In Germany, the holiday tradition of St. Nikolaus is where children out a shoe on December 5th and if they were good would receive a treat from St. Nikolaus. Often times the treat would be small (had to fit in a kids shoe afterall); but if you were not so good, you would recieve switches. These switches were a signal that St. Nikolaus knew you weren't being good. For me it was a signal to get my acttogether before Santa found out.
This past week, I planned a ride for sometime this weekend. It had been a while and I really needed to get back in the saddle. It was decided that Sunday morning would the best time to go. Terri got to do some things on Saturday so Sunday worked out better.
It has been cold in the mornings lately and I knew that riding this morning would be no different. I planned to wear the long sleeve jersey, full finger gloves, my vest, and ear covering headband. No problem. What i hadn't planned for was last night's rain. Well, either it rained last night or some jerk wet all the roads that I rode this morning. I think it rained. It didn't rain on me while I rode; at least not from the sky. The spray from my tires was enough to seem like it was raining from below. My back had a very nice "skunk stripe" from the dirty water coming off my rear wheel. It was 43 degrees when I left and I was plenty warm in the gear I had on...Until I really started going. The spray from the road was heavy at times and in 43 degress moving at 20mph...You can do the math for the wind chill. Overall it was a good ride today. Only about 30miles in 1:40:06. I averaged 17.5mph and didn't have any incidents.
One new thing for my ride is an application I found for my phone. It's called "BiMActive" and it's free. What it does is use the GPS in my phone to calculate my ride info. It was accurate within 1 mile or so to my bike computer and the speed was a little off. What is cool about it is that it syncs up to a website and one can track all their training there. I will rely on my bike computer for cycling; but if I'm going for a walk with the kids or riding scooters with them, it would be cool to know how far we've gone.
I'm really likeing the route I did today too. I rode all the way up Lindsay to McDowell and over to Power back to the house. Lindsay is probably my favoride North/South road in the east valley. The traffic is light, the road is smooth, and the bike lane is frre of debris. What more could you ask for?
So back to St. Nikolaus, what he left in my shoe this morning was a lot of cold & wet. When I got home. I couldn'r feel my toes. I thought to myself as cars were next to me at traffic lights and the driver sipped coffee. "Yeah, but this is fun"!
