First ride of 2024, yay

 

Bicycle "Wyvern" with a frozen
Whalon Lake in Bolingbrook, Illinois.

(OK, so Mr. Pither took a year off. I will cheerfully refund your money.)

Thanks to a welcome mid-winter warmup, my riding season started off today with a standard "Whalon Lake Loop." It's 11 miles and change, and I did it in 57 minutes and change. Pretty good for not having pushed a pedal in two or three months.

When the air temp hit 50 degrees, I pushed the e-bike out of the garage, pumped up the tires, suited up, and realized I couldn't ride it because it has thumb shifters and I have a broken right thumb due to a ski spill on Cascade Mountain in Wisconsin three weeks ago. Grrr.

A wyvern, a
two-legged dragon.
Yes, I have a
pretentious streak
when I'm naming
my vehicles.

So I got ye olde-fashioned manual Trek Crossfit out of the shed. It has Shimano 105 shifters that don't require any thumb action. It ain't easy doing the air pump with one hand, especially on Presta valves, but I got "Wyvern" up and running, clipped in and headed out.

Lord Love A Duck, I miss riding my damn bicycle. I was pretty pleased with my broken, fat, old self as I negotiated the challenging point-5-degree inclines.

Whalon Lake itself was pretty, as always. It was frozen over, but reflected the rare blue sky. As I circled the lake clockwise, the low sun turned the blue expanse of ice to white and back again.

A bit of huffing and puffing back up from the DuPage River valley brought me home. It was just barely warm enough to sit in the backyard and enjoy the scant heat of the low-slanting February sunlight with a glass of wine.

I'll join my Sanctuary Ski Club's "Spokes" bike-ride leaders in a couple of week to plan this year's bike adventures. Looking forward to seeing my bicycle buddies again! Should be some wonderful rides to add to the blog this year. I promise I'll keep up.

- 30 -