2018 mileage:1029.5
What a stunning day for a ride! Unbroken bright blue sky, and a temperature of 59° when I started at 10:15, up to 68° when I finished! Consequently I rode consecutive round trips to Marsh Park today for the first time since October 25, finishing the 18.4 miles in 2:16.
2018 mileage:1011.1
Today was a cool ride, and my hoodie felt just right (even though I also rode in shorts).
When I went out at 2:15, it was under a fairly thick blanket of clouds (although a very few patches of blue sky did peek out here and there). At least the temperature was bearable—46° when I started, and 50° when I finished.
I had hoped to ride consecutive round trips to Marsh Park today for the first time since October 25. But I have been making excellent progress on a choral composition, and in the end I could hear it calling to me to come home and get some more work done on it before the 7:00 Tigers game. So I settled for a single round trip to Marsh Park, completing the 10.2 miles in 1:15.
2018 mileage:1001.0
Riding at 11:45 today, for the most part I avoided the rain forecast for this afternoon. However, I was treated to some light, cooling sprinkles beginning the last couple of miles of my ride, to moderate the 64° heat wave I was experiencing. I rode a single round trip to Marsh Park, augmenting it with a loop in Stonebridge on the way home, to push me over my first big mileage milestone of the year.
2018 mileage: 988.0
Like yesterday, I rode today in shorts and t-shirt. However, though it was not it actually that much cooler, it FELT considerably chillier. When I went out at 11:15, the temperature off 55° was quite nice, but it was accompanied by an unbroken blanket of gray overhead, a refreshing breeze (10 mph from the east-southeast) to ensure I wouldn't have to deal with heatstroke,, and some intermittent light sprinkles.
As a consequence of the weather, I held back from doing the two round trips to Marsh Park I had considered, and did a single one, with loops on INterfirst Dr. and in Stonebridge added on. This gave me a ride of 14.3 miles, which I completed in 1:59, riding at very nearly a snail's pace.😁
We are currently entertaining a houseguest. Kim is a friend of Michelle's from high school days, and is a first grade teacher in New York state, home for a visit. I'm so glad that the two of them could reconnect.
2018 mileage: 973.7
Today, on the nicest day we've had all year so far, I went out at 11:15 in shorts, proudly sporting my Michigan Recumbent Trikes t-shirt (covered, however, by the Visibility Vest my daughter gave me), and did 13 miles, limited only by schedule (I needed to cut it short so that i could get to Emerson School to rehearse with the orchestra, as I am guest conducting in a May 10 concert on a composition I wrote for them).
I rode a single round trip to Marsh Park, and on the way home, turned into Stonebridge and did a lap in there as well. I began in bright 60° sunshine and finished in 66* sunshine!
2018 mileage: 960.7
After not riding the last two days, despite our glorious weather (my passion for riding lost out to my passion for watching the Detroit Tigers, and happily they won both games), I was glad to get out today, particularly in light of the problem that prevented the long ride I had planned this morning. I had not ridden outside since April 11, and today was only the 9th time I've been able to all year, due to our persistent wintry weather (it was snowing as late as earlier this week).
Late this afternoon, after watching yet another Tigers win, I rode a single round trip to Marsh Park, covering the 10.1 miles in 1:14. Although clouds had moved in, obscuring the bright sunshine we enjoyed earlier in the day, the 57° temperature seemed virtually tropical compared to most of the year so far.
This morning when I went out at 10:00, having planned a long ride, I found that the back tire was flat, having expired sometime since my last ride 10 days ago, evidently due to the cold we've experienced. Not knowing yet how to change a tire, I was stymied. But just yesterday we got a hitch put on our 'new' 2015 Honda. A few days ago, Michelle and I had salvaged the trike rack from our totaled old Honda from the yard where it was towed, so I was able to put it on our car and drive the trike over to Wheels in Motion, our local cycling shop, where they changed the tire for me.
A nice perk, too, was to find the bathrooms at the park, which have been locked ("Closed for the season") since October, were open again today.
I was hoping to do a good long ride this morning -- roughly 20 miles, to Baker Rd. (Dexter) and back. However, when I went out to the garage, the back tire was without air -- and it wouldn't allow me to pump any in, just hissed emptily while getting no fuller. So I've texted my bike expert friend, Doug, and await assistance to figure out the problem.
2018 mileage - 899.6
I rode outside today for only the 8th time this year. Perhaps our weather of recent weeks, which my brother has taken to calling Second Winter, has finally transformed into spring. When I began today just before noon, it was 45° and sunny—quite agreeable conditions, despite the breeziness we felt.
However, by just past my turning back for home after having reached Marsh Park, a light cold rain began to patter down on me. Though I had, to that point, been waffling about whether to ride one round trip to the park or two, the arrival of the rain made up my mind, and I gladly settled for a single round trip, completing this 10.1-mile ride in a slow time of 1:21.
I am so glad to be counting (this year for the first time) my indoor riding "miles" in my statistics. Of the 899.6 miles I've ridden this year, 800.3 of them have been indoors!
Discouragingly, while shifting I noticed some shooting pain and discomfort in the area of my right hand where I broke the bone at the base of the little finger when I fell last August. This leads me to suspect that it will be a permanent condition.
My use of the word "patter" above to describe the arrival of the rain recalls a humorous incident from my youth. I was very close to my maternal grandmother (1897-1999), who was a lifelong pianist and very proud of my musical ability. (When I say "lifelong," I really mean it ... she used to play to entertain audiences in the silent movies back around the time of the Titanic's 1914 sinking, and played to entertain her fellow residents in the nursing home until shortly before her death.) We frequently played piano duets together, and on one such occasion in my early teens we played at her Hudson, Michigan home for a luncheon meeting of the Hudson Women's Club. The reporter for the small town paper misquoted the title of one of our duets, causing us to giggle over it for the rest of her life. We played the popular song "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," but in the paper it said, "Mrs. Myers and her grandson Allen entertained with numerous piano duets, including 'Raindrops Keep Pattering On My Head.' " 😁
