I've missed the last couple days getting in my aerobic riding. I really notice a slowdown in my energy level when I don't ride, even though I'm normally occupied bending and lifting (i.e., CUTTING FIREWOOD) when I fail to ride.
We got most of our running around done by noonish today and I determined to take at least a short ride before we went into ABQ to stuff ourselves at our son's Christmas Eve sociable gathering at his home.
As our road is still a bit muddy in spots, I racked the recumbent 2-wheeler on the SUV's bike rack and drove it down to the pavement to ride. We got a little over an inch of new snow Sunday night but this time instead of just letting it melt, I cranked up the Ford tractor and plowed the slight snow off the dirt goat-path as best I could. I find when I do that, even though it doesn't completely clear the road of snow, what little is left melts more rapidly and leaves much less mud and muck in its wake.
The sun was shining brightly this afternoon and still by the time I got rolling on the bike, but it went down rapidly and left me a bit breathless with the nippy temperatures.
I tend to think I'm going to get out and ride with plenty of sun, but this time of year the days are so short that if I take off after 2:30 or 3:00 PM, the sun slithers quickly over the Sandias and off somewhere to the west and it gets fairly dark by 4:00 and downright dark, requiring lights, by 5:00 PM. Plus, the disappearance of the sun also means a disappearance of what little warmth there may have been when I foolishly started riding.
One of the things we spent precious time on today in "town" was finding a sporty-goods store with a decent selection of winter mittens and gloves. Mine were several years old and getting perforated with wear, allowing too much cold breeze inside my mittens and around my freezing fingers. We finally found a good but pricey pair of combination mittens, with a fold-back pocket to expose the fingers for working shift levers, radio knobs, and other important things, at Sportsman's Warehouse .
They came in very handy for this afternoon's ride, since it was fairly cold, and my hands stayed quite toasty with these new mittens in spite of the rest of me being a bit overly cool.
My chain and shifters seemed very squirrelly today, and I wondered if it was because of the cold making the grease and chain oil not lube correctly. Who knows.....
The riding was quite nice except for the occasional patch of snow and ice extending across the bike lane and into the roadway. Naturally enough, most of the times I encountered these patches, cars were roaring up behind me at the same time. Since I don't trust my life to car drivers behavior that much on totally dry roads, I'm a bit gun-shy about doing so with complications of ice that would force me out in the roadway to avoid them. If I had been on one of our trikes I would have just bounced over the ice, but on 2 wheels it's just too dicey for me.
I got back home just before dark and with barely enough time to change clothes and head for the Christmas Eve feast......
Ride Started: 3:16 PM Ride Ended: 4:43 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage: 13.2 Ending Voltage: 13.0 Lowest: 13.0
Lowest Temp 27 F Highest Temp: 39 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 10.13
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
6.9 MPH 8.9 MPH 28.4 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
1 hour 27 mins 1 hour 8 mins 20 minutes
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