Winter Road Biking

Rick and I are planning on riding a century (100 miles) at the beginning of Spring Break, so we are trying to get as much time in the saddle before then to prepare for it. Unfortunately, it's still a bit chilly outside so we really have to bundle up when we ride. It's easy to put on a couple of shirts and a warm jacket, warm gloves, winter hats, even double layers of biking pants, but our feet are hard to bundle up. Our biking shoes are made for warmer weather so they are ventilated to let the air flow through and keep our feet cool. That doesn't work very well when it's cold outside. Rick has a pair of neoprene booties that he cut out to fit over his biking shoes, but I don't have those, so we've gotten a little creative. As a preface to what we did today, on our first ride I didn't have anything but one pair of socks and my biking shoes. My toes FROZE. So on our second ride, I put a plastic bag over my socks and inside my shoes to cut out the wind. My feet were a little warmer, but my toes still FROZE. Today, we put our heads together and decided to insulate my shoes, so I put an old pair of wool socks on the outside of my shoes and Rick then covered them with duck tape. I was afraid that my feet would get too warm, but with only 41 degree weather, sadly my toes FROZE even worse today than the other two days. Here's what my space age shoes looked like:

I know, I'm sure I looked like a total dork, but then to make it more funny (for me anyway), I was listening to my iPod and for some reason I had five different renditions of "Carol of the Bells" on it that played in a row! So I was freezing while listening to Christmas music. Rick actually got cold, too, so we only were able to ride 23 miles today before we had to stop and get warm.

Most People Just Trade in Their Cars...

It's true, right? Most people just trade in their cars. It's too expensive to keep, there's too much maintenance needed, you just don't need the extra car, you need a bigger/smaller car...take your pick. There are many reasons to trade in your car. We never seem to have gotten that MEMO about trading in our car. We just smash them up and hope it's the other guy's fault so we can replace them. (Who was in charge of sending out that MEMO????) Here's our history:

In 2004, Rick hit a cow on the dark highway coming home from river rafting the Selway. Luckily, the rancher was at fault and we were able to replace the car:

In 2007, Whitney was driving by the high school when a lady pulled out in front of her and Whitney hit her. The other lady was at fault so we replaced that car:

In 2009 (two days ago), Kendall was driving down Canal when she rear-ended a lady. Unfortunately, our luck ran out this time and it was all Kendall's fault. The car was totaled:Without c/c coverage, we're out a car. Now we have three drivers (four in May) who will need to share one car. Aaron will actually take that car with him when he goes to BYU-I in April, so we will have no car for those drivers. The good news is that experience in life makes you stronger and teaches good lessons. Maybe paying for their own cars will help my kids be even more responsible when they drive. Time to tune up the bicycles.