Thanks. A good tip. I did like riding on 13th Street; and the bike lane on 14th made that street pretty comfortable.

Do you ever use the Capital Crescent Trail? I noticed that there were no lights on that trail. Can it be used at night? I hope so, or else people who use it to commute could not use it in the evening for several months out of the year, when the sun goes down early.

On my last day down there I went up and down the Anacostia River on the bike trails in Anacostia Park, and enjoyed a final jaunt through the streets before I caught my bus home.

It takes a while to adjust to the distances, which are only a fraction of the distances in New York. Roughly speaking, Philadelphia is half the size of New York, and Washington is only half the size of Philadelphia. It was kind of cool to be able to easily get to all the most interesting points within a major city by means of relatively short bike rides. I was situated about a mile away from the downtown area. This was a huge difference from my trips to Philadelphia, in which my hotel in Northeast Philly was about 15 miles away from the Center City area.

From my hotel on 16th NW and T (1 1/2 miles from Washington's geographic centre at 4th NW and L), it is only 5 miles to the city's northernmost point, and only about 8 or 9 miles to the easternmost point. By contrast, from my home in Woodhaven on the Brooklyn/Queens border in New York City (about 3 1/2 miles from New York's geographic centre), it is a trip of more than 20 miles to get to the city's northernmost point. Or, to put it another way, if I rode from my home near my city's centre all the way up to the city's northern boundary, that would be the same distance as riding from my Washington hotel to the top of the Rock Creek Park bike path in Derwood, Maryland.

I took the Bolt Bus home; and, when I got off the bus at Sixth Avenue and Grand Street in New York, I set off east on the bike lane on Grand Street. At the first intersection, Thompson Street, I saw two bicyclists blowing through the red light, and two others riding the wrong way on Grand. I thus saw more of that behaviour in one minute back in New York than I had seen in four days in Washington. And it wasn't too much longer before I encountered drivers' aggression during turns, their ignoring of stop signs, and their parking in bike lanes. All this made me embarassed for my beloved city, and also rather sad. After two trips to Washington and three to Philadelphia, it is hard to escape the conclusion that New Yorkers are savages.

Anyway, the whole thing was great fun, and I am now plotting my next trip.