We went out for our second joint bike ride of the season the day before yesterday. Since we knew ahead of time that it was going to be a scorcher of a day, with temperatures in the 90s (°F), we left early to try to beat the heat, but we were not very successful in achieving that goal.
I managed to get a new bike rack for the Prius in the meantime. This one fit over the bump in the rear end of the car. The bike rack itself looked less sturdy than the one we have for the Honda, but the reviews that I had read makes me want to give it a try. This being the first time the rack was being used, we were very deliberate and careful about how we mounted the bikes, checking every strap along the way, and placing duct tape over areas of the bike that might rub against the carrier itself. This bike rack unfortunately does not have an additional strap that goes around the multiple bikes in order to attach them to the main section of the frame. The bikes just hang on the carrier rods that they are attached to.
We were more careful than usual during the drive to the canal. We did not go far, and I kept looking back at the bikes as we drove. It all went well.
We rode upstream from Violettes Lockand ended up near Whites Ferry before turning back.
It was cool under the trees, especially earlier in the morning,but you could feel the heat on your shoulders the moment we were exposed to the direct sunlight. One felt the most exposed when crossing the open stretch of trail under the crackling and buzzing high voltage power lines that cross the river.
We took a few breaks during the ride. Going forward, we will need to also carry more water with us. It is easy to get dehydrated.
Considering the conditions, I was surprised to see people on the river later in the morning, completely exposed to the sun. I hope that there was liberal use of sunscreen.
I did hear and see a bald eagle flying over the trees in the area near Rileys Lock, but it was difficult to stop in time to follow the flight of bird, to see where it was going. We did see a few Indigo Buntings. These bright blue birds would land on the trail in front of us, but we would be going too fast to stop in time to take a picture. I had to settle for pictures of an egret and a great blue heron. I even managed to chase the egret away! There were also plenty of dragonflies beside the trail, but I did not stop for pictures.
We also found a lot of fluffy white seed pods all over the place in certain sections of the trail and on the canal itself.I do not know what tree or plant these come from.
We spent a good part of the rest of the day recovering from the efforts of the morning. It does not seem to matter that all of my past biking efforts took place in the heat of summer. It still takes a good deal of effort to get used to the conditions once again.
It has cooled down in the days since the ride, but I am sure that this is only a temporary reprieve.
This is the first new bicycle that I have bought for myself. (I did actually buy a used bike once before – as an unemployed graduate student – for almost zero cost! Maybe that is a story for another day…) The bike I have been riding for the last few years belongs to Teresa. It is a woman’s hybrid bike that has served its purpose, but it is somewhat small for my size, and it was not really built for the heavy-duty usage that I was putting it through. I had somehow managed with her bike, not feeling a necessity to spend money on this background pastime of mine that could be considered non-essential. I kept postponing a final decision about a new bike. But the kids finally put me to shame with a present that they had bought me last year. It was a camera bag that was supposed to attach to my new bike! Where was the bike?!
I did some research before going out to the stores. I test rode a couple of bikes. I did have a couple of bikes in mind when I finally went out shopping, but I ended up buying a completely different bike from those on my list! My final choice was between a somewhat staid REI Co-op CTY 2.1, and the Trek Dual Sport 2 that looked more sporty. Both bikes had similar features. The Trek bike might even have been a little ahead in feature comparison, but I finally got the bike from REI because of the benefits of membership in REI.
I rode the new bike on the towpath for the first time last Thursday. The first challenge was fitting it on to the bike rack on the back of the car. It turns out that the bike barely fits into its position on the carrier. I am going to have to make further adjustments.
It was actually not the best day for a ride, but the bike had been sitting at home for a while, and I was itching to try it out. It was cloudy and chilly, and I could feel the cold of the gentle breeze on the skin as I rode. Fortunately, I was somewhat prepared for the weather – with a long sleeved bike shirt and a sleeveless vest (apparently also called a golf vest – who knew!) on top of it. It took a while for the numbness to go away from my fingers.
