I'm Stuck In Colder Weather... Maybe Tomorrow Will Be Better

We just keep getting more snow and the bottom just keeps dropping out of the temps lately, this of course has made for some difficult riding or even finding days to ride on. This weekend was super nipply and the next few days look to be bringing even colder temps, some of them could maybe crack the top 10 coldest days in Omaha history. While it's not likely it is possible but it'll need to get to at least -25° to do that and the forecast only has us dropping to -21° overnight tonight. Close but no frozen cigar.


Sunday was cold but not unbearably cold, the wind chills were up there... or down there depending on how you want to look at it... for sure but wind chill is all about how the air feels on bare skin. That being said caution should definitely be exercised when dealing with wind chill but there is a world of difference between actual temperatures in the -28° range versus the wind chill making it feel that cold on exposed skin. The actual temp on Sunday when I ventured out was a balmy -7° for actual temperature. There is a saying that there is no bad weather, only bad clothes. I'm not sure I totally subscribe to that philosophy because there is a limit to how good your clothes can possibly be but if you have good gear and cover any exposed skin -7° is completely ridable. A few years back I participated in the Fat Bike Frozen Forty in Minnesota and the actual temps a the beginning of that ride were right around - 15° and gradually rose to around 5-10° above zero but it climbed really slowly over the seven and a half hours and 47 something miles on the bike. To date that's probably the coldest ride I've done but even then, once I got going I felt fine. If you're so inclined you can read about that experience HERE. Back to Sunday, I decided to bundle up and venture out and see about getting in a lap around the nursery and see how I felt. While the ride was a mere 4 miles it was a tough 4 miles with the recent snow so that 4 miles took me a little under an hour and a half total time. I did try to putter around a little bit after the nursery loop but you could tell that traffic had been almost non existent beyond that and it wasn't a ton of fun trying to break trail in those drifts so I called it a day and headed for the car. Even in the cold of Sunday I ended up needing to open the vents on the Cobrafists and had to pull the Lung Cookie down to keep from over heating. It might be hard to believe but I feel like I was maybe a little bit over dressed for the ride. This is how I remember winter as a kid, 4-5 months out of the year where I'm from in Montana the average temperature is near or below freezing and we always had snow on the ground. Always, shoot I remember some winters I swear you didn't see a bare street in front of the house from November through February. I'm beginning to not be a big fan of the constant snow this year but it doesn't happen all that often around these parts so I suppose we were due. Still it'll be nice near the end of the week when temps finally get above freezing, we probably won't get any new snow fall this weekend but everything is going to be super sloppy.




With the weather being so cold I've been doing a lot more cooking and that leads to a lot more eating. I'm going to have to start knocking out centuries as soon as the weather turns just to burn off half those calories. Saturday I whipped up my take on Noodles and Company's Pesto Cavatappi only with Mostaccioli since it's almost impossible to find Cavatappi noodles. I added "mid-west fresh" shrimp, fresh minced garlic, fresh chopped onion and fresh diced roma tomatoes and did a nice jalapeno, cheddar bread with butter and fresh minced garlic. No vampires were coming over for dinner that night.


Dessert was this minuscule Key Lime Pie, which I did not make but bought instead. I'd like to get into baking more also but I'm a little anemic on baking equipment at the moment. Plus I am a sucker for sweets so the more I make the more I eat, it's sort of not a bad problem to have until you lose a toe or two to the die-a-beatus.

Hoping to get out for a little bit longer ride this weekend than the usual 3-7 mile rides from the last few weekends but we will see how things pan out. Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day and got to do something fun over the chilly weekend.