Prelude
For our tourist week in D.C. we’d been staying at a friend’s house in Alexandria; we were planning one more night with a different friend near Union Station. For an equipment shakedown, and to see more of Anacostia, I decided to ride there.
I was interested in Anacostia because of some Bike Lab analysis I’d done on neighborhood change around streets named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Washington, D.C. was one of the few cities where neighborhood median income had increased from 2000-2017, without Black residents being displaced during that time frame. That kind of development without displacement is a holy grail for city planning, and I wanted to experience the neighborhood for myself.
I rode over the Wilson Bridge from Alexandria (not bad), and navigated a maze of paths and sidewalks to get across the highway into Anacostia.
Oxon Hill Farm sits at the southern end of MLK Jr. Avenue. I rode down a chunky dirt road, then a smooth paved path through a pleasant woods.
On the west side of MLK I saw a large, mostly abandoned complex of historic brick buildings. I would have explored more but the gate was signed as “Department of Homeland Security.”
MLK is not the route that recreational cyclists would take along the Anacostia River. It does go through the heart of the neighborhood, where I saw only Black people. And also past the spectacular Go Go Museum and Café which we’d visited a couple days earlier.
The demographics got pretty white once I crossed the highway to Anacostia Park. That difference is consistent with the census data I’d looked at from a few years ago.
Crossing into central DC, I was also interested in checking out the M Street underpass, which I’d researched in 2022, when it was referenced by the City of Oakland as an example which could be copied for our pedestrian walkways under highway 880. When I wrote the above piece, the M Street project was already viewed as a failure in D.C. Now, the concrete barriers which had been placed to combat encampments are being replaced by bike infrastructure; a bike share station on one side, and a two-way path on the other.
I met up with Nancy for a last afternoon at the Smithsonian (the powerful National Museum of African American History and Culture, thankfully not yet watered down), then visited the Lincoln Memorial for sunset. An appropriate end to my time in DC, I felt.
Day 1
Today Nancy and I would take separate paths, she the train, and me the Anacostia River Trail, planning to meet again in Baltimore.
The river trail was pleasant enough.
But after a couple of hours of this, I was getting bored; it really wasn’t much different than the trails I’d spent five days riding from Pittsburgh to D.C. I was in College Park and hadn’t seen any evidence of the university. So I hopped off the trail and found my way to the campus.
The campus layout was a little jumbled, except for Frat Row.
Leaving College Park, my route headed into exurban and semi-rural areas.
I also passed by some low-rent light industrial areas housing the waste transfer station, the sewage treatment plant and the women’s prison.
I had a bit of a climb to get over the ridge into the urban landscape of Baltimore.
I noticed that even in neighborhoods which presented as low-income, the houses were decorated in creative ways.
The timing worked out for me to meet Nancy’s train at Penn Station. I helped her with her luggage, and we both met her friend Kevin who came to pick her up.
After rolling to Kevin+Craig’s place (I got there faster by bike), we went out for a nice dinner. I’d have a tourist day in Baltimore before resuming my trip north.