Since this was also my first bike ride of the season, I also found it to be somewhat of a relearning experience. I do need to get the muscles that are used in this exercise routine back in shape. And it was also the other simple and basic things that I had to think about while riding. I had to remind myself of the danger of drifting across the trail if I turned my head to look back while riding. I had to get comfortable once again with the experience of passing other people who were on foot or on bikes on the trail. You cannot always predict how somebody else will respond to your presence.
The bluebells have almost all disappeared from the trail, but most of the flowers that I regularly observe in Spring have made their appearances. Getting on the trail, it was this field of buttercups near Pennyfield Lock that first caught my attention.
Once on the trail, I stopped every once in a while to take pictures of the Wild Phlox, Fleabane, Chickweed, Ragwort, Spiderwort, Honeysuckle, Dames Rocket, Yellow Iris, Violets, etc.. The Rosa Multiflora will be flowering soon.
The squirrels and the birds were quite active. The presence of a relatively fast moving bicycle on the trail seemed to confuse some of these creatures. One of the squirrels almost ran into the spokes of the bicycle. Birds would occasionally fly across the front of the moving cycle, and sometimes they would fly ahead of the bicycle and try to land on the trail, seemingly misjudging the speed of my approach towards them. I deliberately made an effort to keep a somewhat slower pace and not speed up. I needed to get more comfortable with the gearing on the new bike first and find out what worked the best for me.
There were plenty of turtles that were out and about.I did notice that the herons were missing in action. (It fact, they have been generally missing in action during our last few outings!) I finally got a sight of one of them in the distance towards the end of the ride at the pond near Rileys Lock.
Even though I was prepared for it, I was surprised to have encounters with snakes this early in the riding season. (I can sense a shudder going through some of the readers!🙂) Both of the snakes I saw were small in size. I cannot make up my mind about the kind of snake the second one was. It seemed to have the pattern of a Northern Copperhead on its body, but it was darker than the Northern Copperheads I have seen during previous outings. I also do not think the eyes were the right shape. This one had round eyes. Anyway, I kept a safe distance away from it.
And then there was the experience that I mentioned in my previous blog!
Yesterday’s bike ride could end up being the last bike ride of the year. I am leaving on a long trip. Any long trip can be a bit of an adventure, and this one certainly falls into that category. You let go of the guardrails of your usual routines, you plan as much as you can, and then you take a chance and step out into the less known. Inshallah!
The trip that I am about to make has come together at the last minute, and thinking about its logistics has shifted my balance a little bit. There are particular challenges because of current circumstances.
I forced myself to go out for this ride. I needed to do something that was a part of my usual routine, a routine that had been disrupted even last week by the almost daily singing I had been doing at the fair. I needed to get the endorphins going. Biking has become that activity in the more recent past.
It was a warm and muggy morning when I headed out, but I got it done – covered the usual 30 miles on the towpath! Now, onward!
Here are pictures from the last couple of rides.
The inspiration for the title of this blog came from a song our chorus sings. Here is a version that I found online.
It was a hot day for a bike ride, and I had gotten a later start than usual due to a phone call earlier in the morning. The plan was to ride from Sycamore Landing to the Monocacy Aqueduct. I did make it, and I set a decent pace in spite of the heat. I could literally feel the heat on my shoulders through the openings in the green canopy of the forest during the later parts of the ride. Surprisingly, I saw more people on the trail as it got closer to noon, when it was beginning to feel really hot.
I could have finished the ride earlier than I actually did, but was delayed by an encounter at Lock 27. An older gentleman seemed to be eager for conversation. I indulged him.
As I was riding by Lock 27, I slowed down to look at a small black dog running around on the other side of the lock. A gentleman who was on the towpath noticed me and informed me that the dog was a work dog. Having heard something recently about the difference between pets and work dogs (specifically those that help to corral animals in the fields and pastures), I asked him if the dog worked on a farm. That was an excuse for me to stop and get off the bike, and for him to extend the conversation. It extended more than I was expecting.
