Adventures in Cycling

I had Lasik three months ago.  This means my vision has been fluctuating a bit.  It is fairly stable at this point, but certain things on certain days make my eyes extra tired and thus, my vision a bit blurrier than I'd like it to be post-expensive-scary surgery.  Among the bad eyesight triggers: focusing on my smartphone's screen too much and for too long; not getting enough sleep; and cold/windy conditions which dry my eyes out.  So on Thursday, I biked to my optometrist's office in my 3-month, post-surgery check up.

It was a rainy, cold, breezy morning--which I'll say more about later.  Anyway, biking in, my eyes got all dried out from the wind and cold, and needless to say, my eyes did not "perform" so well when I did the eye tests.  The eye doctor saw quite a few patches of dryness and recommended I start using the gunky night drops again.  (Blech.  They give me itty bitty styes, which are harmless, really, but frigging annoying. But if the doctor says...)  He also advised I visit with his buddy in the glasses department for some spiffy goggles for biking.

As much as I'd love to drop $60 on some fancy goggles, I can't afford that right now, so I walked three blocks to Big 5 Sports and investigated their offerings. They didn't have any biking goggles, per se, but they did have protective eye wear for racquetball and also for sharp shooting.  I went with the youth/women's sized sharp shooting glasses, for the handy benefit of UV protection.  Check 'em out!

So that's what I'm biking around wearing.  I feel pretty bad ass.

Anyway, as I mentioned, Thursday (April 7) was a cold, wet, breezy morning.  Thursday, like pretty much every day in April up to that point, was also a cold, wet, breezy day.  Remember my post two weeks ago where I discussed typical April weather in Seattle?  I had this cute little chart, remember, that showed an average of ~2 inches of rain for the entire month of April and average high/low temperatures of 58 and 43 degrees F?  I was, like, "oh sure, it rains in April, but not like constantly, it's much better than March."  Okay, yes, it is better than March.  But "much better"?  That's a gross overstatement, given the weather during the first week of April this year.  GROSS.

This is a La Nina year.  Now I'm one of those people who gets El Nino and La Nina confused, and thinks that the two weather phenomena only happen on leap years or something, not whenever the water temperature in the Pacific does X or Y.  Let's face it, if La Nina is the opposite of El Nino, then I'm the La Nina of a meteorologist. My approach to weather forecast is: well, it did this last year.  I'm sure there really are insights I could gain from last year's weather, but assuming that this year's weather will be just like last year's weather is not the insight I should be taking home.  Last April, it was warmish and fairly dry and lovely.  And then right around Mother's Day, it started to dump rain and didn't stop until the 4th of July.  So if that was El Nino and this is La Nina, then it should be a fantastic late spring and early summer, right???  Oh, good gawd, it's time to stop this erroneous speculating!

So instead, let me just inform you that, in the first week of April, Seattle got 2.01 inches of rain.  That's the monthly average!  And let me also tell you that the average low for the first week of April 2011 was 39.6 F and the average high for the first week of April 2011 was 49 F. A little colder than usual, but not revolutionary, especially for early in the month--but that wind chill has been horrible!

This less-than-desirable weather has not made an easy introduction to my month of low gas consumption.  I expressed my fear of riding my bike in the rain in this previous post.  Now that I've been doing it for a week, I'm less afraid of wiping out.  Instead, I'm afraid of freezing my arse off.  And then sweating like a pig for a bit and then freezing more because I'm wet from sweat.  But it is improving.  It's a balmy 55 degrees F right now, and Friday was a gorgeous sunshine explosion.

Jumping on your bike is easier when it looks like this out your front door.

Still, I am doing it, the whole no-driving-my-car thing (except for when I volunteer--what a glorious drive to Shoreline that is!).  And biking up hills is getting easier (muscles adapt faster than you think!), and I'm better tolerating cars and faster cyclists zipping past me with looks of annoyance on their faces. 

I have a lot of different objectives in this year of consuming less.  One objective is to push myself outside my comfort zone.  While I did have some uncomfortable sugar cravings in January, and had to do some extra cooking in February, and decline wine in March, none of those monthly challenges REALLY pushed me to do something I was afraid to do.  This month has already pushed me to face several fears, and there have been days when I've wondered if succeeding in this particular challenge is worth my heightened level of anxiety.  Right now, I think it is. I need to push through anxiety about a whole lot of things in my life, so I can just DO them.  I'm building muscles with this month's challenge so that I can go forth and conquer in other aspects of my life.  Definitely worth it.

Tough.