January. Meh. The Turk’ and I both find it too tedious for words.
The upside of cycling in 30-something temps is that your bottles stay cool while your boogers get warm enough for you to bombard the iPod People with drive-by snot rockets as you zip past. The downside is that you have to wear every bit of kit in your footlocker and staying out for more than 90 minutes or so kinda sucks.
Yesterday I thought I’d be smart and toddled off to a nearby junior high school for a bit of solo cyclo-cross on Old Yeller, my favorite Steelman. The grounds there have a rolling nature, there’s a gravel track, some asphalt and a couple of staircases for run-ups, so yeah, perfect for chewing on that cold NNW wind only in tiny bites and getting in some vigorous healthful exercise.
Until the rear tire collected every goathead in Christendom and I had to take five to replace the tube, after first running a finger around inside the tire, probing for sneaky spines invisible from the outside. I found ’em the hard way, as usual. Owie.
This morning the front had gone flat, too. O bugger. That one I fixed indoors, where the furnace is.
Mad Blog Media 
Ayuh. Even the weather here in the Sunny Southlands has been disagreeable.
Finally done broke Ye Olde Cortinas and a fan out from the well of chaos that is the storage shed. The drive belt looks sketchy, so hijinks may ensue at a later date. But I managed to climb on and ride awhile without jouncing or veering off into the furniture. And having a plastic bike means less worry about sweating the frame to death…
Funny bike drug blog.
http://deadspin.com/5738218/the-case-against-the-case-against-lance-armstrong?skyline=true&s=i
I hear ya Patrick, two “friends” and myself wobbled out for about 2 and a quarter hours Saturday morning with the mercury hovering around the 20 mark. Good thing we were riding in the mountains eh? Oofa…What started out as water in the bottles had graduated to the slush stage by the time we returned to the shop.
And that wasn’t enough for one of these “friends”. He thought it would be a fine idea to go for another ride yesterday. Hey, at least it’s flat down here where we live…..
FOUR (4!!!) hours and one flatted tubular repair later I dragged my ass back through the front door of home sweet home.
Sir Cur–perhaps its time to try a set of tubeless tires–been using ’em on my cars for decades, try it!
Ugh. Goatheads. My condolences.
I’d say its good to be back, but it was also good to be outa here for a week and in a part of the world (Bremen, Germany) where I didn’t understand a word of the political ranting and raving and where bicycling is actually encouraged rather than treated as an insidious infection.
24 sexually-active degrees farenheit below zero this morning. A high today of all of +2, with wind. Can’t even ski. Pipes froze up.
Tomorrow: fly to Tucson!