Saint Valentine's Day 2012

Sneaking around, rushing it, making sweet treats for the ones we love...Doing our best to draw up some crafty cards complete with cartoon characters and multicolored hearts and daffodils and heartfelt sentiments...

Getting dressed up after preparing a tasty Mediterranean style dinner and then indulging on a heart shaped desert (made with Love by KPD soon to be S)...

Rockin' the sugar high, melting faces, composing songs about Love, Love, Love.

Doing our best to make sure that the ones we hold most dear feel extra special on Saint Valentine's day. Thankful to be having such a great night out, right here at home.

Better Late Than... Whatever.

Despite battling sickness, last week was pretty good on the bike. I finally, I took advantage of the freakishly mild weather and fired out for a lunch ride early in the week. Wow. It's been months and I had forgotten how therapeutic and fun it can be to ride my bike in the midst of my work day. The Wednesday night ride, was a lot better for me than the last several had been. Ron and Mike still slapped me around, but feeling half decent on a hard ride is a more than welcome change. I could even see them at the top of a couple climbs. Win(sorta). The bonus is that I was in shorts and arm warmers for a late January night ride - so maybe the weather had something to do with how I felt. Whatever it was, I'll take it.

I was on the bike Saturday and Sunday with Kim, so that's four out of the last seven days. In my world, that's a pretty good stretch. I've got a bike and a kit in the car today and the view from my office is bright and blue. The National Weather Service thinks this week will be a good one, and I've got slightly more motivation that I've had all winter. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to harness it and have another "good" week.

Just Riding Along; A Brisk Walk in the Park

Late Saturday morning I was graciously afforded a window of opportunity in which I intended to play in the fresh snow with my bike. The SS was locked inside my car, which was buried under a Mazda sized snowbank. Fail.

With precious limited time, I had no intentions of digging it out. I'll save that task for Monday morning because I like to procrastinate before heading to my office. I pulled the Salsa down from it's perch above the workbench and cannibalized some bits to make it rideable once again.

(Muddied and incomplete... the lesser of two evils I guess.)

Rolling from the parking lot, there were was evidence of a few riders before me but I remained hopeful that I'd be able to make some fresh tracks. The scenery is typically censored by the darkness of night or the blur of tunnel vision. This morning my ride was unusually scenic... a welcome change.

(Gratuitous pics of our snow covered wedding venue.)

The usual scenery was passing by slowly enough to look around once in a while. I found no evidence of life on some of the more obscure, less ridden trails. The snow was a little crunchy, but mostly rideable. The climbs were a redline effort at roughly half a mile an hour.

(Score with some virgin snow)

Toward the end of the ride, my bike started acting up a bit. There was an occasional - but recognizable - pop coming from the drivetrain. The DT Swiss hubs tend to skip a tooth once in a while under load. No big deal. It happens once a ride, maybe. After a few times, I was starting to get nervous. Then on a false flat, the hub didn't engage. I tried once more and after a few yards, it happened again.

Hoofing it.

Disgusted, I dismounted my bike and started to fiddle with it like I was actually going to fix it trailside in the snow. In a superb effort to diagnose and remedy the problem, I turned the crank arm a few times and watched the wheel spin. Then, I made a rooster tail as I lowered the wheel into the snow. That was cool... So I did it again. The second time was much less entertaining, so I started walking. Sweaty and frustrated from my wrenching efforts, my comfort level was declining rapidly. Walking swiftly, wasn't swift enough. I started to run. When I'm just running , a snowy run is one of the few times that I find joy in it. Running while pushing a lame bicycle through the snow while cold and wet, however, is definitely not enjoyable at all.

Meh.