Lately I’ve been taking half-day mountain hikes as a way to get exercise and burn a couple of thousand calories.
But I forgot to charge my car after my last hike.
So, last Monday, instead of a hike, I took a 45-mile (round-trip) bike ride on the Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) trail. I live just a few blocks from the trail, in Vienna VA.
That provided roughly the same amount of exercise and calorie burn as a half-day hike.
To cut to the chase, I won’t be going back on the W&OD any time soon.
The things that suck the fun out of a bike ride on the W&OD.
Nothing that I list below is terribly off-putting. But together, they mean that any long-distance bike ride on the W&OD is constantly interrupted by annoyances.
1: Scofflaw bicyclists and the three-lane W&OD trail.
Near as I can tell, there’s an entire class of bicyclists whose only rule is not to slow down or stop, for anyone, or anything.
The W&OD appears to be a two-lane trail with a painted center line. The rules for using that trail are obvious, simple, and posted everywhere. You must give a clearly audible warning (bell, horn, or voice) when you are passing someone, so that they know you are there. (Note that bike bells are not required bicycle equipment in Virginia, though they are in some other jurisdictions.)
As with the blue sign in the picture above, it’s not as if those rules are some sort of super-secret. In fact, that particular rule is actually Commonwealth of Virginia law, for bikes ridden on any public right-of-way in Virginia.
I’d guess that maybe one-in-four bicyclists on the W&OD gives the legally-required warning when passing. For the rest, if you don’t happen to notice them in your rear-view mirror, you can just be delightfully startled as they whiz on past.
The scarier part is that the rules are ambiguous about when you may pass.
In a car, the oncoming lane must be free of traffic, if you pass someone. But, as far as I can tell, the rules for bikes simply say that passing must be done “safely”, without a firm, fixed definition of what that means.
The Reston Bike Club suggests that you only pass when the oncoming lane is empty. But near as I can tell, that’s just a suggestion.
For sure, that’s routinely ignored. The upshot is that the W&OD is NOT a two-lane trail, despite the way it looks above. In practice, it’s a three-lane trail. Left and right are what you’d think. But the majority of cyclists will pass even when both left and right lanes are occupied, by the simple expedient of barging down the center stripe, without slowing down.
Fundamentally, if both lanes are full, and there’s a fast oncoming bicyclist, you can get the hell out of their way, or you can risk getting hit.
Intellectually, I know that collisions are relatively rare on the W&OD. But on a long trip like this, by the 50th or 100th time you’ve had one of those close, high-speed in-your-face passes by a cyclist passing by threading the gap between occupants of left and right lanes, going far too fast to stop if there is a problem — that grinds you down. Not illegal, not per-se against the regulations, just a continual continual pain-in-the-ass you must accept if you choose to ride on the W&OD.
2: Scofflaw motorists and road crossings.
Source: Falls church pulse, as shown above.
Some W&OD crossings are controlled by a stop light, but most are not. Bicyclists face a “STOP” sign (routinely ignored, see point 1 above), but motorists often merely face a bright-yellow “yield to bicyclists in crosswalk” sign. Sometimes with flashing lights that the bicyclist may trigger. Sometimes not.
The big danger here is that 95 out of 100 motorists will, in fact, stop at such crossings when you are trying to cross. And the other 5% don’t even slow down. So every road crossing, in traffic, becomes a sort of test of wills. Can I edge out enough to get traffic to stop, without getting splattered across the road?
Again, not terribly dangerous. Even the worst intersections have single-digit bike-car accidents in any given year. It’s just another constant irritation that you have to shrug off if you want to bike on the W&OD.
That said, studies by the City of Falls Church and others find that almost all bike-car crashes at W&OD intersections are from bicycles who ignore the clearly-posted stop signs at those intersections. See point 1 above.
3: Fast-moving E-thingies.
Electric bikes. Electric scooters. Bikes that look like bikes, but are partially electrified. And various oddball stuff whose value seems to lie principally in weirdness (e.g., mono-wheels, skateboard-looking things, perhaps the stray Blart-esque device, you name it.)
Generally speaking, these did not exist last century. As evidence, I present the BikeE, below, which, despite the name, is not an E-bike. It’s strictly pedal-powered. In hindsight, the name (“E” is for “Everybody” in BikeE) shows that there was no inkling of commercial E-bikes circa 1998 when these BikeEs were made.
