Not so Easy

That tropical storm down in the Gulf was on my mind this morning when I awoke. I grappled for the remote in the dark and clicked on the TV, quickly hitting the mute button and scanning over to the weather channel for a quick look at the radar. It looked good, so I hopped out of bed and immediately discovered that -- surprise! -- my legs were sore. It would be a good day for an easy Monday recovery ride, though, and considering that the unpredictable weather might yet wash out Tuesday's ride, I figured I may as well get in some miles. I arrived at the levee quite a bit early and spent ten minutes riding around in little circles wondering if anyone else would show. None did, so I rolled up the bike path at an easy pace and with a strong tailwind, already thinking about turning around early. A moment later I met Donald who turned around to ride with me. Clearly, his legs didn't feel the same as mine, and although we rode all the way out to the turnaround side-by-side, I could tell he was holding back. Every now and then he'd speed up a bit, notice I wasn't there any more, and coast for a moment to slow down again. So after we turned around and had the wind in our faces, I just sat on his wheel and he pulled the whole way back into the wind at a speed that did not encourage me to come around. Even so, I guess I ended up going a little harder than I'd planned, but it wasn't too bad since I never had to pull into the wind.

Yesterday, Ed and I were driving back from Enon, we got on the subject of birds and he mentioned that he'd seen a Swallow-tailed Kite the other day. I told him that I never saw those around here, but had seen them in Florida before. Well, about two minutes later I look up and one of them flies across the road right in front of us. That was strange.....