ALLISON MANN

I hit the road!  Solo, but this time it worked out.  I saw quite a few cyclists, unlike last weekend, but they all happened to be going the opposite direction.  It was a pretty quiet ride overall.  Some wind, lots of sun, and the road just disappearing underneath my wheels as I kicked over my comfortable cadence, climbed the hills, and enjoyed the descents.

Always a fan of matching… I picked up some Swiftwick ankle socks at the Rock N’ Road sale on Saturday:

I managed to clean up my road bike all by my lonesome (after it got pretty grimy/dirty in the rain the previous week).  The chain was pretty dirty (worse than the mountain bike!), but I got it cleaned up and ready to ride, and set out before 11 for a pretty chill, but long, ride.

First little climb.  I couldn’t make up my mind on which *way* to ride the route.  I called Justin just down the road from home telling him I was going to ride our normal direction (clockwise) so that I had a place to stop on the way back and wouldn’t run out of fluids.  It was here (just a few miles later) that I changed my mind.  Again.  I was going to ride it opposite and hope for the best.

First stop.  I was about an hour in and managed to finish off my first bottle, so filled it up fresh with cold water.

Was hoping this would carry me through about another 2 or so hours in the heat.

Hard to see in the picture, but my impending climb was up next to the freeway.  A nice climb with 6-9% grades.  I was looking forward to the following descent, but wound up with a good headwind the entire way down, so it was somewhat slower than expected.

Cruisin’ somewhere, working up a sweat

Don’t tell anyone, but I stopped briefly to snap a shot of my next descent.  Love this one so much.  No traffic.

Just made it back to civilization as I ran out of liquids and got a little bit of water to tide me over until I got home.  Last week I’d done a similar route, only the other direction, and minus one extra descent/climb.  I was getting shaky on the way home.  I had felt pretty hungry earlier on this ride, but had a Lara Bar and finished off most of my calories, so opted to spend my remaining $1.13 on a Pepsi so I’d be feeling good when I got home.

Drained most of it as quickly as possible, then hit the road to do a nice warm down on my final stretch home.  Killer cross wind coming off the hills, as always!

I was feeling decent heading back home on the bike path, and traffic in the business park area of town was really low.  I rounded a little bend and saw a little dog, without a collar, chilling in the middle of the path.  I kind of got nervous since I wasn’t sure if it’d respond by trying to my bite my tires/ankles, or run off into the bushes.  It did neither, actually.

Instead it ran this far in front of me for about almost a mile before peeling off.  I rode behind it for awhile before I took out my phone/camera to snap the shot.  Trust me, with the crazy crosswind and unpredictable dog, I did think it was a pretty stupid move on my part to be getting the picture anyway, but hey.

Weirdest thing I’ve seen on my bike in awhile: I’m riding in a fairly rural neighborhood area, windy 2-lane road, no shoulder, I see a female walking on the side of the road, going the same direction as me, wearing a very fancy/flowy green dress and nice white half arm gloves.  No joke.  I have no idea where she was coming from or going to.

In other randomness…

This guy has basically taken up residence on our patio.  I see him everyday.

It was 6 months early, but we opened it anyway.  Soo tasty.

Up next?  More open road, of course…