It seems as if each day's ride is unique and unusual in some way, and the long empty stretches of trail where I am encountering no other riders or pedestrians afford me ample opportunities to reflect on the day's ride and to begin composing my blog entry in my head.
Today I had hoped to ride several loops of the route that takes me past our former church, Westminster Presbyterian, as shown here.
However, riding in a counterclockwise direction, when I was coming down the second half of it, construction adjacent to Oak Valley (near the library) had a stretch of the sidewalk blocked off and unavailable to me. I was able to get around it, but decided that for the rest of today's ride, I should go on my old familiar trail (the Lohr-Textile Greenway) to Marsh Park.
When I began at 9:20, it was a gray and chilly 42° morning; by the time I finished, though, it had warmed up to a balmy 45°! My toes were tingling until the became numb, and, though I suspect that in the forties I was in no danger of frostbite, I decided to cut the ride shorter than I wanted to anyway. I could have (and perhaps should have) forced myself to go farther, but instead fell back on my tried and true motto: "Well, it's better than nothing, anyway!"
So, the one early loop I did, plus the one round trip to Marsh Park gave me a day's ride of 14.8 miles, in a slow time of 2:00. (Actually 1:59:48.) The cold was one reason for the slow speed, as was the sidewalk obstruction; still another was additional difficulties with MapMyRide on my phone. Whereas both yesterday and Sunday, it worked beautifully to have the phone in the front pouch of my hoodie, today that approach did not work, as the coat I needed muffled the sound. So then I moved it to the mounting bracket (which I had placed on the bar at the front of the trike). But that did not work, either, as the sound was just barely audible ... I am quite certain that it is not a matter of my hearing failing, but rather, of the phone being too far from me when it is in that position.
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