One of the farmers' markets has closed for the winter and the other
has gone to one day a month, but I still think of Saturday as the day
to take a ride.

It may be the last roads-clean day for a while, and I was thinking of
finally making the Spring Creek Market tour; I figured I could handle
a thirty-mile ride if I stopped in Pierceton for a cup of soup,
stopped again at the gas station in Larwill to buy a quarter of a
pizza and a newspaper, walked around in Spring Creek for a while,
stopped at the gazebo in Larwill to eat the other slice of pizza, and
had another cup of soup in Pierceton.

Then I did the math. Curfew is five P.M. I rarely wake up before
nine. [This morning, I rolled out at 11:40.]

At five miles per hour, it would take me six hours to ride thirty
miles. Five rest stops could hardly add up to less than an hour. It
takes me a full hour to dress and eat breakfast when I'm *not* wearing
at least three layers of everything.

I began a ride at three in the morning once, but I can't stir up that
kind of enthusiasm for this one. Besides, I hurt myself, didn't
finish, and had to stop and rest after every mile for a month. Might
have realized that I was coming down with one of those ailments that
don't exist because only women get them if I hadn't explained every
symptom as the result of getting up at three.

The predicted high is well below freezing -- I could go to Leesburg
and buy stuffed chicken breasts. I know I can do that with only one
rest stop. But I don't feel like doing stuff on Friday so that I can
roll out on time on Saturday. We need milk and eggs, I'll settle for
the 1.6 miles to the Kroger store. But by bedtime, I'd decided to do
the Sprawlmart tour of about five miles.

I usually pulled off the road and stopped when I needed to blow my
nose. This wasn't because of last Saturday's incident, but because I
couldn't find my handkerchief with mittens on. (On coming into the
garage, I used my last piece of nose paper.)

Time to review "How to keep your bottle from freezing". I've been out
of practice ever since we moved from a very high-priority state road
to a low-priority residential street. When it's very cold, it's
seldom safe to go out.

If you can refill, you keep the second bottle from freezing by leaving
it home. Otherwise, refill beverage should start hot and be wrapped
well in a pannier. Boiling-hot beverage in an exposed bottle is a bad
idea; the valve freezes before the beverage cools enough to drink.

Blowing into the bottle instead of sucking on it isn't as easy as I
remember it. Biting the ice off the outside of the valve, then
forcing it closed and pulling it open made it work again, and I didn't
have any more trouble with it. The weather wasn't *very* cold; the
ice in my spare bottle was still small, loose shards when I poured
most of its contents into the other bottle at Aldi. Didn't think to
look at it when I got home.

I used the breadbag trick with newspaper sleeves. I was taken aback
when I couldn't get the bags over my sandals, then remembered that
with sandals, you put the bags on first, then the sandals. Which
meant that I could walk around freely without needing new bags. (I'd
put rather a lot of newspaper sleeves into my panniers for renewal
along the way.) Since the bags wouldn't fit over my sweat pants, but
rumpled up around the ankles just above where the sandals held them in
place, I didn't really need my ankle warmers to hold them. I was glad
I wore them anyway.

There's an inch or so more plastic coming out the toes of my sandals
than there was when I left.

At that point, I took sandals and newspaper sleeves off and found that
my socks are wet, and now my feet are cold. Though I felt a bit cool
about the knees early in the ride, one thin pair of wool socks, one
thick pair of wool socks, and a pair of newspaper sleeves kept my feet
plenty warm at all times, even though I probably had wet socks all
that time, because I didn't get out of the house for quite a while
after I put on my ankle warmers.

Now I'm going to take the rest of this stuff off and take a nap. (Had
the hand covers, head covers, and my wool-jacketing jersey off before
I got all the groceries put away, but pretty much stalled there. No
wonder my feet are sweaty.)

[asterism]

When I packed my groceries, the canned goods went into the insulated
pannier and the frozen food into the open one!

No notes in my memo book except that color printing is $0.59/sheet.
And a few arrival/departure times.

There's an untranscribed note on last week's page that I saw a heron
while crossing the bridge on Arthur street.

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.