As he walked up to me, he mentioned that his dog was was a search and rescue dog. She was trained to find people trapped in rubble from structures that have collapsed. He went on to inform me that he had been working for FEMA for 40 years. His job was as a search and rescue specialist, a task which he performed with his trained partner dog. He mentioned the recent condominium collapse in Florida as an example of where his work could take him. (He later mentioned that he had been a part of the team responding to the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.) He said that he was 75 years old. His dog was 7 years old, and her training started when she was 6 months old.
She was a small black dog. She seemed to be very mellow. She looked light on her feet, which is what is needed when she is walking on rubble that you do not want to collapse further. The dog was listening to everything that he was saying to it, and was responding to his instructions. He demonstrated this to me by asking her to go down into the bed of the lock to look around. This was a typical action that would be needed to go into destroyed buildings to try to rescue people. You might have noticed that I used the word “asking” rather than “ordering”. Yes, he actually talked to the dog using full sentences. It was quite clear that they are good friends. She was a very quiet dog. She responded every time he asked her something. She seemed to be happy.
He had had a stroke about a year ago. He is still recovering. He still had some physical issues to overcome (which I could also see), but he was hoping to go back into active service at FEMA. He lived on a farm near the aqueduct. He had his stroke when he was on his tractor working on the farm. He says that when the stroke happened he felt and knew what was coming. He stopped the tractor. Unfortunately, his mobile phone had died. When he got off his tractor, he fell and could not get up. There was nobody around other than his dog. He asked her to go to the neighbor’s farm to seek help. He said that the dog did not know the neighbor. The dog left and eventually came back with the neighbor, and he was able to get the help he needed. Apparently, the dog had appeared at the neighbor’s front door barking insistently, and succeeding in convincing her to open the door. When she opened the door, the dog would apparently try to convey what she wanted by running a short distance towards where he had fallen, and then coming back to the lady. She did this a few times. Apparently, her actions were enough to make the lady understand that the dog wanted her to follow her. And the dog led the lady to where he was lying in the field. The dog saved his life.
There were a few other directions that the conversation went off into once we got talking at Lock 27. He liked telling his life stories.
He had fought in the Vietnam war for 4 years. He had been a fighter pilot, flying F-100s. He named the five dogs that he has worked with at FEMA after military aircraft. His aircraft had been blown up out of the sky by anti-aircraft fire on two occasions. He mentioned how, all of a sudden, he had found himself in his ejector seat in the sky with no aircraft around him. He was fortunate to have been rescued on the ground after he had fallen behind enemy lines.
He says that he did not have ill-will for the Vietcong even in those days. (He differentiated between them and professional soldiers for some reason.) He mentioned that the Vietcong were usually young boys, 14 to 15 years old. They would come out to the base in the night with explosives to try to blow up the aircraft. The military had a process for confronting the kids, the last stage of which was to kill them if they did not respond to call-outs. He said that on several occasions he ended up taking the Kalashnikovs from the kids’ hands and sending them away without killing them. He was hoping to win them over. His approach was not popular with some of the other soldiers.
Without being asked, he admitted to having killed people. He sounded a little bit defensive when he said that. He said that he was following orders from his government. His job was not to question why. And finally, it became apparent to me that his current job at FEMA, trying to save lives, was partial atonement for some of what had happened during the war.
