Choices

Been riding outside as much as possible lately but the last two days I still rode the trainer 2 hours each night. Well I rode the rollers on Tuesday night and the trainer last night. Despite watching the Producers (pretty funny if not a little slow paced) and a couple funny According to Jim's, riding the trainer is still not my favorite way to train. Combine that with the fact that I'm trying to eat a little less to lose my vacation fat (read: hungry like lion), training isn't as much fun as actually riding.
I've been lucky enough to get out at lunch every day at least and since the snow and trails are sloppy at best and unrideable (without the Pugs) at worst it's been mostly road time. Today I had another great ride in the almost 55 degree weather. I raced the rain clouds most of the ride but other than a few sprinkles they held onto their moisture here in town. The mountains looked more foreboding however.
After work I decided riding outside was still better than the trainer so I came home and changed and outfitted the battleCog with lights. Mistake one came here. See apparently you have to charge newfangled "batteries" every so often. I would not realize this until later on in the ride. Mistake two came just before leaving. Marni asked me, "Are you sure you are dressed warm enough?" I had two layers on top with a windshirt in my pocket, shorts, knee warmers, my LG powercap, wools socks and my normal gloves. I figured this was good for the 45 degree weather that was reported as I left work.
I cruised out of town trying a couple offroad routes along the way. The snow was completely rotten though and I turned around 10 feet in both times. Off on the road I went in seemingly windless weather. Mistake 3 is here. It was not windless, it was at my back 180 degrees from this afternoon's ride.
I look relatively happy here still, only mildly concerned that my bike light seems to be loosing little green dots at a rapid pace. Here I turn light from High to Low. Continuing on only a little further, I decide that I better turn around before my light dies all the way. At the point I turned around apparently the temperature dropped from 45 degrees to a few degrees above absolute zero. Now I continued home with the wind in my face and the temperature approaching a point at which all motion in atoms stops. Lucky for me I had this headwind the entire way home. At first I donned my windshirt which kept my body warm enough. However since I was wearing my "normal" gloves, read "summer" with 1,000,000 holes that let wind in gloves, my hands began to freeze into some sort of handlebar shaped club. My light sensed this and all the green dots went away and a red one lit up. My light apparently believed that red is similar to fire and would warm my clubhands. In reality the red light signaled it's impending shut down as I raced towards the streetlighted subdivisions. Miles ticked by and eventually I turned off the darkened streets onto the slush filled streetlight paradise that is my neighborhood. The cool splatter of water and ice felt oh so good on my knee warmers.
Since I've been home I sat in a warm shower for a while then dressed in my old man SmartWool outfit, sat on the couch, plugged in Marni's electric blanket, read some of The Mountaineering Handbook by Craig Connally and worked on this blog while listening to music.

Still it was better than riding the trainer. Yes definitely better. More riding tomorrow. Predicted high temperature is 29 degrees. Better bring warmer gloves! Plus you gotta remember, there is light at the end of the snowy tunnel and it's name is ARIZONA!