Sunday!

Weather has taken a turn may stay in Saturday 

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Supposed to be 38 and sunny later today. Then warm again tomorrow. I found my fender so should be ready for wet roads provided not too icy.

I'm in for Sunday. Have to ease back into things since I've been mostly off the bike for weeks.

So when I left the house around noon today, things looked grim, but by the time I emerged from the Subway Museum around 4pm, things looked pretty dry on the roads. Looking forward to a 4-5 hour ride tomorrow. Flexible departure time, let me know if you want to join, but figure NO LATER than 11am. If I was "good" I'd be out the door at 9am, but you know...

I'll be at GWB at 11am tomorrow, meeting a friend and planning on doing Bradley tweed and a coffee stop in Piermont if anyone is interested?

Passing through BB at 10am ish

@mugwump good point. how dare I bring up a Rapha Ride... @JillSink what time for alpine tomorrow AM? Getting home before noon sounds AOK

@JulieJones I vote that you join!

Im in!!

Who is riding tomorrow at the regular time?

Also, new bar tape, are you happy now
@Adam ?!?

Oh no @JulieJones turns out my parents are coming to town tomorrow so looks like I'm staying local and doing some park laps to stay a bit flexible! Sorry to vote you in and bail! 

I'm potentially in to do just river road and alpine tomorrow, but it potentially may not happen because I have a friend in town and left her behind today to do 70 miles.  I'm VERY tempted though.  I'd do the normal 8am BB, 9am GWB though.  There was a brisk headwind from Nyack ALL THE WAY HOME!

I'll start with the group and keep on going north at Sparkill.

didn't set an alarm, will be solo this am unless any other stragglers want to do river road and alpine with me leaving GWB 10:15 ish

My alarm went off, but the temp didn't meet my minimum requirement of 30 degrees. 27 is a no-go. I've lost all of my Minnesota heartiness

JillSink said:

My alarm went off, but the temp didn't meet my minimum requirement of 30 degrees. 27 is a no-go. I've lost all of my Minnesota heartiness

Seriously, 27 degrees is a heat wave in Minnesota!

Saturday no joiners on the long ride option, so I rode solo to the Apple Orchards, traditional route. 72 or so miles. Gray day. Felt a bit nippy. The ride felt like work. In part because of nasty headwind that had me hiding in the drops quite a bit because I got tired of going 10 mph at threshold. Some days are like that.

Today, different story...

Was sunny and comfortable all day long. Nice sized group at the GWB. 10 total. Delna was our weekly representative from the women's squad. One day we'll have more than one woman on the group ride at the same time! Jeff Condon took a photo of us all. He also later took the low-road state line sprint from JP and Malcolmson. 

Typical low road ride to Piermont where 8 split off for coffee. JP got the super-delux hall pass from his wife today and decided to ride to Bear Mountain at threshold. 

I followed for a while but had to turn early for home and took a nice backroads way home and was back at the GWB by 11:45. About a 45-mile ride. Might be a nice variation for those looking for a group ride of similar time frame to the usual Piermont and back routine.

Saw Jill(?) and Keith motoring opposite direction when I was returning. Keith got home from work at 5am, so you know...making a 9am ride after pulling an "all-nighter" to pay the bills wasn't in the cards.

Ahem, I got JP with a bike throw at State Line. Turbo Condon was on fire though.

I have to apologize to Max, we ended up waiting about 15 minutes for you while you were in the bog at Piermont Cycles. We assumed you'd fallen in and continued on. Hope the ride back wasn't too soul destroying. 

JohnMalcolmson said:

Ahem, I got JP with a bike throw at State Line. Turbo Condon was on fire though.

I have to apologize to Max, we ended up waiting about 15 minutes for you while you were in the bog at Piermont Cycles. We assumed you'd fallen in and continued on. Hope the ride back wasn't too soul destroying. 

JP was the one who told me Condon took it. Interesting.

I ran into Max on the Bridge. He seemed a-okay!

Hmm.. about fifteen minutes? You might wanna get your Garmin checked out. Through the window I saw y'all ride off no more than three minutes after I came outside to say I was waiting in line for the bathroom. To be fair, I also implied that I didn't really mind if y'all went on ahead, considering you conveyed to me how anxious some in the group were to hit the road. I admit that I'm new to the bike racing mentality--it seems that every second really does count. I rode back through Tallman State Park, Columbia's Lamont Campus, and River Road, and thoroughly enjoyed every vertical foot of extra climbing. Apology accepted!

Comedy of errors Max. We rode off to catch up to Sean and Ragot to let them know you were going to be a few minutes and then duly waited at the Rockland Rd intersection. Jeff went back to find you even (check his Garmin). We do make an effort to be no man left behind on the group rides. 

^ Fun fact: Defoe's blood spurts failed to go off in this scene from Platoon, with no time for a reshoot they ran with the pretend "shot in the back".

JillSink said:

My alarm went off, but the temp didn't meet my minimum requirement of 30 degrees. 27 is a no-go. I've lost all of my Minnesota heartiness

This is where vanilla Forums needs a "weak" button next to the Like, Awesome, LOL ...  

Scott Kuhlke said:

JillSink said:

My alarm went off, but the temp didn't meet my minimum requirement of 30 degrees. 27 is a no-go. I've lost all of my Minnesota heartiness

This is where vanilla Forums needs a "weak" button next to the Like, Awesome, LOL ...  

Well, I didn't see you out there the day before doing 70 miles and Bradley Tweed with a headwind all the way home.  Dude!

Ah, @JohnMalcolmson, you mean if I had continued further along the usual return route we would have been reunited? Alas. I couldn't resist the hardpacked dirt paths through Tallman. Thank y'all for waiting though. Sorry it ended up being wasted time. 

JillSink said:

Scott Kuhlke said:

JillSink said:

My alarm went off, but the temp didn't meet my minimum requirement of 30 degrees. 27 is a no-go. I've lost all of my Minnesota heartiness

This is where vanilla Forums needs a "weak" button next to the Like, Awesome, LOL ...  

Well, I didn't see you out there the day before doing 70 miles and Bradley Tweed with a headwind all the way home.  Dude!

I'm going to sound like a broken record, and I'm not making any assumptions about the exact decisions and how they were made by KCC this weekend so please don't any individuals take it that way, but "oooh burn" has me thinking.

That it's not just about the air temperature as reported on your smart phone. Dry air and sunshine make riding out of doors even when the air temp is lower than a given threshold, quite pleasant and doable.

In contrast to a very rideable weekend, on Monday, it was 35, cloudy, wet/damp air and incredibly chilly and really unpleasant. This past weekend was similar. Saturday, overcast, windy, not that much fun. Sunday might have been technically "colder" but it was really nice.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that please don't get in the habit of setting arbitrary temp thresholds for when you'll ride outside. Take the total weather picture/forecast into account. Is the temp going to rise 3 or 5 or 10 degrees in the hours that you'll be outside? That matters too.

There are going to be plenty of days when it's not even close, not a question, you are going to be stuck inside.