He asked me where I was from. He said that Indians were shady people. I was completely floored by his statement, especially because I, a person of Indian background, was the one having the conversation with him. Unfortunately, it turns out that his prior formative experiences with Indians have not been good. When he was in Vietnam, an Indian merchant tried to rip him off. There was a confrontation (with the use of all the threats available to military personnel being brought to bear) before the situation was resolved. The funny thing is that he seemed to be sympathetic to the circumstances of the person who had ripped him off and, in the end, ended up trying to help him. Most recently, he became a victim of a call-center scam where people from India remotely got control of his computer, locked it, and in the end got money off of him. I was trying to tell him that there are scammers everywhere in the world, and that we are not all like that. I did not do a good job. In any case, both he, and his dog, did not exhibit any suspicion of, or acrimony towards, me. In fact, they were downright friendly. The dog let me pet her and wagged her tail in delight when I scratched her neck. He said that dogs know whom to trust, and behave differently in the presence of different people. He also mentioned that although he cannot do it himself, it is possible to learn about people from their auras. He said that it was a skill that could be taught. I began to suspect that he might have Buddhist leanings.
When I mentioned my name and my background as a Christian from the State of Kerala, he sprung it on me that he was of the Mormon faith! I do not know why, but that caught me completely off-guard. But it did also make some sense. There is a big group of people who follow the Mormon faith in the area where we live, and he had actually grown up in Montgomery County. And I had learnt previously that the Mormons had fought in the past in wars for their country.
In the end, I had to stop asking questions lest I got him going off on yet another interesting topic or the other for an indefinite amount of time. I really had to get moving once again because I had not yet reached my intended destination at that point.
During the initial part of the ride I had been thinking about whether I would have anything interesting to blog about as a result of the ride. The only notable events so far in the ride had to do with birds that were not cooperating with me when I tried to take their pictures. They would seem settle down for the shot, but would fly away when I got off the bike and reached for my camera. I did not get even one picture of a bird! Fortunately, Bob and Raider came to the rescue!
Before proceeding further with this blog, I have to make a note related to my previous blog. There was a picture of a bird in that blog that I was not able to identify in a timely manner. I now know that the bird is a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. These birds breed in North America during this time of year and fly to South America during the non-breeding winter season. They are shy birds that apparently stay hidden most of the time. I am very thankful for having had the opportunity to see it! Incidents like this give our outdoor activities that extra zing!
I went for a bike ride last Friday, starting out from Rileys Lock, and heading north. I had not been on the trail too long before I came upon a lady who was stopped on the trail. She stopped me and told me that there was a snake on the trail. A somewhat smaller-sized northern copperhead lay in the middle the trail enjoying the cool of the early morning. In case one is not aware of it, these snakes are venomous and can be deadly.
The young lady wanted to proceed north with her travels, but was very nervous about the reaction the snake might have to her attempt to get by. The two of us stood for a while strategizing about how to get around the snake. I was thinking of riding past it on the bike. While we were standing around, a bald eagle landed on a tree nearby. I could not get a very good picture of the bird.I wonder if the eagle was attracted by the activity on the trail.
I eventually rode past the snake, right in front of it. It might have turned its head to keep an eye on me as I rode by, but I was not too sure. My focus was on my safety! I stopped after had I passed the snake to take a picture of the bald eagle that was still hanging around, but the bird took off before I was ready with the camera. The young woman finally decided that she was not going to risk moving past the snake.She turned to head back towards Rileys Lock.
Having seen one snake this early in the morning, I was prepared to see more of them as the ride progressed. And it happened! The reptile sightings actually took place only towards the end of the ride – on two occasions.
The first time was when a long and thin black rat snake crossed the trail.It was moving fast enough that I my attempt to frame a picture capturing the entire length of the snake in the picture was unsuccessful.
The second time was toward the end of the ride. I saw a big and fat black rat snake beside the trail. I think the snake was getting ready to cross the trail. It turned and quickly slithered back into the grass when I stopped to take the picture.
It was towards the end of the ride, a little bit after I stopped for the second black rat snake, that I realized that my lens cap had fallen off the camera somewhere along the way, probably after I had taken the picture of this last snake. Something like this was bound to happen some day because the Olympus lens caps are, in general, designed very poorly from the point of view of staying attached to the front of the lens. You have to make an extra effort to make sure they are locked into place after you put them back over the lens. They might seem to be securely attached even when they are not. There have been several occasions in this past where the lens caps on my lenses have fallen off, but I had always been fortunate thus far to have been able to find the piece that dropped off. Not this time! I returned home “capless” in spite of my effort to find the lens cap by riding back along the trail – back to the place where I thought I had taken the last picture.
