Cold and Grey December Day

It was still just arm-warmer weather on Sunday, so Ben and I drove across the lake to make the northshore ride rather than spend yet another day on the asphalt of Chef Highway.  I guess there were around twenty when we rolled out from Lee Road Junior High for the regular 64 mile winter ride.  This year the standard course has shifted a bit, eliminating Tullos Road and most of 1072 in favor of south Choctaw and Dummyline, and a couple of miles of 1072.  It was a good ride that turned out to be a bit faster than I'd been expecting.  I was pleased to find that my legs were responding reasonably well after Saturday's 90+ miles.  Not that I wasn't feeling those miles, of course, but at least it wasn't bad enough to have me throwing in the towel on the climbs.  So the bottom line was 312 miles for the week, which was the best I'd seen since July and more than ample excuse for skipping Monday morning's ride, especially once I checked the radar and saw the line of rain storms moving in my direction.  Monday turned out to be pretty dismal with lots of rain and dramatically falling temperatures behind the cold front.

Back at home, the kitchen renovation is moving along fairly well.  The old pine floors look to be salvageable after spending the better part of the past sixty or seventy years with linoleum glued to them.  The beam to (hopefully) support the roof once the back wall studs come out is in place, so the whole thing should be opened up by this afternoon.  Meanwhile the old concrete back staircase that is also scheduled to be replaced is literally crumbling as the result of the extra use by the contractor and so that job may need to be moved up before they completely collapse underneath someone.

By this morning the temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees and I rolled out the door at 6:15 to a cold and grey December day with a strong north wind. With the temperature below 40F for the first time this fall, it finally felt like winter.  I was wearing my trusty NOBC winter jacket, skull cap, long tights, etc., so I was pretty comfortable when I arrived right on time atop the levee to find nobody there. I stopped for a minute, hiding from the wind behind one of the big stacks, and a little while later Big Richard rolled up. There was nobody else in sight so we headed out, soon picking up three more riders who were coming from the playground.  It was going to be a long ride, but with so few in the group I knew we'd be turning around early. On the plus side, the strong crosswind and resulting eschelon would allow only five to get any degree of shelter for much of the ride. The pace stayed moderate today and I think we were all just glad to be out there getting acclimated to the colder temperature. For much of the return trip I was getting in about forty pedal strokes at 22 mph at the front before my quads told me it was time to pull off.  I listened to them.