Ride In 3/17

Ugh. St. Patrick's Day. I don't care for it and I have the most Irish name ever (my middle name is Francis, even). Let's just say I'm a puritanical New England prig and not go too much further into it. I made a chart so even economists can understand:

At least it's not Halloween.

The chart is courtesy of four required economics classes in college.
Since I had nothing pressing at work to do this morning aside from filling out my brackets, I decided that I would take a different route in this morning. I've only gone over the Chain Bridge via bicycle once and all I remember of that trip is the hilliness of North Arlington (or NoArl as no one calls it). I also remember that I had to take the C&O towpath back about a mile and a half to reconnect to the CCT because there didn't seem to be a way to get to the CCT. But it was just such a nice day out today, I figured that I would take advantage of that and that the hills wouldn't kill me.
NoArl consists of single-family homes, most of which look like they should be featured on a show by Sherwood Schwartz (not Gilligan's Island), and Protestant churches. My route took me along Quincy and Military Road through such tough-sounding neighborhoods like Cherrydale, Donaldson Run, Gulf Branch, Bellevue Forest and Rivercrest, the last of which I believe inspired a role playing card game that once rivaled Magic: The Gathering in the mid 90s. Sure, there were hills, but there were bike lanes the whole way! These residents must be super-IMBYs (as opposed to NIMBYs) when it comes to bicyclists because there were inspirational phrases spray-painted in the bike lanes. Things like "Keep Pumping!" and "Almost There!" I'm looking forward to similar adornment along the New Mexico Avenue bike lanes once those are painted.
I didn't see any other cyclists on the road today, but I think this route is pretty popular on the weekends. I don't think that many people, comparatively, commute by bike to upper NW via the Chain Bridge. Mostly because of the lack of connectivity to anywhere.
On to quibbles, then. This is the Bike Arlington map, showing the connection between the Chain Bridge and the Capital Crescent Trail:

Chain Bridge

According to this, it looks like you can pretty much just bike straight through and get on the CCT. Cool, huh? Well, it's not exactly that straightforward (at least based on what I saw- maybe I missed something). There's a pretty significant change in elevation (read: hill) between the bridge level and the CCT level. And there's no paved path between the two. Instead, there's this:

Not NACTO approved.

Yes, this is technically an off-street trail and that's all the red line on the map promises. But it's not bikeable. In order to access it, you have to bike/walk about 50 feet down the sidewalk (or lift your bike over the guard rail), cross the do-not-bike-on-according-to-the-map Canal Road amidst the stopped car traffic and work your way back in order to get to the trail, which as you can see the from the picture is not super. The map could be a little clearer. Serious portage opportunity.
Not much else interesting from the CCT to work. I saw this truck:

Om

So, if you're working on renouncing all desire but can't totally shake the desire for your own backyard zen garden, call this guy.