Deer Season

12:49 a.m. and I'm walking back from the kitchen in the dark after making a late-night refrigerator raid.

The cellphone beeps with a text message. It's from The Daughter.
Somewhere between Minneapolis and Iowa City.
"hit a deer...car looks bad. awesome. still 2.5 hours to get home."

Sheesh! Luckily the car didn't end up in the ditch or upside-down. As an added bonus, it was still driveable. She stops at the next service station and does some duct tape work to secure a loose piece of plastic on the fender. Both of the Jeep Liberty's headlights survived and the deer didn't come through the windshield, but the side marker light is MIA, as is part of the fender, and the passenger door and sill are smashed. The little Min-Pin's doggie seat restraint did its job, though, and no airbags deployed. Not too bad of an outcome as deer collisions go. Much of the interstate up there in deer country was apparently awash in deer blood last night, and they later straddled another victim that was in the middle of the interstate. Good thing that Jeep has a lot of ground clearance. So the plan for her to drive in to NOLA this weekend for a little vacation to Disneyworld got amended at the cost of a couple of round-trip plane tickets. And I didn't get much sleep.

It was still pretty chilly this morning. I went out dressed warmly with the plan to ride really easy. My back was still hurting and my quads were sore from the weekend rides, so a rest day was definitely in order. Up on the levee there was only John, and once we got rolling I told him I was going to drop back into his draft to give my legs some recovery time. He was trying to make up for some lost riding time and so I sat on his wheel as he pulled me all the way out to Williams Blvd. at 20-21 mph. By then I was warmed up a little bit and since we came back a little more slowly we rode mostly side-by-side. I have a feeling my legs will still be feeling Sunday's ride on Tuesday, though.