0°F

I was a little overdressed for this morning's ride, but not too bad. Would have been about perfect if I opened the pit zips on the shell a little.

Somehow some genius in a pickup managed to put himself WAY the heck off the road this morning, and the wrecker and cable were stretched across the road. I could have walked the bike through the ditch but decided I'd enjoy watching the wrecker dude work for 5 minutes more than I'd enjoy a snapping bit of cable tackle hitting me, or some other thing that I could imagine, so I just watched.

This guy must have really been pulling some bonehead moves, because the road was absolutely perfectly plowed, it was covered with packed snow but no ruts or anything. He was probably just doing 50 and had a deer jump in front of him, or maybe he just did something stupid all on his own.

Well, at least it's getting warmer...

It's been consistently incorrect on temp (it says 18 at 10AM, it's actually 11), but I don't doubt it'll be raining tomorrow, followed by hard freeze.

I was hoping to go sledding Thursday afternoon, but the snow will probably have turned to crap by then. Yuck.

Miserable road, and inexplicable drivers

The last 2 miles of my ride are on lightly travelled and not-much-plowed gravel. Wow, that was bad. Today it was covered with about 6 inches of ground-up mucky snow, mashed around by car tires. It's worse than trying to ride a skinny tire bike in sand, because there are ruts that make you unable to really control your direction. The only way to get through it is to try to follow a single car's tracks. Unfortunately the cars can't see, and therefore don't avoid, the horrible pothole trails this road develops; about every foot in rows stretching a hundred feet are little 3 inch deep potholes, it's like washboarding but just a foot wide or so. It is like someone pounding on your bike from underneath with a jackhammer.

And I don't know what's up with drivers; it's like someone spread a rumor that I was riding around armed or something; I was pulling way over when another car was coming from either direction and waiting until they passed, because I couldn't guarantee I'd be able to control my path. Cars would CREEP past me even if I was off the bike and way off the road. At one point there were cars coming from both directions, so I pulled way off in the path a homeowner cleared to his mailbox, so I was well off the road with plenty of room for both cars to go past. BOTH of them sat there for over a minute and refused to move. Eventually the oncoming car proceeded, staying well to the other side of the road, then the overtaking car came, and when he went past me, he swerved WAY over to the far side of the road as well.

I can understand them being cautious around cyclists in the snow, neither the cyclists nor their own cars are really totally under control at any speed, but that seemed way out of proportion to me.

Maybe someone painted "psychotic serial killer" on the back of my jacket, I dunno.

From the looks of the weather, I'm staying the hell home and working from here tomorrow. I'm not driving any kind of vehicle in that weather. Maybe it'll be OK again to get to work again on Friday.

Is it an Easter Egg at Christmas?

The icon for VLC is wearing a Santa hat!