one headlight

this morning when i woke up i had no idea what the weather was going to be like. i've been really uninformed since i started boycotting all major networks for their heavy bias towards all things i hate. i just can't stand them. fortunantly i am very resourceful and i've been getting my weather reports from coworkers and eves dropping on idle super market conversations.... i usually over hear crap like, "it's going to snow tomorrow"... then the other person usually says, "really?" [because it's september, or something], and then the other guys says, "well... up on the mountains". so back to my story, for this morning, i didn't any warnings and i was completely surprised... but completely happy.

if i was more observant i would have noticed that list night the wind was blowing from the north... in fact it provided me with a very awesome tail wind. some might argue with me, but it doesn't really do much good to know the weather ahead of time. at least when you don't care, it doesn't matter:) what would i have done anyway? lay out my clothes the night before? actually ... never mind, i've done that before, it kind of worked out pretty nicely :).

too bad i didn't get my new studded tires yet. i was a little disappointed but it wasn't going to ruin my day. alex had just left the house when i opened the front door to wish him well at school... when i looked down i saw a package from peter white cycles! i was so excited i don't think i even finished my good by to alex. it was something like.. "have a n...." poor kid, i think he'll get over it. my new tires were here and it was snowing!
i picked up the box [in retrospect, that box was pretty heavy] and ran over to the tire assembly room. i brought my wheels in, and changed the tires over. it didn't take long even though i was super careful to not pinch the tube. these tires were tough, i had to use my best tire iron to put them over the rim. these tires were huge. i'll bet that with a little work, i could fit them over the other tires. for now i just put them on. i spent the next couple of hours getting all of my clothes together.

the clothing i chose was all wrong. i kind of dressed for skiing. i wore my ski jacket and my lobster claws, and for the legs and feet, i wore shorts with .... lycra tights underneath... yep, back to lycra :( you'll be happy to know that i was really sorry i wore them because they didn't help very much. my legs were freezing. my shoes were these old shimano bike shoes.... oops!

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i had to run out and get my shoes from the garage and put them next to the heater vent. that would have really sucked tomorrow, putting on icy cold shoes
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i thought i was pretty well dressed, when i left the house. it felt like the snow was pretty dry and the ground was pretty nice for my studded tires. i had my wife take a picture of me riding down the street. that's the picture at the top of the post.

speaking of my wife, she is usually pretty quiet about my adventures. she never tries to stop me or anything... until this morning. she said, "i really don't think it;s a good idea". i didn't know what to say, because i know i was going to do it no matter what. i guess i have a lot of juvenile tendencies, i'm not really a "risk taker" but sometimes i have a different perspective than most people, on what is sensible. i think that i am just about ready to out grow that :)

as soon as i left out development, and got out on the main road, it was so wet! someone, put all these chemical out on the road and the snow was just a continuous melted puddle of dirty water. my new tires were splashing so much water on me, but tit was nothing compared to the water that the cars were splashing on me. it was crazy, every car was throwing these huge rooster tails of dirty water from their tires to ....me :( dirty old me. my shoes and chins were getting wet from me, the upper half of me was getting dirty and wet from the cars, and the inside was getting wet from me pedalling so damn hard, because these tires weighed more than my bike!

so what is wet on the bottom, muddy on the outside, and stinky on the inside? me at work this morning. when i got to work, my cube looked like a low income yard sale. dirty wet clothes hanging over the garbage can, and chair backs, cube walls and spare computers. nothing was overlooked as a potential drying rack. unfortunantly, everything didn't perform the same, and at the end of the day i was stuck with wet socks, wet shoes, and wet lycra tights. i don't know if you have ever wore wet lycra tights, but it feels like wet refrigerated metal wraps! it was so amazing. these stupid things felt exactly as they did this morning when i was out in the cold. there didn't seem to be any temperature change in these even though they spent the whole day in the warm office... freaking amazing.

to be continued....