Today’s ride was a quick one, just down the hill to meet J. for lunch and a chat about bicycling, one of my most favorite topics. I woke up to rain, but it was just a bare mist when I headed out, and besides, what am I going to do? Drive downtown and park? Please. I took Maryland Avenue, which is a speedy ride and takes me over the freeway. I coasted and took a minute to look up and check out the skyline from that vantage point–the manwoman statue in front of Penn Station, the new glass behemoth that’s almost built, the old hotels and office buildings, row houses and cranes in the sky. It was such a lovely feeling to be on a bike with the crisp air and the view that I actually honestly and for real said out loud, “Oh, it is so good to be on a bicycle.” I love that that feeling never goes away. J. was on foot, so I got off and we walked to the Women’s Industrial Exchange for lunch. She asked for a table with women on bikes on it, and we got seated at this one, the tabletop covered with pathbreaking women in sports and got down to business. Turns out J. also loves bikes, and we shared bike story after bike story. She also rides in a charity ride every year, raising money for a local group, Moveable Feast, that provides food for chronically ill homebound folks in Baltimore. 140 miles over two days, training rides from Baltimore to Annapolis, good cheer and happy cyclists all for a very good cause. Would I like to join up? Why yes, I believe I would. And now’s the part where I ask all of you, my dear readers, to pitch in $5-$10, if you can, to help me raise enough money to provide food for one person for the entire year. How cool is that? I promise blogs from all over the state in return, and a new set of stories about a new kind of riding. I rode back up the hill to home and logged on to see how in the world I will ever be able to ride that far. Insert squeal here.