Memorial Day Parade in Annapolis

It's Memorial Day!
We decided to go to Annapolis for a breakfast and watch a parade. Yeah, I am sure the parade in DC is a great one, but we also wanted to relax.  Besides, strolling down the harbor in the morning sounded like a good idea.

It was a nice and at home. Although Annapolis is a state capital and a Navy town, the parade felt like what you would find in a small town.

Annapolis in the morning. You can see the capital in the distance.

 

To Hooper's Island, MD

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Type: Day Trip. Distance: 199 miles round trip Riding Time: 4hr 29min according to Google Map.

It was a beautiful day today. Just a perfect weather for riding. The sky was clear, but not too warm, nor too cold, and it was pretty dry as well. I went to Hooper's Island on Eastern Shore. I am planning to do a longer distance touring next week, so I decided to do just a day trip even though it was a three day (Memorial Day) weekend. What a great day trip it was!  

Mail box at Old Salty's on Hooper's Island.

Point A (E):
I wanted to get there around noon. It was supposed to be about 2 and a half hours ride so I upped the kick stand around 9:15. Filled up the gas tank before I left. The weather was gorgeous right from the start.  I got "Born to be Wild" ringing in my head for some reason, thinking "It's a cruiser guy's song." at the same time.

Point B:
One of the highlights of this route comes right after the departure, major and impressive Chesapeake Bay Bridge (btw, don't get this confused with Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, another major bridge. I plan to go there soon as well.)  It is a beautiful 4.3 miles long bridge connecting Annapolis and the Eastern shore of Maryland. According to Wikipedia, it was the longest over-water steel structure in the world when it was built, and still is one of the longest. Unfortunately though, it is hard to take a photo while going through the bridge on highway (of course you can't stop), and it probably won't come out right. So, I'll just post a stock footage here. Try clicking on the panorama picture to get a sense of the scale.

Bay Bridge. Courtesy of Baydreaming.com 

Bay Bridge Panorama. Courtesy of WikmediaiCommons.

It has a toll of $4.00 (well, they are hiking it up to $6.00 from 7/1/2013) for two-axle vehicle, which includes motorcycles, when you are crossing from Annapolis to Easter shore. The other way around is free. The view from the bridge is just glorious on a sunny day like today, especially on bikes. It would be cool to video tape it some day. Soon after crossing the bridge, there was a sign that said, "First English Settlement in Maryland". The ringing in my head changed to "Glory glory hallelujah". It is a kind of embarrassing come to confess it.

BTW, I saw many groups of bikes heading to the direction of Washington DC, while did not pass even one heading to the opposite direction. Maybe they were all going to the big Rolling Thunder parade in DC.

Point C:
The route is entirely on US-50 until you cross over another bridge to reach Cambridge, MD. I took a first pit stop and stretched my legs here. I was a kind of surprised to find a nice visitor center there. It is complete with a small museum type exhibit. It could be a little hard to find although there is a big sign on highway. It is the first right turn after the bridge, then one more right turn immediately after that. It is clean and even has a little play ground for kids. It is a nice stop.

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Looking back Choptank River bridge I just crossed.

A little light house in the distance.

From C to D:
Now, after leaving the visitor center, from Cambridge to Hooper Island was just a gorgeous, gorgeous ride. You actually ride through a part of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The view was great and the road was a modest, relaxing twisty that was just right. I managed to stop by the road and snap a couple of photos, but it really didn't do a justice. You see, the road has no shoulder due to the fact that it is weaving through a salt marsh, so there really is no place to stop, take off gloves, get the camera out and take a photo. Again, I wished I had some sort of a helmet camera. It was just a beautiful ride.

Nope, it really doesn't capture the beauty at all.

Point D:
I think it was around noon when I got to the North Hopper's Island. Hooper's Island is actually a chain of three islands. The North and the middle islands are accessible via bridge from the mainland. The island ride was beautiful too. Heck, maybe everything is gorgeous on the day like this. Anyway, the water was clear, blue and green, the sun was bright. The ocean breeze was just right. I really enjoyed the island.

The bridge behind boats connects the island and the main land.

Maybe because it was a memorial day weekend, or may be there was something poetic about the way they were set, I took a few pics of graves. There were several plots of small, small cemetery. One of the ones I took a pic of happens to be of Hooper family's. It probably  is a family of the Island's name sake.

