|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
AG: It's Saturday and I left the house
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. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Speeding cyclist mows down elderly jogger | Mrcheerful | UK | 10 | February 13th 14 10:43 PM |
Cyclist:0 Disabled granny:1 | Mrcheerful[_3_] | UK | 1 | June 13th 13 09:15 PM |
Hit & run cyclist injures elderly woman on pavement | John Benn | UK | 25 | August 19th 12 09:33 AM |
cyclist says injured granny should not be on pavement! | Mrcheerful[_2_] | UK | 5 | June 13th 10 07:37 PM |
Cyclist hits granny in pavement crash in Brighton | [email protected] | UK | 167 | February 1st 09 10:44 AM |