Cherry Fuckin' Blossoms

Yesterday was an amazing day. The temperature climbed to a magnificant 27 degrees. The ride to work was wonderful.

Twice, I gave serious thought to blowing right by work and continuing to ride. First, when I ran into my friend Nancy as she and her friend sipped coffee at the Fresh Fields in Vienna, VA.

Nancy had tried to wrangle a bunch to play hookie and ride to Leesburg, VA all day. All told, it would have been a 90-mile ride. As I sat with them, I told them they had 6.5 miles to convince be to continue on.

Alas, I thought better of it (or worse depending on your point of view) and took off ahead of them to go in to work.

The second time I was tempted was when a group of riders latched on for a pull. I got to live up to my nickname "Diesel" for a few miles. (See next post for why a few riders on Bicycle Tour of Colorado 2003 gave me this nickname.)

But once again, I chose common sense (or cents) and went to work. It was a good thing, however, that I didn't continue on this time. As I locked up my bike, I realized that I lost my water bottle. It dawned on me that as I sat with Nancy, I took my water bottle. So, my water bottle ended up remaining at Fresh Fields.

That evening, I got into my car to return home with the bike securely on the roof rack. It was a glorious day. My windows were down. The sun roof was open. The wind was blowing threw my... eh, beard.

I stopped at Costco and proceeded to head home around 6:15. I arrived home at 9:20. "What happened?" you might ask.

Why did it take over three hours to drive what normally takes about 50 minutes?

The cherry fuckin' blossoms, that's what!

Because of the weather and the timing of the peak bloom of the blossoms, thousands of people were converging on DC to get a glimpse of the stupid trees. Don't get me wrong, I think there fucking beautiful. But three hours in the car made me so mad. The absolute worst part: it dawned on me a half mile from home (still in grid lock traffic), that I should have parked my car and rode the bike home. It would have been much faster.