The capstone reads 1835. People have lived here for a long time.
In the back ground, you see a several of them that says "Hooper"

The island is also the birth place of Phillips Seafood. Phillips is a well known sea food restaurant chain in the East Coast. They had a sea food processing factory there. The travel guides say that it is no longer in operation. But it looked like it was very much in operation to me. Well, nobody was working since it was a sunday, but there were a couple of tracks parked outside (with current tags), and cleaning and other supply were stocked.The upstair looked like somebody occupies there.

I had to eat a lunch before leaving the island. This was actually an event. There is only one operating restaurant there. I looked up on the internet. I have never seen such a polarized review. One side says it is fantastic, the other sides says it is so bad the tourists should avoid it at all costs. Well, not that I had much choice. The next nearest restaurant is all the way back in Cambridge. I had to see it with my own eyes.

I must say that it was pretty good. The service was prompt and the people were friendly. The rustic decor (apparently a converted school house) was not bad and the view from the window was great. The food, I ordered a crab cake, was pretty decent. Here is a pic of my food. Simple, nothing fancy but had a lot of crab meat.

Point E:
The return leg is just a trace back of the outbound. There is really no other way besides some back road deviation here and there. I actually tried some back way and got lost, started running out of gas. So, I went back to the original route. I left the Old Salty's restaurant around 2:00 pm and got home around 5:00. It was such a nice day.

GIVI T489 Tank Bag

It was raining this weekend. Since I burnt the rain gear with a saddle bag last week, I decided not to go anywhere this weekend. So, instead, I made a video of the tank bag I recently purchased. I looked hard around internet to gather info on GIVI's T489 before I purchase. I couldn't find much, and just decided to make a leap. Well, here is one now. Tank Lock System is cool, since I really wanted a bag that doesn't scratch. The bag itself is a kind of mediocre. It makes an OK system over all.

Well... ah... ah.. I could have done a better job with the video, I guess. 

Around Europe in a Half Day: EU embassy open house.

Dining room in UK ambassader's residence.

Continuing from the last week, we went to DC for embassy open houses. This time, Europe. The countries in Europe had the open houses this week, while the rest of the world had it last week. 

We were so impressed by last week's experience, we decided to make my older daughter skip school and take with us. So, it was a whole family affair this weekend. 

The first stop was Great Britain. Man, compare to the other embassies, it's huge! Well, actually, the embassy itself is not that big (still pretty big.) but the estate has both embassy and the ambassader's residence, and the residence is larger than the embassy, complete with English (?) garden. Just look at this picture.

Apparently, this was the first time this residence was opened up to the public. It was impressive. Here's more from the place.

They had Shakespeare playing in the back porch. 

BTW, the embassy home page said that they would have whisky waiting for us. I didn't see it. Maybe it was in the front yard somewhere...

Next stop was Denmark. A lady in a patriotic poncho lured us in with cookies.

The embassy is in a great location. It is close enough but somewhat off the embassy row. Nice and secluded. My wife said that stereo typical image of Danish was true. I agree! They were just modest and over all extremely nice people. It was warm and inviting like their famous furniture. No pretention, I mean, even the ambassador greeted us! He was actually out and about walking among us.

The man in the center is ambassador Peter Taksøe-Jensen

The front entrance to the ambassador's residence. Full of natural sunlight.

lk

The queen.

They were pretty proud of their environmental consciousness. They said that garbage recycle rate over there is 90%. I am not quite sure if I heard it right. That is unbelievable. 36% of people in Copenhagen commute with bicycle. They even had bicycle track in the front yard to show us how much they like bicycle. My kids are just learning to bike, so they enjoyed it. They also enjoyed Lego.

BTW, down the street was an Italian embassy. Long, long line in front of it. People were lining up for two hours. Maybe they had good food. We did not stopped by.

Italian embasy

Also not stopped by was Belgian embassy. This was a bummer. We were looking forward to it, but it was already getting late and we were afraid we may not have a bus back to the Dupont circle if we get in the line. Why we were looking forward to the Belgium? Well, I knew they had Beer, waffle, chocolate... need I say more?

Belgian embassy.

So we decided to go walk down the Massachusetts Avenue embassy row. For those of you who are not familier, the embassy in Washington DC are clustered together in particular neighborhood, most of them on Massachusetts Avenue. On this street, it is pretty much every other houses and buildings are some diplomatic function. It is really something to see. Anyway, so we strolled down the street and just walked in to small embassies (many of them look like a town house from outside.) from small countries.        We chose those small countries because there were no lines outside. Here are some.

We went to Latvia,

Ciao! Romania,

 Luxembourg!

