Things I Think I Think

The weather this month has forced me to take lots of shorter rides (less than 20 miles). I took advantage of the warm weather on Sunday to take a longer ride. With a sincere salute to Peter King, NFL writer for sports illustrated, here are some things I think I think about it.  (Peter usually list 10 things he thinks he thinks about a football Sunday.) 

 

 

It was good day to ride, even if I had to take my son's bike.

1.       I’m glad my 13-year-old son is my size (yes, you read that right). His bike, like many of his clothes, fits me now. When I got my bike down today, the back tire was flat. So I grabbed his bike, put some air in the tires and off I went. How convenient.

2.       As one of my Facebook friends observed today, you gotta love North Carolina weather. We had snow and ice last weekend and temperatures in the teens. We were one of many neighborhoods that lost power. The high temperature today was 70. Most people out on the trail had shorts on.

3.       My plan today was to go ride after lunch. But chores and other activities pushed my departure time back to 3. The temperature was so warm I wore one of my short sleeve bike jerseys. It worked out great at first. But it is Jan. 31. As the sun got lower and lower, it became much cooler in the shade (and there are long stretches of the trail in the shade late in the afternoon). By the time I got home, I was quite chilled.  A hot shower never felt so good. Note to self: regardless of the temperature, wear the long-sleeved jersey when riding in the afternoon in January. Also think about carrying a pullover of some kind, just in case.

4.       I wrote about all the rain recently, but I didn’t realize the extent of the flooding on the trail until today. The water is gone now, but there’s a thin layer of dusty tan dirt on the concrete everywhere the water overflowed. I rode north on the Neuse Trail and made it almost to Capital Boulevard (33 miles total). There is a lot of dirt on the trail. Some of the splotches were small and some were almost 100 yards long.  

The dirt and leaves show where the river overflowed the trail.

In many places, you could see where the water had flowed from the river to the trail and washed the leaves and pine straw away.  There are even a few spots where water is still flowing over the trail. There’s been a lot of rain, and when you add the snow and ice of last weekend, you realize that we’ve had a lot of precipitation. Oh well…it beats going through a drought.

5.       Hats off to the maintenance people for the greenways. Last weekend’s ice brought down many trees along the trails. I rode the entire length of the Mingo Creek trail and more than 12 miles of the Neuse River trail, and there were no trees in my way. I saw the remains of quite a few trees that were down across the trails. They’ve been chopped into pieces and removed from the trail. The major ice storm was only a week ago and they have cleared the trails already. Nicely done.

Crews have already cut and removed trees that were downed by the ice.

6.       Judging from the number of people out on the trails, walking, jogging, riding and skateboarding, cabin fever has been running rampant. Many walkers had their dogs and many young parents were pushing strollers. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to be out of the house. Enjoy it while you can. The high next Saturday is supposed to be 44.