David and I got up early to go on our bike ride this morning. We started out at the old Vienna train station. We went west on the W&OD towards Leesburg but only went as far as the Herndon Community Center. Round trip it's 18.6 miles. In one of my recent posts I said it was 12 miles. I was wrong. My bad. We got there at about 8:15 in the morning, put air in my tires, strapped on our helmets and were off. The weather was perfect. It was sunny. The temperature was in the high 60's. Very low humidity and a slight breeze. It was beautiful. The trail wasn't too crowded either.

For the most part I led the way. I don't ride all the fast so David was on my tail. At about the half way mark we stopped to rest a bit and have some water. Then we started moving again. David took the lead this time. Shortly after starting off again, the shoestring on my right shoe got caught around my pedal. It almost ripped off. I tried to yell to David (he had moved pretty far ahead of me) but he was too far ahead. So I just had to pedal backwards to unwrap the shoestring and then I reached down and shoved it in my shoe all while still riding. At the next road crossing David was stopped so I told him about the shoestring and was able to retie my shoe and keep going.

We stopped again for just a minute or so to get a drink and rest a minute. Then we were off again. We finally made it to the Herndon train station. There's a little mini-mart close so we stopped there and had something to drink. Then off to the Herndon Community Center. There we were able to use the bathroom and rest a little longer. This is where I discovered that my camera phone doesn't have an unlimited amount of memory. I had to spend a little time sending the pictures I had already taken to myself. While there David and I were eyeing a really hot guy. He was cleaning the bathrooms at the time. He had a tattoo on his leg and David was bold enough to ask him what it meant. He said it was for the Iron Man Competition. He said he had competed in 3. I believe it. He had a nice body and was very good looking. After drooling over that guy, we were back on the trail.

The ride back didn't seem to take as long as the ride there. And it didn't seem to be as tough a ride. I guess it was more down hill on the way back then it was on the way there. Along the way we did see some nice eye candy and some nature. David almost hit a chipmunk that was running across the trail. Then when we stopped because my shoestring got caught again, we saw a big deer run across the trail and up into the woods. It was pretty big. That was cool to see. Of course he was gone before I got my camera out. Toward the end of the ride I was getting really tired so I let David continue on without me and I took my time pedaling the last mile or so. When I rode up to the Vienna Train Station, David was already there resting. I was pretty hot and sweaty by that time. We rest and had some water and then called it a day. It was only 10:30 in the morning but I was tired. We had a great time on the ride. Saw lots of eye candy and enjoyed the great weather. We'll definitely do it again soon. One thing we both realized. DDW = Distance Does Wonders. Many of the guys we thought were good looking or hot from far away were actually not once we got closer. Keep DDW in mind while riding on the trail.