Old 12-06-21, 08:41 AM
  #372  
Tundra_Man 
The Fat Guy In The Back
 
Tundra_Man's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Posts: 2,527

Bikes: '81 Panasonic Sport, '02 Giant Boulder SE, '08 Felt S32, '10 Diamondback Insight RS, '10 Windsor Clockwork, '15 Kestrel Evoke 3.0, '19 Salsa Mukluk

Mentioned: 91 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 319 Post(s)
Liked 165 Times in 110 Posts
Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1323:

Challenging commute today.

Our mild fall temperatures finally swung back to normal. Last week I wore shorts a couple of times. This morning was 9°F with a 20 mph headwind, which works out to a -12°F wind chill. It was definitely a shock to the system. My thighs took the brunt of the cold. By the time I made it to work and the showers, it looked and felt like I had a bad sunburn on my legs. Nearly an hour later my thighs are still burning.

First time this year I wore my goggles. I generally don't break those out until the temps drop below 20°F. Today's high is only supposed to be 18°F so I guess I'm wearing them home as well. My goggles don't have a mirror attached to them like my glasses, and I definitely miss that.

We were getting a few snow flurries this morning, but it was dry flakes and not accumulating so I went ahead and took the road bike. My shift cables froze up from the cold, so they didn't want to move in any direction that slackened the cable (upshifting on the rear and downshifting on the front) until I would smack the brifters a little to get the cable to move and get the levers to do anything. As a result, I wound up riding in some non-ideal gears at times just because I didn't feel like trying to get the bike to shift.

On Friday they gave me a new heart medication. By Saturday I realized it was kicking my butt pretty good. Constant headache, dizziness, extreme malaise and doing simple things like brushing my teeth would wind me. I sat around doing nothing a good chunk of the weekend. My wife was concerned about me riding to work this morning, but I told her one way or another I was going to make it. I did make it, but I was sucking wind pretty hard the whole ride even though I was only going about 10 mph. I'm going to give this medication a week, and if my body doesn't adjust then I'm going to tell the doctor I'm done with it. The whole purpose of taking meds is to make your health better, but if the side effects are worse than what it's trying to fix then I don't see the point.
__________________
Visit me at the Tundra Man Workshop
Tundra_Man is offline