Sunshine!

There was a great big bright shinny sun in the sky today! Portland is great all the time; it absolutely *glows* when the sun comes out. Mt. Hood was just amazing off in the distance. Truly stunning.

So of course I went for a bike ride. I took the DDX up Thurman to Leif Erikson to Saltzman to Skyline. I managed to stay seated the whole time. The DDX is running 40x19(*edit* actually it was a 44x19, so I'm a little more manly than I thought...), so it wasn't necessarily anything to write home to Mom about, but still not a bad bit of training.

I took Skyline to Germantown Road, then u-turned and rode Skyline back to Burnside. There were a couple of decent climbs on Skyline. There were quite a few groups and solo road riders out. I'll ride that section again for sure.

They I came to the highlight of the day: Riding down Burnside! Two miles downhill at an 8% grade! I don't know how fast I was going, but it was posted at 40 MPH and I had no trouble keeping up with the cars. I could have passed the car in front of me in several spots, but chose not to do that this time. As a bonus, the song "T*****s" by The Trucks was on the Ipod during the decent. You know the one I'm talking about. It was perfect.

Overall, I'm still not getting in enough hours. The rides I am getting are quality, however, so I hope that makes up for it to some extent. The VanPort Kermeese series starts a week from today; we'll get a good test of early season fitness there, I suspect.