Warming up

Today, it felt like summer outside -- a high in the low 80s, and even warmer temps expected in the next couple days.

After work, I took a ride up the Capital Crescent trail from Georgetown to Bethesda. The destination was the Apple Store to try out an iPad, but it was really just an excuse for a ride on a beautiful evening. (The iPad was cool, but I think I'll be able to restrain myself for a bit. While it's spectacularly thin, it's heavy enough that you'll pretty much always want to be sitting down while using it.)

I took the Capital Crescent back home -- it's not the most direct route, but because it's an old railroad grade, it has a very gentle downslope for all 8 or so miles from Bethesda to Georgetown, and you can cruise 15+ mph with little effort. The slope is almost imperceptible visually, so it makes you feel like a very accomplished cyclist. By the time I was heading home, it was dark, and cooling down. When you have warm days followed by cool evenings, and you're wearing only a t-shirt, differences in temperature are easy to feel on your skin -- warmer air near swaths of pavement, cooler air where the trees are thick, etc. The variety of vegetation, development, and water features that the Capital Crescent passes through create a good number of these noticeable variations, and the fact that you're cruising pretty fast makes them more obvious because the transitions happen faster. Between the lovely cool night air, the zippy ride, and the the ability to feel the environments as I passed through them, it was a wonderful ride.