Like the passeggiata - or the evening stroll
And the Nougat festivities with mulled wine at Christmas Time
But my favorite personal tradition is still the Christmas Day Bike Ride...
With the promise of clear skies, I made some left over breakfast, and suited up, watching the weather reports for that 10 o'clock hour when it was supposed to be clearing up... 10:15, helmet on, open the front door to sheeting rain.
(insert your favorite curse word here)
I literally laid back on the couch, cycling shoes hanging over the edge, helmet on, and ran a litany of shitty thoughts about the holidays I don't really like, why on earth a shut town, empty roads, and people staying indoors has to come at the time of year when the weather is most shitty and unpredictable, all the childhood disappointments that I could remember this time of year... a veritable downward spiral of stinking thinking was on its way to becoming Day-Drinking and regrets...
Then something rang in my head...
"If it was easy - everyone would do it!" The quote I try to live by when things are less than perfect conditions, when you forget your cycling shoes and you are at the trail-head, when you have no water bottles and someone lends you a draw string souvenir backpack and a nalgene, when you had expectations but dont want to spoil the moment. Ironically by the time I swapped my fest and wind jacket for a bulky rain jacket and headed out the door I was receiving a text replying to my complaints of weather with my own words - "If it was easy - Everyone would do it."
Soaking wet within 30 minutes, and only mist for the next 3 hours, two friend visits, one that supplied grocery bags to keep my feets dry and toasty, some killer views, and roads mostly to myself I was on my way to feeling unstoppable again.
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| Loni in the Christmas Spirit |
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| NOT the same pic - but the same hill a few miles later... |
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| Old Turnpike is one of my Favorite dirt road climbs... |
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| ...and there is some skinny singletrack right off of it. |
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| we use the word "overlook" loosely on days like this. |
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| couldn't even see the end of the parking lot |
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| fog also hides the gradient of hills and before I knew it I was back towards town. |
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| cut through a very foggy and still greenway, |
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| feelin stronger than these Doodes... |
...And speaking of the Greenway.... Stay tuned for more info as it happens but in 2017
50Mileradiusadventures will be adopting a chunk of the Greenway - and im SUPER excited about it!
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