Man, Jacque and I have not ridden our beloved trike since the 8th of December.
yesterday was SO beautiful I was able to do a short ride to the PO and back, and since we were scheduled to cook for the LDS Institute's Friday Forum, we decided we would load the trike on the roof-rack, and, unless the weather deteriorated horribly, we would RIDE. And so we did, making slightly over 20 miles around our favorite Albuquerque loop: UNM don Martin Luther King to downtown plaza, through the plaza to Old Town, with a short potty break at possibly our favorite bike stopover place: The Plaza at Old Town. We again entertained tourists and visitors with our trike and photogenic Papillon Puppy Dog, used the facilities, and went on our way. We had a short visit with a long term Plaza entrepreneur: A guy who has a 4-wheel pedaled open frame vehicle which he uses as "Historic Old Town Tours". This has got to be an ideal business: Good exercise and make money doing it. I have no idea how much or if he prospers in the pedi-cab tour business but he's been there for several years so I hope he's doing well with it. Maybe WE can think of something as ingenious.
We were chasing a short day so we avoided the temptation to turn south on the Bosque Trail to visit Tingley Beach, another favorite stop. We turned due north off "Bicycle Boulevard" (Mountain Road) and rode north up the Bosque Trail to the Paseo Del Norte parallel bike trail and then south on the North Diversion Channel Trail back to UNM. Since it is only 20 miles, we occasionally delude ourselves into thinking we could do it in 2 hours: After all, that's only 10 MPH, hardly a blistering pace. However, with water breaks, potty breaks, doggy breaks, rest breaks, long slow crawls up slight grades, you can see the resultant "average speed" which helps explain why it took us 4 hours to ride what should be about 2 hours. Whatever. BAH
This current winter weather was lovely, though. It was just cool enough to make for very nice cycling with minimal layers, though Jacque got a bit chilled stoking away in the back seat.
Here's a photo of the North Diversion Channel as we paused for a short break:
Beginning Battery Voltage: 12.7 Ending Voltage: 8.4 (Repeat: This old gel cell battery is getting TERRIBLE, gotta spend some bucks and replace it!)
Lowest Temp 48.2 F Highest Temp: 69.8 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 20.87
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
5.2 MPH 6.7 MPH 24.0 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
4 hours 0 mins 3 hours 5 mins 55 minutes 12 seconds
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