Training Ride

Well, I finally canceled the Monday Spinning classes for the rest of the year. This frees me up to be able to go for longer rides on Monday mornings.

So far the biking I have been doing is mostly just my usual biking except that I am using the fat bike for a lot of rides that normally I would use my road bike or mountain bike. I ride my bike most every day, which keeps me in good enough condition that I can do an 14 hour bike ride without doing any training first.

Anyway, since I woke up at 3am to go riding this morning I think today's ride counts as training. I rode 5 hours and 45 miles on the fat bike this morning. Yeah, not really fast, but that wasn't what I was after. I just wanted to have a fun ride that would last for about 5 hours. Most of it was on the road, but it did include some nice mountain biking trails.

Well, here it is:

Hot or Cold

Spring Time

March, at the South Pole it is the beginning of night. Here in Utah it is Spring time, and Spring in Utah means that it is too cold one day and too hot the next. This makes me ask:

Which do you like better, hot or cold? Feel free to post answers in the comments below.

Cold

When I was a kid winter was my favorite time of year. I think this is mostly because my birthday and Christmas are in December and like most kids those were two of my favorite days. I always loved it when it would snow on my birthday, which it did frequently. As a teenager I would go skiing, snowmobiling, and just have a blast playing in the snow. 

Hot

However, as I've gotten older I prefer warm or even hot weather. It is common in Utah for people to complain about it being too hot during the summer, and complain about it being too cold in the winter. I don't complain about the hot weather, I love it, but I am no longer a fan of the cold weather. I have biked through the desert in 120F and loved it. I love biking in the mountains in the summer, wild flowers, the smell of the pine trees, and just being outside. 

Cold

But the cold winter means people quit biking which is hard for my bike store. Plus since I have put all my money in the store I don't have much for necessities like heating my house. Through the winter we keep our house just barely warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Well, we try to keep it warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing but sometimes they freeze anyway. 

To the Moon

So why would I want to spend a couple months in the extreme cold of the Antarctic? I think JFK summed it it well when he said, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I Can't Wait

I haven't looked forward to the next winter with such anticipation, such desire, hardly being able to wait, since I was a kid.

Saturday March 23

Tuesday March 26