Riding through damp

Things were definitely warmer, this morning, than they'd been.  Friday and Saturday, last week, I was needing to take very regular drinks to ensure the water in the tube of my camelbak didn't freeze.

In fact, in one stretch on Saturday, I took a little too long, and found it mostly frozen.  I was able to suck warmer water through, by sucking really hard, but it took so much that I was literally gasping for air for a minute or so afterward.  (And that was the ride that seriously pissed me off, because my phone ran out of batteries really quickly.  The meter kept running for about an hour into the ride, but the phone only had the first 3/4 mile recorded, somehow.  Missing out on the other thirty-three and a half miles, or so.)

Today would have been an absolutely glorious ride, because it got so much warmer (started at 61, and actually got warmer), except that I looked a gift-horse in the mouth, and wore my rain gear even though the rain had stopped by the time I got on the road.  That meant I got a lot warmer than necessary.

Also, because Saturday and Sunday were so tough (both around thirty-five miles, pushing hard), my legs were still tired, so I tried to make it an easier ride.  The downside, there, is that the ride went fifteen minutes or so longer than I wanted.

Despite all that, getting back home without cold fingers was a very nice change of pace

One thing I've been chuckling about a bit, lately, is how empty the trails and roads are, especially of other bikers (there's fewer joggers as well, but a larger percentage of the joggers are still coming out, I think).  Today, that was not the case; there were a bunch of people out, even with it having just finished raining.

I suspect tomorrow will be pretty similar; it's supposed to be around fifty, with no rain.  I'm looking forward to it.  After that, it's getting colder and is supposed to snow on Wednesday.  I'm definitely NOT looking forward to snow.  One bit of preparation I have not yet done is get tires for snow and ice (and I apparently can't get them for my road bike; I wasn't aware of that.  Riding the hybrid is fun, but the road bike is a blast, so that's disappointing).

One bit of weirdness, post-ride, was that my iPhone wasn't working for data connections.  It first manifested as trouble uploading the ride to Strava, but after a bit, I realized that other things weren't working either.  The IP stack must've gotten corrupted, or something, because rebooting fixed everything, but that was weird.  I've never needed to reboot my phone before (although my iPad2, after upgrading to iOS 8, did reboot itself from time to time), so it was entirely unexpected.

Oh, and one bit of amusement.  I needed to do laundry, and especially with the winter tights (all but one of my tights, plus both sets of knee- and leg-warmers were dirty), there's quite a bit of it.  It used to be that I had a little bit of cycling clothes in my laundry.  Now the cycling clothes are my laundry, practically.  Which means that the dryer is startlingly close to empty, when I run it.