It's not over until...

the fat lady sings, winter that is. After a few days of dry roads and no snow or rain, we got hit again yesterday and early this morning with anywhere from 3-8 inches depending where you live in Northeast Ohio. With the sleet and freezing rain it sure looks pretty. Winter is beautiful, at least to me until you have to drive home on the stuff. Love to take better pis but these ones will have to dowhenyou are taking them from your moving car. At least we can see the sun even if we can't feel it.

Lake Erie ride

Rode with the alzheimer depends gang this morning to frozen lake Erie and back. 3.5 hrs at an easy pace.
25 degrees at the start, about 32 when we finished.

Week

Long week at work, fair week training wise. Hit Hinckley lake for laps on Wednesday. 3 miles around the lake of short punchy climbs and you get and excellent workout. Hit 4 of the climbs hard and rest in between. Ended up with 6 laps. I'll increase by 1 or 2 next week.
The temps have been great but dropping again into the 30's today and rain and or snow for tomorrow. Last night the wind was howling but went out for a ride anyways. Hit the path north from Strongsville and there was only a few runners on the trail taking advantage of the warm temps. It always surprises me how the direction of the wind can change in a minute when riding there, it just swirls and changes directions constanly.
On the way out and back I had both head and tail wind. Riding the single speed was a bit hard at times if you got hit with a wind gust and I'm glad I rode the path because a few times it pushed me all the way across into the grass or left over snow/ice. You don't really want to be on the road and get pushed by the wind across the road with headlights coming straight at you.
Planning on riding the new Jamis 29er for the first time today to dial in my position.
Later.

Ready or not...

I have my new 29er.

Picked it up a couple Saturdays ago under a raging snow fall.
Thanks to the boys at Edge Outdoors for putting it together. The Geax barro tires are off and for now I'm running different tires. If I was to get a flat in the middle of nowhere, there's no way I was going to get the tires off the rims. Jason and I broke two tire levers trying to get them off and he cut his fingers and spilled blood over my new rims, my new American Classic rims, can you imagine that.
Can't wait to ride it off road when we take our anual trip to Asheville in March. Plus a short trip to Florida in April to ride Croom and Santos trails.
I have to put in some serious training.

It was good, but this is now

I had a great time during my week in PR riding close to 500 miles in less than a week but I'm here now and I have to make the best of it. Hopefully the groudhog was right and we'll have an early spring. Temps finally going to be over 30 and 40's coming next week. We go from the tundra to floods.
Hoping the park roads are in good shape for a Sunday ride.

More Vuelta pics

Vuelta pics.

After I got home my head cold got worse and my voice went and it hurt to talk. My voice is  almost
back to normal, lots of warm tea with honey.
Here's a few more pics from the ride. As usual I didn't take enough pics. Enjoy these ones.
Waiting for the start

 The start

 The climb

 The Crew

 Nephew

 The women of La Vuelta

 My niece after the first day, 151 miles

Back home

3 cancelled flights and a night in Atlanta, I'm finally home without a bike and luggage. The dummies at the Delta counter in PR after my flight got re-routed to Atlanta didn't send it through to Cleveland. The good new is that it was found and it should be here tonight...hopefully all of it. I'm glad I wrapped the box twice with 3 inch plastic tape, it rained hard and long last night in Atlanta. I saw a few card board bike boxes at the airport in PR with no tape protecting the box. Hopefully they were going somewhere dry.
Waiting in Atlanta.


The good wife coming to pick me up. 27 and snow plus a lot of ice that fell last night. The pilot did a great job landing for a moment I thought the wing was going to clip the tarmac.

Stuck in Atlanta

My flight to JFK was cancelled cause the weather, got re-routed to Atlanta and 2 connecting flights to Cleveland were cancelled. This airport is so big the Captain tolds us after landing that we had a 5 mile trip to the gate.  I'm here spending the night at a Clarion hotel watching tv. Wake up call at 6am and catch a flight at 9:50. I may get stuck here again tomorrow, who knows. Can't wait to get home and hug my wife.

Safe, tired, sunburned with a head cold in Atlanta.