Day 73

Finally cold enough for the swim cap.  Sometimes I can't believe more people don't wear them on a ride, they practically work like a thermos for your head and take up almost no room under the helmet.  Apart from that, tonight was the first snowfall I've seen for the year, and I discovered a few equipment shortfalls while I was out tonight.  So, it turns out that my jacket and gloves are much less water resistant in the snow... within 10 minutes I had puddles in my gloves!  Also, no front fender wasn't so bad in the rain, but filling my shoes with slush was a little less comfortable.   I meant to go for about an hour, and although my swim cap kept my core nice and toasty, my feet and hands were getting pretty numb (my guess is that numb hands at least doubled my braking distance, on top of whatever effect the snow had).  My glasses also seem to fog up much more in the snow and that meant that I couldn't really see anything.  So after about 20 minutes, I decided I'd pushed my luck long enough, having not run into anything yet, even though I did have a few close calls.  And since I had to slow down a bit because I couldn't really see anything, I decided to turn back once the snow was starting to stick.    So in the end I went 14.24km in 36:39, for an average speed of 23.4km/h. 

I thought I might try another picture, since there aren't any up of snow yet...