Autumn rides

The drought cost us color and the extended warmth cost us the feeling of fall, so Thursday was the first bike ride that really felt like fall at all — a bright, sunny day with lots of leaves on the ground, the smell of rot beginning to fill the air (and waiting for today’s rains to really set things in motion). It was the kind of day where you’re quite comfortable out in the sun and freezing the moment you ride into a shady canopy. The difference between the 60s in summer and the 60s in fall is that in fall, you can feel the heat leaving the earth. That some weird angle of the earth could produce these incredibly different seasons just seems so strange sometimes.

The oddness of this riding season, my longer rides are coming now, at the end of it. (To the extent that it ends; last season, the only month I didn’t ride was February.) The new bike has not made me faster or given me the time to take longer rides, but it is vastly easier to handle and lets me come home from a ride twice as long as my average without being completely exhausted. At this point, though, a century sure looks a long way away, unless I find the flattest century around. My average speed in the hills around here is what feels like a respectable 25.6kph, which is almost 16mph — which feels fine and plenty fast when I’m doing it, but would mean more than a 6 hour century, if I could even keep the pace that long. So I’ve either gotta get faster, find a one-way downhill century, or give up this ridiculous dream. So of course I’m gonna have to get faster.