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After yesterday’s morning rainout, I was happy to be back on the bike this morning for my commute to the fitness center.  It was another of those cool, crisp autumn mornings where it felt good to have booties over my shoes, but my jacket was too warm, and I didn’t think the vest and arm-warmers would have been enough.  So what did I end up doing?  Wearing my jacket and hauling in the vest and arm-warmers for this evening.  Oh..and that’s on top of the blue jacket I keep attached to my pannier all the time in case of rain!  It’s the time of year that I end up hauling a lot of crap back and forth because we’ve got such a wide range of temperatures here in the Ozarks.

It’s kind of odd…as I get ready to head out of the house at 5:45 these mornings, I’m definitely not looking forward to venturing out into the dark.  After I get out and on the road, however, I thoroughly enjoy myself.  The city streets are so quiet and peaceful that time of the morning it seems that I own them.  Really, I rarely get passed by anyone, and the few cars I do see are  around the major streets I have to cross (Sunshine, Chestnut, National, and sometimes St. Louis).  The silence this morning was punctuated by the wail of a fire truck siren as I was riding up St. Louis Street.  It was eerie to be able to follow it’s movements along Chestnut Expressway, then North on Glenstone just by the way it sounded from where I was.

At the fitness center, I did my standard “1/2 hour of power” workout (which has actually grown to about 40 minutes), then pedaled the two long blocks to work.  By lunch time, I was getting itchy feet and decided to go run with the lunchtime crowd today.  I ran with them yesterday since Pam and I got rained out in the morning.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so it was too much to resist while the sun was shining.  I made a note to myself to be careful of my knees and not over do it like it’s so easy to do when I run.

Here’s also another note to self:    Plan for this in the future!  Running at lunch in the same clothes you’ve gotta ride home in is nasty……..

 One of the issue’s I’ve recently encountered on my homeward commute is the road re-surfacing going on around MSU.  The way Springfield does it is to rip up the old asphalt, use it to recycle for another road surface elsewhere, then repeat the cycle on another street to make asphalt to replace what was originally ripped up.  When I say ripped up, I literally mean it.  It’s nasty to ride on….you’ve heard and experienced the trevails of riding on chip and seal haven’t you?  Well, I would love to have some good old chip and seal instead of what’s there now!  Talk about a tooth rattler!  And very dusty as well….you can’t see it below, but you don’t want to follow a car down this street.

 

On the way home tonight, I met up with Jim and got to ride a few blocks with him.  It’s funny how we both use pretty much the same route home and ride at approximately the same time, but we rarely see each other on the road. 

By the time I got home, the weather change predicted for tomorrow was looking imminent.  It’s sure not sounding like a nice day at all.  Pam and I are already talking about alternate plans for running in the morning.  We’ll see what happens. 

God bless…

TW

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This entry was posted on October 7, 2009 at 7:38 pm and is filed under bicycle, Bike Commute, Cycling, Fitness, Running. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: bicycle, Bike Commute, Cycling, Fitness, Running

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