All this E-transport has some “newness” to me, and I likely noticed it more for that. But also, to be fair, at times, and for certain populations, there was just a lot of E-transport occurring on the W&OD. Not just that a lot of the AM commuters were on E-scooters and similar, but I ran across one gang of old people on low-slung three-wheel recumbent E-bikes.
Legal interlude: At some point in the past, the Norther Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA) tried to ban electrically-powered vehicles from the W&OD. That’s moot. At some point, Virginia law stipulated that if you allowed bicycles, you had to allow all these forms of E-personal transit.
The current rules for E-bikes on the W&OD (from NovaParks, which I guess NVRPA morphed into at some point) are at this link.
The bottom line from those rules is that an-E-thing goes, as long as top speed is 20 MPH. A cite from Friends of the W&OD suggests “speeding ticket” is the sole enforcement mechanism. That is, this does not exclude any devices or require some sort of manufacturer’s certification as to top speed. Any such otherwise-legal device is OK as long as you keep your speed below 20 MPH while on the W&OD. It looks like Virginia law has a 750 watt (about one horsepower) limit on the device. That will easily push an E-bike over 20 MPH on the flat.
Superficially, it looks as if NovaParks excludes mini E-motorcycles from the W&OD. It seems to require that you had to be able to pedal any electrified bike-like personal transport. (This is identical in concept to the old “moped” legal definition. You had to be able to move it under pedal power alone, even if no one in their right mind would do so for long.) But I’m not sure if I’ve read that correctly or not. The Reston Bicycle Club says explicitly that E-bikes must have pedals (and so, by inference, that E-mini-motorcycles are banned.)
Rules or no rules, I encountered several fast, fat-tired E-mini-motorcycles heading east during the morning rush hour. Maybe they had vestigial pedals, but they were driven as motorcycles. Those, and several tiny-wheeled E-scooters. I’d say that the E-commuters were as numerous as traditional (manual) bike commuters. All told, there was a trickle of fast-moving business-like commuters, just intent on getting somewhere.
Which led me to ask a simple question: Is there a legal speed limit on the W&OD? The answer is, only for E-bikes (and other E-things), not for manual bicycles. Assuming that’s correct, fully-manual bikes can legally exceed 20 MPH on the W&OD, likely subject to a max set by some fuzzy standard of prudent behavior. In any case, even I can manage 20 MPH downhill. I’m sure some bicyclists routinely exceed that for long stretches of the trail. There’s only a speed limit (20 MPH) for electric- or electrically-assisted bikes, scooters, and such.
I’m sure there’s a ban on internal combustion engines on the W&OD. I’m sure there’s a ban on cars and trucks, except those somehow authorized (e.g., VA Power). I’m not sure how they keep true interstate-capable electric motorcycles off it, but possibly the law does effectively ban any bike- or motorcycle-like device that cannot be pedaled. Or the 1 HP limit keeps them off. Take your pick. They aren’t there, and chances are, if they could be, they would be.
No motorcycle-style E-bikes? I’m not sure. Possibly if it looks bike-ish, you have to be able to pedal it. (Effectively, only E-mopeds, not E-motorcycles). Maybe that’s my misreading of the rules.
No sit-down E-scooters? Again, I’m not sure of the rules. In some places, it looks like scooters with seats are not included in the definition of allowable vehicles. In other places, it’s not clear.
It doesn’t matter. Near as I can tell, there’s no enforcement of anything on the W&OD, other than not driving a car or gas motorcycle down it.
Practically speaking, anything electric is allowed, short of an EV or electric highway motorcycle.
4: Loss of the rural landscape to frankly creepy data centers.
And cheap housing for the masses.
The history of the W&OD trail includes Virginia Power buying it. Or the rights to use it. I’m not sure which. In any case, the practical consideration is that the W&OD is now a major electrical power transmission artery. Most of the trail west of Vienna VA runs adjacent to (and occasionally below) high-voltage power lines.
I mention this because data centers need electrical power.
And so, half a century after Virginia power bought the W&OD right-of-way, data centers now nestle against the W&OD. Being NoVA, I’d bet we have pretty good access to the backbone of the internet. And so, cheap land adjacent to this major power line sprouts data centers like mushrooms after a spring rain.
