Sunday's weather surprise - getting my kicks while it's still 66!

After being threatened with a blizzard a few days ago, it only makes sense that it's 66 degrees out today. Hey, I'll take warm weather when I can get it... Whazzat? 66 is warm?

I guess it really just comes down to conditioning. Now that I've finally come around to the idea that riding my bike in temperatures lower than 40 degrees won't kill me, suddenly there's a wide range of climates I can enjoy. As such, today was absolutely beautiful.

I started off taking advantage of the warm weather by cleaning the mud from my bike and inspecting it for further damage after the ride on Thursday. I pulled the rest of the broken chain-guard from the sprocket and gave the pedals a few cranks, just to see if the drive-train was working correctly. All that was left to do was take the bike for a quick spin to dry it off and make sure everything else was ok. After a mile or so, I decided to go another... and another, and another. 10 miles later, hey, where did the time go?

I saw neighbors putting up Christmas lights, teens skating and riding BMX bikes in the skate park up the street, a guy on a motorcycle and a couple of little kids riding bikes around. One even yelled, "Hey! He's got a bike, too!" I pity you if you're not out there, enjoying the weather today.

In other news, I've been thinking about single-speed mountain bikes, lately. My chief concern is that I won't be able to crank fast enough to keep up with the pack while finding the ratio too high to climb some of the steep inclines out on the trail. If I recall correctly, I mostly stuck to the middle ring while shifting up and down only 1 or 2 gears and did fairly well. I know a few of other riders were on single-speeds Thursday night and they didn't seem to have any complaints. Just something for me to think about...

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