Open Season!

Knowing that bicycle weather was fast approaching I began fretting about being able to get to my bike.  See, during the winter Schwartzbeere and his family came to stay with us, bringing a lot of their stuff with them.  Most of it went into the garage, which pretty much filled it up and left only a couple of narrow trails through it. Buried the bikes pretty well. This shot is a little dark but if you look close you can see the bikes in this picture, kind of. 

Hint: the white bike in front is not one of them.

See the black hand-truck?  The back tires are just to the right of it.  Yeah, buried in there pretty deep and thorough.

But Schwartzbeere was so good to me.  He dug it out and moved it up front to where I could get to it.  Not as much room as I've always had in the past but it was workable and I was grateful.  Now all I needed was for the weather to cooperate.

Today that happened!  I'm a wuss, I'll admit it.  I don't like to ride if its below 50 degrees or wind over about about 12 miles per hour.  Today it was great!  55 and about 8 mph so as soon as I got home from work I changed clothes and took off. 

First stop was a gas station so I could put some air in my tires.  When the season was ending last year my bike had developed a slow leak and I needed to put air in it every few weeks.  I figured with the whole winter having gone by it might be nearly flat but it wasn't.  I was able to ride to the station.  That was nice.

This early in the season I usually have to stay off the trails because they're still snow packed.  Nobody plows them; the people that ride in the winter use the fat tire bikes and just pack the snow down so they stay snow covered a while.  That, plus as the snow melts it leaves puddles and I don't like getting a stripe up my back so I stick to the streets for the first while.  The street I chose for today's ride didn't have a path or sidewalk along side it for the first 1.5 miles so I was out in the street anyway.  It felt nice to be out again, even though this first stretch was into the wind.  I could sure tell that it has been a while since I was on my bike.  But then, the first ride of the season is usually like that.  So I kept it short.

At about 2.5 miles I turned onto a path, a wide sidewalk, really.  But nicer than out in the street.  This will be much nicer when it greens up a bit more.

Then another mile down the road I turned again and began the return trip.  I like to ride in big circles, no backtracking, although that doesn't always work.  But I try to do that.  Maybe its the OCD in me.  Anyway, the next stretch was along a busy street.  Fortunately, there was still a good, wide sidewalk by the side of the road. This time the wind was pushing me along, or at least not fighting me.  It was much easier going. 

Then a couple of miles later I'm back into quite, neighborhood streets, much less traffic. This was the last leg of the trip.

All in all, this first ride of the season was not quite 6 miles.  Not too bad for a first ride, for me, anyway.  And my average speed was 9.6 mph.  Actually a little faster than my season average from last year.  I thought it was pretty good for the first ride of the season.  The downside is that the weather does not look very promising for as far out as the extended forecast goes. Might be a few days before I can get out again. Bummer.