One of those rare rides...

I can't quite put my finger on it, but yesterday was a ride that only seems to happen on special occasions. Some friends, Jim & Diane, and I set off for a nice long ride. We decided to ride north from our home in southern Jacksonville. Most of our rides usually take us south to St. Johns County where the routes are great and the traffic is easy. But today we decided to ride into Jacksonville...into the traffic filled streets dotted with potholes. But on July 4th we found the traffic minimal and the potholes just didn't seem to matter. We covered the 18 miles to downtown fairly quickly, over the Acosta Bridge and then rode the entire north bank River Walk, which I had never done. We took a brief break and started back south again. In riding through San Marco we decided to stop at Starbucks. It was still early so Starbucks wasn't crowded. We hung out for a while and then finished up leisurely. I've heard many people talk about rides like this but I'm usually into those epic rides. So this was a new experience for me. AWESOME!!! I'll be trying to have more experiences like this more often. Stats: 35 miles, 3 1/2 hours.