Saturday, February 22, 2014

Ride report: Saturday, 22 February 2014

The weather so far this year has been pretty chilly (more than a few days in single digits). I’ve only been out for a ride once, and that was in January. Connie hasn’t been riding since last year. So, when it became obvious that we were going to have decent weather over the weekend, I got about planning a couple of rides (one for Saturday, and another for Sunday if I could trade riding for chores). We’re engaged in the Big Money Rally 2014, so I selected from that big list of bonus locations to plan Saturday’s ride.

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The planned route is in red; the dark cyan is the track.

We got started early (well, earlier than I often get going on weekend rides), and headed for the William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge, just east of Annapolis, Maryland. There was a big wreck on the outer loop of the Capital Beltway (surprise!), so we did a little detour to get onto U.S. 50 East.

Clear days are an especially nice treat while on the bridge, because it’s the highest point around. I like stealing glances of the ships at anchor, just south of the span. The traffic on this chilly Saturday morning was light; fast forward just a few months, and the weekend traffic can be daunting.

The major theme of this ride was libraries – our mission was to find specific libraries, then get a smartphone photograph of a library sign (free standing or on the library itself), our rally “flag”, and the bike. It’s great when Connie is along because, in addition to being wonderful company, the flag is in the right place in the photograph.

We had a late breakfast at Southern Grill in Seaford, Delaware, a little mom-and-pop diner.

In addition to taking a lot of photographs of libraries, we stopped to do one virtual geocache.

We completed the ride by heading south on I-95, all the way to Virginia.