sunday on saturday

I swear, you don't HAVE to wear red to come on my winter rides. It just works out that way. 

 I have a conflict that interferes with my usual Sunday ride-leading tomorrow, and Laura OLPH had a conflict with her usual Saturday ride today, so we decided to swap. I planned one of my usual routes, and posted it for today.

There's not enough going on; I had nine.

... and some others. Not everybody wore red.

Good heavens, but it was windy today.Laura sent me a screen cap of the wind reports.

No wonder I'm tired. We were into the wind the whole way out, and, in a show of meteorological unfairness, good parts of the way back, too.

We set off on my usual route, and as we cut through Hillsborough, Bob N asked if I'd like to try a few more shortcuts along paths. Oh, yes, sir!

However, the GPS had other ideas and cut out; I had to stop and get it going again. The ride page here shows the two files surgically joined. (It includes my rides to and from home; I got about ten miles more than the ride went. That said, five of my nine had ridden from home, and probably also wound up with extra miles.)

Anyway, Bob's shortcuts are neat; I'm going to try to include them on future trips.

We got to the Pig, my favorite coffee stop.

See? Not everybody wears red!

(The red thing makes me a little crazy. I like a certain amount of anarchy - within the bounds of safety - on my rides, and the preponderance of red makes it look like we're a team in training, or maybe one of those gotta-be-matching clubs. Hrmph.)

On the way back, the folks who had ridden in from home rolled off one by one, leaving me and three others. As we got on to Canal Road I felt my legs about to cramp, and slowed down, letting the others disappear over the horizon. They were waiting politely at the parking area to make sure we were all OK when I got there.

So that's what I did on this windy, but sunny day. I hope things went well for you.