Early April

Well, after today, I have ridden 76.70 miles so far this April. Pretty good, considering I rode 60 or so in all of March. Year to date, I've ridden 152.60 miles, which doesn't include trainer time (I don't think).

Today's ride was incredible. Originally, the forecast for today was rainy and in the 50s. Lo and behold, it turned out to be in the mid-70s and sunny. Gotta love New England! We cut our pre-planned rainy day activities short and rushed home. As we were heading out the door to get on the road, it started to sprinkle. By the stop sign in front of our neighbors house, it had progressed to a drizzle. A little after 5 miles into the ride, after we had climbed up into Harvard, it starts to rain very hard. Around the 6 mile mark, it started to thunder, and we saw some lightening. For those of you familiar with Harvard, we were on Oak Hill Road, Pinnacle Road, and Old Littleton Road, which is the area around Carlson Orchards, and is very exposed feeling. During a thunderstorm. The rest of the ride was more or less uneventful (we didn't come close to getting hit by lightening, but it was kind of neat to be out riding during the storm). About 15 miles into the ride, the sun came out again & we started to dry out.



It wasn't a cold rain, it wasn't windy, and we didn't get struck by lightening - so it was a good ride. We really enjoyed hearing the frogs croaking away after the rain had passed - I had forgotten how much I missed the "peepers". We climbed about 330 feet today, all told. We can do better.

Once again, we saw some wildlife in Harvard - a herd of deer were grazing in a farmer's field on Elderidge Road. There were about 8 or 10 of them, grazing in the steam rising off the soil in the sun in this neat little hollow between two hills, and they picked their heads up to watch us pass. Amazing. There is just something about that area.

On our way home, about a mile from our house on our street, we surprised a wood duck and some other kind of water fowl. I'm not sure what it was, really, but it was something I hadn't seen before. I suppose it was most likely a female domestic wood duck, but it also kind of looked like a "Common Goldeneye".

All told, I've ridden 152 miles so far this year/season and have burned almost 6,000 calories - almost 4,000 of those in the past 10 days or so. The season is ramping up, and it's going well so far.

Bolton Littleton Ramble

While checking out MapMyRide, I came across a common route that we typically do early in the season, or later in the year as a recovery-type ride. The ease of inserting this info here is really amazing, so I'm going to participate in some gratuitous linking/inserting. Bear with me.

April Showers...

... bring May flowers? Let's hope so. Earlier this week, the forecast for this coming Sunday was for a sunny day in the mid-50s, so were planning a ride. Now they are calling for rain and 43 degrees. Another weekend of riding in the basement - there isn't much that is less appealing than sitting on the trainer in a cold & dark basement for an hour or so. Unless, of course, you consider riding in a 40 degree rain at 20 MPH with cars whipping past you.

On the training front, Ken has been getting up early before work to ride the trainer in the mornings, since we appear to be unable to get to it in the evenings. Good for him! As the sun gets up earlier and earlier, we might actually be able to squeeze in a run or a trip to the gym before he catches the train into the city.

I forgot to mention that during last weekend's ride, we had our first unusual wildlife spotting. As we came around a corner just before the Old Frog Pond farm we came across a beaver making it's way across the pond (the old frog pond?). We were close enough that we could actually make out its eyes. I'm not sure I've had the opportunity to see an active beaver in the wild (not on display at some zoo), but there it was in broad daylight, swimming toward us (more or less).