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.

I know it was the week of April Fools Day but I was really not prepared for some of the strange happenings this week. Monday went by uneventfully. Then on Tuesday, I managed to nearly get hit twice in the span of about 3 minutes. Wednesday I got revenge by nearly t-boning my boss’s BMW. On the way to work on Thursday I spotted vultures in a tree next to the trail. In the evening I decided to take in the blossoms (which were nonexistent) in East Potomac Park. On my first lap of Hains Point I spotted a sail boat capsizing in the Washington Channel. The two sailors were clingning to the boat trying to right it but the mighty wind kept frustrating it. The sailors were wearing life vests but the water had to be numbing them. Eventually, with some help, they got the boat back upright.

Yesterday proved to be a fittingly weird ending. I rode to Friday Coffee Club on The Mule. It was warm so shorts and shirts sleeves were the order of the day. I had a strong tailwind the entire way which made up for Thursday night’s brutal headwind. We sat outside for the first time in months. It was dry outside until about 8:15 when a light rain passed through. As we were leaving, Will clipped into his bike, slipped on a manhole cover and went down with a thud. There was pain. Here was the first casualty of Friday Coffee Club. The clear cause of this calamity was insufficient caffeination. Oh the humanity.

A security guard did a nice job of checking on him and summoning an ambulance which arrived in minutes. He was soon whisked away to the George Washington University Hospital emergency room a few blocks away. The fall had cause his shoulder to re-separate. The doctors popped it back in and he reportedly was back at work before noon. Ozzie cyclists are tough.

As for me I managed to get to work without catastrophe. The ride home was somewhat surreal. The office was quiet as this was Good Friday. I left a bit early and rode home. After a couple of miles, I stopped to celebrate. The Mule’s odometer turned 37,000 miles.

Just south of the Dyke Marsh bridge I rode past something in the trail. It couldn’t be. Yep, it was the head and spine of a Canada goose. Probably eaten by an early bike tourist headed north. Gross.

So I am grateful that I survived the week without being hit or eaten or falling down go boom.

This morning’s ride to work was a nonchalant affair. Big Nellie and I had big fun doing the street luge thing on the downhill on Park Terrace Drive. It was coldish and my eyes teared up as we approached 30 miles per hour. Nothing wakes me up like blindly riding a bike downhill to my doom.

The cruise up through Old Town was uneventful. Near the power plant a runner was standing on the side of the trail. She was checking out two vultures perched in a tree. By the time I got my phone out one had moved to an adjacent tree. Unfortunately, the vulture looks tiny in the picture. I took these carrion feeders as an omen.

Somehow, omen or not, I managed to get through the Intersection of Doom without becoming vulture chow.

Temperatures rose into the low 70s so I decided to go down to Hains Point to check out the progrees with the cherry blossoms. Not much doing on the blossom front I am afraid, but considering how hard the wind was blowing that is probably a good thing. How hard was the wind blowing? So glad you asked. It was blowing hard enough to capsize this little sail boat in Washington channel. It looked like a sailing class was underway. There was a motor boat to come to the rescue. The boat first completely capsized then they started righting it and the wind pushed the sail down to the water. After several tries the boat was righted and the two folks bobbing in the water with their life vests on could be pulled out. I image they were freezing their noo noos off.

After a couple of laps around Hains Point, I headed for home into a fierce headwind. As I approached National Airport the wind was so strong that it slowed me down to about 7 miles per hour. And I was spinning my ass off.

Even with the wind, the ride home was fun and much nicer than riding in February.

April, more drama, less frostbite.

Today’s bike commute began like most others with one big exception. Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent, got the call for the first time this year. Whenever I switch from one bike to another it takes me a while to adapt to feel of the new bike.

Riding Big Nellie is so different from riding The Mule that riding it seems like a different sport entirely. It’s more like pedaling a luge sled than biking. Riding up hill on a recumbent is tedious. Obviously, you can’t stand up to gain leverage. The steering is so sensitive compared to a conventional bike that you can’t use your arms. And for some reason, if you mash the pedals your knees will self destruct. The only remaining option is to spin like a maniac. It helps to have clipless pedals. On a recumbent the pedals are not below your torso, they are in front of your torso. Without clipless pedals you end up exerting a good deal of energy just keeping your feet in contact with the pedals.

In the past it could take several days to get my bent legs. Nowadays, having ridden the bike over 37,800 miles, my legs instantly adapt. The first few miles went by like a flash. This was especially true for the downhill on Park Terrace Drive. I can reach 35 miles per hour without too much effort. It feels much more like luge than cycling.

There was a light coating of ice on the boardwalk over Dyke Marsh on the Mount Vernon Trail. I very carefully slowed to check out the sunrise.

I like the sunbeam.

After my little respite I had 12 more miles to go. The heads up position of riding a recumbent makes bald eagle watching much easier. Unfortunately I didn’t see any today. The crisp morning air made up for the lack of raptors though.

I made it through the Rosslyn Intersection of Doom unscathed. I rolled down the sidewalk to my office building. Just as I was about to turn left into the garage, a big, black BMW turned off the road and directly in front of me. I went to take my feet off the pedals but nothing happened. I forgot I was clipped in. Eek. I didn’t panic, stayed upright and extricated my feet from the pedals just before t-boning the BMW.  It turns out the driver was the head of the agency. My boss’s boss. Career advice: never t-bone the boss’s boss’s car with your bike.

Fortunately he had a good sense of humor about the incident.

I still have a job to ride my bike to.

So today’s lesson: don’t t-bone the boss’s car. It’s bad form.

The ride home involved no t-boning incidents. I learn fast.