The 180 Embassies Ride

[consularrider]

Thanks to Brad for the planning and inspiration and both Brad and Peter for taking it easy on this old man with all the climbing. I finished with just under 52 miles and 3200 feet of elevation gain. Since I forgot to bring my camera, I too am looking forward to seeing the photos. And where is the Honduras Embassy? The address includes a suite number, so I guess it must be inside the INTELSAT building. Maybe we should substitute the Honduran Consulate at 1014 M St, NW, and we almost went by it anyway? It’s not much to look at, but at least they fly the flag!

[girlonabikedc]

Wow! Definitely let me know if anyone is up for doing this in the spring!

[Dirt]

@consularrider 1837 wrote:

And where is the Honduras Embassy? The address includes a suite number, so I guess it must be inside the INTELSAT building. Maybe we should substitute the Honduran Consulate at 1014 M St, NW, and we almost went by it anyway? It’s not much to look at, but at least they fly the flag!

Perhaps Honduras is now a fully-owned subsidiary of Intelsat?

Sorry. I had to say that.

@Brad: I’d love to see the adjusted cue sheet when you’ve made the 4 or 5 changes that we found while riding it. I’ll be happy to lead this one in the spring.

Did I mention that I broke the frame on my mutant cross bike on the ride home? I couldn’t have picked a more lovely day to break the frame. It died a warrior’s death.

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

Pete

[skreaminquadz]

@Dirt 1841 wrote:

Did I mention that I broke the frame on my mutant cross bike on the ride home? I couldn’t have picked a more lovely day to break the frame. It died a warrior’s death.

Sorry to hear – how’d you do that? Or did you find a crack in the frame when you got home? Will this be replaced with a Air9 Carbon ; )

[carfreecommuter]

I can’t believe I haven’t posted here yet. This ride was fantastic! Thank you Dirt and Consularrider for making this an incredibe ride! I’ve written down all of my corrections and will be making the changes to the online version this weekend hopefully. There were a few wrong one-way streets and I have to input Maldives(thanks to consularrider for spotting that one!). Here are some reflections on the ride. We took a relaxed and fun pace and we stopped at everyone of the first 100 embassies to take photos. It was a cold day but the sun was out and the wind made for great flag photo weather. After 6 hours in and out of the saddle with no breaks we decided to stop taking photos. We were only done with about 100 of the 170 embassies. We rode out the rest of the route which was still great but we sadly missed out on some great looking embassies. The best way to do this ride is to really stop and admire each embassy and it’s architectural uniquiness. The problem is that makes for a very long day and I doubt that even if we tried we wouldn’t have had enough daylight to finish with all the photos. I suggest breaking up the ride into four individual routes to make it more managable. Here is how I suggest making the new routes: Africa(about 50 embassies), Asia(50), Europe(45), Americas & Oceana (40). Like I said I’ll buff up the full route this weekend and double check the last embassies we rode past but I’d like to make these more obtainable routes as well. Any thoughts?

[Dirt]

@carfreecommuter 1852 wrote:

The problem is that makes for a very long day and I doubt that even if we tried we wouldn’t have had enough daylight to finish with all the photos. I suggest breaking up the ride into four individual routes to make it more managable.

We just need longer days. Springtime will make this possible.

Thanks for your hard work on the route. It was amazing. I’ve started sorting photos, but there’s a lot out there.

[carfreecommuter]

Yeah I’ll try to post my photos soon too. I put everything else off last weekend finishing the route so now I have to play catch up with my other stuff.

[bikesnick]

Yesterday I finally attempted the 170 Embassies Ride. A group did the ride several years ago. Thank you for the cue sheet and MapMyRide route.
Due to misreading the cue sheet, I bailed before the end – it’s hard to read the sheet, watch traffic, and see the embassies by yourself. Even though I only rode past about 120 embassies, it was fun and challenging. It was almost as much fun as the 50 States Ride. I have lived in the DC area for many years and there were embassies and roads I had never seen.

Is anyone interested in doing this ride again?
It will take several hours. There is about 1000 feet of climbing and a lot of stop lights and stop signs. Traffic was light on a summer morning in August.

[KLizotte]

I’d definitely be up for doing this ride but I’m out of town the next three weekends. Sept or later works for me.

[Dirt]

That ride was a blast when we first did it. I’ve been wanting to revive it. That may well be one of next year’s charity rides. It is a very odd ride. Glad you had fun! We had a heck of a lot of fun putting it together.

[americancyclo]

@Dirt 1841 wrote:

Perhaps Honduras is now a fully-owned subsidiary of Intelsat?

Sorry. I had to say that.

@Brad: I’d love to see the adjusted cue sheet when you’ve made the 4 or 5 changes that we found while riding it. I’ll be happy to lead this one in the spring.

Did I mention that I broke the frame on my mutant cross bike on the ride home? I couldn’t have picked a more lovely day to break the frame. It died a warrior’s death.

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

Pete

Was this when the WTF frame broke for the second time?

Also, would a GPX file with POIs make this a little easier to use with garmin nav? I might have some free time today.

[consularrider]

Of course it is much more challenging when the temperatures are below freezing or above 100°F. I can see one of the problems with trying to following this on my Garmin 500 this time around would be that you recross your route several times. Here’s my Garmin read out. We were pretty slow and why didn’t I ride another 3.05 miles to get my half century in for the day? Of course, it looks like there was some kind of problem on the eastern side of DC. Wonder if I hit the stop button around the Canadian Embassy and didn’t realize it until we got to 14th and Shepherd NW.

[Dirt]

@americancyclo 61146 wrote:

Was this when the WTF frame broke for the second time?

Also, would a GPX file with POIs make this a little easier to use with garmin nav? I might have some free time today.

That was the death of the VooDoo… the bike before the WTF. It was a bike that I was asking to do some things it was never designed to do.

The NAV was done with a Garmin Edge 705. Using an Edge 800 or 810 would be a HUGE improvement. With those you can just add in the different buildings on the cue sheet. Unfortunately with 172 things added to an already INSANE cue sheet, it would be very, very, very long. I was also working 80-100 hour weeks at the time that we did that ride. I didn’t have as much time as I’d like to have done the prep work.

[Author]

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