It’s New Year’s Day, today.  Time for resolutions and all that.  I actually make resolutions every year, but I’m usually very private about it.  I’m very superstitious (I know, intellectually, that superstitions are silly, but I often choose to ignore my intellect anyway . . .), and somehow it just seems to me that starting the New Year with a certain mindset or frame of mind is important.  So I always ride my bike on January 1st.  Since I’ve been riding, anyway.

In past years I’ve done the annual ride put on by my LBS, The Spin Cycle.  But there’s a little note on their website that says they won’t go if the weather is “inclement.”  Hmmm.  Today this was a dilemma.

 My friend Lisa Angel and I were planning to do the ride together–neither of us has ridden outside since Christmas, and she had even reined in her New Year’s plans so that she’d be up and at ‘em in time this morning.  The only possible kink in the plan was a cold front that started pushing through last night.  It was supposed to rain off and on this morning, clearing up in the afternoon, and bringing colder temps.  So when I got up this morning, it was nearly 70 and very cloudy, and the roads were wet, but it wasn’t actually raining.  We talked on the phone, and hemmed and hawed about it, and finally decided to bag the organized, 10 AM ride.  Surely, we reasoned, it made sense to wait until the afternoon, when the skies would be clear, rather than risk getting caught in the downpour that was bound to happen late in the morning.

So we waited.  I made soup.  I did dishes.  I sliced oranges to make some marmalade.  I looked at the Doppler.  Delaney had a friend over.  Toby watched football.  It was warm and cozy and puttery in my house.  I had very little desire to leave.

But we decided that 2 o’clock was our drop-dead time–we had to get on the road by then, or we’d be pushing too close to dark getting back home.  So when we talked at 1:45, it wasn’t raining, so we decided to go forward.  By the time Lisa got to my house, it was drizzling.  Hmmm.

Ever the intrepid adventurers, we got on the bikes and headed out.  Lisa’s first comment was that the last time she had started a ride in the rain was in Vietnam.  That got my attention–you don’t really expect someone to say that, even if you know full well she did a bike tour in Vietnam several years ago.  So of course, I couldn’t be a wuss.  At least it’s not cold today, right?

Mm-hmm.  Not cold at all–indoors.  That whole cold front thing?  It’s called that for a reason.  While it was pouring on us (the really wet kind of pouring; sloshing-in-my-shoes kind of wet), the temperature was going down.  It dropped 10 degrees during the course of our 30 mile ride.  It did, mercifully, stop raining in the last half hour, but by then we were so wet it didn’t matter a whole lot.

The whole time we were riding in the rain (some of which was a stinging, wind-driven downpour), we were uncomfortably conscious of the fact that we had waited through the whole dry morning before we headed out in the rain.  I was convinced that every driver who splashed by us in a warm, dry car–and there were an amazing number, given that it was a holiday–was laughing at us, knowing that we had skipped a perfectly good, dry ride in favor of insanity. 

Interesting observation:  hard-core chatting can distract one from all manner of miseries.  We have ridden together a fair amount over the years, and it’s always good catching-up time, but we were both working today to keep the talk flowing.  It was kind of amazing to me how well it worked–as long as we were talking, I wasn’t thinking about my cold, numb feet (too much).  And at one point I realized just how miserable I’d be if I was alone, and I was very grateful not to be!

So now it’s a new year.  Lisa had wise words about today’s ride–she said that if this was the first ride of the year, then things could only get better.  Later, after my feet thawed out, I was pretty pleased to have ridden in nasty weather.  I know it’s what I have to do to build mental toughness, and to be ready for whatever PBP throws at me, and the only way to prepare for misery is to practice.  At least today I got to be miserable with company!

 Aside:  I did actually have one New Year’s resolution, and it has nothing to do with cycling.  I thought about the concept of resolutions a lot on the ship, and decided that my best chance of following through on one would be to think of something very specific.  So here it is–I’m going to leave the house 5 minutes early for appointments and school pick-ups.  There.  Now it’s public.  If you see me at the grocery store at 2:30 in the afternoon, feel free to remind me.