Brrrr. I really don’t think the mercury made it out of the 30s today. If it did, it was not by much. My original plan was to head out mid-morning, say 10:00am. I figured by then that the morning chill would have burned off. I was wrong. I waited until 1:00pm and then decided it wasn’t going to get any warmer so I headed out.<\/p>\n
I dressed warmly and wore my Pearlizumi Barrier jacket\u00a0as a top wind-proof layer. I also wore warm, winter-ish gloves. My lobster gloves when in my back pocket though just in case the winter-ish gloves ended up being over kill.\u00a0 My feet were toasty in my winter shoes — boy were they a great investment last year!!!<\/p>\n
Off I went on my “normal” route. I headed north and turned left after about 5 miles. I was warmed up by this point and the Barrier jacket and winter-ish gloves needed to come off. The problem with the jacket is that although it is a great wind and rain barrier, it does not breathe well (or at all?). It was definitely wet on the inside when I took it off. Beth Laber would tell me that this is why I get chilled so easily (and no doubt, she’d be right in this case!). I swapped out the heavy gloves for my lighter ones too. I was a bit chilled until my shirt(s) dried off and then I was quite comfortable.<\/p>\n
There wasn’t much sun on this ride — gray clouds were forming as I left the house and they got thicker instead of thinner as I rode. By the time I was at the half way point in the ride, it was looking like it might snow! I didn’t speed down the hog’s back — just didn’t want to get too cold, so I took it leisurely and enjoyed the scenery. There were a few other cyclists out, but not many and those that were riding looked pretty serious. Most were decked out in fancy kits complete with stream-lined jackets. Very smart looking. And most looked wicked fit. I did see a small number of more pedestrian riders. I certainly fell into that category today. That is until I was about 6 miles from home and made a turn onto the long stretch of road that runs north-south in front of the Carter Lake turn-off. I noticed a rider turn onto the road right after I did. The switch flipped. I was no longer interested in a leisurely pace. No, I was interested in staying in front of that rider, whoever it was. It was not a conscience decision, I don’t remember flipping the switch. But the next thing I knew, it was ON! My pace increased until I was moving along at about 20 mph. It was a slight uphill grade but there was little or no wind — and I just continued to turn those pedals. It felt great. I\u00a0checked \u00a0a few times and the rider got smaller and\u00a0smaller in my rear \u00a0mirror. Either they weren’t interested in catching me, or they couldn’t.\u00a0 By the time I turned at the fire house onto Cty Rd 23, I couldn’t see the rider at all. I continued my accelerated pace until I got home just the same. It no longer felt like winter — it felt like a nice, fall ride as I turned into our driveway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brrrr. I really don’t think the mercury made it out of the 30s today. If it did, it was not by much. My original plan was to head out mid-morning, say 10:00am. I figured by then that the morning chill would have burned off. I was wrong. I waited until 1:00pm and then decided it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions\/2325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}