Public Nudity!

Date: March 9
Mileage: 20
Ride type: Commute
March mileage: 106
Year to date mileage: 555

I feel like things have been rolling along at a breakneck pace lately. Thursday I rode to work on the Raleigh. It was a beautiful ride home, and I could tell it was warm by the number of runners wearing shorts. Normally I see a few guys wearing shorts even whenever it gets above 35 or so. But Thursday's public nudity was remarkable in that 3 of the 5 people I saw in shorts were women. No matter what the internet has let you to believe, men are still more likely to take off their clothes in public (women who want to disprove this claim are encouraged to e-mail photos). So when the shorts wearing women outnumber the men I know it's a nice spring day in Minnesota. My wife called me when I was in Minnehaha Park and said that she and the girls were out for a ride. So I kicked it up into high gear (both on the bike and in my legs) and met them at the Big Rivers Regional Trail trailhead overlook. The kids were thrilled to see me ride up unexpectedly. After we fooled around for a while I "raced" them home. It's only about a mile, and I left while they were still buckling seat belts but they still beat me. Not by a lot, because I pulled into the driveway while they were all piling out of the van.

Date: March 10
Mileage: 20
Ride type: Commute
March mileage: 126
Year to date mileage: 575

Because it was so ungodly nice I couldn't resist taking the Schwinn out on Friday. Repacked bearing be damned! And it was totally worth it. On the ride home I managed to stuff my jacket into my pannier and rode wearing a jersey with a long sleeved shirt over it on top, and bike shorts with tights over them on the bottom. Perfect. The Schwinn is so much faster than the Raleigh! I had a fairly decent headwind on the way home, but still made it home faster than normal. And it was a joy. It was also nice to have a computer to see how many actual miles this new route was. I was a little mistrustful of my google maps estimate, but the computer clocked in at 19.97 miles, so that's close enough to 20 for me.

Nancy called me from the Y when I was on the Highway 55 bridge. She and the kids were swimming and she wanted to meet me at Granite City for dinner. I was home early enough that I was able to shower and change before heading over. I had their Smothered Beef sandwich and a nice glass of their MaiBock. After riding 5 consecutive days, a glass of beer and a good, heavy meal I was out like a light. I spent the rest of the weekend either working or doing homework, far from enjoyable but you gotta do what you gotta do.



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