Weekend Riding, part 1

Got my 20 mile ride in on Friday (20.8 to be exact).  Yay!  I was off work, so I had lots of options about exactly when I would ride.  The weather forecast showed strong winds kicking in slighly before noon.  I knew I didn't want to be out riding in that.  So I opted to head out at 8:30am when it was a chilly 38 deg.

I felt comfortable, except the areas of my face that were exposed.

I have to admit to feeling pretty bad@ss for getting out there on a chilly morning. The thing that scared me most was getting a flat.  Not because flats scare me, but because fixing one would require taking my gloves off.  But I figured it would only be bad at the beginning of the ride, the temp was likely to go up by 10deg while I was out there. And it really wasn't THAT cold.  I just haven't acclimated to the fall temps quite yet.

The leaves are turning!  Beautiful :-)

I didn't see very many other cyclists out there.  Probably because it was a weekday.  I must say, it was nice having the trail mostly to myself.  And it really was a spectacular fall morning.

Rio Grande full of water.  It was scary low this summer, so this was nice to see.

When I was about a mile from home, I heard that noise that no cyclist likes to hear:  "Thuk, thuk, thuk, thuk, sssssssssss"  Darn it!  I'm fairly sure it was a goat head thorn stuck in my tire.  The "thuk" sound was it hitting the brake on each rotation and the "sssssssss" was the air coming out of my tire when the thorn finally dislodged from my tire.

Since I was so close to home, I made the executive decision to ride on it as far as I could, walk the bike the rest of the way if needed, so I could fix it in the comfort of my own home rather than on the side of the road. Surprisingly, the tire held up well enough for me to stay on the bike.  Seems like a bit of the thorn was still stuck in the tire, blocking the hole well enough to stay fairly well inflated until I was done.

All in all, planned ride #1 was a success. Would planned ride #2 go this well?  Stay tuned...