Luckily, it is not too difficult to get a replacement lens cap.
I want to finish the blog with this picture of a swallow taken at Whites Ferry. This was one of many on a wire. I cannot figure out what kind of a swallow this is.
I will post more of these pictures on Pbase eventually.
I felt good this morning. I was able to go for a run after a somewhat long break. The last couple of days have been a little cooler than usual, and the temperature was in the 60s when I started out. I thought that I would feel a little sluggish because of the break. That happened to not be the case. I got my mojo going pretty quickly, probably because of the cool temperatures. The running came easy. I was was able to maintain a decent pace throughout the run, and I actually felt wonderfully refreshed the rest of the morning.
We walked from Weverton to Harpers Ferry last Sunday. We were walking a section of this trail for the first time this year. Because of the location closer to Harper Ferry, there was more activity on the trail than one wishes and hopes for. But it was OK. We still had our extended periods of quiet. Here are some pictures from the walk.
The railroad line runs beside the canal all the way to Harpers Ferry.
This is the Route 340 bridge across the Potomac.
The river is very rough downstream of Harpers Ferry. The water is also very low in summer.
Harpers Ferry is across the river in West Virginia at the meeting point of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. The railroad line crosses over the river on the bridges to the right of the picture.
The newer flowers that we saw for the year during this walk include White Campion,
Buttonbush,
Queen Anne Lace (here in its early stage),
flowers that I was unsuccessful in identifying last year too,
Crown Vetch (distinguished from Red Clover because of the nature of the leaves),
Hedge Bindweed,
Wild Sweet William,
Rose of Sharon,
and Asiatic Dayflower.
My bike ride last Wednesday started once again at Pennyfield lock, but this time I headed towards Washington, DC. I rode up to Chain Bridge. It was a typical hot and humid Washington, DC, summer day. I covered more distance this time than I did during my first ride of the year last week. I put in a little more effort than during that first ride – keeping up a decent speed on the trail. There were quite a few people on the trail in spite of the heat. Thankfully, interactions with folks I encountered were generally pleasant, including a conversation with a couple who were in the early stages of an ambitious ride of over 60 miles! I hope they made it.
Here are a couple of pictures from my ride. The first one was taken at Widewater.
You can make out the typical haze of a Washington, DC, summer day in the second picture.
I rode my bicycle last week – for the first time this year. It has been a late start. I was going to start writing about the reason why this has happened, but then realized that I had a late start, for almost the same reasons, last year also. So my mindset in this regard, and the preparation for this first ride, mirror what happened last year. I wrote about it in the first section of this blog.
Truth of the matter is that I had gotten my bike cleaned up for a ride a couple of weeks earlier, but had never gotten around to actually taking the bike to the trail. This year, I am finding that the heat outside is discouraging me more than I expected from my efforts to exercise. I have become better at making excuses. Years are catching up.
There were three distinct stages to the ride last week.
The first stage was getting used to the feeling of being in the saddle once again after a very long time. When I am on a bike, the distances and the scenery pass by more quickly and smoothly than I am used to when on foot. I cannot pay as much attention as I usually do to things beside the trail. Nevertheless, it was difficult to miss the large number of birds at the pond at Riley’s lock. I had to stop to take pictures. There were an unusual number of egrets at this location.
There were also a few Great Blue Herons to be seen all along the trail. We have not seen them for quite a while, and their sight, for some reason, brings a feeling of comfort.
