Spring

As far as I’m concerned, Spring came early this year. Friday was a beautiful day, and I went on a 4 hour MTB ride with Mike “Crusty” Russ and his wing-man Scott. It’s still a bit sloppy riding in the woods, so we opted for an urban adventure ride—riding on streets, sidewalks, parking lots, front yards, along with limited singletrack.

The ride was somewhat of a blur. All I remember is pedaling from Bethesda, crossing over Chain Bridge and the Potomac River—and spending the next few hours touring Northern VA streets, towns, and neighborhoods that were foreign to me. At one point we touched Route 7, and later connected with the W&O Trail. This trail eventually took us down into Rosyln, where we crossed the Key Bridge, connected with Macarthur Blvd—eventually making it back home to Bethesda. A cold beer never tasted so good.

The weather today was equally impressive. After an 8:30 a.m. soccer game—we met up with Helmo and his family at Old Anglers for a nice hike along the canal (disappointed we didn’t see gmansurf on his SUP). Everyone wanted to be outside today, and we were no exception. This afternoon, it was down Beach Drive on the FJR (with my 8-year old daughter on the back)—breaking in some new tires in anticipation of some Spring touring.

With guidance from my computer guy Darrell, I recently achieved a major milestone by converting some of my iTunes to MP3 format—and loading those tunes onto my Garmin GPS device. It’s quite exhilarating listening to The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Stevie Wonder while tooling around on a motorcycle. It’s hard to believe one device provides step by step directions, plays music from your song list, feeds prompts from a radar detector, and integrates a Bluetooth enabled mobile device (perfect for my ADD). I’m looking forward to riding the FJR to Cape Breton Island in the coming weeks.

In spite of all the beautiful weather, I did find myself bitching on more than one occasion today. What is it about these packs of bicyclists who feel entitled to ride four across, taking up entire lanes of traffic, choking up the roadways and making driving significantly more stressful and dangerous? I’m all for “sharing the road”, and also have a passion for cycling (albeit MTB), but this behavior annoys the crap out of me. Is it not reasonable to move over and allow cars to pass?