Pretty, baby.

This morning was crisp and clear and sunny and the wind was finally a non-issue. It was also the first morning that I've gone out to meet the 6:40 a.m. group and not needed a light. After so many cloudy mornings, it was a surprise to find how much we've tilted back toward the sun over the last couple of weeks.

I've been meeting up with this white and tan dog every morning lately as I ride down Short Street to and from the river. He'll come running out from nowhere and run alongside me, barking now and then in a very non-threatening way. Poor guy just wants to play. I talk to him to keep him occupied so he doesn't try to run across my path (they all try to do that for some reason). He'll run alongside for a couple of blocks until I'm out of his territory and then let me go.

Despite the pretty weather, it was only Rob, Joe and I this morning. In fact, the bike path was rather deserted altogether. Rob was feeling a little tired from yesterday and neither of us wanted anything but an easy spin, so I pulled most of the way out at 19-20 mph and enjoyed the scenery. We rode back even easier talking about not much of anything, with Joe in tow.

I sent our LAMBRA president a possible compromise proposal on the Cat. 3 issue last night, but am already having second thoughts. Maybe we should just do what Texas has done and eliminate the combined Cat. 1,2,3 ranking, replacing it with separate Cat. 1,2 and a Cat. 3 rankings, but let the promoters decide when to combine the groups. The downside would be the not insignificant difficulty of scoring the races deeply enough to get the top 10 - 12 Cat. 3s, and the negative impact it might have on the actual racing ("we're not going to help chase that break because they're all Cat. 2s and we're just want to be the top Cat. 3s."). I dunno. I would rather have Texas' problems which lately involve things like how many separate Cat. 5 fields you can run to accomodate the 150 Cat. 5s who want to race.