cold but beautiful st. pat's ride

I would have thought that today would be the warmer of the two weekend days, based on the weather prediction, but, despite the snow yesterday, today sure felt colder. I'm not sorry I didn't add extra miles today, although it was Laura OLPH who initially suggested it might be too cold to do so; I had a thought this morning, before we left, of adding some miles at the end, but neither of us wanted to do that when we got back to the cars.

We did this route.  Just four today: Mark H joined Winter Larry and the two of us; Ed C is otherwise engaged.  We decided to keep it a bit short, but Larry wanted to try out a new road in (I think) Jackson. NJ Bike Map showed Patterson Road as green outlined in yellow, which, according to the key, means "...scenic roads. Few or no houses, farmland or forests", but it was mostly dirt (sand) when we went over it, to a depth of at least two inches (my tires were cuttin' through about that far). We won't go down THAT again soon... and, while I've generally heard good words about the NJ Bike Map, Winter Larry said he'd sent more than one correction to the editor-fellow and hadn't heard back yet.

That region got much more snow than we, and it was a beautiful ride. At one point, Laura stopped to take a picture (and her camera was so cold it took time for it to warm up, but check her blog in a few days to see if she's posted any pics). So there was some reward for the cold. I'm going to risk both boring you to tears and broadcasting my egotism and arrogance by quoting myself:

...[I]t strikes me that if one wanted to draw a conclusion about the Creator, if one exists, from a study of creation, it would appear that God is very interested in beauty; it seems to be all around us, on all manner of scales of size and time. But I see no evidence in the least that God cares at all about such things as safety, comfort, or convenience. We humans may be interested in such things... but, at every opportunity, nature sets her legions to disrupt and destroy them.

But now back home and dry, with the bike clothes in the dryer (except for the fleece, the wool, and the Lycra; don't machine-dry those), and gearing up to go back to work tomorrow. The Excellent Wife (TEW) has arisen from her nap; I'm about to go see how her day is going. Life, as I sometimes say, is good.