What a view of the big lake this morning. 74 and sunny at my house, 58 and dense fog along the North Shore Drive. It's kind of cool riding in the dense fog, in that those variations in the terrain just seem to disappear. Only you legs can tell if you are going up hill or down. And eerily quiet. I actually rode with music today. I keep the volume down and ride the shoulder just to be safe. The shoulder is wide, smooth, and clean up the shore for the most part, but I don't push my luck. My BlackBerry has a shuffle mode in it's media player, so it's a great way to listen to an eclectic verity of tunes.
The fog lifted about a half hour into my ride, and warmed up a bit. This was indeed an almost perfect ride. The wind was very light, as was the traffic. Plenty of other cyclists were enjoying it, too. I saw maybe 15 others out riding, but didn't hook up with any. I passed a few and wasn't passed by anyone.
Speaking of the BlackBerry, this has real turned out to be an almost ideal riding companion. The I-Phone and some of the other smart phones have similar features and capabilities. The GPS, the ride data collection via Allsport GPS service, the media player, Google maps, a decent camera, and some others I haven't explored really make for a nice package. No need to haul around a bunch of separate gadgets when this current generation of phones does them all well.
I'm looking to do 150 miles this week, so I hope the rain holds off. I don't mind the heat and humidity, I just don't like lightning. Being fried on the bike would just absolutely ruin my day.
