I had taken today off from work (tomorrow, too) to help out around the house as my wife’s best friend has flown in from AZ with her two daughters. There’s stuff they’d like to do, just the two of them, and I can stay home with the four kids while they do so. They didn’t have anything planned until this afternoon, however, so I had planned to take a ride. Sure… it was a bit windy and there was a chance of rain, but it’s only wind and only a chance of rain, right? Besides, next week on the CNC, if it’s windy or rainy or spewing lava and frogs from the heavens, I’ve got to ride on through it if I was to get to my dinner that night.
So I went on my ride anyway: another running of my 50-mile loop.
And it was windy. And rainy. And my BlackBerry’s battery died again 10 miles into the ride. :/ (Note to self: turn the BlackBerry’s radio off; don’t just turn off e-mail checking… radio off!)
Having no more audiobook to listen to (with only 5 minutes left in the entire book, grumble grumble grumble), my head found songs to fill the silence, using my cadence at the moment as a guide. Oddly, my head primarily and repeatedly came up with the following:
- Poison Arrow by ABC
- Never Tear Us Apart by INXS
- Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith (particularly the pre-chorus guitar riff at ~1:54)
Some mix, huh? 
I also experienced a rather odd set of recollections: the first time I traveled this route, I was listening to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics. This second time, as I traveled the same route, I was vividly recalling what was being discussed in the book at certain locations: at Guess & Berry roads, it was the corruption present in Sumo wrestling… on Satterfield Road, leaving Hurdle Mills, it was how Superman helped defeat (or at least seriously damage) the KKK in real life… crossing the bridge over Lake Michie, it was the similarities (and differences) between Architects and Prostitutes… passing Bahama Fire and Rescue, it was the economics of drug gangs. (Freakonomics truly is a very interesting read/listen and I highly recommend it.)
I got home–safe and sound and wet–about 4.5 hours after starting. The gusting headwinds cut my average speed down to 12.4mph (11.4mph for the first half of the ride), but I was pretty pleased with my performance overall. I’ll be taking tomorrow off from biking as I’ll be pretty busy packing, getting the bike ready… oh, and getting new tires on my car. :/ Very good friend and very good auto mechanic took a look at my tires earlier this week and strongly recommended against driving to Black Mountain on them (grumble grumble grumble).
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[...] rain you say? Well, were we talking about a recreational or work-out ride, I’d tell you that a little rain means nothing. However, as a condition present during an hour-long ride to work, where I’d have neither [...]