2.10.2011 Ride: -4.5, -5.3 or -15?

"Houston.  The Eagle has landed."

It's almost 9:00 AM, over an hour and a half since the ride this morning.  My body is still trying to warm up.  Not that I felt cold during the ride.  My fingers did develop that sensation as if the gloves have melted away and my bare fingers are exposed to the outside air.  Just grabbing a handful of dark chocolate and dates as my sole nourishment probably wasn't the best pre-ride meal.  But, I was eager to get on the bike while the temperatures were reading below zero.

There was a slight pang of disappointment when I awoke and saw our weather station showing a reading of only -1.  I checked weather.com and did a double-take when I saw -16.  I refreshed the page twice.  Surely there couldn't be THAT much of a discrepancy.  I checked the Highland Station which showed a reading closer to mine.  Another check of my station showed the temperature was dropping.  I decided to go for it. The clothes were all laid out the night before, the least amount of layers I had ever worn for this temperature range.  I had been getting too hot so I had the bare minimum. About 20 minutes later when I was headed out the door, my sensor was showing a -3.1: Fayetteville, -15.  (Later, the sensor's memory would show it had dropped to 4.5).

Stepping outside, the chill was immediate.  Still dark with the sky just lightening in the east and the world eerily quiet, I felt as if I had just stepped out of a space capsule and out onto a new world.  Tightly tucked into my space suit, I knew that there wasn't going to be any pictures this morning.  My facemask was pulled as high up as possible and I had no plans to unglove my hands for even a moment as I knew I would be losing heat I could never recover.  Setting off, there was the initial favorable memory of riding on the driveway from yesterday.  Turning on to the road, the tracks had settled and crusted as I hoped and made for good riding.  The tracks became even better as I reached the main road of our neighborhood.  Not having been plowed, I steered along the narrow track between two 10" walls of snow.  It was still early enough in the morning, so I headed for Hwy 45 which had been plowed but was still covered in a thick blanket of packed down snow.  It made for perfect biking for the studded tires.  A few trucks passed me and I entertained the idea of riding all the way into town but abandoned that idea knowing that traffic would probably pick up.  After a little over a mile, I turned around, detoured down Sassafrass which was also plowed and made for good riding.

The ride was indeed other-wordly.   But what kept striking me was that I was not on another world.  I wasn't even in an exotic other part of our planet.  I was right here in Fayetteville, Arkansas and the thought was exhilarating and intoxicating, the latter probably due in some part to the frigid air I was breathing in. 

I headed back down 45 and I knew that it would be a bit of challenge.  Interestingly, Wes Bradshaw asked this morning how is it braking on this stuff.  Sticking out my foot and dragging it along the snow/ice and steering the bike into the thick snow are two methods that work great.  Squeezing with all my might on the brake levers is merely a suggestion to the tires.  It works slightly better than me asking the tires if they would please slow down now.  I inched my way down the Hwy 45 hill to the turn off for my neighborhood.

Checking my watch, I saw the sunrise was just a few minutes away.  I did a small detour so that I could end up on the higher portion of the road as the sun would come up.  Again, the sense of being on another world intensified.  The lightening of the sky, the whitening of the snow, the glow in the east, I felt as if I was about to witness a sunrise for the first time on a new planet.  I looked over to my left just as the sun peeked out over the horizon.  I let out a loud "whoop."  This, I thought, was why I get up at 5:30 AM to go ride in subzero temperatures.  And, again.  Not a somewhere-way-out-in-space high, not a Rocky Mountain high, but a good ol' Fayetteville, Arkansas high. 

Taken after the ride was completed and right before re-entering my space capusle.  I'm glad that I did not attempt to stop to take a picture during the ride because, to take this picture, I had to take the battery out of the camera and warm it up for it to work.

Today's Ride:  75 mins.  @6.5 miles.  Temp:  -4.5, -5.3 or -15.  Miles YTD:  710.56

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