A-Biking We Will Go

This morning, we got up and after a leisurely breakfast (of sorts - the doodle ate real food, I think Tim might have as well. I had coffee) we piled in the car and headed up to Old Town Alexandria in order to hit up a bike shop that rents the same configuration of bike we are hoping to rent when we're in Vancouver later in the year.

The drive up was actually rather pleasant, we managed to hit I95 before all the various vacationers made it impassable, so that's nice. We happened upon a $5 flat rate garage not two blocks from our ultimate destination, so we parked and strolled down to the bike rental shop.

Where we were promptly informed that:
1) All the tandems had been rented, and
2) They won't hook anything up to the back of a tandem because your average Joe is not able to handle the length of that configuration, so their liability insurance says no.

But we were there, with bike helmets in hand, so we rented two normal bikes and a trailer (the doodle having decided that he did not want to peddle, but instead lounge in comfort). I suppose it goes without saying that, had we known this, we could have just brought our bikes and trailer (as we have the exact configuration we ended up renting) with us and saved $60, but well, whatever.

So we mounted up and headed out. One of the things I love about this area is that there are, actually, several really nice bike paths. We meandered over to the Mount Vernon Trail (which follows the streets in Old Town for a little bit) and then made our way up to Gravelly Point (Gravelly Park? Not sure which it is.) It sits at the end of National Airport's runway and you can rest in the shade and watch as planes take off and land (today they were taking off) over your head. We made a quick detour into the airport to get lunch at the Cosi there. We both agree that that airport Cosi would never survive as a Cosi where it had to deal with any kind of lunch rush - it took them probably 45 minutes to get our 3 sandwiches made and to us. But picnic-ing under the airplanes was fun.

The path itself is along the shore of the river and so you have a nice breeze, shade trees, and enough hills that you bemoan how incredibly out of shape you are every 50 feet or so. At least on the uphill portions. Round trip is just about 10 miles, so we used that to justify Ben & Jerry's before heading home.

I still wish we could've tried the tandem, but I'm guessing that the other shop won't rent that configuration either, so at least we know that this is pleasant enough, even if there's considerably less conversation.