First Ride!

I started using a new weather app on my phone recently.  I've used this app's website for a long time but not the app  One thing I really like about it is I can code in the "ideal" weather conditions for the outdoor activity I want and it will tell me whenever those conditions are in the upcoming forecast.  Nice.  So I put in my biking weather minimums and the other day it said such a day was coming.  While I had already seen that in the long range forecast, it was nice to see the app telling me about it two days in advance.

So, knowing that a good biking day was coming, I needed to dig my bike out from where it spent the winter in my garage.  Every fall I tuck the bike away in the garage where it won't be in the way.  Then things happen and it gets buried.  So when spring comes it can sometimes be a chore to get the bike out.

The bike spent the winter on the far side of the trailer, in front of the window.  We had stacked a bunch of heavy stuff in front of the trailer that I originally thought I was going to have to move but when I got looking at it I decided I could just bring the bike out right in front of the trailer, over the tongue, without moving all that heavy stuff.  That was nice.

So getting the bike out turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be.  My first stop had to be the gas station, to get some air in the tires.  I hadn't really looked at them before taking off.  I might should have.  That ride on low tires turned out to be the hardest part of the whole ride.  One of them had only 16 pounds of air pressure.  Quite a bit less than the 45 I like to keep it at. The other was a little better but not much.  It was so much easier to ride after filling the tires up.

So pretty soon I had my tires back full of air and was on my way.  The paved multi-use trials had been plowed all winter so they had melted off and were clear for the most part.  A few puddles and a little ice here and there.  But for the most part they were clear and nice.

Plenty of snow at the sides of the trail but that's not a problem.

Back in through the trees.  It was a pretty ride.

It felt good to be back on the bike but I could tell it had been a while.  I keep thinking about getting a stationary bike for the winter but I need to make a place for it before I can get one.

At one point I passed a point where the trail was not paved.  They don't keep those clear during the winter so they were still snow covered.

One of the main reasons I had picked this particular route was because of the road construction that had been going on last summer.  They had started working on a stretch of road a few miles long and hadn't got done when winter arrived.  So they worked it to a point they could leave it for the winter and took most of the equipment away.

Part of getting it ready to leave all winter had included putting in a temporary asphalt walkway, to replace the sidewalk they had ripped out, that was a couple miles long.  I just had to ride my bike on that.  And I needed to do it early, before the construction started up again as the weather improved.  So this was the day.

The whole way had been kept clear except for one tiny stretch where there were still two snow piles on the sidewalk.  The first one was pretty small and I could probably have made my way around it.  But just a few more yards down the road was another, bigger pile.  So instead, I took a detour around, through an apartment complex.  About a block out of the way but not a problem at all.

From there it was clear sailing all the rest of the way home.  So past all the snow and ice covered ponds, I made my way on my first bike ride of the season.

Pretty soon I was back home and had to get past the "ice shelf" that had formed at the end of my own driveway.  That was actually the worst ice and snow I encountered on the whole trip.  So the ride ended up being about 6.4 miles.  Not bad at all for the first ride.