Chilled

We have finally had a couple of days of fairly sustained coolness, and so when I got home yesterday the house had pretty well chilled down. I cranked up the old gas heater in the fireplace, and that warmed things up pretty fast, but I knew it was time to descend into the scary basement and confront the beast, aka the furnace. Since I had, as usual, turned off the pilot light for the summer, I knew that there would probably be some corrosion on the two tiny pinholes in the aluminum gas jet that fires it. Sometimes it isn't too bad and there's enough gas coming through for the pilot light to keep the safety hot enough so that everything works. Well, to make a long story short, this wasn't one of those times. Sooooo, I strapped on my trusty Katrina headlamp (lighting in the basement is by means of a bare bulb hanging from the floor joist) and disassembled the pesky little thing. The only thing that is small enough to clean out the little holes in the jet is a single strand of brake cable, and it takes a bit of finesse, along with a magnifying glass, to do it, but finally I got the holes flossed out and everything reassembled with only one leftover screw! Everything fired up fine after that, so I turned the thermostat up to about 80F and let it run for a while just to burn off the summer's dust and make sure there were no obvious fire hazards.

The relative coziness of the house, however, wasn't much consolation when I stepped outside this morning where there was still a north wind that made the 41 degree air feel more like 30. There must have been a few who skipped this morning's ride as a result, because we ended up with only four or five, at which point Luke was quick to suggest we shorten the usual long ride and turn around at the first "dip." I think Ronnie would have liked to have gone farther, but the rest of us were satisfied enough with Luke's plan today. Because of the wind, it was a struggle to stay above 22 mph most of the morning.

Even colder than the morning training ride was my commute to work. There's a fairly long and unprotected stretch that goes straight north, which this morning was again directly into the wind. My cotton sweater and work clothes did little to stop the wind, and I was glad I had put on my vest over everything before I left. As I walked into the building I must have looked kind of whipped, because the security guard said something like "you must have had a hard bike ride today."

Indeed.

So now it's 3 p.m. and of the four people to whom I sent the draft of the paper that is due in Baton Rouge tomorrow afternoon, only one has come back to me with comments. Hopefully they won't all send me their stuff just before they leave early tomorrow for the holiday, leaving me to turn out the lights and lock the doors.