Took another mini vacation over the weekend and drove to Washington DC. Why? First reason was the State of the Map US conference. They had an “Intro to Using OpenStreetMap” tutorial that I wanted to attend. Then I found out that it was going to be peak cherry blossoms during the same weekend. I’ve always wanted to see that, so I made the crazy drive. I drove to Perrysburg Ohio (close to Toledo) after work on Thursday and spent the night in a hotel. Then did the rest of the drive on Friday. Since it rained from the time I started until about an hour outside of DC, it wasn’t the best ride. However, once I got to DC, the weather was fantastic, around 80 degrees. I checked in to my hotel and jumped on my bike to find the cherry blossoms. They did not disappoint. My pictures are here.

The conference started on Saturday morning and I went to that all day. It was interesting, but conferences really aren’t my thing. I was glad I went to the tutorial, but I probably could have passed on the rest. The talks were interesting, but since I don’t do this for a living anymore, I didn’t care that much about it. Anyway, as I heard the weather might be bad on the drive home, I decided that I’d only stay for one day of the conference and leave on Sunday morning. I got in a couple more hours of nice biking after the conference ended and got a chance to bike up to Georgetown. Again, it was a really nice day to ride.

Sunday morning started with me leaving the hotel at 7am eastern time to do the drive home. Fortunately, I didn’t hit any bad weather until about 20 minutes before I arrived at my Mom’s house. So the drive was ok, though probably about two hours longer than I should have done. I’m glad I went as it really is a beautiful drive, but I think next time I’d prefer not to do it alone. Or to definitely break it up into two days of driving.