06 June 2014

An Ideal Ride, Almost

Many cyclists have their own, very particular definitions of the "perfect" conditions for a bike ride.

Me, I don't have one scenario for the ideal ride.  Rather, I have a few different visions of the best conditions for a day of pedaling.

One of them came true today.  The temperature was neither too warm nor too cool:  For most of my ride, they hovered between 21 and 25C (70 to 77F).  They started as the former and rose to the latter before dropping back as I approached the Atlantic shoreline.  Further inland, the temperature rose to 30C (86F), according to the weather reports I saw. But I was spared that.



But even more important were the sky and light.  The sun shone, mostly through a filter of puffy clouds that did not threaten rain.  So I enjoyed the benefit of bright light without having the sun beating directly on me as it did during my Somerville ride on Memorial Day.

Plus, I encountered relatively light traffic.  I figured I would, which is one of the reasons I decided to do another Point Lookout ride today.  Tomorrow, the weather is expected to be the same, maybe a degree or two warmer.  Because it will be a Saturday, throngs of people will flock to anyplace with a beach.  But today I didn't have to be around them:  Long stretches of sun, sand and waves were almost entirely mine!



The only "smudge", if you will, in this picture was the wind.  It's not that I'm wind-adverse.  Rather, I found myself riding with the wind on the way out, but I had to buck it on the way back.  Like most cyclists, I prefer the opposite.  But I won't complain:  Everything else, including Tosca, was Ideal.  And any day I can ride is a blessing.

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