Tapas On Two Wheels

I "Googled" for a definition of tapas. Here are a couple of them:

• Burning away impurities through self-discipline.
  
• Penance, austerity, voluntary suffering to vanquish impurities and to achieve the higher.
• Sanskrit word meaning "heat".

I think today's ride qualifies with respect to the first two and fails miserably with respect to the third. I rolled this morning around 0435. I was planning on a couple of laps of Sunset Park in Rock Island before turning for work. I did manage to do them. I hit the door at work with 21 miles to put me at 99 miles remaining. Oh yeah... it was raining... it was 34F. Obviously, there was no heat involved.

The ride home was short since I cleared work late. I am always running out of daylight at the end of the ride now. I can't wait for December 21st when the days start getting longer again. The conditions for that were snow and wind. It's so much fun to ride on/in fresh show. You hear nothing except the crunch of the snow under your wheels. The falling snow acts bike a blanket muffling all of the "normal" sounds. It also brings a stillness with it.

There was one little exciting bit coming home. When I applied the brakes leaving work, the rear calipers wouldn't release. They were literally frozen. When I got home, the bike went onto the repair stand so I could get the cables and calipers dried out. After I got back from the sparsely attended Tuesday night class, I got them working fine again and all is good to go in the morning.

Mileage Update - 87 to go. The end is near. I just need three good rides or three more ugly ones.