We had a nice quick downhill ride back to the route early this morning and before I knew it, I was heading back north. The rolling hills continued and the scenery remained the same as yesterday for most of the day.

Today would be a day that reminded me of a couple of the many lessons learned while doing these adventures. The first lesson is that both good and bad conditions are usually only temporary. I found myself on a country road with no shoulder and a ton of traffic this morning, not good.

This traffic just made no sense to me at all for this time of the morning. Where could these early birds be going? Why are so many of them out and about. It was as if they had to get to some Army Physical Training or something else very important.

This continued for a large portion of the ride today and just as I was about to take another break and potentially let out a big yell to relieve some stress, I see a multi-use trail. Just at my breaking point, a change came for me. The stressful situation was indeed intense, but proven to be temporary in the grand scheme of things.

The other lesson is that when you go through something stressful and hard it can make the problems of yesterday seem no longer problems at all. Things can definitely always be worse, I guess. Maybe yesterday was not that bad after all when looking back after a really hard today.

The highlight of the day was down by the Occoquan Historic District. After crossing the bridge over the Occoquan River and beginning my way back up the hill on the other side, I heard a screech. An Osprey was on a perch that is normally used to assist these birds in making a nest.

The Osprey had a great morning of hunting apparently as it had a rather large fish within its talon. It was a perfect way to take a break as I watched the bird try not to lose the fish as the fish flapped around during its struggle to survive. The picture posted below will not be clear because of having to use zoom, but does work to show the fight.

The rest of the day was either on a nice bike trail or a big enough sidewalk to ride on as we are now getting closer to Washington D.C. with the obvious increase in traffic. It was refreshing to just cruise on into the area on these separated from traffic surfaces.

I made it Fort Belvoir and was able to prepare the paperwork required to get Folker access to this beautiful post. When he arrived, it was easy breezy to get him onto post. We made a stop at a post express, aka a service station with benefits, for a late breakfast and air conditioning.

During our time at the post express a gentleman originally from the Netherlands, Albertus-Hugo Van den Bogaard, introduced himself after seeing Folker’s flag on his bike outside. To make a long story short, his life story has been truly remarkable and he has indeed met some very important Dutch politicians due to his time in the Dutch Embassy as a multilingual translator. This man is a top-notch story teller and the most interesting man met today by a long shot.

Time for some tent camping down at the primitive campsite here on post. We will do our best to stay in the shade as it is forecasted to be 100 degrees Fahrenheit today. Luck would have it there is plenty of shade down here accompanied by a nice breeze.