While other devoted members of the team were at Blair, Andy Gilbert and I (two of the team’s three cyclists) were on our way to Germantown to send off a very special delivery. Samir Chainani, a team senior, had neglected to attend the yearly team dinner. Due to his absence, he was not able to receive his graduation gift, a fine poster with collage by Eszter and her mother.
Andy first rode to my house and then with $12, two Gatorades, and a water bottle, we set off North, poster in tow. The ride to Bethesda was uneventful, though it would have helped if cars were banned. A pedestrian asked me to get out of the sidewalk. I didn’t feel like explaining the law to her.
We then used the Cedar Lane cut to avoid the MD-355 beltway interchange. There is no sidewalk on MD-355 covering its two major highway bridges, making it impossible to use for any cyclist. The unfortunate thing about highways though is given that they are locally infinite, in order to return, we would have to at some point, cross it again.
We reached North Bethesda and then Rockville with great speed, not having taken a single break. On my way back along this route, I would be struck by a car leaving a North Bethesda Strip Mall–I was fine. We rode straight past my father’s office but amid my pleas, we did not stop to visit. We continued futher through Gaithersburg and eventually onto the Germantown Bike Path. This thin asphalt strech connects the end of Gaithersburg and the north point of Germantown in a way that nearly makes biking fesible. We descended into and out of beautiful Seneca Park before passing Middlebrook, Germantown, and Ridge. Then we had reached our destination. We had biked 20 miles.
MD-355 is a truly spectacular road. In Montgomery County, it goes by the name Frederick Road in Germantown, Frederick Avenue in Gaithersburg, Hungerford Drive in Rockville, Rockville Pike in North Bethesda, and Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and into the district. It interchanges I-495 and I-270 in Bethesda, and I-370 in Gaithersburg. 9 metro stations are placed on it. It is sidewalked for the majority of it’s length, cutting out nearby Old Baltimore Road. What makes it so special though is that every single dynamic present in this county can be seen, just by biking it. In the South is wealthy Chevy Chase. Then urban Bethesda. Going further, you see the spiraling parklands of North Bethesda (followed by the much more common strip-malls). Then wanna-be-urban Rockville, the loose residences of Gaithersburg, and the utterly unpopulated Germantown. I definitely recommend it for a day trip, if you can take the smog.
