Day 1 - Home to Fredericksburg

43 Mile The Route

It's finally started and it feels great to be on the road again.

Kelsey and I went to the midnight release of Breaking Dawn last night, so I treated myself to a sleep-in this morning thinking that I could still finish up my pre-departure "to do" list and maybe hit the road by 11:00. I didn't end up pedaling up the street until after 2:00. I kept finding "one more thing" I had to do.

I stopped at the end of the street to take a picture of my ride in front of Station 17 (where many great rides begin and end). Just before I left home I decided to "fly the colors" this trip and mounted my flags. There are a lot of narrow twisting back-roads on this trip and flags flapping behind me (or simply hanging there...I'm not the fastest rider in the world) would make me more visible.


I headed down Route 1 through Dumfries then cut through Quantico. Route 1 from 234 to Joplin Road is high volume but relatively low speed with bits of shoulder and sidewalk to work with most of the way. South of Joplin Road it gets back up to 55 MPH with no shoulder past the Marine C0rps Museum.

From Quantico to just North of Frederick (after crossing back over I-95 and Route 1) it was just hot. Very little respite from the sun. After that however I passed through a lot of tree-lined back roads where the tree branches met over the road and provided lots of shade. Ahh...

Tree lined road in Fredericksburg

When I hit Fredericksburg I found a very nice bike lane with a lot of bike-friendly road signs instructing drivers to yield to cyclists and share the road. I'd heard that Fredericksburg was a nice place to ride. I was also starting to get a little bonky. By the time I hit the hotel I was really dragging.

Fortunately Pattye came down with chinese food and rapsberry sorbet to revive me.