Daffodils!

I was going to blog about my ride this morning, but the only exciting parts were as follows:

1) There was a red Honda parked in the bike lane that pissed everyone off.
2) I stopped for a pedestrian in the cycle lane crosswalk and she was huffy because two cyclists had already whizzed in front of her.
3) I picked up an old iced tea jug that was rolling down the street because it occurred to me that if I didn't and someone swerved to miss it and crashed, that it would somehow, cosmically, be my fault.
4) Sharrows recognized me, and it makes my day when other cyclists, especially cool bike bloggers, recognize me and say hey.  It doesn't happen often.
5) Hipster Douche in pink crew socks and a plaid sweatshirt cut in front of me at a red light then proceeded to bike slowly because a CaBi biker was in front of him.
6) The weather.  Was.  Beautiful.  So beautiful, in fact, that I left my internship early and took the long way home through Rock Creek Park. No hipster douchiness ensued, though lots of roadie douchiness did (would it kill you to bike slowly behind a pedestrian for 3 seconds so I can get by????).

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But that's not what this blog post is about! The Kate-inator (as she shall henceforth be named) and I decided to go for an epic bike ride this past Sunday, when the weather was less beautiful.  After careful consultation of the DDOT bike map, we (by which I mean Kate) decided to bike to Virginia, take the Custis Trail up, cut over to the W&OD, find Four Mile Run, take it to Mount Vernon, then bike back home through the wilds of Georgetown.

Kate on the Key Bridge

Somewhere in Nova.  NoVa?  NoVA? 

The ride, in total, was something like 20 miles, which to me, falls into the category of "semi-epic."  However, had the entire route been anything like the Custis Trail, it would definitely qualify as epic.  Holy HELL, does that trail have hills going into Arlington.  They're short hills, but most of them are between roughly a 75 and 90 degree angle.  Sheesh.  We had to do a lot of standing and sprinting.  By the time we got to the park at the end of the trail, we realized we'd ridden only four miles and were baffled, because it felt more like 15.  

There's a system of really cute parks in that part of Arlington.  We rode by a disc golf course and saw lots of kids out playing on awesome playground equipment.  It makes it pretty easy to get confused, but fortunately, the Kate-inator (that's lame, isn't it?) has a much better sense of direction than I do, and we found our way.

Four Mile Run is NOT four miles.  It's more like nine.  So why they named it that, I will never know.  

Shirlington seems like a fun place to live, but there were parts of it that weren't so awesome.  It might also have been the dismal grey skies....

Something called the Beenie Weenie.  Or Weenie Beenie.  I wanted to eat there, but it was closed.

I have done the Mt. Vernon Trail roughly 27 million times (not to sound like a jaded ass or anything), so there was nothing super notable about it up to the point where it hits the 14th Street Bridge.  Except that, in a moment of weakness and stupidity, I stopped to use the port-a-johns at Gravelly Point.  It's not an experience I ever want to re-live.  I think everyone was anticipating the snowstorm that never happened, because that trail, along with all the others, was pretty empty.  I wasn't complaining.

We rode back up to Key Bridge, past Roosevelt Island.  That was pretty neat, because I've only done that part of the trail once or twice.  It was pretty cold by that part of the ride, though, and both of us were slightly under-dressed and therefore ready to go home.  We took the back streets of Georgetown (of which there are many) and wound our way back.  

There were TONS and TONS of daffodils on the side of the Mount Vernon Trail.  I don't even know how they got there--aren't daffodils bulb flowers?  So don't they require cultivation and wintering and all that fancy stuff?  Didn't someone need to plant them?  I actually noticed a whole bunch on the side of the Rock Creek Trail today, too--has DC always had a giant crop of wild daffodils or has it been this abnormally warm winter?

Daffodils in the distance

Anyway, excited for future springtime rides!  Kate is training for some super athletic event, so it's a good excuse to go on rides with her.  We think it might be fun to head out to Leesburg on the W&OD and see how far we get before we have to start biking back, because I doubt my legs' ability to make it the whole way.  It would be good training for a cross country ride, however....