24th ride of 2019 - Wednesday, 5/8/2019
2019 mileage: 1749.9
After taking Sunday as a rest day, and then beginning a major new compositional project Monday morning and being very excited about the good progress I was making on it, I took the last two days off also in order to devote more time to composition. So I strongly felt that I really needed to ride today before my hiatus stretched out to an intolerable degree.
So I left just past 11:30 (even though I was, again, making great headway on my composition this morning) and rode another round trip to Baker Rd. It was 52° when I began, and 57° when I finished, with mostly cloudy skies. And three negative factors affected me today.
1) Just as I was beginning, I had an "adventure." When I leave our complex, I have to cross Lohr Rd. in order to reach the sidewalk that (eventually) takes me clear out to Dexter. However, just as I began to cross the road (on a slight uphill), the chain came off the front gear, so that I could make no more forward progress beyond the very modest momentum I had at that point. So I stopped in the middle of the road (in the left turn lane), unclipped my feet from the pedals, stood, and (after waiting 30 seconds or so for traffic to clear) pulled the trike the rest of the way across the road to a safe spot where I could fix the chain and resume my ride. This little maneuver cost me several minutes.
2) I was battling a fairly healthy and gusty wind today. It was 15 mph and above. But, whereas the wind is most often from the west or southwest, so that I'm riding into it on the way to Dexter, today it was atypically coming from the east, so that when I made my turn and started for home, I was fighting it all the way ... making the trip back to Ann Arbor much less pleasant than usual.
3) Finally, although I wear a battery pack (clipped to a belt loop), so that my phone has power throughout these lengthy rides, it went dead during the last few minutes of the ride nevertheless. My hypothesis at this point is that the cord connecting them is going bad, since it has been problematic upon returning home also. Because of this problem I have to make a slight guess at my final stats, but I believe I rode 20.3 miles in 2:39.
After taking Sunday as a rest day, and then beginning a major new compositional project Monday morning and being very excited about the good progress I was making on it, I took the last two days off also in order to devote more time to composition. So I strongly felt that I really needed to ride today before my hiatus stretched out to an intolerable degree.
So I left just past 11:30 (even though I was, again, making great headway on my composition this morning) and rode another round trip to Baker Rd. It was 52° when I began, and 57° when I finished, with mostly cloudy skies. And three negative factors affected me today.
1) Just as I was beginning, I had an "adventure." When I leave our complex, I have to cross Lohr Rd. in order to reach the sidewalk that (eventually) takes me clear out to Dexter. However, just as I began to cross the road (on a slight uphill), the chain came off the front gear, so that I could make no more forward progress beyond the very modest momentum I had at that point. So I stopped in the middle of the road (in the left turn lane), unclipped my feet from the pedals, stood, and (after waiting 30 seconds or so for traffic to clear) pulled the trike the rest of the way across the road to a safe spot where I could fix the chain and resume my ride. This little maneuver cost me several minutes.
2) I was battling a fairly healthy and gusty wind today. It was 15 mph and above. But, whereas the wind is most often from the west or southwest, so that I'm riding into it on the way to Dexter, today it was atypically coming from the east, so that when I made my turn and started for home, I was fighting it all the way ... making the trip back to Ann Arbor much less pleasant than usual.
3) Finally, although I wear a battery pack (clipped to a belt loop), so that my phone has power throughout these lengthy rides, it went dead during the last few minutes of the ride nevertheless. My hypothesis at this point is that the cord connecting them is going bad, since it has been problematic upon returning home also. Because of this problem I have to make a slight guess at my final stats, but I believe I rode 20.3 miles in 2:39.
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