The first two days of the trip didn’t really present many opportunities to get out solo. There might have been a few minutes when we got both kids down for a nap however the youngest had been sick and the previous night’s sleep was really pretty bad. Katie and I found ourselves on the couch where we were both kind of leaning together all nice and warm, she looked sleepy and I wasn’t about to take that away from her, so I shut my eyes as well. It is vacation.
By day 3, we were all kind of in our rhythms and we had done a fun drive down to Hatteras to see what was what. Which was pretty cool, driving through some really tiny remote beach villages, the Hatteras Light house, all kinds of things. On the way back the whole car slept which actually made for a nice quiet ride back to the beach house. It was a pretty day, albeit freezing cold and windy as hell but pretty.
Once we got back I took inventory and got the go ahead to sneak out for a few minutes. Fortunately I packed a fair bit of cold weather gear, so I suited up and headed out. I had taken a look at the maps and found some decent roads as a starting point and figured I’d just see what I could see. I headed over towards the Wright Brothers Memorial and saw it from a distance, the gates were all closed for the government shutdown so I took my picture from a far. I found some short little gravel roads that led me nowhere, some residential areas, nothing too crazy.
On the way back I was riding along the water with the sun starting to get low and found a few cool places to snag some fun pictures. I’m by no means a photographer but I’m starting to see some of the draw to it. I don’t have the capacity to take on anymore hobbies at this point but if I can find some fun pictures I’ll usually give it a shot.
The next day things panned out again and I was able to get back out while kids were napping. I decided to go the other direction this time, North towards Kitty Hawk. This ride was a little less exciting, not too much to see, I came across a couple of parks and a really fun stretch of greenway that almost felt like a trail in the woods, twisting and turning around trees and it even had some grade reversals but it was all new smooth asphalt. Almost felt like an IMBA flow trail, joking of course, those aren’t as tough as this was….
Anyhow, I managed to sneak in two hour long rides and see parts of the Island that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. During those rides I did actually work in a few “efforts” to make them almost like a training ride I was supposed to do while still keeping the “fun” in them.
