courtesy of Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie

CLIF Bar’s 2-mile challenge is about as simple a concept as it comes: if the errand is within 2 miles, replace a car with a bike. Sure, it’s tough to hear when it’s going to be torrid outside, but WABA is hoping that you’ll take a ride (which makes its own breeze!) through the city to help them raise money.  The bike advocacy non-profit gets a buck per ride during the month of July, to a maximum of $10,000, which they can use to help get  bike routes marked and lanes painted throughout the metropolitan area.

If you’re the biking sort, it doesn’t take much to get signed up and charting your rides with them!  Remember your lights & helmet, though, and practice good situational awareness.

As someone who’s now lost close to 60lbs by taking a bike a few times a week, the little miles add up to a whole lot of progress. Get out there and bike, DC!

Androids Can Litter
courtesy of Epiclectic

How bad is this heat wave we’re in? The folks who run DC’s text alert system have gone to the Thesaurus to find new words for hot. Last night’s alert read: “NWS has issued an Excessive Heat Watch, effective from Saturday afternoon through Saturday evening. Although tomorrow will once again be very hot, with highs near 100, Saturday is expected to be torrid. Dewpoints are expected to remain the lower 70s all day (i.e. high humidity). That will likely make the high temperatures of 100-103 feel like 115 degrees.”

There’s that word, right there in the second sentence.

Torrid.

I’m going to say that again, because saying it makes me feel mischievous, almost lewd.

Torrid.

My dictionary says that torrid, aside from being a scorching heat, is “full of passionate or highly charged emotions arising from sexual love”.

So, stay cool DC, but mainly because I’m not sure that this town could handle a string of torrid days. The scandal would be too much to take.

Tim Lincecum
courtesy of LeonPrz7

Since losing 4-2 to the Rockies last Monday night the Nationals have score 12, 11, 10, 5, 5, 8, and 9 runs and went 5-2 in those contest. In their game against the Giants the Nats were facing a pitcher in Tim Lincecum who has struggled all season with command and control. Having his average fastball velocity drop from a career average of 92.6 MPH down to 90.4 MPH and complaining of pain when throwing his slider it isn’t hard to deduce that the freak is malfunctioning.

Lincecum’s delivery was designed by his engineer father and worked to help him win two Cy Young awards despite his slight frame. Now it appears that Lincecum is dropping down to a more 3/4 arm slot and it is causing him to struggle with both the command of his pitches and the control of his pitches in the strike zone.

Continue reading →

state beer & wine
courtesy of ekelly80

The power outage has hurt so many, but I never thought it was cut so deep as to take our beer away. Port City Brewing in Alexandria has had some major setbacks caused by the derecho storm last Friday, which is resulting in a giant kegger tonight from 3-9pm, and featuring the music of songwriter Justin Trawick from 3:30 to 5:30. You can also fill growlers ahead of the 4th.

In addition, next Tuesday Cap City Brewing is having a tapping party for their latest, a Rye IPA, on Tuesday next from 7 to 10pm, with complimentary appetizers at their Shirlington location.  

Beer nerds, get ready for some geeking out.

Day 194: Bocce
courtesy of InspirationDC

I’m not one for playing softball or, really, much of anything that requires running. It’s not that I’m out of shape (okay, I am out of shape, but that’s not why I don’t run), but more that I think that bocce is more my speed in the summertime. Leagues are starting very shortly for the DC Bocce League with metro-accessible game locations in Columbia Heights, Capitol Hill and Dupont Circle. It’s a six-week season followed by a single-elimination tournament, so you’re not going to be overcommitted forever. Give it a shot. 

Brookland: 107F in the shade. FFFFFUUUUU
courtesy of tbridge

With heat breaking a 142-year old record in DC today at 104°F, and a high of 100°F due tomorrow, you’d think that we were heading for a hot uncomfortable night in DC. Instead, sometime tonight DC a unique weather phenomenon – a derecho – will cool down the District and bring with it some heavy rain and high winds. A derecho is long-lived severe thunderstorm that can travel over a thousand miles in a straight line with a very unique shape, a bow-shaped frontal line.

Squall Line
courtesy of gainesp2003

50 knots of wind speed are not uncommon in these kinds of storms. As of 5:30, the storm’s bow was just east of Columbus, Ohio, and about 30 miles wide. You can follow it on the Weather Underground radar map for the region. It should hit DC sometime between 9pm and 3am. Tornadoes may spawn from the storm, but it’s often hard to tell the difference between the tornadic activity and the result of the straight-line winds.  Last Friday’s straight-line winds damaged numerous homes in Ward 5 and Ward 4 in DC as well as Montgomery and Prince George’s counties as large trees were downed by the storm and power was knocked out.

Tonight’s round of storms could be just as dangerous, so do be careful as the storm approaches. This one could have some real fireworks attached.

Real estate site Trulia has released a new fun tool to look at zip code by zip code break downs of DC Real Estate including some spiffy sorting options that show that Capitol Hill has the highest “lowest” price, while Georgetown has the highest “median” price.  Georgetown also carries the largest disparity, with an 8.7x factor between high and low end. 20001 (containing Shaw) has the shallowest magnification factor at 2.8.

Now, there are problems with looking at real estate trends based just on zip codes instead of actual neighborhood boundaries, but that’s a harder database query, that’s for sure. As someone who lives in 20018, but whose neighborhood is mostly comprised of 20017, I suspect that there’s some better breakouts of this stuff available somehow.