Ride Interrupted

The weather continues to make a mockery of my namesake blog. Friday was another cold but dry and sunny day. My ride plan was a short but steep loop that starts at the base of the west hills, follows sweeping switchbacks through the upper crust neighborhoods of Westover, Hillside, and NW Heights, past Pittock Mansion, eventually topping out about 3 miles up. The entire loop is less than 10 miles and takes me an hour. It's a good route when I don't want to spend a lot of time riding, or when the weather's bad and the goal is to get out and back home quickly. Today the weather was not an issue. As you can see, sunny and clear.

Top of Lovejoy, view of Portland and Fremont Bridge

The first sign of trouble appeared early in the climb at the base of the first switchback.... Ice? Frost? What is that? There were orange cones around it, so I attributed what appeared to be an icy patch to workmen having spilled water on the road or a burst pipe. A few hundred feet later, though, I again spotted what looked like frost patches on the road. Then more. It wasn't until I came across about 1/2 dozen of these that I was willing to consider that there might be frost on the road. But the patches were sparse enough that I could easily ride around them. Until.....

Icy Cold Patch

....less than halfway up the climb, the road turned entirely white. I dismounted and, still not quite willing to admit it, tested the ground with my hands. Frosty indeed. Wondering if the streets higher up might be in the sun and thus frost free, I walked to the top of the hill but saw that the road ahead was as bad as the road behind. So I walked back to the nearest dry spot and rode back down to the car. There is nothing as discombobulating as a workout interrupted. Go home or try again? I was already dressed and the temperature wasn't too bad so I drove to one of my other parking spots and did a short, frost-free ride on sunnier west-facing roads. Got a personal best on Girlfriend's Old Germantown hill climb with a time of 17:54. All's well that ends well.


In other news...

Mystery Picture; note the furry legs

Saturday night dinner. Carrot and sweet potato soup, courtesy of Chris. With roasted asparagus.