Road King Blog

Woke up in the morning to find that it had recently rained, and everything was quite wet. Rode over to the diner we missed the previous day for breakfast.  I found I was pretty uncomfortable riding in the wet, which I suspect is simply based on a lack of experience in doing so.

Fortunately, as we ate breakfast and then walked over to Starbucks to feed Sean’s near-Betty-Ford-level addiction to espresso, things dried up.  And with that, we were off to Virginia, and the Udvar - Hazy center which is perched on the southernmost part of the Dulles Airport grounds.  They have an excellent collection of aircraft both military and civilian spanning the history of flight.  The collection is dominated by two attractions, though.  A Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise.

A product of the heady days of the Cold War reconnaissance race, the SR-71 was developed by the famous Skunk Works at Lockheed.  The Blackbird is almost universally accepted as the most successful reconnaissance aircraft in history, operating with impunity all over the globe.  The SR-71 A on display at the center set a record on her final flight, traveling from Los Angeles to Washington DC in 1 hour and 4 minutes.  Just another day at the office for the mighty Blackbird.

The Enterprise was the first of the Shuttles, and was used as an atmospheric flight testbed.  Although she never flew in space, Enterprise was a key part of the Shuttle program, which represents the pinnacle of mankind’s quest to explore space.  Although she completed her testing role in the 1980s, Enterprise had a role to play in the investigation of the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.  On February 1, 2003, the Columbia was lost on re-entry during STS-107, killing all 7 aboard.  During the subsequent investigation, it was discovered that the leading edge of the wing had been damaged on launch, resulting in a failure of the heat shield and catastrophic damage to the spacecraft.  As a part of the investigation, sections of the leading edges of the Enterprise’s wings were removed for testing.  For a long time, there were large green panels over the gaps where the leading edge segments were removed.  The leading edges have been re-constructed now, and Enterprise sits as she was at the end of her flight career.

The ride out to the museum was pretty good, save for the portion on Route 66 in Virginia.  Route 66 in this area is concrete, with irregular scars and lots of seams between lanes.  It’s rough, and densely populated.  We decided to seek another path back.

After we concluded our visit to the center, which includes a superb gift shop with a great selection of books related to civil and military aviation, we headed back toward Fairfax to visit the National Firearms Museum at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association.  This museum has an astounding collection of firearms from the first matchlock muskets to the very latest in modern small arms.  We strolled through the collection and spotted a few firearms we had never seen before, including a prototype semi-auto rifle in .303 British from WWII.

We decided it was time to head back up the road to the hotel, and I consulted the iPhone maps application for a routing plan.  We ended up riding along Vale Road, which was absolutely amazing.  Windy, hilly and lightly travelled, Vale meanders to the Northeast past a variety of enormous, multi-million dollar homes.  We rode along the hills and curves, eventually connecting with Route 123, which brought us north through Vienna (land of 1,000 speed traps) back to the beltway and up the super-slab to the hotel.

We grabbed some dinner and rolled over to Borders to sit and write a bit, enjoying a beverage on the outdoor terrace and soaking in the cool evening breeze.

Following Borders, we decided to ride around some of the old neighborhoods and haunts as night fell, working out way generally toward the hotel.  We had big plans for the next day, so it was time to turn in for some rest.