Battlefield Cruise?

Happy Birthday to Joyce. For real this time. Her birthday was a week ago today and my post is long overdue. I kept busy with her this past weekend, traveling Virginia, celebrating her birthday in style. I also had the opportunity to meet Betty, Joyce's new bike which she bought for Ragbrai. When she moved to Newport News, she left her bike in Florida and, when deciding to go on Ragbrai, figured it would be more economical to buy a new bike and sell one of them than to pay insane amounts of money to have her bike shipped to her. I think now she's attached to both and will have a hard time selling either. Betty is fancy and her old one is classic. Meet Betty. She is super light and fancy.


She and Lucy became friends. Good thing because they'll be spending a lot of time together this month! Our weekend involved a lot of traveling, from DC to Newport News to Richmond, to VA Beach, back to Newport News and back to DC (for me). We went out in Richmond and Virginia Beach which was fun and different and I got to meet some of Joyce's friends I hadn't met before. It would not have been a trip, though, without our attempt at an unfamiliar bike ride in Richmond. Joyce and I set out early Saturday morning to find this "Richmond Battlefield Cruise Ride" that she had read about on Virginia's list of best road biking trails. We were up late into the night before on google maps searching for this place. It wasn't very clearly marked but we took down directions and decided to head out the next morning not entirely sure what we'd find. Our directions guided us to the Dorey Park parking lot and information center. "Perfect!" we thought, "the information center must be able to provide us with INFORMATION on this bike trail we will soon embark on". Low and behold, nobody in the information center had any knowledge of a bike trail existing in the area. So they gave us a map and we kind of made up our own. We rode on lots of back two-lane roads. That is good preparation for Ragbrai. As were the many CORNFIELDS that we passed!!

The many other bikers we passed (actually, that passed us) led us to believe that we were on a part of the Richmond Battlefield cruise path that we'd intended to find. A "path" along these many small roads. One of them was a historic battlefield strip with forts and battlefields to explore. Biking makes history fun. Riding with Joyce makes biking more fun. Whether we found the path or not, we had a fun ride that provided a sweet glimpse at our upcoming Iowan ride. We'll get a better glimpse of it this weekend when Joyce comes up to DC to ride 50 miles with the me and the Shaws!