial) bridges and still complete loops.

For a clockwise loop, collect these Strava segments:

ArLoopCW1
ArLoopCW2
ArLoopCW3
ArLoopCW4
ArLoopCW5
ArLoopCW6
ArLoopCW7
ArLoopCW8

For a counterclockwise loop, collect these Strava segments:

ArLoopCCW1
ArLoopCCW2
ArLoopCCW3
ArLoopCCW4
ArLoopCCW5
ArLoopCCW6
ArLoopCCW7
ArLoopCCW8

Note that many of the segments have been flagged as hazardous in Strava by people wishing to protect their KOMs, I assume. If you don’t see a segment you expect on your ride, click the button to “show hidden efforts”. Also, a segment will NOT be counted if it is in your Strava “privacy zone”.

The prizes will be, of course, specially inscribed commemorative boxes of Froot Loops (TM).

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The FS Web Gurus successfully programmed a leaderboard for these prizes last year. So, no hashtags needed.

Will CBGAnimal continue her utter dominance of the Counter-Clockwise Loop competition?!? Not if she doesn’t come back from Spain soon!

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@n18 203143 wrote:

Cedar Lane Bridge to open in two days(December 23, 2020):

http://outside.transform66.org/about_the_project/project_sections/cedar_lane.asp

It would have a shared-use path on the east side(17.5′) and a sidewalk on the west side(6.5′).

Sigh. I will miss the flashing red light where Cottage crosses Cedar. That light won’t change for a bike and the east-bound pedestrian beg button is hard to reach.

The old Cedar Road was very narrow on either side of the bridge with no sidewalks north of I-66. What does the shared-use path connect to? Or does it just dump you back onto Cedar at each end?

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@dbb 203035 wrote:

Drop the speed limit on the Parkway to 25 and put speed cameras every 100 yards randomly in the traffic lanes. FIFY

No, ban cars as the GWMP is too dangerous for them anyway, give the Parkway to bikes and the MVT to pedestrians. Then all headlight disputes can be remanded to this forum.

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Yes, GWMP is far too dangerous for cars. They clearly need to be banned. Let cyclists have the Parkway, and pedestrians the MVT.

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@DrP 202870 wrote:

So this morning I went by this circle and there were plantings all around it. Looks really pretty now and those shrubs are tiny now, but they will soon block any views trail users might have.

Maybe if enough “dogs” pee on the shrubs, they will fail to thrive.

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@DanB 202879 wrote:

From the description, it doesn’t look like they’re adding more paved sections. They are doing a crushed stone overlay, which will make this section much more comfortable and safe for the many families I see using it. Some have small kids on bikes or are even pushing strollers, which has to be a challenge with the current conditions.

If it’s anything like the finely crushed bluestone on the C&O towpath in a few sections between Great Falls and White’s Ferry, it will ride like a paved surface. I couldn’t believe how smooth that was last Saturday.

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@dbb 202824 wrote:

I went up to the circle today and watched a cyclist just ride to the left of the circle and go under 66. I think that is likely to become the route for most cyclists that ride this often.

@accordioneur 202827 wrote:

Such a poor design. If you have to paint lots of arrows to explain how the intersection works, it’s probably not an intuitive design. And if you decide to paint double-headed arrows pointing in weird directions, it probably doesn’t help. …

That double-headed arrow basically tells eastbound Custis riders to go around the circle the wrong way! Such a stupid design. The original drawings of this rebuild looked much more promising in that the main trail from under I-66 was looped away from the retaining wall with nice sweeping curves making the trail down from the detour footbridge a T-intersection with a better sightline to the main flow of traffic.

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The temporary social-distancing protected bike lane on Tysons Blvd. is gone. Either the pandemic is over, or The Galleria could not countenance the loss of a driving lane during Holiday Shopping season.

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@komorebi 202758 wrote:

Great idea for a PP, SarahBee! I’m planning to organize a group ride to Meadowlark’s Winter Walk of Lights on January 1, since it sounds great and I’ve never been. Stay tuned for more details.

Note that in past years, Meadowlark’s Winter Walk of Lights has had ticketed timed entry. No telling how it will work this year.

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@SarahBee 202392 wrote:

…The ball-busting pavement on 4th…

Wait, how would you know?

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@ursus 202403 wrote:

Another W&OD detour https://twitter.com/WODTrail/status/1310619472672284672

Starting on or around October 5th, Dominion Energy will begin performing major line work along the trail between Sandburg St and Gallows Rd in the Dunn Loring area. The construction is expected to continue well into next year and will require a detour of the trail onto Iliff Dr.

So that’s why they built the little trail extension on the east side of Sandburg St. to Iliff Dr.

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Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt meets most of your conditions (depending on the final negotiated price of your fixie). I think I get about 8 hours of battery life. It does not need external sensors, but I think it is more accurate with the speed sensor. It’s pretty small. It does all the GPS mappy stuff, but not in color. I called tech support for it once because I wanted to do a factory reset, but how to do so was not described anywhere obvious in the operating instructions. I can’t recall how to do the factory reset however, because I only ever did it once, so reliability is good.

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