July 15 Sunday Afternoon Ride

Spent the morning hanging out with my wife and kids. Even squeezed in a viewing of the funny and meaningful movie, "Despicable Me."After lunch I attended to about 3 hours of "get ready for the coming week" type of paperwork.

So by 3:30 pm I am ready to stretch my legs and spin my feet.

This will be another great day for "hot weather conditioning." It is, with the humidex, 34 C (93 F). Not my favorite temp. But if I am going to cruise Route 66 across Arizona in September, I'd better get used to a little bit of warmth. (Our daily temps on that ride will be reaching to 38 C (100 F.)

So I slap on the sunscreen, load up my bike to "travel weight" (i.e., bike rack bag and backpack loaded to weight of what I will be carrying in September for four days).

I aim for a one hour ride. Attempt to keep my speed in the 18-20 kph (11-12.5 mph) "cruising range."

I am successful. The hot, humid ride lasts for one hour and 12 minutes. My average speed is 19.4 kph (12 mph). I eat one no-name brand power bar (Probably the Sport's world equivilent to watered down gasoline) and drink two liters of water. That's about twice the fluids I drink in a "regular" biking hour. But I decided to err on the safe side instead of risking dehydration. I was sweating big time. I also hydrated significantly by drinking about a liter of water a half hour before my ride.

If the weather permits, I'll try to squeeze in an early morning ride tomorrow before heading to the office.

I've crossed (by road :-) this usually nicely flowing stream many times before. But here in Ontario, as in much of the North American "mid West" (Ontario is geographically the northern part of the Ohio Valley), we are experiencing a Stage 2 Drought. Water is desperately needed. The streams have stopped flowing and weeds and grasses are sucking up the remaining water. We have "chances" of rain or thunderstorms weekly. But nothing is falling from the sky in any helpful significant quantities.