Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Wow, Long Distance

Spotty Tracking Today
We awoke again, this morning, to thundering rain showers pounding the roof.  It startle me awake but I promptly went back to sleep while Jacque could not get back to sleep because of the racket.  So she got up before the alarm went off and I slept blissfully until about 6:30 AM, by which time the storm had stopped pounding.
All well and good, but it was soaked and soggy outside, with heavy fog.  I looked several times at the live weather radar on the internet and could see nothing storm-wise except for cloud cover.
I stepped outside several times early in the morning, and though it wasn't raining, the mist and fog was so thick it "splished" on the face while walking around and promised to soak me if I dared to saddle up the pedal-powered trike.
By noon, the sun still was in hiding but the sloshy fog had thinned out to the point it felt almost dry outside, so I loaded the trike into the trailer to ferry it through the mud down to the paved road.
By the time I got to the parking spot alongside the pavement of Frost Road, there was a wee speck of sunshine in evidence, but threatening clouds in almost every direction.  Desperate to get in at least a short ride, I decided to ride my usual shortie 9-10 mile loop and turn around early if I go hit by rain.
All this because the weather forecasts for the next few days indicate frequent showers.
At first it certainly looked like I might hit rain and have to retreat:

Interestingly, the threatening clouds seemed to drift to the north and away from me as I rode east.  I did actually get a little rain on my head... as I was riding along in the clear, with NO clouds overhead!
Evidently a few drops had blown quite a ways sideways from surrounding clouds, allowing me to feel a few of them.  As I noticed the raindrops hitting me, I looked overhead to see where they were coming from, and could see no nearby clouds.  Only in New Mexico??
I usually talk on my ham radio while riding, to two or three hams who might answer me when they hear me on the trike.  Today I heard a weak signal on 146.52 MHz, the national simplex 2 meter calling frequency.  I tried calling back but got no response, so I remotely switched the remote base station at home over to 146.52 and tried again, talking through the remote radio.  This time I got a response, from a ham who was working on his antenna in Santa Fe.  As I finished talking to him, I heard a call from KG5LRB George, who was ON HIS BIKE somewhere up in Santa Fe.  This happened at 1:36 in the afternoon and I record it since it's so unusual to actually talk to another ham radio nut on  a bicycle.  It's happened less than a dozen times for me during the last 20 years of riding bikes with ham radios a-squawking.
The I exchanged greetings and salutations with 2 or 3 other hams on the same frequency, so 146.52 was more fun than usual today.
As I cruised along, I became convinced that I might actually make my full 9-something-mile route without getting rained on.  The closer I got to home, the more the dark clouds seemed to be coming at me over the Sandias.  I thought this time I might get wet before I got back to the Exploder-and-trailer combination.
Amazingly enough, I made it back and got the trike back into the trailer just as a few sprinkles started coming down.  It still did not actually rain, though storm clouds continued to gather and threaten.
A few moments ago, as I was typing this, KOB radio issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Sandoval and Bernalillo counties.

Ride Started: 1:10 PM    Ride Ended:  2:35 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.9  Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.4
Beginning Blood Glucose:  95   Ending BG Reading: 67
Lowest Temp  67F      Highest Temp:  78F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  9.32
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
6.3 MPH                                 8.2 MPH                    30.5 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
1 hour 22 mins                        1 hour 8 mins            14 minutes


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