<rant>Sigh</rant>

So just when you think the weather is going to start to turn for the better, and that spring will soon be on its way, it gets freezing cold. Then has the nerve to snow at night in such a manner that the cars running over the fresh powder snow causes a sheet of ice to form on the roads. Not only does this make my night miserable because of all the people who don't know how to drive carefully, it also causes the highway department to put more salt on the roads! Arrrgggg

Fortunately, the salt doesn't seem to be on too thick, at least on the roads I have view of outside my work window. Though, it was slick enough coming in this morning, I'm not sure they salted this road at all. I have an erie suspicion that other roads might be a different story. Maybe since they (the highway dept.) weren't prepared for it, they only salted the main roads, and didn't get to any of the side roads that I bike on a lot. Guess I'll have to take the long way home tonight and inspect.

On another note people, if the roads are icy.... SLOW DOWN.... for crying out loud. If you see vehicles smashed into jersey barriers, or in ditches along side of the road, its probably icy there. Further more, if you see big fire trucks with bright flashy red lights, there are probably firefighters walking around too! SLOW DOWN! We had a multi-car (more than 2) accident on a bridge that was iced over last night, with cars on the shoulders of both sides of the road. Crazy people flying through the accident scene at 50+ mph, with state police, and big fire trucks there all over the place. Granted, I feel that there could have been a better effort to give the traffic a fair warning to slow down. But in my opinion, they shouldn't have been driving like that in that weather to begin with.

02-25-06 Wind Sucks (unless its behind me)

So I took a quick ride over to a local outfitter to pick up some maps of Shenandoah National Park for a group hike I'm planning to lead in June. I discovered how nice out it was and decided that I couldn't pass up the nice weather and had to go for a bike ride. Mark was out of town and I couldn't get a hold of Tex, so I was on my own. The first two miles were great, as usual though I think I started out to fast and it took me a while to get into my grove. I left my chest strap at work so I have no HR data for this ride either. Oh well. You can see details of my ride here. Over all I enjoyed it, but the wind picked up about 10-15 minutes into the ride, and made things quite difficult, gusty cross winds made going in a straight line difficult. I swear for a while I was riding at an angle going down a pretty straight road. It was nice to get out and just pump the legs for a while. I tried to concentrate on my cadence and keep it consistent this ride. I think I'm liking the 90-100 rpm range.

02-23-06 Afternoon Ride with Mark

So after all the nagging Mark hounded on me for not riding, I decided to finally give it a go. The weather was forecast to be nice this afternoon although not so good this morning. It was pretty wet and rainy this morning (yay, wash away the salt!), and Mark was almost chicken enough to back out on me! He's lucky he didn't, he would have never heard the end of it. The Ride was pretty good. About as well as I could expect for not having done anything active all winter except for 2 previous bike rides last month. Details of my lack of fitness can be found here.
Nothing else interesting is going right now. Work is the same... Its work. Eat - work - eat some more - work again, eat some more, relax, sleep. Wash rinse repeat.

First Post!

So I've decided to setup a blog. Not really sure why.... I guess partly because I feel I need to defend myself against posts of certain other people who like to defame me publicly on the web. Partly because I thought it might be fun, and partly just because. I dunno. I suppose it's kind of an experiment to see if I can actaully convince myself to keep this thing up to date. Who knows. I don't always claim to know why I do things. So here it is, we'll see what happens, and if I have something profound to say (wouldn't that be a miracle!), you might find it here. Later.