We were on a roll, to plagiarize another phrase, until the last few days when it suddenly decided Winter was not yet over, after all. It started to rain yesterday just after we woke up, and an hour or so later it turned to SNOW and came down so heavily it began to accumulate on the ground. On and off again, it snowed all day, and made a muddy mess of our goat-path road. Jacque made it to and from Albuquerque fine, but it certainly was not conducive to biking.
I don't recall the excuse I used for not biking on Monday. I went to town for a flat repair on the Ford Exploder and ran some other errands while there, and it was almost 3 PM when I finally got home.
During the misery of being house-bound because of the weather yesterday, I finally worked up my courage to start our tax return for 2016. I HATE doing taxes, even though the last few years we've qualified for free online returns. It usually takes several days of intermittent effort, trying to track down and download all the needed IRS forms, etc, etc. This time, however, I only put in a couple hours last night on it and another couple hours this morning and I easily talked Jacque into a celebration ride, even though it was still a bit cold and damp outside.
We took the Terratrike Tandem for this ride, and we "only" took it for the relatively short but intense ride to the Post Office and back. When we got to our normal parking space next to the pavement of Frost Road, we found the normal hardpan dirt and gravel to be fairly slimey mud. I had to engage the 4-wheel drive to move around at all on the normally-dirt area, and tried hard to park where we could step out of the vehicle without getting too much mud on our shoes. Not too much success there, BAH.
We got saddled up and rolling and it was fairly pleasant in spite of the long hill and the mostly uncomfortable cold breeze. The doggies got all wound up several times due to nearby OTHER dogs being walked by their human servants. Coming home back the mostly down-hill grades, we get to coasting pretty fast, and the length of the frame on the tandem allows it to noticeably drift back and forth, requiring some dedicated attention to the steering. It's a steel frame trike and no lightweight, but I can actually watch Jacque twist one direction while I'm bending in the other. It's only noticeable at speeds approaching 20 MPH and higher, and of course Jacque, in the back seat, notices it more than I do.
We were down to about our last half-mile when I tried to shift the front chain rings to the highest gear and FOOF - suddenly my left-hand gearshift no longer worked. Another control cable bites the dust - We go through several each year. So I gotta cut this epistle short and get back outside before the sunny day fades away.
Ride Started: 12:44 PM Ride Ended: 1:34 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage: 13.4 Ending Voltage: 12.8 Lowest: 12.5
Beginning Blood Glucose: 225 Ending Reading: 105
Lowest Temp 53 F Highest Temp: 64 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 3.57
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
4.4 MPH 5.8 MPH 27.3 MPH
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
48 minutes 32 minutes 11 minutes
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