Warmth

I can't quite classify yesterday as warm, but comparatively speaking to what we've had lately, it was damn nice out. While I'm not quite ready to bare the legs yet, I did don only a pair of leg warmers and shunned a jacket in favor of a long sleeve winter base under a short sleeve jersey. Just about perfection for the temps. I showed up on the cross bike assuming that would be what Squirrel and Conlan were riding. Nope, both of them were rolling fat tires. Normally, I'd think I brought a gun to a knife fight, but with Squirrel training in full swing, it was something a little more mixed...

Heh, you can't imagine how long I've been waiting to use that shot!

We headed off through Berwick, Bondurant, and out towards Chataqua park before making a quick stop at the bridge. We found a bit of wildlife hanging out under the bridge snacking on some varied carcasses that had been dumped (thankfully not human). The wildlife had to antagonize the wildlife so it made for a couple good shots.

We rolled back with a hefty tailwind and fairly well flew back towards Ankeny. Conlan peeled off to head back to his truck while Squirrel and I tagged on another 20 minutes rolling down through Berwick again before heading back. Unfortunately we'd rolled south of our starting point and had to turn back north into the wind again. I decided to crank it up for a bit and rolled off into the wind alone, but a slight miscue in merging with traffic left me hanging out on the side of the road as Squirrel rolled by to leave me in the dust again. Something about slow and steady wins the race came popping through me head about that time...

I headed back home and as I was just about there a friend called needing some assistance with a flat tire. I halted my search for grub and went to play knight in shining armor for a bit. We changed out to her spare and headed back to my place to plug her tire and get her back on the road. I didn't feel quite right about sending her another half hour down the road running on one of those damn donut spares. I'm sure it would've been just fine, but when you've got the tools and time handy, why not get it done?

I finally made my dinner run after 7 and sat down to watch some trash TV and enjoy a brew or two. The hot tub siren song was singing so I grabbed another beer and soaked my legs for a bit. That was all she wrote though and I was down for the count at 9:30. I couldn't even make it through a quick conversation with Miranda before the combination of beer, biking, and the hot tub effect had me swooning and needing to lie down or fall down.