I definitely enjoyed this, and the last weekend. We will try to do it again next year!

FZ-1 Exhaust Melted Saddle Bags

After  I came back from the Solomons Island trip, I found that my saddle back had a big hole on it. The exhaust of the bike actually melted the bag (and a rain coat inside it) I had an inexpensive moto-gear saddle bag. I had been quite happy with it. It was good for about one year that I had them, but I guess as the time progresses, it sagged more and more, and finally went too close to the pipe.

FZ-1 does not have much clearance between the pipe and the seat to begin with, and the exhaust kind of comes out upward. Plus, without a support, the bags inevitably sags inward and downward. I need a new bag, but without solving this problem, I will just melt another one.

To Solomons Island MD

View Larger Map Type: Day Trip. Distance: 118 miles round trip Riding Time: 2hr 35min according to Google Map.
You know, I really like outdoor sculpture garden. Something about walking among artworks makes me relaxed and joyful. During my last business trip to Tokyo, my co-worker and I took a little stroll in Ueno Park. There is a museum with nice small sculpture garden there too. I throughly enjoyed it. The same co-worker recommended me to go to Ann Mary Garden in Solomons Island. It sounded like a good place. It turns out Solomons is a somewhat popular destination among DC metropolitan people. There are few places to visit, including a small brewery, a large Tiki bar, and a maritime museum with a light house. It's a short ride, but I decided to make a whole day out of it.  

Point A (F):
It was a bit chilly in the morning. The sky was overcast. (I just hoped it wouldn't rain.) I wasn't in a hurry so I took time enjoying breakfast with my family and upped the kick stand at 9:30.

It's pretty easy to navigate from Bowie to Solomons. Ride on US 301 and turn to MD 2 after about 20 miles. That's it! There is really only one turn here. To the tip of the Solomons, you just ride till MD 2 disappear into the ocean. (Of course, my first destination was not a tip of the Solomons so I had to turn to the Ann Mary garden. ) It was a beautiful ride. I just enjoyed lush green forest and pastures. East Coast spring has a beauty different from Colorado. (BTW, they just got a foot of snow in Boulder last week.)

Point B:
I got to the Ann Mary Garden around 10:30. Besides the sculpture garden, they have a good size gallery space.

They happened to have an exhibit of "Fairy Houses". Artists and community people contributed to make some houses for fairies. They were about to be brought outside in the sculpture garden for all the fairies to enjoy for summer season. I took a lot of pictures for my daughters inspiration. She would enjoy them. May be I would bring them over here some time.

They had a large collection of sculptures out in a 30 acres of forest. You get  to walk around on and off the paved walkway. It is a very nice setting. I enjoyed it.

I spent about two hours in the garden and the gallery and left for lunch. The Ruddy Duck Brewery is conveniently located near the garden. My lunch was a Crab Cake Sandwich.

There was a quote posted by my table;

Here's to a long life and a merry one

A quick death and an easy one.

A pretty girl and an honest one

A cold beer and another one!

I'd drink to that.

Point D:
After lunch, I strolled around this small island.

Point C:
I also stopped by at the Calbert County Maritime Museum. It's a small museum exhibiting the history of the Chesapeak area, starting from pre-historic (dinosaur age) to war of 1812 to present day. They had a good looking old lighthouse outside. It was decommissioned in 1962 and moved there in 1975.

From D to E:
I chose to take MD-2, MD-235, MD-5 and MD301 route on my return leg. I usually like to avoid tracing back the same route if I can help it. The highlight of this leg was right in the beginning of the trip. This rather impressive looking bridge. 1.5 miles long and 135 feet tall. You have a great view from the bridge, but it was a kind of thrilling at the same time. The way it keeps going up to the top was somewhat like being on an upslope on a roller coasters. You know, when you feel that anticipation of what to come after the upslope? It has two lanes with no shoulders. Man, I would hate to cross this bridge on a bike in a windy weather.

Point E:
The ride wasn't too bad until I turned to highway 301 in Waldorf. From then on was just kind of a commuter's traffic. There weree many cars, with notoriously bad DC drivers. Overall, I enjoyed the outbound leg much more than the return trip.   

Point F:
I got home around 4:00. My wife then reminded me that it was a Cinco de Mayo. So we went out to a neighborhood Mexican restaurant to celebrate. BTW, there aren't too many Mexican restaurant around here. Well, there just aren't too many Mexicans/Hispanics. Back in Denver, Cinco de Mayo was a pretty big celebration.