Bikes and Rugby in DC

The last few days passed with a calm rhythm.

Thursday, March 8, we visited Weina to help babysit William while she took her driving lessons.  Then, after lunch, we all went shopping.  We wound up the day sharing a nice dinner with them and Matt.

We spent Friday, March 9, being domestic, and actually took a full 5 hours to plan and make reservations for our campground itinerary from mid-April through Memorial Day.

Saturday, March 10, was a beautiful, sunny day, though chilly.  We decided to try a trip into DC with our bicycles.  We drove the truck to the nearby metro station, parked for free (on weekends), and rolled our bicycles onto the metro for a ride to L'Enfant Plaza, where, after a yummy lunch of pizza, we cycled through DC streets over to the Jefferson Memorial and down to the bottom of Hains Point, a peninsula of land that juts out into the Potomac River due East from Reagan International Airport.  The day was brilliant and the air clear, and we had spectacular views of Alexandria down the river, as well as Fort McNair to the East of us.

The occasion was a rugby match between Matt's team and another DC area team.  We haven't seen a full rugby match in a couple years, so we enjoyed watching the competition.

After the match, we talked a while with Matt and some fellow teammates, then hopped on our bikes for the trip home.  We found it easy enough that it encouraged us to plan more trips into DC to bicycle around and view the upcoming cherry blossoms.

That evening, we drove into Annapolis to participate in a Craft Beer Pub Crawl.  It was an adventure finding a parking spot for the big diesel truck, but we found one.  After a light dinner, we hopped around to four local historic pubs with our tour leader and five other participants.  Two were a mother and daughter from Annapolis, who had suggestions for future visits we make there.  The other three were young people originally from Pennsylvania.  One woman is starting her medical residency.  Another, an occupational therapist, had spent some years in Portland, Oregon, where David grew up, and even had lived near and knew all of his childhood haunts, including his elementary school, his childhood home, and some parks in the area.

Today, March 11, we did some Spring cleaning, Skyped with Katie, and cooked steak and Brussels sprouts over a campfire, enjoying warm (60F), sunny, clear spring weather!