pollen, fog, and outta-shape-cyclist, oh my!

I finally rode my bike back into work today for the first time in a couple of weeks. Leaving my place in Vienna, everything looked pretty cool. Literally cool. It was humid (rainy weekend and all) with temps in the mid-50's, but nice and sunny. You know, nice bike commuting weather. I wore just my shorts, jersey, and a wind vest. A nice change from the previous commutes with long sleeved jersey, wind vest, rain jacket, leg warmers and duct tape over the vents in the shoes.

So, I'm plodding along and as I approach the Hunter Mill Crossing (Center of map, the trail isn't marked, but you can see the cut in the trees for it...) and it starts to get prety foggy. I look down at my arms. You know how a spider's web will glisten in the morning dew? Well, the fog was condensing on my armhairs and had the same appearence. I've had that happen before when hiking. It's pretty cool. As I said, it was humid.

I got to the office and everything was fine and dandy. Since I'd been off of the bike for so long, I actually had rested my body tremendously and felt stronger than before. Of course, I also wasn't carrying a lot of weight with me since it was warmer than before. After I showered and walked up to my office and was putting the bike on our indoor rack, I notice my bike and water bottle are covered in pollen. No wonder the water tasted slighly off...

Ahhhh spring has sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where my allergy pill is?

My wife and I are expecting. And we finally had the 20 week sonogram after 2 delays and it's a boy!!! So now we get to pick a color to paint the baby's room. Well, the baby's/bike storage/brewery/office/DSL&WiFi router location/backbacking gear storage room. sigh we need a bigger house, or I need to drop some hobbies.

Anyway, it's time to paint. But not yet. Like all good doityourselfers, I need to prep the room first. You know, spackle all the holes, correct any nail pops, move stuff away from the walls. So we've taken the first step. I moved our wall standing bike rack down into the living room. I admit it looks funny there, and you have to sit _not_ on the right side of the couch in order to see the whole TV screen, but it replaces the CD shelf system that was there before.

Heidi was talking about a green color before, but our downstairs bathroom is a shade of green that just doesn't sit right with me. She says it's fine, and besides, she wouldn't pick the same shade, but I'm not convinced that something the shade of baby poo/upchuck is what I want the walls permanently colored. So we picked up a bunch of light brown/tan/taupe paint chips from Home Depot the other night. Hopefully we'll get around to that _before_ the baby comes. But who knows...

In the mean time, I'll just fantasize about a nice big house with plenty of storage for everyone's things, that's low cost to heat/cool, and the property taxes are low, yet the value is high so I can get a home equity loan in case of an emergency. You know, the perfect, mythical house... :-)

Cycling Math

Riding west to get to work
+Wind for region predominantly from the West
+slight net gain in elevation over commute route
+wind advisory for the day until 1:00 pm
+Out of cycling/general shape fat guy
+Early in cycling season
=
holy poop I'm tired!!

I used to ride to work on my bicycle pretty regularly. Then my bike met an untimely demise on a roof rack last fall and it took me a while to replace her. Well, I finally got a Jamis Eclipse road bike. It's black with Campy Centaur components. The down tube (from handlebars down to where the pedals attach to the crank set) and chain stays (bars on either side of the chain parallel to the ground) are steel (painted dark silver) and the rest of the bike is woven carbon fiber. I've ridden to work a few times this year already, but oh man, today's ride was a serious effort. We're under a wind advisory with steady winds 20-30 mph from the West North West, and gusts up to 45 mph. But, hey, if I wanted an easy way to work, I'd drive my car...