Outside Riders - Your Mile Totals 01-03/07?
Hi,
There is a small minority of us who biked outside all winter. Just wondering what everyone's totals are.
I finished at 995 miles. I did have stretches of time where there was snow or the wind was too strong, thus I could not ride. However, I had a lot of rides in inclement weather and I now enjoy riding in the wind and heavy rain.
The rewards are that I am stronger and fitter. I don't pay any attention to the wind anymore. The Spring headwinds feel more like a slight breeze to me.
Another positive result is I lost 2 1/2" from around my middle and more inches elsewhere, though the scale doesn't show a dramatic drop.
The oddest thing I saw was on a winter ride on a Saturday afternoon in the first part of February. The temperature on the bike computer said 38 degrees. It was raining hard, with lots of wind. I was wearing multiple layers of clothing, ending with a pair of rain pants, Gore-Tex jacket and winter gloves. I was going down a hill, but being cautious about my speed because I knew that up ahead there was a bridge over a creek and that where the road met the bridge was a three inch height difference in the pavement. If you are going too fast and the tire hits that ridge, you can get a blow-out. From behind me came a small pack of five riders, spinning fast, with an older man being in the rear. Here is what is odd. The riders were wearing only shorts and short-sleeve jerseys, and the older man was wearing one of those see-through super light rain jackets so that I could see he was wearing a short-sleeve jersey underneath. The cyclists were all soaking wet. I was under the impression that they were cycling a century perhaps, out from the city into my rural area in the valley. They whizzed by me, but managed to get over the bridge without a fatality. After the bridge I sped up and kept them in sight, until I turned off to get back to my car at the state park. I put the bike up on the rack, put my things away, and drove out of the park. On the outskirts of the little town outside of where I live, where I turn to go up the mountain, there was the pack of cyclists, just standing there in the heavy cold rain having a huge argument. My guess is they were all so non-Fred that none of them had any money or a cell phone on them, and they probably realized they were one step away from a hospital stay for pneumonia and did not have the strength to cycle back to the city. Their heads swiveled as I drove by, because my bike is pink and other cyclists can remember it. I could of stopped and offered them money or the use of my cell phone but I did not. I wasn't going to try to stuff five more bikes on my car and drive 5 cyclists back to Portland or Salem or whichever city they came from. So I drove on by.
Darcy
