Welcome/Ride 1: Virginia
Old Dominion
Hi, friends and family! Welcome to our new blog space. As many of you probably know by now, about two years ago we decided to embark on what is bound to be a lifelong journey together: to complete 50-mile rides in all 50 states (plus DC!).
How did this idea first come to be? We’ll spare you most of the biographical details and distill it down to the basics:
In 2013, Michael moved to Washington, DC, for school and work.
In 2017, Alex did a med school rotation at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore (about 45 minutes from DC).
In 2019, Alex matched with Sinai for his medical residency and moved back to the DMV area on a more semi-permanent basis.
Once we knew we had some time together here, Alex began trekking down to DC to explore the city’s numerous urban trails and sights (and tastes) with Michael. Pretty soon, some girl named Mary Kate started tagging along...
One weekend in summer 2019, on a beautiful June day, Alex and Michael took a longer excursion out to Virginia, which ended up clocking in at more than 60 miles (66.74, to be exact). The route took us from DC all the way out near Dulles Airport in Virginia along the W&OD Canal Trail—with stops along the way for beer and barbecue, obviously.
This prompted another idea: because DC was also so close to Maryland, we should also try to do a longer ride there—maybe one over 50 miles as well. And while we were at it, why not just make a plan to do it in all 50 states?
And thus we began working toward a new lifelong bucket list item.
Unfortunately, neither of us thought to catalog our excursions for all of you until after we had already finished 8 of them! Rather than squeezing all 8 into our inaugural post, we will roll them out periodically between now and our next ride, which will likely be sometime this fall. In each post, we will also show our progress in map form, and you will have the chance to follow along as we shade in new states. Here’s what the map looked like after our first ride:
There is plenty more to come, and we hope you will join us as we continue onward.