Words and photos by Kelly (IG @KCROBERS)

I’ve been itching to get out on a stupid early adventure for a while now; toying with the thought that if I get up really, really early on the weekend, waking up at 6:40am during the week would feel like a total treat.

Some weird, entirely unofficial psychology and brain hacking of sorts. Why not play tricks on my mind like this during Covid?

Earlier in the week, Kelley had mentioned wanting to ride sometime that coming weekend, so I figured I’d shoot my shot and see if she too was losing it in quarantimes:

“Hey, want to ride out to sunflower heaven for sunrise?”

“Let’s do it.”

It’s about 30 miles from home, sunrise is at 6am.

Enter this text:

There’s something extra wonderful and borderline sacred about waking up that early to see or do something before anyone else does. Almost felt like we were getting away with something innocently mischievous.

It was even better to share this time with someone and race the sun together.

We talked and didn’t talk. Took turns looking up at the stars while the other watched the road ahead for deer - no whammies! We enjoyed the fact that darkness meant we couldn’t see the top of any hill and just kept pedaling until we were up and over – it’s still the DMV so none were really all that long or terrible. We smelled all the musky, earthy scents of trees and plants (and cucumbers?) and soaked up the time together in the close, quiet morning.

We made it to the spot; beat the sun; traipsed through rows of flowers who, unlike us, had smashed the snooze button and had yet to lift their heavy heads toward the morning light.

After we thanked the pollinators and took some pics and more than a few ill-fated boomerangs of yours truly, we set our sights toward home via Vie de France for croissants and the C&O Canal where we said hi to Dr. Fauci out on his morning walk.

Kelley and I rolled back into Georgetown right around 8:30am - just in time for second breakfast and a big heaping serving of sanctimony for having finished our ride before many had even rolled out of bed.

A couple of years back, Andy reminded us of one of the founding principles of our team: “we believe in eskaping.”

It’s not always about those big, epic, multi-day excursions – although those are awesome too! Sometimes eskaping means that 3am wakeup call to be the first to greet the day. Sometimes it’s ripping out the pirate trails on the canal to catch the sunset after work. Maybe it’s a sub-one hour jaunt to clear your head before your next Zoom meeting that you’re already dreading because, frankly who isn’t sick of those yet?

Whatever your eskape hatch is, pull the lever. Shoot- wear out the mechanism, break the cable! Go refresh and restore and pursue the adventures accessible to you wherever you are.

But one last thing before you go chase that stoke: promise me you won’t just-ify your eskape, no matter how short it may be.