in honour of paris roubaix

i thought i would throw this particular pave-related L/H image up concerning my ride this am. it is hard to describe riding in door cty in the springtime. mind you, we are surrounded by ice-flow covered water on 4 outta 5 sides. so, no matter where ya go, there is a 80% chance you are gonna be riding into a hateful bone-numbing soul-freezing breeze that will cause you to weep with agony and suffering. while it is nice to have a zillion pretty cool roads, with next to zero traffic on them . . . on occasion it does occur to a person that there is ALSO nobody out riding bikes on these roads, either. with very very good reason. people in the rest of the state do not get it, it's fooking C-O-L-D out there. those guys in belgium are pussies, i am here to tell you - after a ride in door cty in the spring i would stand in one of those supposedly miserable belgian spring rains you always hear them crying about and use it as a warm shower.

there is a reason i own 3 different bikes set up for various states of unridable cold.

but for some reason today, i said enuf. i broke out the actual road bike for a couple hours starting at the butt-crack-o-dawn. 15 minutes into into it, i realized my mistake. even ultra-fine new custom steel fork ( first ride, it's sweet ) could do precious little to forestall the suffering that was setting in. 45 min in, and most of the pain was gone, replaced by numbness, and a slowly spreading sensation that was by-and-large incomaptible with life. i played the percentages, and figured if i made it back with > 50% of my body mass still possessd of sufficient heat to keep my heart beating i could make it to work, and if not i would just hope for the resurrection by some cryo-technique at some time in the next century. the former proved to be the case, a 30 minute shower draining the water-heater later, and i am ready to roll.

have i mentioned door cty sucks in the spring ??