Love my Friday evening rides.  Doing a nice and easy 11 miles after work, that is almost always uneventful.  Feels great to put on my “feel good” jersey and spin off the stress of the day.

The only real downside on tonight’s ride was some poor skunk lost their round of Frogger on the expressway that the creek trail passes under.  Not when it happened and I didn’t even need to see it but there is no mistaking the outcome of skunk versus motor vehicle.  It was one of those times where you want to see how far you can peddle without breathing.  Found out that I can’t really go terribly far before I had to breathe and it was nowhere close to far enough to reach minimum safe distance.   Big shock that the fastest I went on the whole ride was during that stretch.   Made me really happy that I was not running tonight.  That would have taken WAY too long to get through.

There was a pretty good headwind on the way out (almost always blows in off the bay in the evening) to the turnaround point.   This might be a shock to people who know me but I am NOT aerodynamic.    Well I am but it is in the same way that a VW Micro Bus is. Riding into the wind feels like I am going uphill so it makes for a nice workout.  There is enough material in my cycle jersey to make a sail for an Americas Cup yacht.  Of course I don’t really have the racing lines of a yacht, but what the heck, still love my jersey.  Have to admit that it is nice when I make turn and start the downwind run so to speak.  Makes it really easy to roll in my higher gears.  Just have to stay inside the navigational beacons on the course or between the buoys.

All things being equal I hate days when I miss that ride even though I know I need to start stretching out the distance farther.