Friday's Cold APRS/GPS Track
We again cooked a noon meal for the UNM LDS Institute group yesterday. As usual, I baked a huge pile of homemade cookies (this time Peanut Butter, with 2 chocolate chips on top of each cookie) on Thursday to minimize the kitchen contention on Friday.
As usual, with Jacque's great cooking (Menu: Fresh-Made Pumpkin Soup and whole wheat bread twists) we got lots of thanks and comments about the good food. We both remember the ever-hungry college years and are happy to provide some fresh homemade tasty eats for the college crowd, who are a great bunch of young people. I was going to refer to them as "KIDS" but decided not to.
After the Friday Forum Feed, we changed into our biking clothes and layered up a bit since it had been cold and breezy the last couple of days, and it was still very cold outside even in the UNM area of Albuquerque and in spite of it being 2:00 PM. Bright and sunny but breezy and cold.
I wore one of my expensive long sleeve turtleneck underlayer absorbent cycling shirts and it was great... I had to take off the outer light jacket when I got warmed up and assumed I'd regret having the turtleneck on but it felt great all the way through the afternoon ride. The sweat-wicking feature worked great in this weather.... when it got cooler I noticed the black sleeves absorbing welcome heat from the sun and when it got warmer it was just comfortable, evidently successfully wicking away the perspiration. It never got really warm at all, so we were glad we had on the layers.
We again rode to Old Town through Albuquerque's downtown plaza and then over to the Bosque Trail. We turned north and as we approached the underpass at I-40, we turned right on the trail instead of left and rode parallel to I-40 for a couple miles, just cruising a route we've never ridden before. It dead ended just shy of Rio Grande Boulevard, and when I pulled out the ABQ bike map it showed another path connecting on the other side of Rio Grande, but the idea of crossing Rio Grande without benefit of any bike lane deterred us. So we turned around. This time, we did actually go under I-40 at the underpass but Jacque had never yet ridden the "New" memorial bike bridge across the mighty Rio Grande river so we decided to try that - I had ridden it before on my recumbent 2-wheeler. With our 10 and a half foot trike length we were unsure if we could even make the hairpin turns approaching the bridge but with wide turns we actually made it, and with the ever important help of Grandma Gear, we climbed the long grade up the bridge to the other side of the river. Even at our slow crawl in super-low gear we could feel the infamous multiple rough bumps of this wonderful but bike-unfriendly bike bridge. When we reached the other side we stopped for a break and got warm from sitting in the sun in the lee of the bridge abutment for the first time during this ride.
Then we hoisted the hind end of the bike and arm-stronged it around the other way (Of course no room to turn around otherwise) and rode the long almost-a-mile length of the bridge eastbound and slightly downhill, riding the brakes all the way to prevent being thrown from the saddle by the rough surface and horrible concrete bumpy joints of the bridge. Then we got back on north-bound Bosque Trail and rode a few more miles. We originally planned to do our 'normal' loop up to Paseo and then east to the North Diversion Channel Trail south of Balloon Fiesta Park and then back south to UNM, but it was still very cold and now 4:30 PM and I worried we could not get back to the vehicle before dark if we continued the loop, even though we were within a few miles of the halfway point. We decided, with me being the biggest worrier, to turn around and just retrace our route.
It turned out to be maybe a BIT shorter to get back, but the long climb up Tijeras back to UNM was not enjoyable at the tail end of a longish ride. Going the loop as we normally run gives us mostly downhill for the last leg of the ride: A much more enjoyable ending for a ride.
I recently robbed and reprogrammed the tracker from my recumbent 2-wheeler, so now we have temperature and voltage datum --
Beginning Battery Voltage: 8.6 (Uncharged from last ride!) Ending Voltage: 8.0
Lowest Temp 55 F Highest Temp: 73 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 18.53
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
4.8 MPH 7.3 MPH 24.4 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
3 hours 50 mins 2 hours 33 mins 1 hour 17 minutes
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