Fair Weather Rider

Yep that's me, I've just decided. OMG it's turned cold!! I took all my warm gear when I went to work today, I knew it would get colder as night hit, and it's been getting dark earlier. But wow it really did turn tonight, Autumn is over :( I got to test out the gear tonight, thermal liners in the summer gloves, nope not good enough. My hands weren't freezing I'll give them that, but the gloves with liners are tight and hard to move in, the trip home is only about 8 minutes and my hands were starting to get cold already. The jacket, which has always kept me warm travelling round town, even on the scooter in the dead of winter, let in the cold tonight. And I decided today to take my old open face helmet, the idea being that my full face has the tinted visor on it so I'd have to ride with it up anyway when I came home, and then I didn't have to try to take off the Senna as well ... bad idea, I'd forgotten how much wind I got with that helmet! If I do have to ride tomorrow I'm taking all the stuff off the Shark and wearing that .. my face is only now starting to thaw.

I walked in the door tonight and said to hubby, I'm not riding the bike tomorrow. Am I a fair weather rider? Hell yeah, it was just too cold tonight for me to think. My ride home didn't feel good, I felt like I wasn't concentrating properly. I'm not sure if it was the cold starting to seep in, or I was just tired, but I felt wrong. Taking corners, something I'm still cautious about, felt wrong, and I found myself doing an interesting thing. I was looking where my headlight was going instead of through the corner like I normally do. I don't really like riding at night as it is, but I think battling the cold as well just sapped all the joy out of it.

My husbands response to my flippant comment as I walked into the warmth was, well in a week you're going to be riding in it all day. Yep we're going to be riding in cold, I understand that, but I'm hoping the thermal stuff I'll have underneath will help. I didn't wear the thermal understuff or I would have died at work. The other factor is, even early morning rides aren't going to be as cold as it was tonight, I hope, and at least it'll warm up as the day goes on. I'm going to have to work out the gloves though, the set of winter gloves I have are a touch too big, the main problem is that they gradually slip off my hands as I ride, I mentioned that to my boss, who is an awesome sewer, and she came up with putting more Velcro on so that I can do the wrist straps up tighter. I'm going to try that and if it doesn't work I may just have to go for a flying trip to Orange to the only bike shop that has a pair of winter gloves I've tried on that fit and see if I can get someone to serve me. My feet and legs were warm as toast though, yay.

I really don't know if I will continue to ride to work when I have to ride home at night, at least during winter. I love the ride to work, it's a chance to ride (always a bonus) and it's a bit of a chance to just kinda veg out before I get down to a stressful day at work. I have come to love that ride, but I don't get to do it as often as I'd like to lately, getting up early in the morning after having no sleep (due to insomnia) means I'm just not comfortable attempting to ride on three days of the week, and on the two days when I start work later in the day I'm finishing in the dark now that winter has hit, and cold. So maybe as far as commuting on the bike for work it's going to be a summer thing, ah well I'll just have to make sure I get more weekend riding in :D

But ... I still love my bike !!!