Oh, It's Tandem Time Again....

Today's Tandem Tracker Tracking

I haven't been on a people-powered cycle in a week or so, and the main excuse is the weeds roaring up out of the ground around our house, forcing me to take action NOW or have wste-high NASTY weeds to deal with in another couple weeks.  We got some recent rain and snow and now sudden sunny weather contributing to the mess.   My only exercise has been soveling wood chips, filling the wheelbarrow from the main pile on the wrond side of the house, wheeling them around the house and dumping them out and burying weeds alive, and raking the chips to smooth out their appearance to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
Our near neighbor is a professional tree trimmer and during the summer work season has tons of chips he has to dispose of somewhere.  We have found even fresh chips from live ground-up trees and limbs seem to kill weeds better than any other solution we've tried.  The chips immediately start decomposing and getting "hot" underneath the first inch or so and not only block the sun, mulch-like, from our noxious weeds, but "cook" them and kill them in large measure.  Anyway.  That's been taking up my time from people-powered travel.  I suppose I could stretch at straws, so to speak, and claim the wheelbarrow is definitely "people-powered".  Meaning tiring exercise but it doesn't make me feel supercharged after several hour:  Just exhausted.
Today I determined to get in a bike ride no matter what, and as I was about to go out the door with Jazzy (aka Belly-Mount Doggie), Jacque called and said she was on her way home from her sewing buddy and why don't we think about doing a trike ride?  So we did.

It was surprisingly warm by the time we got rolling, and on the way home the outside temperature on the car thermometer registered 82 degrees.  That might be considered cool to folks in Phoenix and Las Vegas, but around here, this early in the spring, it feels HOT.
Jacque thoughtfully made us a picnic lunch to take on the ride, and we found a rare shady spot along the road almost halfway through the ride and enjoyed something better than my usual biking food:  Cookies

Ride Started: 1:33 PM    Ride Ended:  4:37 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.2   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.7
Lowest Temp  71 F      Highest Temp:  78 F 
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  9.47
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  2.2 MPH                                5.5 MPH                  29.3 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
3 hours 4 minutes                 1 hour 42 minutes       1 hour 22  minutes