God bless him

At 6:30 this morning, I may or may not have said something along the lines of "I might try to go for a bike ride tonight."  You see, my husband calls the kids on his way to work (at various job sites - an electrician) because they get up just before he has to BE at the job site (which is nearly always out of town by as little as 30 min and as much as 2 hours).  So I just mentioned it in passing after we discussed that we didn't have much on tap this evening.

After knocking out the drafting on nearly six pages of sanitary sewer plans today, I wasn't so much feeling it.  But the weather was warm (still 70° at bedtime!) and some clouds had started to form (so less hot than earlier in the day).  Dh (dear husband) asked if I was going on my bike ride.  I wondered aloud if I might get rained on.  He assured me that it wasn't likely.  Then I tried a lame excuse about being tired of my boring route.  He suggested I head a different way, but still close enough.  I tried to see if I should bag it to fix dinner.  He assured me that he'd cook the ham steak and it would be ready when I got home. 

No excuses left, I changed into my neon orange running shirt and bike shorts and clipped in for an hour of fun.  I mention that it is a "running" shirt only because it became obvious to me why people buy cycling jerseys.  Umm..they are longer in the back!  Thankfully, this shirt didn't contribute to "crack" issues, but I was a little aware of how much I bent over on the bike.

Road out to the other end of Algoa (big hill on way out), then across the highway on the overpass, down Liberty (and UP Liberty - long ass hellish hill), then across highway (at-grade intersection that is sometimes dangerous, but thankfully rather void of cars), then WHEE! down the hill by the Hwy Patrol and looped Scholastic before heading home.  Got to the house with 58 min on the watch and decided to ride up the street a ways to get in a full hour (plus a minute or so).  Total mileage was 13.79 - and I'm good with that because I averaged 13.5 mph even with some nasty climbing. 

But I really do need to find some different routes as I get to adding distance.  It is nice to have a change of scenery.  Got back and dh did indeed have our meat cooked (side dishes really aren't in his purview).  I ate several bites of the deliciously salty meat and drank some water while he and my son washed the dishes (apparently my daughter never made it inside to eat - oops).  Then dh wanted to go for a walk so I clicked off a couple more miles with him.  I kind of wanted to run it - how weird is that?!  But it was nice to just chat along and walk briskly with my tall guy (considering a year ago I couldn't have kept up with him much less held a conversation at that pace).  He managed to organize pawning off our daughter on his sister Sat evening (and son is going out of town with a friend) so SCORE - DATE NIGHT!!  Lovely news on our lovely walk.  God bless him.