Happy Holidays

A Cold Winter's Ride

32 degrees Fahrenheit when I set out this morning towards Leesburg.

Hamilton Station

Purcellville Christmas Parade

Big Al

Rudolph, the red-nosed Allosaurus. A Holiday tradition.

Dark

Well, the first ride home from work was.... DARK!

It started out well enough riding off into the sunset on the W&OD. Starting on mile marker 24, heading for 44. The sun set fast and I switched on my little headlamp and rear, red blinky. The trail is pretty much a highway for deer at night and I must have seen 50 or so. The tend not to move out of the way until you are right up on them and then they faint right and jump left. today at work I heard stories of deer-bike accidents on the trail that ended unpleasantly for all involved.

Once the sun was down the going got a bit colder too and the wind picked up. And it got really, really dark.

First Ride

We've been in the new house for 20 days and I finally got my first ride-to-work day. One of the reasons for moving was for me to be able to ride into work a few days per week. Today was a proof of concept. The house is a bit further than originally planned. The original Idea was to find a nice house in a nice neighborhood in Leesburg about 16 miles from my office. As with all great plans, this was modified when we drove through the town of Purcellville, you know, just to check it out. Well we both sort of fell in love with the town and the house we wanted to check out was in a perfect community with a million kids on a cul de sac.

So we end up 23 miles from my office. What still makes it ideal is that the route to work is almost all on the W&OD (Washington and Old Dominion) trail; a dedicated, paved walking/jogging/biking path. Today's ride, at a decent pace, took 90 minutes. Pretty much what I expected given my current level of fitness. It was cold. I have all the appropriate cold weather gear... except... shoe covers. My toes were ice blocks for three quarters of the trip. I was miserable. I'll be going to the store to get some covers during lunch. Tonights ride home should be interesting in the dark.