I skated the Capital Crescent Trail from the White House to about a mile south of Bethesda to the Kenwood neighborhood. They have a huge set of large cherry trees along the streets. It looks like I missed the peak bloom, but it was still pretty. This is just the part from the trail in and around the neighborhood and back to the trail.

Here’s an approximation of the route, I was mostly lost once inside the neighborhood and just skated around.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5889652

Here is one lap around Hains Point during the first peak day of cherry blossom season. I did three laps, but the other two have lots of traffic. For some reason it mostly cleared out on my last lap. Starting temperature was almost 90 degrees!

Here’s the route:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5884376

If you go to Google Maps and look at the street view, they drove Hains Point during cherry blossom season in 2011. Pretty cool that they made the special timing effort!

The first part of this is just me hanging out in front of the White House and watching the tourists. Then we skated the route, and I included Hains Point even though it’s very dark. I blanked the live audio of the skate since it’s mostly wind noise, and added generic ACID loop ‘music’.

Here’s the route:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5854120

This is a partial video since it still gets dark fairly early, so I ended the video at the Lincoln Memorial. We skated over to Hains Point, and then I skated back home in Southwest Waterfront. The Friday Night Skates are a social skate and usually end at Froggy Bottom Restaurant for pizza and beer. This night we were all feeling health-conscious, so we skipped that part. I skipped the Hains Point loop part this time since the speedsters wanted to go fast, and I’d done 22 miles the day before.

Here’s the route:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5854120

This is a partial video since I bailed at the big downhill on Piney Branch just north of the Takoma Metro station. Too steep, too narrow, too much traffic equals too much risk, for me!

Here’s the raw unedited video of the skate. Starting at 1:48:20 I have a close encounter with a driver who wasn’t paying attention, and veered me out over a grate in the street. Exciting!

Starting at about 1:51:20 we go into the Department of Skate shop in Chinatown.

http://www.facebook.com/DeptOfSkate

I turned the camera off after a while being there because I wasn’t sure of the lighting, but it did okay.

Here we are at the start of the skate with the advanced group. I don’t know who that guy is with the antennae and camera on his head!