No Garmin, no camera. UGH! “If I only had a brain…”

Luckily I had my old-fashioned ‘analog’ computer on board. Today’s stats are:
Riding Time: 2:00:45
Distance: 34.1 miles
Ave Speed:  17.0 mph
Max Speed: 36.1 mph
ODO: 5259 miles (but this goes back to sometime last summer!)

My commute ride is starting to feel very familiar. It is no longer daunting and when I arrive home I am not totally exhausted anymore. There was a slight breeze out of the north/northwest early on and a fairly stiff breeze….OK, a head wind, out of the west after I got crossed CO-287 (Main St) in Longmont and rode northwest for the last 7-8 miles. It was an obvious wind and should have really slowed me down. Instead, I found myself leaning into the wind and maintaining my pace. I’ll probably regret it tomorrow when I ride back into work, but it felt great this evening!

Spring must be here as farms are starting to prepare field for planting and irrigation ditches for carrying water. Apparently there wasn’t wind during the day because I passed several farm properties with smoldering ditches that had obviously been burned within the last several hours. It has been sooooo dry out here that I was a little concerned by a couple of them as the ditches looked like they still had some “hot spots” yet no one was attending them anymore. Hopefully they will burn themselves out completely before it becomes an issue!

As I crossed CO-52 heading north I heard a deep “big dog” bark. Instintively, I started to reach for my water bottle as I looked over my left shoulder to see how large the dog was that came with that bark. A good-sized yellow dog was lunging towards me and there was a startled handler on the other end of the taunt leash. The handler was off balance and kinda falling towards me too as his dog started after me. I was concerned that the dog might get loose from him and then I would have had some serious sprint training added to my commute. He did not. I was also relieved to see that the dog had a muzzle on as well so I probably would not have been bitten even if he had managed to get free and catch Scooter and me. And, it took me much longer to tell the story than it did for it to happen. My guesss,  it was probably 3-5 seconds from start to finish.

Other than that, it was a pretty mellow commute. I’m hoping for the same tomorrow morning.  Would be nice if it were still dry and I’d take a tail wind if anyone is offering….