Touch and Go

It felt really cold this morning - around 38F or so - up in Jackson, but I headed out anyway because I knew I'd be off the bike this weekend when we go to Iowa City to attend the annual awards ceremony. I had pretty much everything I needed to stay comfortable except for my shoe-covers and my helmet cover. I decided to do a little exploring this morning since I had noticed on the map that there was a road that bypassed the torn up bridge and connected back up with the road that makes for a nice 22 mile loop. I had ridden down that road a few weeks ago, but had turned around when the asphalt ended. This time I figured I'd tackle the mile or so of gravel and dirt and ride the loop for a change. It turned out to be really nice. There were a few patches of loose stuff, but it was mostly quite rideable and reminded me a lot of the roads we ride in the Rouge-Roubaix race. It's actually a lot more scary when you're going slow like I was today. When you're racing, you just fly through and don't have time to think much about how loose the gravel is. It's amazing that we actually race on stuff like that without killing ourselves. Anyway, this nice little road eventually crossed a small creek by way of a little low bridge that consisted of little more than a bunch of wood planks. Immediately after that was a long, steep climb before it connected back up with Jones Vaughn Creek road. I suppose that was Jones Vaughn Creek that I crossed. By the time I got back to the house, my toes were so cold they hurt.

It was a busy day at work. A bit depressing too, hearing about the people who were being laid off. We left a little bit early to pack up and head into New Orleans, getting stuck in the Baton Rouge traffic for a while along the way. We'll spend the night at the house tonight so that we can hand-deliver some paperwork to Accounts Payable which is back in some sort of operation uptown. Then it will be off to the airport for the trip to Iowa City. I will probably try and get in an hour of riding on the track bike or the old Pennine road bike in the morning.