The second part of the ride was when I was transported into a world of happy fantasy, where my mind wandered away into some other space. The act of biking itself became completely instinctive. I even recited a nursery rhyme loudly when I went past a section with a lot of blackbirds. My song for the morning included the words – “I want to fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me“! And then, there I was, chasing the butterfly, and the bird, and the rabbit, as they showed me the way ahead, each for a short distance – as they fluttered all over the place in the air in front of the moving bike, or skipped along in the grass beside the trail, or hopped for a while on the trail, all while staying in front of me. This was my Alice in Wonderland moment, and there were no magic mushrooms involved.
The last stage of the ride was the slog. This happened primarily because I am not fully in shape. (Thankfully, I had decided to do a shorter ride than I normally would have pushed myself to do.) If I had been in shape, I would have been in the zone by this point. This stage of the ride is usually notable because one can end up speeding without even realizing what is going on. But I had to slow down. I was feeling the effort. There were also a few distractions along the way, including having to deal with the hordes of people who had descended on the trail by this time.
I hope I can keep myself motivated to do more rides this year. The bicycle rack remains mounted on the car.
He he he… Perhaps some may mistake the title as a setup for a ghoulish October treat. What strange tale awaits?! Alas, it is only me, your boring neighborhood yakker, with more tales for the bored of mind.
This blog is about yet another bike ride. I thought my biking days for the year had come to an end. But Mother Nature has a mind of her own. She can be idiosyncratic. Thursday turned out to be a warm day, starting at about 60° in the morning. It was an unexpected opportunity for me to go looking for the colors once again, this time on a bike!
But the morning also turned out to be extremely foggy, as you see from my pictures. The fog presented a different kind of opportunity for picture taking, but perhaps not the best for showcasing colors. Nevertheless, it was a somewhat unique combination of conditions that ended up making this one of my slowest solo rides in a very long time. I kept stopping to take pictures! Without further ado, let me show some of them to you.
This is what it looked like as I approached Pennyfield Lock.
This is how it looked as I started the ride.
Here are some pictures taken as I headed south, in the direction of Washington, DC. I left the camera hanging around my neck and was stopping every few minutes to take the pictures. Any runner worth her (or his) salt would have easily covered ground faster than I was doing at this point.
This is where I turned back – Mile 9 on the towpath, the point at which Lock 11 of the canal is located.
These are some of the pictures taken on the way back. The fog was beginning to lift, but it was still cloudy.
The sun finally made its appearance towards the end of the ride shortly after noon. I could glimpse the sunlight as I got close to Pennyfield Lock, at the end of the tunnel of trees that I was riding through.
I enjoyed the ride, but, as you can see, I achieved a mixed level of success in my attempt to find the colors of autumn. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride and whatever nature had to offer to me. It was certainly an experience that was unique to this season of Fall.
The weather turned wet on Sunday after an extended period of sunshine, a period of time that had left me wondering whether the solar panel system on our roof would end up generating a record amount of energy for the month. I now do not think this will happen. There is a concept called the law of averages that will probably even things out over the the month. (Note that the law of averages more of a common sense statement rather than a mathematical statement of probability. But that is a discussion of another day!)
Anyway, it was a sunny morning last Thursday when I did a bike ride, heading towards Washington, DC. The experience of this bike ride left me with the feeling that I could be reaching the tail-end of the riding season – or that my strategy of starting a bike ride early in the morning – in order to ensure that I was back home at a reasonable time – was not going to work for the rest of the year. It was much too cold! It was cold enough that I went off-trail to visit the fully-equipped restroom at Great Falls after about eight miles of riding – to turn on the dryer in the facility in order to warm my hands and get sensation back to my fingers. It being early in the morning, I was riding in the shadows of the woods, and I could not even depend on the touch of the sun to warm me up.
I was still feeling the cold when I got to the end point of the ride, a spot beside the trail between the mile 7 and 8 markers of the towpath, just beyond the footbridge across the canal.In order to keep myself warm (while I refreshed myself with a Clif bar and some water), I parked the bike next to a bench that happened to be in the sun.
