dragonflycrk
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I’ll share my story!
I used to live in Maine, and one of my favorite pastimes is hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I travel up there a few times a year, always at least once in the winter. This year was no different, despite participating in Freezing Saddles for the first time. I didn’t even know that “coldest ride” was something to strive toward until the Team 19-Team 26 happy hour-turned trivia night at the Thirsty Crow, when Steve O revealed to me all of the fun data. Before that conversation I had pretty much accepted the fact that I wouldn’t get in any rides Fri., 2/14-Mon., 2/17. All of a sudden, the wheels in my head started turning. A new acquaintance at the happy hour, Rachel, offered one of her bikes that lives in her parents’ garage in Kittery, but unfortunately, that would have been too far out of the way. On Thursday night, while sipping a beer at DCA during my flight delay, I called the friend who I would be staying with to touch base about the weekend and decided to pose the bike question. Abby exclaimed, “Cassy! I JUST fixed up this bike that I got for free from the dump!” Turns out someone threw away this gorgeous yellow Raleigh bike, and all Abby had to do was put on new tires and it was good to go. The bike was with her in Orono, where she lives during the week as a grad student at the University of Maine, so one major hurdle was fitting it in her car (a Toyota Corolla) for the drive to her and her fiance’s house in Gray (about 2 hours). I wish I had taken a picture, but after some serious tetris-ing, we made it work. After a day of hiking and visiting a few breweries, we arrived at their house, which sits way back on a hilly unpaved road covered in a layer of slippery snow. The car thermometer said it was 1 degrees Fahrenheit outside. It was now or never. We carefully pulled the Raleigh out of the trunk, and I slowly road it back and forth on a small flat stretch of road, barely getting to 0.6 miles and hoping that rounding up would count. The Klimat app on Strava would later tell me it was … 0.16 degrees Fahrenheit! Definitely worth it to make that memory with one of my best pals.
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Woohoo, so happy to be rewarded for eating my favorite food!!!
This competition was so fun, as I typically get tacos solely from my favorite joint (Taqueria Habanero), and this really propelled me to explore some new places that I otherwise probably would have never visited.I did a terrible job of sharing photos/updates to this thread, so here are a few highlights. Hope we can all share a celebratory round of tacos in the near future!
1.) I found two new spots that serve their tacos on blue corn tortillas (my favorite): Cielo Rojo in Takoma Park (pictured) and Anafre in Petworth (on the same block as Taqueria Habanero and Mezcalero).
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2.) Before the recent situation, El Chucho in Columbia Heights was offering a splendid bottomless happy hour: $20 for all you-can-eat tacos, elote and guac/salsa, as well as margaritas and select beers, so I celebrated my birthday with friends there.
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3.) The most adventurous #tacoloco ride I had was taking Capital Bikeshare in the freezing rain to Taqueria del Barrio to get frozen margs with a friend going through a break-up.
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First-year participant here! A few highlights for me:
1.) “Drawing” a manta ray in Arlington on Dave Pomeroy’s Strava art ride! This is something I’ve always wanted to do, so I was thrilled that Freezing Saddles brought about this opportunity. Thanks so much for making that happen, Dave! I would love to participate in more of these in the future, so please keep me posted. After the ride, Dave also guided me on my first journey over the Memorial Bridge. (Somehow while bike commuting for 6 years, I just never rode over it before!)
2.) Going for the coldest ride in Maine! Over Presidents Day weekend I visited friends in Maine and thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to ride. Turns out one of my friends had rescued a vintage steel Raleigh from her town’s dump and fixed it up! Her house is set way back on an unpaved road that was still covered in snow, but I let a little air out of the tires and rode back and forth on the one short flat area of the road. According to the Klimat app, it was 0.16 degrees Fahrenheit!
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3.) Impromptu trivia at the Thirsty Crow! Team 19-Team 26’s joint happy hour turned into a few of us sticking around for to play pub trivia. We actually did pretty well until the end (despite no one else but me having watched Game of Thrones, and there was a whole round just about it!), but it was certainly fun to take the friendly competition to another cerebral level.
My last FS ride will be a solo ride this evening to get takeout from Rito Loco to get my #tacoloco on one last time.
THANK YOU to the organizers! Look forward to doing this all again next year!
#Nationaldays are best spent eating your out-of-town-friend’s snacks! I rode my bike to her apartment to feed her cat; when I poked around the cabinets for cat treats, I serendipitously found these to celebrate National Tortilla Day.
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@Steve O 198191 wrote:
There may be good reason these two days coincide.
Tuesday, Feb 11
National Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk DayNational White Shirt Day
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So EVERY day is National Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day.
