Total mileage for 2017: 2557.2
After taking consecutive days off (something I very rarely do), I was glad to get back to riding today. The time off did, however, allow me to make great progress composing. I began a piece Wednesday morning and finished it yesterday afternoon, a setting for choir and string quartet of a fairly sizable poem by Robert Frost.
This morning was rainy, so I waited until 11:15 to ride, at which time it had eased up considerably. There was still, however, a very light misty drizzle with which to contend. I had hoped to do a longer ride, but had to settle for a shorter one due to two factors:
(1) The weather. While new precipitation was not much of a concern, the trail on which I ride was thoroughly soaked, and throwing water up onto me so that in short order I was quite wet and cold. I wore shorts and a t-shirt ... at 58°, I should have been comfortable, and am sure that it would have been no better in soaked long pants and sleeves.
(2) I noticed as I approached the park that my rear flag (AKA spinner, or "tornado," as my grandson calls it 😎) was missing. Since May Michelle and I have been parking our car in the driveway in front of our garage, but with colder weather approaching, we wanted to start parking it in the garage again. The only way to do that is to park the trike in the back corner, below the loft ... and the only way to fit it under that loft is to remove the flag. So when I removed it on Wednesday, I was not used to it being off, and just left on my ride this morning without replacing it. But I have it back on now so that I'll be OK for tomorrow morning.
One other additional, but minor, factor is that Michelle is gone on the annual field trip that she and her orchestra director colleague Leslie take with their students to Frankenmuth for a couple of days. With her gone, I am deprived of the "safety blanket" feeling that I have if she is here, and could bail me out if I become imperiled. Hopefully it would never come to that, but I realize with her gone what a comfort it is to have her here.
So at any rate, I settled for a soggy single round trip to Marsh Park today, 9.9 miles in 54 minutes.
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