I made some good lentil soup for dinner tonight, but the highlight of my day was going for a bike ride with my friend Bob.

Vintage picture of my bike

We took some familiar roads and made our way from HoVal to Sergeantsville and back, catching up and sharing wisdom and understanding on things like relationships and life.

We were happy to be outside riding, and our halfway point 20 miles in was also familiar.

The  Sergeantsville General Store, a deli which also makes very good and reasonably-priced Chinese food

Sometimes if I’m on a long ride and I need a little more food, I’ll get the $5 meal with dumplings, rice, and salad. (If you haven’t tried it, you should.) Today, I went with the more standard fresh scone and Gatorade.

Can’t think of a better way to spend $3.47 on a Sunday morning

After repositioning the scone into my stomach, I took a few pictures of some flowers nearby and thought this blog and appreciation.

Daffodils

Pink flowers

Painted flowers

It was definitely a day for daffodils on the side of the road, which Bob and I noted, and in fact, the first pictures I took today were of some yellow daffodils at my place before leaving. I took them with the idea of including them on another (more photo-centric) blog that I was thinking of starting under the heading and theme of, See the beauty every day.

Another friend, though he didn’t remember having had said it (perhaps it came naturally to him), had said these appreciative words one day a few years ago when glancing at an architectural feature on the side of an urban building – something he was seeing and I wasn’t – and the words lodged in me as something to come back to and remember whenever perspective is wanting or wanted. Among other thoughts today, I did think of See the beauty every day, and the sentiment was present on seeing the daffodils in the morning and then seeing much more of them and other flowers later on.

Some yellow daffodils

A daffodil close up

And some more

According to Bob’s Garmin, when we finished the ride, we had done 2,681 ft of climbing, burned 2,662 calories, and covered 43 miles in 3 hours. It was a good ride.