I don’t get great cell phone reception in my office. I can sometimes get text messages and occasionally a phone call will even sneak through, but generally the service bars just disappear. So, it was fortuitous that yesterday I opted to take a late afternoon lunch break. It was the first day I’ve had time for one since we returned from Utah and I desperately wanted a few minutes outside in the warm air.

Getting outdoors allowed my phone to reconnect with the world and to alert me to a surprise message from my college roommate. She and another college friend had made a last minute trip to town and were wondering if we were here, too, and, if so, did we want to meet up for dinner?

But of course!

The day progressed in such a way that I was able to escape for the day at a mostly reasonable 6:30, and Eri and Eric, who’d rented bikes, pedaled up from the Mall to meet me outside my building. (It’s sad to say, but I was so tired that I originally told them my office was at a totally different intersection. Yikes!) Rudi, who’d had Good Friday off, biked down to join us, and the four of us set off for dinner.

We had a leisurely ride to Dupont Circle, where we landed at Luna Grill’s outdoor patio and a nice long time to catch up. We traded news of family members and of friends and snippets of work-related tales. We talked politics and cycling and D.C. and New York. Later, a bit chilled and ready for dessert, we pedaled over to ACKC, a local chocolate shop, for macarons and cocoa. Minutes and hours passed until we found we’d shut the joint down. Reluctant to end a perfectly lovely evening, we even stood on the sidewalk, bikes in hand, in front of the darkened shop until nearly midnight when we all agreed that really if we ever planned to get up today we’d have to go home. So we parted ways, but with a promise to meet up again soon.

It was a very good night, the best I’ve had in ages.