May rides, may they all be wonderful

[Crankin]

Ha, I've only ridden a beach cruiser once, on Hilton Head Island. After 3 days of that, my knee was killing me, and I don't have knee problems! I love my gears.
So, we rode 32 miles this morning. We ended up doing a run through of our club rally ride, which we lead one group of. It's not new and we designed the route, but there is a hill that is pretty hard, so I wanted to test myself on that one. We rode to the start, 5 miles and then proceeded until we were a mile from our house and, then we headed home. The ride next week is 29m miles. It was 72 when we left and close to 85 when we got back, but this route is mostly shady. It was also breezy. The heat did get to me by the end, but more than that, the damn pollen is just gross; I kept swallowing stuff in the air, which made me feel like I was choking. I dealt with it, though, but next time, I will take my inhaler with me, in case. After the big hill, there is one other smaller, short climb that is annoying and DH got ahead a bit, and that's where I was dealing with the pollen. However, we had a great tailwind on my favorite road, so we increased our speed a lot and by then, we were about 4 miles from home.
I was starving and overheated when we got home, and today was my first spray the bottle down my bra ride! Going out tonight, to celebrate a long weekend.

[emily_in_nc]

Sorry about the pollen, Crankin. We dealt with that here back in March -- or was it February!? It's truly summer here now, and with a tropical storm or sub-tropical depression or whatever the h*ll it's gonna be, the season is starting early! I'm expecting a lot of rain from tomorrow afternoon through Monday, at least, so am very glad the weatherman was wrong this past week. It looked like a washout, and we actually got all four of our rides in! We could have ridden all five weekdays, but we always take one off (usually Wed.) to do laundry, gym, errands, chores, etc. We did just have a brief downpour, but overall, a pretty dry week after a very wet week the one before.

I only do short rides on the cruiser bike so haven't had any knee or other issues. But I also had a cruiser bike in Belize and Mexico and did longer rides there. My crotch was more of a problem than anything else, since I typically rode without bike shorts. I did at least upgrade the saddle in Belize, since we were there longer, but never bothered in Mexico, since I bought it and sold it within six months, before we came back to the US for the summer.

Hope everyone has a good Memorial Day weekend. I'll be quacking like a duck down here in the rain and am just hoping to get some walks in between downpours. Will try to send some of this wet stuff up your way, nwg!