A bike hauling a trailer hauling a couch and a bike. (Photo by Mark Nielsen)People move every day. They typically use moving trucks or vans or station wagons or pickup trucks or cars with mattresses strung to the roof, sort of like the horse and wagon days, though without the horse and wagon.

Anthony and Jess Reiss used bikes.

The College Park couple — he works at Proteus Bicycles, she’s an environmental attorney — sold their cars about a year ago. The idea: Cycle or use public transportation wherever they roam.

Last weekend, they needed to roam, with the contents of their one-bedroom apartment, to their new
Jess and Anthony Reiss during their bike move. (Photo courtesy of Anthony Reiss)residence, a house about a mile away.

Bethesda swimmer Katie Ledecky: The best local story of the Olympics. (AFP PHOTO) While the pontificators watch the fluctuating medal scoreboard between the U.S. and China -- we’re up 82-77 -- I’ve been keeping an eye on a decidedly more local tally.

Maryland vs. Virginia.

I should admit that the Maryland vs. Virginia scoreboard exists, to my knowledge, only on a scrap of paper where I’ve been tallying the results. And I’ve heard no rumblings of trash talk between the two governors.

So I’d like to start the trash talk now by saying to Tom Jackman, my colleague who lives in Virginia and writes the State of Nova blog, something that even he can understand: You’re a loser. (But a nice guy.)

On my sheet of paper, I’ve got Maryland with seven medals.

What does Virginia have?

Lower taxes.

Also, three medals.

This post has been updated

The town of Glen Echo is a lovely little place with a grand total of 255 residents. The town is known mostly for Glen Echo Park, a retired amusement park with a wonderful antique carousel that my children love. Saying the words “Glen Echo” to any Montgomery County child is almost like saying the word “candy.”

This is a speed camera — quite common around here. Glen Echo wants a camera to monitor a stop sign. (Jahi Chikwendiu — The Washington Post.)But if Mayor Debbie Beers gets her way, I have a hunch the town will come to have a more infamous reputation: The first Maryland locality with a stop sign camera.

Beers, according to the Washington Examiner, has written state and county officials about amending state law to allow stop sign cameras. Maryland only allows red light and speed cameras, which are almost universally despised both here and around the country.

(Earlier this summer, a Howard County man was arrested for allegedly launching glass marbles at a speed camera van with a sling shot.)

Taariq Mohammed after his wrestling team won a state championship. Oh, he also scored perfect on the ACT. (Photo courtesy of Sayyeed Mohammed)Taariq Mohammed’s ACT test had an early hiccup.

“Did your watch beep?” a proctor asked.

Definition of guilty: His watch. It beeped.

“I need to take it away now,” the proctor said.

Taariq gave up the watch.

Definition of the moment: “It was a little weird,” Taariq said.

His pacing mechanism was gone, but nothing could apparently get Taariq off his game. The rising senior at Howard County’s River Hill High School aced the test.

Definition of aced: 36. Alternate definition: a perfect score.

“I was pretty sure I did well, but I wasn’t sure I got a perfect score,” Taariq told me the other day.

The score was confirmed in a letter he received last month from the ACT organization.

“Your achievement on the ACT is significant and rare,” the letter said. “On overage, fewer than one-tenth of one percent of all test takers earns the top score. Among ACT-tested U.S. high school graduates in the class of 2011, only 704 of more than 1.6 million students earned a composite score of 36.”

Taariq says he took practice tests over and over and over again to prepare, though I’m not sure how he had time to do so because his resume is longer than mine.

Katie Ledecky of Bethesda (Reuters)

Missy Franklin won gold. Then Michael Phelps did, too. Now it was Katie Ledecky’s turn.

As she climbed the starting block, more than 300 of her classmates and their parents at the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda stood up cheering, watching on a big screen. Red-white-and-blue signs on the wall said, “She came. She swam. She conquers.”

The facial expressions on the children at the all-girls Catholic school ranged from ecstatic to how you would expect a child to appear while watching the scariest movie ever.

And then she was off, ready to conquer.

When Katie hit the first turn in first, the crowed went berserk. There were lots of oh my Gods, perfectly fitting for their packed gathering spot at the school — Sister Irene Good Hall. Before the race, they had prayed, a solemn but uplifting moment that ended with, “Go Katie!”

She fell slightly behind at one point, but at turn after turn, she kept hitting the wall first. One minute went by, then another. And another. First. First. She’s still first! It would be the longest 8 minutes and 14 seconds of everyone’s lives. Eight hundred meters is far.

Who were they cheering so rabidly for? She’s not just the youngest member of the U.S. women’s swim team or the star of the famous Curl-Burke Swim Club. She’s one of their favorite classmates, a good student, active in the campus ministry.

Julia Ali, the student president of the school, declared before the race that Katie was “so down to Earth you would never know she’s this amazing Olympian.”

In fact, much of the 660-student body was surprised at how awesome she’s been in the pool. “You would just never know it if you were around her,” Julia said. “She’s a really great person and we’re all really excited to cheer her on.”

Matt Shannon brought his two daughters, ages 7 and 11, both students at the school. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. “And it’s just really cool.”

First. First. She kept hitting the wall first.

With a few laps left, some girls began crying, waving their hands in front of their faces as if to cool themselves off. Others held little U.S. flags high. Connie Mitchell, in charge of communications for the school, kept putting her hand on her forehead and staring at Catherine Ronan Karrels, the head of school.

Mitchell seemed to keep mouthing, “Oh my God.”

The tension mounted. Girls stood on their chairs. As Katie pulled away from the pack in the final lap, the cheering was loud enough to shake a church bell.

And then she won. Total pandemonium.

There were lots of hugs. And screaming. And tears.

Their classmate had just won a gold medal in the Olympics, at age 15. She will be a sophomore in a few weeks. She will go to English class with them, and she will pray with them, and she will go on being a Stone Ridge School Gator — a Gator with a gold medal.

“I think I just had a heart attack,” Karrels said. “Now we have to plan a party.”

Read more:

Katie Ledecky makes a big splash

Full coverage: London Olympics