Loving... no wait, hating... Washington

Anyone who lives and works in D.C. who keeps a clear head about things will soon develop a certain love/hate relationship with the city. I suspect it's like that for anyone who makes a large metropolitan area their home. On one hand there are the wonderful opportunities a big city provides, and DC has them in spades. Museums! The Zoo! Art! You can literally spend a lifetime trying to take advantage of all the free stuff the nation's capitol has to offer.
And then there's the downside, and that almost always involves all the other folks who insist on living here.
Here's the latest, my son has just lost his training wheels. He's a great kid, but a bit tentative and learning to ride on a two-wheeler has proven a bit problematic for him. But to his credit he's game to practice every afternoon when I get home from work.
One of the problems of course is working to find a suitably safe area to practice in a big city. And so yesterday I stumbled upon what I thought was a great idea: to use a small stretch of the GW Parkway bike trail. It's flat, straight and bordered by tall, soft grass in case we need to bail out.
As I said, it seemed like a great idea, but after trying it for 30 short minutes, I can tell you that putting a tentative kid on the GW Bike trail felt like trying to merge onto 95 riding a moped. People were whizzing down that path at breakneck speeds. For those of us who frequent the trail that's normal, and okay, until it's not, then the unwritten rules suggest we slow down, announce and pass.
Silly me. If I had a nickel for all the frustration that was vented at my boy when these guys were forced to slow down for us, we'd have a fair amount of nickels. After repeated passive-aggressive shakes of the head, or insane helmeted mutterings we decided it wasn't worth it. So we played soccer, got a Slurpee and went to the park.
So here's the question: was it unreasonable for me to ask that people make room for a dad using one lane of the bike trail to teach his kid how to ride his bike? Should I have more respect for the super-commuters who use (I'm being generous) their ride home to blow off steam from a rough day? I honestly don't know. My wife says I was brave to even try.
In any case, for those fellas who grumbled at us, there's no chance I'll ever do this again. It's simply not worth it to try and 'take back the trail' from the type A'ers who make it their own personal Indianapolis 500. You scared my kid.