Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Fickleness of Mother Nature

This time of the year is always an adventure in New England. I am in a constant struggle to have the right gear on at the right time. Saturday Gail and I went for a ride. Originally we were planning on hanging out and doing our own thing. My plan was to get some bike maintenance done and hers was to take a quick ride in the lousy conditions to get her bike registered for the BMWMOA mileage contest. The forecast was for a total washout. Around noon the sun suddenly broke out and the temperature soared to 70F. Wahoo! Let's ride!. So what did Gail and I do? We rode to the coast to find bad weather. We had to have lost 20+ degrees and we found fog. I was under dressed, I was cold and I whined to myself in my helmet like a kid in the checkout line at the supermarket. It was ugly. There might have even been some swearing involved. Ok, there was a lot of swearing involved. Anyways, we pulled over where I expressed my feelings on the matter and we promptly headed inland. On the way I noticed many riders like ourselves under dressed heading right where we came from. I'm thinking "good luck with that". Some were in shirt sleeves. At least I had a jacket and helmet on. A little distance inland the temps soared back up in shining sun. It was so nice we decided to stop for an ice cream. The warm weather season is finally here! Just not at the coast.

I left for work at 5:50AM this morning. This is what I had on from the ground up;
Tourmaster boots
Gerbing Electric socks
Jeans
Gerbings Union Ridge electric pants
turtle neck
sweatshirt
Warmnsafe electric jacket liner
First Gear Killimanjaro jacket
Gerbing Electric gloves.
Scorpion Helmet
It was about 30F and I ride about an hour (50 miles) to work. When I went to the gym for lunch, it was 55F and I rode down the street with just my jeans, helmet and sweatshirt on. It wasn't very far. In an hour I'll be heading home from work and I have no clue what I need to wear. I'll probably just over dress and hope I don't get stuck in traffic. Oh well, Mother nature always wins anyways. We are just pawns for her amusement.

2 comments:

SheRidesABeemer said...

The weather forecast on your blog is killing me. 78 and sunny and I'm not home to enjoy it. You suck.

Mongo said...

Sorry babe, Mother Nature like me more than you today :)