Work & Windy
It was 64 degrees. Only three degrees off a record high for the last day of November. We even have a higher temperature than Phoenix, AZ, (headquarters of my company). Seems like a good time to take a day off and ride. In spite of the wind.
Even though I got a late start at about 10:45, I had a ride-packed day. The muscles felt tired, a smidgeon of achey, and a dash of burning afterwards. Just the way they should. The Achilles feel like the rope on a door caught in a stiff wind. My range of motion has decreased quite a bit in the last few years of riding–and with no other complementary exercises. My leg’s tendons only move as far as they need to on the cranks. And that ain’t much. Some stretching might be in order. But stretching is like flossing, you know you should do it, but you never really want to.
I forgot to put my GPS on the bike. Well, actually I did think about it but was planning on just doing two or three loops of the 12/24 course–which doesn’t warrant any recording. So after a couple miles out to Gansevoort I figured I’d do the course in reverse since the wind was so strong from the south and West River Road would be so much more fun with a tail-wind. After passing the mansion on Peters Road and then descending to the river, I realized I chopped off a good 10 miles or so of the loop by taking Peters Rd. Doh! I had pulled off the course onto Peters for a moment to check my phone for messages since it was around my department meeting time. There was a message, but not from work, rather from Liane. Texted her back a quick response and continued in the direction I was facing… Peters Rd, instead of getting back on.
Well after getting the original route plan all messed up I decided to go to Fort Edward and loop back south on the eastern side of the river. I rarely cross the river on my shorter rides, so it would seem fresh. Fresh it was. In fact, too fresh, what with the strong southerly winds, my average speed dropped from 18.5 mph to 15.5 mph once I finished the entire southern stretch of roads from Ft. Edward to Stillwater.
I wonder what story those balloons in the tree have to tell. Did they get snagged on their way up to the heavens, released from a passing family fan? Or did they have a long and dangerous flight across the country finally loosing their lift and coming to rest high in these trees to gaze upon the mighty Hudson River? Or maybe they’re just breaking for lunch.
After slogging my way through the wind, a rest stop was in order a the Stillwater Stewarts by the bridge. When I was checking out in the store, the worker said “Did you get gas?” then looked up at me and said with a chuckle “Oh, you have a helmet, then no you didn’t.” After I paid and walked out to the bench, I thought of the clever comeback “All my gas is here on the counter.” Need to be a little quicker there, Kurt. Anyway, a bottle of Gatorade Rain, a Red Bull, Snickers bar, Damn Good Jerkey (hot n’ spicy) and the remains of my 2nd water bottle were lunch. 
Notice a change in the handling of photos? Flickr enters the picture. (um, pun intended.)
Now, I’m not a big fan of making a visitor leave my site to do something else, so I think I’ll post links to any Flickr related items like slideshows, at the END of posts. Otherwise I fear my internet-ADD-challenged friends may leave the post before finishing reading and commenting to go look at a photo of mine, end up flipping photos for the next 37 minutes then forget to come back. Given that… the silky smooth Flickr supplied slideshow (say that five times fast!) of photos for this ride is accessible here (which is a link AWAY from this site).
An unfortunate hiccup in the Flickr upload was how my photos got uploaded in reverse chronological order. I used the Flickr Uploadr to batch copy and tag the 16 pictures at once. I’ll have to do a little digging and see if I can prevent that.
One of the neatest features to get added to Flickr’s repertoire is geo-locating. You can drag your photos onto a map and place the photos where they were taken. Pretty useful in my case for this site. Click on the “Map” link next to any of the photos to pull up the map (while you’re actually ON flickr… the link doesn’t seem to be available when you view the photos on my site). Then click “See more photos here.” to see what other people have posted in the same area. Here is the photo-map link for the above image.
There are also some notes on the photos. Just hover the cursor over a photo to see if a note exists.
Fun stuff. While looking around I stumbled across a photo of an amazing sunset that I remembered from a week and a half ago.
My heart rate was higher than normal still, averaging 162. However, my perceived exertion wasn’t correspondingly high (good thing). The longer I rode, the better I felt, so it was disappointing to finish at 72 because I ran out of time and daylight. Well, not TOO disappointing, since I got a good soak in the hot tub before picking up Steph from work. I also had time to e-mail a couple friends directly from the tub and rub it in a little that I got a nice big ride in on a workday. Anthony was suitably miffed.
I was supposed to cook dinner tonight and after running an errand or two after picking up Steph, I didn’t really have the energy or enthusiasm to make anything. Oh well, steak at Ruby Tuesday’s made a suitable substitute. I generally don’t care for Ruby’s–don’t like their salad bar, and don’t like their burgers–but the steak was good. ‘Course I was eating it through ride-weary-colored glasses, so most food tastes fabulous.
My crapcam only holds 25 shots, and I ran out in Mechanicville, so the last 25 miles go undocumented.
This was a great day not go in to work. Mork out. Na-No Na-No.
December 14th, 2006 at 11:34 am
But stretching is like flossing, you know you should do it, but you never really want to.
Yup, that’s why I’ve started buying plackers. To bad they don’t make something that makes stretching as easy.