Adventurous is not the best way to describe me. When I’m driving to work, I like to go down Monument Avenue. Why not? It’s a beautiful boulevard. If I’m feeling wild and crazy, I’ll go all the way over to Cary Street and go downtown that way. Sometimes, just to mix things up, I’ll take Grove Avenue. The problem there is that when you get into the Fan, there are all those stop signs now. I know that’s not a problem for the people who live in the Fan. It makes life easier if you’re trying to cross Grove from a sidestreet, so I don’t complain too much when I’m on Grove Avenue.

During this first stage of the Redskins training camp, I’m staying at a place about 20 minutes from Redskin Park. I take the same route every day. I’ve seen some other roads I can take, but I figure, why risk it? I like riding my bicycle up here because I get on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, a paved rails-to-trails path, and ride east or west, or maybe it’s north and south—my inability to distinguish direction is a major reason for my lack of adventure (aside: I was in Kansas City once, and as I left the restaurant, I asked the manager how to get to my hotel, which was near the airport. He told me to go west out of the restaurant. Left or right, I said, I don’t know east from west.  He smiled, made a smart remark and gave me some vague directions. He might have thought they were excellent directions, but I say they were vague because they did not take me where I needed to go. At one point I thought I might have to check into a downtown hotel and start over again in the morning because I was hopelessly lost. Then, I got more hopelessly lost and had to stop at a gas station and ask directions from the attendant, who sat in a small booth, behind bulletproof glass. Yeah, not exactly where you want to be late at night asking for directions.  I finally got to my hotel, after going through Mexico and Canada, I think, on roads I did not recognize). Once you’re on the W&OD, you can ride in a straight line for as long as you wish. No turns are required, unless you exit the trail for a sandwich or doughnut.  That’s my kind of bike trail.

I’m pretty sure Jim Zorn, the Redskins coach, is more adventuresome than I am. First, he got here from Seattle, which is no small task. He also rides mountain bikes, quite a bit faster than I ride mountain bikes, from what I can gather, hikes up mountains and goes down rivers he’s not been on before in canoes. I don’t know if he’s ever gotten lost in Kansas City while trying to get to his hotel near the airport from a downtown restaurant. I’ll have to ask.

Today (Monday) was an interesting day at Redskin Park. Perhaps you’ve heard about the cake incident involving Chris Samuels. It was his birthday, his teammates gave him a cake and during a press conference—which I’m pretty sure was a set up—Randy Thomas, a guard for the Redskins, smashed the cake in Samuels’ face. Jocularity, jocularity, jocularity.

I’ve got to be honest with you. I like cake, all kinds of cake, and while I’m all for players having their fun, that seemed a terrible waste of a perfectly good birthday cake.