Instant Winter

The cold dry wind felt unfamiliar on my face as I started down the road this morning. Although yesterday we'd leapfrogged all the way from summer to Fall within 24 hours, today it seemed like it was suddenly Winter. I'm sure the morning temperature, which was somewhere around 50F down here on the southshore, will feel relatively warm by December, the sudden transition from 80s to 50s certainly felt quite harsh enough to my unacclimatized fingers and toes. Of course, I knew it would, and those who live in colder climates would surely get a chuckle over the multiple layers I piled on this morning. I even slipped on the cotton shoe-covers, and no, I never regretted it. Anyway, the levee was really quiet this morning, and although we had a predictably small group, the ride was nice despite my nagging feelings of guilt for having missed two day in a row. It's been getting noticeably darker each day, it seems, and today we kept the pace under 20 for a while until the visibility improved. Tomorrow's 6:15 start will be pitch black for sure, so I hope common sense prevails and the pace doesn't get dangerous before sunrise.

When we got out to the turnaround, the sun was still lingering near the horizon and there was a picture-perfect sunrise photo-op that would have made for an awesome picture, but of course it's just impossible to capture that sort of thing while you're riding with a little pocket camera in one hand. I did what I could, though, and we'll just have to rely on memory to fill in the depth of the orange and the way it reflected off the ripples in the Mississippi. As we started our ride back down the river, I thought I'd take advantage of David L's presence to ask a bird question. You see, on last weekend's Giro ride we had passed a huge flock of white birds that was congregated in a big shallow pond along Chef Highway. It was really a beautiful sight, but the really surprising thing was that when they all suddenly took to flight, a few of them were pink. Yes, the color of a plastic flamingo. Most of the birds looked like White Ibis to me, and I had never heard of there being pink ones, so I was wondering if it was a different species or some sort of seasonal variation. It turns out that they were most likely Roseate Spoonbills that were mixed in with the Ibis. The picture that I linked to was taken on the Audubon Park golf course. Learn something new every day.....