With the fallout from February's winter storm still complicating my life — as of this writing I am unable to drive my car down our steep, icy driveway — fantasies of sunshine and invigorating summertime activities are beginning to fester deep within my brain.

Sitting on the living room couch, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the lingering winter weather, I imagine a summer vacation where my husband and I ride bicycles along the newly opened Pittsburgh-to-Washington, D.C. trail, 335 miles of pedaling through lush Pennsylvania hills and alongside Maryland's scenic Chesapeake and Ohio canal.

"Are you crazy?" asks my husband, Steve, bewildered by my couch-potato enthusiasm. "What makes you think you could ride that far in a week. You'd need at least a month."

Then Steve, always pragmatic, reminds me that the farthest he and I have ever ridden was the 15 flat miles between Franklin and Oil City.

"The Oil City trail was round trip," I remind him. "And besides, if we ride from Pittsburgh to D.C., the trail ultimately runs down hill."

"Once you get through the mountains," he grumbled, returning to his newspaper.

To wile away our frigid evening — caused by the weather, not by our difference of opinion, I hope — I begin to plot our trip, which I imagine will take place in summer 2008.

"Waiting a year will give us time to get into shape," I tell Steve, but he is lost in the staid, unimaginative news of the day: a presidential election that is still 600 days away and news of another winter storm coming our way.

With the help of the Internet and brochures from the Allegheny Trail Alliance, which oversees the Pittsburgh-to-D.C. trail, I lay out our journey: From Pittsburgh to Connellsville is 60 miles, from Connellsville to Meyersdale, another 60 miles. I continue on, in increments of 50 to 60 miles a day until, six days later, we'd reach Rock Creek Park in D.C., where the trail ends.

Is this really doable, I begin to wonder as I glimpse the trail's elevations: from 752 to 2,390 feet between McKeesport and the Allegheny Mountains. Then I recall my tiredness at the end of our flat Oil City ride. Double that, do it for six days, and throw in the mountains along the way. Ugh!

But then I remember that dreaming is the first step of any journey. Returning my attention to the Internet, I move my index finger easily across the shiny green line that marks the trail on the computer screen. I click the links to the amenities along the way: quaint hotels and bed-and-breakfast stops that would await us at the end of each day, hearty meals at local restaurants, and historical landmarks to reconnect with our country's illustrious heritage.

Again, I imagine the exhilaration of such an adventure. "This would be something we could do together," I say to Steve, reminding him that soon we will be empty-nesters and have to find activities of our own to share.

Looking up from the newspaper, Steve's interest suddenly seems piqued. But the leering look on his face tells me that he might have another kind of adventure in mind for escaping the winter blues.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.