Well, today was a mostly sunny, dry, and pretty much zero-wind day, which made for the perfect first bike ride of the year!
I've commuted with studded tires and have ridden my fat tire bike in past Februarys (Februaries?), but it isn't usually the month in which I pull out a road bike and tool around the city.
It was 32 when my friend Matt and I started riding this morning at 10:15, but we warmed up quickly and had to stop a couple of times to adjust our layers before the temp rose to 45. We rode our slower bikes, which have racks for panniers, so that we would have a place to stash our shed clothing (and our spare, lighter gloves).
We rode up along the Mississippi (and saw some snow under the bluffs), took the #9 bridge over to the U of M, took the transitway to Como Park, Wheelock Parkway to Lake Phalen (where I used a disgusting biffy), and then Johnson Parkway to Mounds Park. Instead of coming back through Lowertown St. Paul, we detoured over to Upper Afton Road so we could take the beautiful winding trail through Battle Creek Park (so pretty) and through the weird but cool fishery area to Warner Road/Shepherd Road. We started at Fireroast Cafe so that we could also end there and have a tasty lunch.
What a pleasant day! This is the third weekend in a row that I have not worked after working a totally unsustainable amount of hours over the past six months and it is so nice to have days off. I forgot that weekends matter as much as they do.
Matt and I had a nice catch-up chat about all the important things in the world, such as why Red Delicious apples were so popular in our youth, Killers of the Flower Moon, hamburgers, foods that have hard outsides but soft interiors, bicycle chains, the number of years we've ridden together (11, but it seems like longer in a good way), board games, music, and the Crusades. You know, typical stuff.
It was a 39-mile ride for me (because I rode to and from the coffee shop). I just spent (wasted?) a bunch of time downloading all my ride data from my Garmin from last year. I normally track my rides week by week in a spreadsheet, but didn't do that last year because I was hardly riding due to my hip/femur injury. I thought my longest ride of last year was my first ride of the season (36-mile ride with Matt on a not totally dissimilar route as today's ride), but it turns out that I did get a 42-miler in at the end of the season and a grand total of 1200 miles. (Normally I do about 3x that, or more, with a few 75-100 milers tossed in for good measure, although there have been a couple of 2k years, I see, looking through the archives.) I realized I rode a fair amount after I first went on my crutches, following the letter - but not the spirit - of the law laid down by my doc. At some point, I must have realized that wasn't actually going to be all that helpful and discovered that it is fun to swim at Lake Nokomis. Anyhow, the point: I think it will be a good year for riding and it was great to have a reminder of how liberating it is to be out there cruising around.
I'm even more excited about the week I'll have off in July for the BikeMS TRAM. Thanks for the donations that you have been making to support the MS Society! https://events.
