Monday, November 26, 2007

Weekend of rides

Finally got out on a outdoor winter 'long' ride with Mike and friend (Jim). We met near the Vet clinic in Fairhaven and road out the interurban trail and then up, up, up Cleator road to the top. I put on two pairs of socks, leg warmers, three shirts, thick skull cap covering my ears, toasty warm gloves and I was still cold. Once underway, I was able to warm up by working hard, and boy was it hard. Climbing the 3.6 mile Cleator road we climbed about 1500 feet in the 3.6 miles, which is tough, but still a bit deceiving as about 1 mile of this is a flat section about half way up. I ended up having to walk a bit just to gather some more strength.

Once at the top Mike took a couple photos and we ate an then after getting cold, started back down. This was not nearly as fun, lots of pot holes and pretty fast going downhill so had to keep on the brakes and this was tough as I got colder and colder as we descended as I did not need to pedal, nor could I really as I was pretty much just standing and holding onto the handlebars and brakes as I rattled over the many small divots.

Back on the interurban it was nice to be able to pedal and start to warm up again. All in all a very nice 2 and half hour ride from home to top of Cleator and home again.

Road with Jacob on Sunday, we left mid morning and road to the bike jump park near the skate park. We road along some roads, but road the trails through Whatcom Falls park and really did not have much traffic to deal with, Jacob did great staying to the side and on the sidewalk when necessary. Jacob wore his fingerless bike gloves and within a mile asked for the full finger gloves I offered at the beginning.

The bike jump park wasn't really as much fun as we expected as it was quite muddy and actually the jumps were too big for Jacob and I to jump. So we tried to ride a couple of the smaller jumps but just ended up getting mud all over our shoes and tires.

The ride back home we got most the mud off our tires as it spun off and up our backsides and some onto our fronts as we gained speed on a couple downhill sections on the way home.

Great weekend of cold riding!

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