It had warmed up nicely by the time I started making my way back to Rileys Lock, to the extent that I encountered many more riders headed the other way during this stretch of pedaling.
As you can see from the pictures above, and also from the pictures below that I took at the start of the ride at Rileys Lock, the leaves on the trees were still generally green that day,but there were also signs that they had begun to drop!
I did not feel too tired at the end of this ride. I am sure the outside temperature had something to do with it.
We went for a walk on the towpath last Sunday starting at Pennyfield Lock and heading north towards Rileys Lock. Because of the threat of rain later in the day hanging over us, we decided to get a very early start. We did not even have breakfast before heading out!
You observe more things around you when walking than when biking. There were the early signs of the coming change to the foliage, and there was at least one point at which we also got a glimpse of how extraordinary the Autumn view can become as the season progresses towards its peak.
In any case, a walk along the canal is beautiful and therapeutic in so many different ways.
Unfortunately, we were also reminded of how busy, and sometimes unpleasant, this section of the trail can get during the weekends, with hordes of inexperienced bikers and walkers taking over the towpath. We had to be on our toes and aware of traffic in both directions while walking. We encountered large groups of people who were unfamiliar with the protocols and courtesies of the trail, people who created a danger to themselves and others. What to do? I made the mistake of trying to let people know in one instance even though I am not good in situations like this.
I went for a bike ride last Thursday. I rode from Edwards Ferryto Point Of Rocks,and back, a distance of 35 miles. I had started out intending to bike about 30 miles, but the possibility of reaching a concrete destination rather than some arbitrary mile marker on the trail drove me on a little further than I had originally intended.
It was a late decision for me to actually do the ride. I also had to push myself a little bit to overcome the laziness I felt that morning. I have not done that many rides this year anyway, and it would have been easy to call it quits for the year. It was also going to be somewhat cold that morning (about 45° F at the time we woke up) – another reason to not push myself. Besides, my exercise route is, in general, completely destroyed by all of the disruptions taking place – and by my lack of discipline and, once again, laziness. But I willed myself to do what was necessary to get to the trail. I had to put the bike rack back on the car. I had previously taken it off, not anticipating further rides this year.
I felt the cold as soon as I got out of the car and prepared to ride at Edwards Ferry. I had to put on another layer of clothing, on top of my regular half-sleeved jersey, to protect my hands fully. Riding into a cold breeze (caused by my forward motion) was a little uncomfortable, but I got used to it. As I rode, the thought came to me that this could be the last ride of the year. I felt that I should do the ride as if this was going to be my last bike ride – because who knows what awaits me at the end of this riding season. Anything can happen. Maybe it is a good general philosophy – and I have heard it elsewhere – live every day as if it were your last.
I enjoyed the ride to the fullest extent, the impact of the ride on my bottom being cushioned that day by the generous usage of Chamios Butt’r for the first time in many years. (You see, I had thought that regular biking had made my nether region impervious to the effects of chafing from the constant rubbing motion, but had found out during my previous ride, a shorter one than the one I was undertaking that day, that this was not necessarily the case. Previous years of toughness of the skin did not mean a thing!) The cool weather also actually helped make the riding easier.
I did get used to the cool temperatures, and it also warmed up a little bit during the ride – to conditions that would actually be considered ideal for the activity. I did also encounter many other bike riders on the trail.
I am now hopeful that this will not be the last ride!
and ended up near Whites Ferry before turning back.
but you could feel the heat on your shoulders the moment we were exposed to the direct sunlight. One felt the most exposed when crossing the open stretch of trail under the crackling and buzzing high voltage power lines that cross the river.
I do not know what tree or plant these come from.
I wonder if the eagle was attracted by the activity on the trail. 
She turned to head back towards Rileys Lock.
It was moving fast enough that I my attempt to frame a picture capturing the entire length of the snake in the picture was unsuccessful.
In order to keep myself warm (while I refreshed myself with a 
but there were also signs that they had begun to drop!
Splattered Brains 
