Snow Day on the Bike

Kelly and I met at 8 this morning at Bent Creek to ride.  We have a new winter rule - anything above 20 degrees is fair game.  It's fortuitous that we revised our previous rule (which was flexible but definitely did not include temperatures below freezing), for two reasons: (1) it's been a crazy cold winter so far, so we'd NEVER make it out on the bike if we waited for it to warm up, and (2) it's also been a very wet winter, and it's sooo much nicer to ride frozen trails than boggy trails.  Or to not ride at all because it's too much of a mess.  So off we went this morning, but with a twist - in keeping with the MAF training, my heart rate was not to exceed 134.  Kelly is not normally the type that wants to ride slowly, but she seems somewhat interested/somewhat bemused by my low heart rate idea, so she came along for the ride.

We weren't expecting a ton of snow - it's all melted outside of the woods.  But not so much in the woods.

Which meant that not only were we CRAWLING up the hills to stay in my MAF zone, we were also creeping on the downhills because there were a lot of icy patches.  Which meant this was not exactly our fastest ride ever.

In fact, when we finished we simultaneously remarked that it was the slowest we'd ever ridden a bike in our life.  I'm kind of really banking on the MAF theory that you can get faster at the lower heart rate if you improve your aerobic conditioning.  Because honest to God, we couldn't get much slower.

But in the category of "there's always a silver lining", we did take a lot more time to stop and smell the roses - hence the pictures.  And we had a great time chatting, and now I'm back home and not sacked out for the rest of the day, which is convenient since I have a fair bit of work to do.

And, in our smelling the roses, we also found some cool ice climbing possibilities.  Not that I engage in such activities, but if one did (and Kelly does), this was apparently a pretty interesting find.

My One True Love

 I totally stopped and asked some very nice, unsuspecting biker to take this picture.  I couldn't quite bring myself to tell her it was for a blog, so I told her it was for a friend.  It's not a total lie, we're friendly, right?

All this talk of the uni was making my one true love feel neglected.  Well, that and the fact that he's been hanging in the bathroom untouched for the last. . . month??  Eek, how did the holiday order crunch do that to us?  Never fear Flash, I still love you.

Look!  I'm actually wearing a full bike kit!  For the first time in weeks!

To prove my love, Flash and I headed out for a quick ride today.  You know it's 60 degrees in December when the parking lot at Bent Creek is full at 2:00 on a Tuesday.

Proof - 2:00 on a Tuesday and the parking lot's full.  Doesn't anybody work in this town?

The weather was dreamy.  The trails. . . not quite so much.  They've been frozen, so when you add 60 degrees to frozen trails you get that lovely trail condition known as grease.  Eeps.  So after trying one trail, Flash and I stuck mainly to the fire roads.  Still totally lovely.

Lake Powhatan.

The thing about Bent Creek is, the views are beautiful, but not cleared out enough to be conducive to pictures that would provide proof.  But if you'll just trust me, the mountains are lovely, and there's a tiny white speck in this picture that is actually The Biltmore House.  Fun.


So what'd I do with the rest of my day?  Mainly lots of this:

 Playing Santa and packing lots of orders.    And if you've had the kind of November and December that I've had, then this makes you very, very happy:

Yes!  More Priority Mail envelopes delivered from the post office!  My level of excitement over these reminded me that December is not exactly an average month.  But it's still a really fun one.

I'm About Watered Out

I'm about done with the rainy exercise. Usually it doesn't bother me - my mantra is "we're waterproof", and off I go. But now I'm beginning to doubt that. Because yesterday as Robin and I were riding down South Ridge at Bent Creek, and it's raining and I don't really have enough clothes on and I'm feeling hot and cold at the same time - I wasn't feeling very waterproof. I thought I might melt at any time. Or burst into flame. Basically I felt like crap. So I'm about done with this crazy water. In self-defense I decided I wasn't going to do anything today. At least nothing strenuous. Which stinks because I missed Masters, but I think this was one of those "discretion is the better part of valor" moments.

I am going to do some actual work things today, though. Among them is tackling the etsy conundrum again. I've dabbled with having an etsy shop before, but basically all I've accomplished is discovering that you have to be committed if you want etsy to work. Committed to getting good photos, committed to staying on top of your shop and relisting. So I had let it go by the wayside, until I was reinspired last night at a seminar at HandMade In America. HandMade does a lot of cool stuff for crafters, and lately that has included a series of marketing seminars. This one was put on by Elijah and Kimberly of Leaflet PR and Figs & Ginger. It was a good "tips & tricks" of selling on etsy, and I definitely gleaned some information to jump start me back into the world of etsy.

But to be honest it was also kind of crazy because I would swear about 60% of the participants had never had any actual experience with etsy, paypal, blogs, websites, shopping carts or anything else that was fairly much integral to the subject at hand. And all I could think, every time they asked a question trying to divine the essence of paypal, was that they were in for a rocky ride. It would be about like me trying to build a space shuttle based on a one hour seminar. Totally lost. So more power to all of us potential etsy crafters out there, but if nothing else at least the seminar left me feeling grateful that I had actually been to the etsy site before. You've got to start somewhere.

So today is devoted to exploring etsy, researching how to take decent pictures at home (argh!!!), making wreaths, attending Sam's swim practice, and not one iota of exercising in the rain. Woohoo!