Categories
Bicycle Rides, Rambles and Blogs Welcome!

March April and Now May

What can I say? The weather in March sucked! The winter wouldn’t end. There was lots of snow still around and in the day time it would get just above freezing in the afternoon and refreeze at night. The morning temperatures were cold so lots of black ice. It was just plain sloppy. I did manage to get a couple of rides in but they were cold rides. Both rides included a fairly nasty short climb of almost 15%. Talk about quad burners.

April got better, temperatures still chilly at times but the snow was gone. The biggest hazard was potholes, followed by the excess piles of sand that gathered along the side of the road and at intersections. This meant my “winter tires” (700×28) are still on the bike, the road slicks (700×23) are still sitting in the basement.

The last week of April into the first week of May turned out to signal the start of spring. I got into some group rides. One group ride I had to bail on because I flatted my front tire before I even got my second foot clipped in. Some days it just goes against you. I told the group to go ahead and I would try to catch up since I had GPS. Well my GPS got confused, or maybe the operator confused it. Anyway there were a couple of roads on the route that split and the ran parallel for a bit before finally diverging. My only saving grace was this group ride was in my backyard so I was familiar enough with the roads to make it back to the start. It was one of my faster rides as I averaged 14+mph over 24 miles.

So far in May I have finally become comfortable with my GPS. I still have an occasional screw-up but overall I like it a lot. The distances of my rides have increased. I did a 40 just a couple of days ago followed up by a 20 miler. I have also ridden a couple of times in my short sleeve jersey which is really a nice feeling. One other good sign is that the road crews are out filling potholes, the street sweepers have cleaned up a lot of sand and debris. I am thinking that in the very near future my road slicks will make their appearance.

Look for more of my updates soon, especially since riding season is in full swing. Also follow me on Facebook: General Thoughts/Issues on Bicycling. A.J.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *