Hot, hot, hot!

I spent the early part of the day working on my mom's 91 Civic, preparing it for sale. It's pretty sound mechanically, but pretty ugly looking. I bought some bumper slide brackets on eBay to re-attach the front bumper, and I ended up machining a 3/4" spacer with a couple of holes for the mounting bolts on the driver's side to even out the bumper since the metal bumper had been pushed in. I also did a bit of MacGyver engineering on the rear passenger's side busted slide bracket to make it work. Finally, I spent some time with rubbing compound trying to buff out the oxidized paint before deciding that it was going to take far too much effort to make a real difference. There are a few little things I might still fix (cracked DS mirror, cracked windshield, busted antenna), but I'm going to post it to Craigslist this weekend and fix the other items as time allows until the car sells.

I haven't blogged in a while, and it's not because I've been riding a lot. In fact, I only have ~1200 miles on the road bike this year, which is pretty sad. I'm going to try to make a late season run at a reasonable showing in the King of the Rockies race at WP next month, and right now that means I need to log some miles.

Because of the car work, I got a late start on my ride, leaving the house around 4pm. I was worried it was going to be super-hot since we've had a near-record-setting 14 days in a row of 90+ degrees in Denver; but fortunately, the clouds were out and I never felt like I was overheating. I did, however, feel the need to consume a lot of water.

I stopped for water at the little shop just before the big downhill on the north side of Carter Lake. They have a bike rack out front and a sign that reads "Cyclist Parking", which (to me) implies they are cyclist-friendly. I walked in, water bottle in hand, and asked politely if I could fill my water bottle. I was shocked by the rude response: "No. We have to pay for that water." I walked out without saying another word.

So, looking at a recent Longmont utility bill, I pay .002530 dollars per gallon for the first 10,000 gallons of water I use. Let's say that this campground needs to have water delivered and stored in a tank due to its remote location, and with gas prices going up...let's say it's 10x as expensive. Thus, we're talking 2.5 cents per gallon. An average water bottle holds no more than 22oz. of water, even less since I had brought along some Cytomax and dumped it in the bottle, but let's stick with the 22oz. figure to be on the safe side. Thanks to Google for the conversion:

22 US fluid ounces = 0.171875 US gallons

Hence, filling my water bottle would have cost

0.17875 US gallons x 2.5 cents/gallon = 0.45 cents

I could have rounded up and offered him a penny...think he would have been offended?

In any case, the ride was 68 miles of goodness. I hit 54.5mph on the backside of Carter (on the low side of what I usually see), then continued up over the backside of Horsetooth into Fort Collins and back. Sights along the way included some pigeons humping in the road, a deer crossing right at the deer crossing sign, a yellow Lamborghini Murcielago cruising the opposite direction just as a Larimer County Sheriff's vehicle passed me, a Volvo 164...nothing so interesting that I regretted not having a camera with me, but enough to keep me entertained.

I rolled up to my door around 7:45, and I was very happy to be done. My legs were very tired (on the verge of twitching for the last half hour--must have been low on electrolytes or nutrition!), and I had a hot spot under the middle metatarsal of my left foot for the last 1.5h. That's become a pretty regular occurrence, regardless of what pedals or shoes I'm using. I should probably go see a podiatrist about it.

Tomorrow Craig is coming up early for a ride at Hall Ranch, so it's off to bed I go!