Sunday was a perfect day to be a bike rider. Since Felkerino and I consider ourselves bike riders, we went outside and rode our bike most of the day.

We departed from the District and steadily made our way north past the Lincoln Memorial, through Georgetown, and out to Maryland.

En route, we briefly intersected with a Bike Rack group ride. They were pretty nice and mellow, chatting their way out to Potomac. We also met Patrick, who said he reads our blogs and enjoyed reading about our Colorado trip. Of course, that made my day. In case I’ve failed to mention it, I loved our tour of Colorado.

From Potomac, we meandered the popular cycling thoroughfare that is River Road, over the country roads around Poolesville.

We detoured from our sort-of planned route to check out some gravel on Greenfield Road by the Monocacy River, and eventually reached our glamorous halfway point– the gas station in Buckeystown, Maryland.

I know it sounds strange, but I really like this gas station, at least on the outside. It’s old, features decorative wood gingerbread on the canopy over the gas pumps, as well as a couple of cool old light fixtures.

The gas station also has a nice picnic table on a little patch of grass that abuts a creek, perfect for sitting a spell to take a break and eat pretzels and slurp iced tea on a sunny day.

Our return trip took us up Mt. Ephraim Road, which is essentially a gravel climb over the lovely Sugarloaf Mountain.

We reached pavement again and meandered back through Poolesville and over to Homestead Farm where I picked up a pint of blackberries, peaches, and one cucumber. Homestead is a pick-your-own place that also has a market where you can purchase their freshly grown produce. They also sell things like cobbler, but I showed restraint and stuck with produce only!

Our return was full of tailwind, and we reached home with 106 miles in the bank.

This was the first ride of any distance since our tour, and it felt great. After about 25 miles or so, we were in the country under cloudless skies of blue. The corn was high and the traffic was light.

We spent the majority of our miles today on pavement, but also took the Co-Motion Java out on some new-to-us gravel sections with our trusty 32mm Panaracer Pasela tires (not as cushy as what we’ve been riding, but still quite serviceable). This bike gives us the confidence to explore.

A sunny mild day with low humidity in August? That’s a gift that does not come to D.C. that often, and I’m so glad we were both able to be out together turning the pedals and basking in every sun-filled moment.