Shorts and Ice

Greetings from Iowa City.

I started the day with a short 6 a.m. ride on the levee wearing shorts and ended it slip-sliding on icy sidewalks from the parking garage to the hotel Iowa City, bundled up in a heavy coat, knit cap and gloves.

After a rather long delay in Cincinnati, first waiting for the airplane crew to show up (half an hour after the scheduled departure time) and then for a battery in the plane to be swapped out, we finally made it to the Quad Cities airport, rented a car, and drove the hour or so down Interstate 80 through a mixture of rain, sleet and snow, to Iowa City where The Daughter and a couple of her teammates were anxiously awaiting us. Actually, they were anxiously awaiting a free dinner. We were just sort of there to pay the bill and say dumb things that made them roll their eyes in disbelief. There's a lot of old snow piled up along the roads here and a light icy mist is falling, but the temperatures are only in the 20s, which is a lot warmer than the last time we were up here in January. I spotted a couple of students riding their bikes in town despite the weather. The on-campus hotel here has free high-speed internet (aren't universities great?), and after dinner we stopped at the local grocery store and picked up a bottle of Red Bicyclette wine, which isn't all that bad, actually. So I'm sitting here, better connected than at home, with a plastic glass of Red Bicyclette Syrah. Not too bad.

I'm hoping I can get over to the little university health club annex across the street tomorrow morning for an hour of so, since we get free passes from the hotel. After that, we'll have to make the usual grocery store run with The Daughter, after which we're supposed to be taking some of the team members over to the arena around 3 p.m. so they can get ready for the meet this evening with University of Illinois - Chicago. They will have live scoring from the meet starting a bit after 7 p.m. on Saturday. The Daughter is in the lineup for Beam, although her ankle is definitely not healed yet and so I'm not expecting her to be pushing it. She's a little nervous about it, since everybody's been wanting to get her back into the lineup, but she knows her ankle isn't there yet.

I kind of wish I had my bike with me. Even though it's pretty cold, it looks like it'll be in the teens or 20s during the day and the roads look basically OK, so it would be really nice to be able to go out for an hour or two, or at least until my toes started to freeze.