Clipless in Mimosas

Today is Easter so I got up at dawn and went to church.

Just kidding.

I slept in and went to brunch with a bunch of grad school friends. We had good eats, coffee, wine and mimosas under beautiful blue skies.

Today is the last day of winter according to the Rootchopper Institute. This is because opening day in DC is tomorrow when the Washington Nationals trot out the most badass looking crew of starting pitchers I’ve ever seen. When you number 6 starter won 15 games last year you are loaded for bear. In the words of my son, it’s filthy. I haven’t been this stoked for a baseball season since 1975 when the Red Sox trotted out three young players named  Lynn, Rice and Burleson. THAT was filthy. And by the time they were done in October, they helped resurrect the popularity of baseball. (Of course, they lost in the seventh game of the series but we’ll always have the sixth game and Bernie Carbo’s blast to centerfield.)

Oh, wait this is a bicycling blog, isn’t it.

After the brunch we came home and I had to go out for a ride. I sat down on Big Nellie, clipped in and promptly fell over. Thankfully, I was on grass at the time. This also demonstrates one of the big advantages of recumbents over conventional bikes. When you fall off a conventional bike you have a whole lot farther to fall. I fell because I didn’t want to take the chance of messing up my knee by unclipping superfast.

Off I rode, aware of the fact that I had better get the mimosas out of my system pronto. I picked up the Mount Vernon Trail and headed toward Alexandria with a tailwind. Life is good. I stopped at the Morningside bald eagle nest but didn’t see any activity. I always amuses me when cyclist ride by oblivious to the nest. I suppose this is a good thing becase more people hanging out would probably cause the nest to be abandoned.

The trail was quite crowded so I decided to ride over the Wilson Bridge to get away from the crowds. Riding down the spiral ramp on the Maryland side with mimosas still in your system is an interesting experience.

I rode up the long hill to Oxon Hill Road. It is always a slog but on a recumbent it is a workout. By the time I made it to the top, the mimosas had left my system. This is a good thing becasue the ride back down was about 1/2 mile at 30+ miles per hour with a high speed merge at the bottom. Weeee.

I rode back across the river and headed back home. Just past Belle View Boulevard I spotted a hornets nest hanging from a tree limb about 12 feet off the ground. Hornets are not very active in cool weather so seeing this nest was a bit of a surprise. I don’t recall it being there on Friday morning either.

On the ride home I stopped and sat on a bench on a hill above the Parkway. I took in the river and the budding trees and the blue skies.

A lovely end to Rootchopper winter.

As for tomorrow I have only two words:

PLAY BALL.

Oh, and one other thing: THERE IS NO WRONG PIPE.