By: Bethany Cates
Day 2 in the books! Bethany here. Today we took a rest day in DC (or more properly, Arlington) to relax and get things together before we officially start biking. After a very stressful weekend of running errands and planning trip logistics, we were all grateful to have some time to destress and take care of last minute errands.
My day started bright and early with a 7:30AM run (walk) to the neighborhood grocery store, about a half mile from our host's house. I picked up some bagels and fruit for breakfast, grabbed some much-needed caffeine in the form of a Starbucks flat white, and trekked back to the house, greeted by several half-awake teammates.
After breakfast, we decided the plan for the day would be to handle last minute logistics, and then bike into the city together to do some sight seeing and to get some practice on the bikes before rolling out.
Half the team went on a run to REI, while Matt and I drove into DC to return the van we'd rented for the drive down from Boston, and then set out back to Arlington by bike. 9 miles and 13 hills (750 ft) later, we rolled into our host's driveway, which was lined with the 6 bikes we'd unloaded from the van.
The others were still out getting groceries, so we pedaled around the neighborhood for a while to try and get used to the clipless setup. I fell before even exiting the driveway, which is a good indicator of how the next half hour or so went as a whole. By the day's end I definitely felt comfortable with the cleats, so hopefully there will be no more falling at stop signs in my future.
Once everyone was back and we unloaded the groceries, we set off on our !!!first ever!!! group ride. Fortunately for our not-very-experienced-with-city-biking selves, the route from Arlington to DC is almost entirely along the Custis bike trail, which meant we didn't have go deal with much traffic. (This made testing out the clipless pedals a lot smoother!)
We made it to the Lincoln Memorial in around 40 minutes - thanks in no small part to some generous stretches of steep downhill - and then walked around the mall for a bit. Here are some photos of us doing mall things.
An uphill ride home (my second of the day), 8 heaping bowls of pasta (perfectly sauce), and an intense planning meeting later, we turned in for the night, ready to hit the road for real in the morning.