Frozen Cyclist (on a stick)!

And the above picture pretty much sums up the way I felt when I rode in to school this morning!  You see, when I finally arrived at school this is what Weather.com said the outside temperature was;



Of course, the good folk over at The National Weather Service said the temperature was actually 20 degrees but I'm not going to get into the debate over whose more accurate.  To tell the truth, at those temperatures, four degrees really doesn't mean much.  Especially when the wind is gusting up to 25 mph!  It really felt like I was riding on rollers in a walk-in cooler!!!!  I truly just felt like an popcycle shaped like a cyclist.  Of course, this is not to confuse me with Jose Jalapeno on a stick who is usually much warmer (being a jalapeno) than I was;




Of course it could be worse, it could be like cycling in the Antarctic;



Now I have to say as I rode in I saw a lot of curious faces.  Well, not so much curious as flabbergasted.  They sort of looked like this;

(What the ????????)

Although (speaking of lemurs) I have to say that at one point during this morning's ride I felt like this (fast forward to :52 and leave it there a while);



Mainly becuase I was pedaling as fast as I could but with the wind gusts on my nose, I was only averaging 15 mph!!!!   But mostly people seeing me ride into work were asking me the simple question "Why?"  Well, its not so I can do my impersonation of an Emperor Penguin;



Though I suppose if I WERE a penguin I would be more like this guy;



But it would be a cross between dancing and cycling I think.

No, the real reason I'm riding in this weather is that I have to get used to a couple of things - 1) Riding EVERY day (or at least ALMOST every day) and 2) Riding in all kinds of weather.  I realize it probably won't get to be 20 degrees at any point during my ride IN THE SUMMER but I do have to get used to riding in some degree of coldness as I'll be passing over a couple of mountain ranges.  I also have to get used to riding in the wind.  We're planning on leaving at the end of June and traveling east to catch some of the westward winds but there's never a guarantee - especially on the plains of Kansas!

So, I plug away and I'll keep on riding in all kinds of weather becuase I just can't see the possibility of telling the kids of Sunrise, "oh, I couldn't cycle the whole way becuase it was too cold (or rainy, or windy, or hot)."  No, its 3600 miles or bust come rain, shine, hail, tornado (okay, hail storns and tornadoes MAY slow me down a bit), fog, gloom, and dark of night.  Hey, maybe I should just work for the US Postal Service.  But of course, we know they don't support cyclists!

Okay, its time to retire for the night and get ready for tomorrow's big commuting ride - at least its supposed to be warmer!

Stay well and I'll see you on the road!