By: Kate Pearce
Our first day of biking to a new place! This morning, we all committed to waking up at 6am in order to be on the road by 8. From taking the tents down to making breakfast to packing up and checking bikes, this left us a good amount of time. On the road right before our goal of 8am, we headed out for Woodbridge, VA. Big thanks to Elizabeth and her family for starting our trip off in a great way as our first host.
While we’d biked a recreational 18 miles to and from DC the day before, we were amping it up a little today with around 35 miles to our next site. The weather was pretty good, not too sunny or hot. Some team members used the clip-in bike shoes, while others were waiting until getting out of the city. We packed lots of snacks and water and headed out for the ride.
As our first “real” day of biking across the country began, we split into two groups- the “slow” and “fast” groups. These names ended up being pretty irrelevant as we ended up meeting up a few times along the route and biking the last bit all together.
In terms of route, we strategized the night before to try to make it the most enjoyable route we could find. We ended up biking out of Alexandria on the Custis Trail which was lots of fun. The ride overall was interspersed trail vs road. Lots of small rapid ups and downs and slightly longer climbs awaited us on the ride. In a deeply forested area, we thought a hill ended around the bend. We were wrong. Shouts echoed back through the chain of riders, relaying “It keeps going!” like an old-school game of Telephone.
The Mount Vernon trail proved to be rather beautiful as we rode along the river and wooded areas. All in all, we were mostly on well-paved surfaces, riding along averaging between 13 and 15 miles per hour. We hit around 30 mph on some of the fun downhills!
Today was a good lesson in shifting gears. We all worked to be proactive and quick with gear shifting to maintain a steady pedal stroke rate (as my dad always preaches) as we went up and down hills and flats.
There were some parts with tricky roads. No bike lanes, narrow roads, lots of debris, and many cars. However, that was very short-lived as the majority of the roads had bike lanes and very biker-aware drivers.
We went through many Lara bars (cookie dough, apple pie, and chocolate peanut butter being some favorite flavors) and lots of water. I was glad to have my Camelbak in my backpack. By the end of the ride, I’d finished it off completely.
In terms of gear, we were really glad to have our Halo sweatbands. Our hosts Elizabeth and Gerry had recommended them, and boy were they handy. Even though we were sweating lots, none of it dripped into our eyes.
Many team members ended up finding some quirks with the bikes that need to be worked out. We are actively working to try to improve our bike maintenance skills so that we can diagnose and fix the weird sounds and things that pop up.
All in all, the ride was relatively short and sweet. We all arrived at the Pohick Bay Regional Park Campground before noon! The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. We set up our two tents, cooked lunch, and went grocery shopping. Bethany, a huge Wegman’s fan, took us non- New Yorkers to her favorite grocery store. I, along with Matt, An, & Lisa were pretty impressed after all. After a couple hours of biking, we were pretty enthralled with all of the food options available in the huge grocery store.
In the afternoon, we all sat around the picnic table. With a ukulele and a guitar getting passed around, nice acoustic sounds were drifting through the trees. We might have attracted some interest from people at neighboring campsites, but all in all it was a lovely afternoon. It was nice for us all to have had a positive ride as well as some time to decompress and hang out. Plus Lisa, hip-hop dancer extraordinaire, taught us how to do the wave. We’ll be practicing…
Shout out to Bethany (and her sous chefs Matt and Annie) for a delicious and healthy lunch! Her idea of quinoa, cous cous, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, feta cheese, and lemon yielded a tasty meal. We each used our personal sporks. I was pretty excited about the sporks because (8 different colors purchased so that we I have 1) I think sporks are great! And 2) I’d suggested buying sporks in 8 different colors such that each person would have their own personal utensil for the trip.
For dinner, we cooked up some tacos with black beans, salsa, cheese, and more. Delia was the master chef on this one, stirring up some cheesy rice and beans. It was delicious! Later in the evening at the campground, we met Dan Black and Ray Black from northern Kentucky along with some of his family members. They were camping at a nearby site, and it was really nice talking with them. It’s always amazing meeting such friendly and kind people along the way. I’d briefly met Dan at a shared campground sink, and he'd asked me what all the bikes were about. I was excited to share our Spokes mission with him, and we were all excited when he came back later to visit our campsite and meet the team with his niece. Very generous and thoughtful, they even brought us a huge citronella candle they had made. They gave it to use to help fend off the mosquitoes on our trip. With a special blend of 8 essential oils, the candles should prove to be very useful. Dan and Ray even came back and brought us two more! As a subscriber to our blog, I’m sure they will be reading this- thanks again, Dan and Ray! We were all so glad to have met you at the Pohick campground!
After our usual nightly meeting (debrief + planning) in one of the tents, we went to bed at 9:30pm to wake up at 5:30 am for Day 2 of biking. Stay tuned for more on that from Lisa!
PS: Sorry for the delay in posting this- no wifi at the campground.