After pedaling past I-lost-count-how-many data centers, I concluded that beyond their oddly windowless nature, and the outsized ratio of AC capacity to building size, what makes them creepy is that they are anonymous. They are obviously big capital investments. Which, in any other context, would mean a big sign on the building, proclaiming whose it was. Just like you’d see outside any industrial plant, say.
But data centers are more like phone exchanges. They do not advertise their presence, let alone who owns them. That results in these gigantic buildings — mostly on beautiful green nicely-landscaped and manicured “campuses” — with nobody’s name on them. Just lots and lots of blank wall surface.
The overall effect of large numbers of huge, widely-spaced unmarked windowless industrial building is … unsettling.
The upshot is that the rural character of the land between Sterling and Leesburg is disappearing to development. Near as I can tell, for long stretches, there are no vistas that don’t include at least one data center now. And there were many new and ugly subdivisions compared to the last time I biked through there.
I went for the exercise. I got another bit of in-your-face future shock thrown in for free.
Conclusion
If my goal is to get an exhausting dose of exercise, I find that hiking beats biking hands-down on all fronts except environmental impact. (The “environmental” part is that I have to drive 100+ mile round trip for a good mountain hiking opportunity, but I can readily bike to my local long bike trails.)
From the numerous road crossings, to the variety of fast powered vehicles on the trail, to the in-your-face passing strategy of oncoming bicyclists, to the increasingly built-up scenery east of Leesburg, a long bike trip on the W&OD is anything but stress-free or relaxing.
That constant string of minor annoyances makes this too much like driving during rush hour, and too little like being out in the country.
In any case, if I’m going to take half a day to get thoroughly sore and exhausted, I’d much rather do that by hiking in the Blue Ridge than biking on the W&OD.
Addendum: In praise of the semi-recumbent bike and collagen supplements.
I took a five-hour, 45-mile bike trip, without having ridden any meaningful distance in at least a year. More-or-less, I inflated the tires and got on my way. My hip joints were a little sore by the end of the ride. But even that had disappeared by the next day.
The principal reason for the lack of pain is the design of the bike. If I’d done that on a traditional double-diamond (upright) bike, I doubt I could have walked the next day. (Actually, I doubt I could have finished a five-hour bike ride). But this semi-recumbent design is like sitting in a comfy office chair. While you pedal down the trail.
While the bike looks modern, and still gets comments from passers-by, it’s more than a quarter-century old. I bought it (from Bikes At Vienna) in 1998. John Brunow, then the owner of Bikes At Vienna, had to talk me into it. But at this point, I think I can say that I’ve gotten my money’s worth. I still take it back there for the occasional maintenance and tune-up. Apparently John sold quite a few of these, and quite a few are still in operation in and around the Vienna VA area.
Even now, I don’t see a bike on the market that I’d be willing to trade for. You have all the visibility of a traditional upright bike, and all the comfort of a recumbent.
But in addition, I’m now convinced that a second reason for the rapid recovery of my joints after this long ride is that I eat an ounce a day of hydrolyzed collagen peptides. (It’s protein powder, made from degraded animal collagen.) This cheap substance provides the right amino acid mix for building collagen, which makes up the majority of the dry weight of the tissues of your joints. (The specific amino acids needed to make collagen — particularly glycine and related — are somewhat scarce in the normal diet.) And, as research suggests, stuffing your body with the right amino acids for making collagen speeds up your body’s production of collagen. Which, aforementioned, is what your joints are made of. The upshot is that this high daily intake of hydrolyzed collagen peptides pays off in a near-miraculous lack of joint soreness or pain, the day after one of these long bouts of exercise.
I’m pretty sure this stuff won’t fix structural issues with your joints. Or, at least, it ain’t fixing mine, so far.
But in hindsight, I think that some of my chronic joint problems were plausibly due to slow repair of wear-and-tear. My joints were always a little bit sore and inflamed, not from any mysterious source, but because they were chronically under repair. Chronically, because my body couldn’t keep up with my normal level of wear-and-tear. When I manage to speed up that repair process, some chronic joint issues disappear, e.g., clicks and snaps from inflamed tendons sliding across bony surfaces may subside, because the underlying source of the click or snap was a (somewhat) inflamed tendon moving over a bony surface. . Repair the tendon fully, the inflammation subsides, and the chronic hip click goes away.
