Almost there!

Winter break is only 4 days away, now. While the holiday spirits have been rising, the temperature has started dropping. More Christmas lights twinkle. And traffic is horrendous, in my opinion.

The canal finally froze.

This morning is the new record (for school days anyway, I'm not getting up at 5am to check temps on my days off) so far at 12F. The truck I use now has a digital readout that went from 10 to 14 on my trip out to get the boys this morning. They ride with me in the truck to the bus, ride the bus on my regular route, and then  I drop them off at their school right on time after I leave the high school. I'm getting an extra hour per day at least until Christmas. After that I'll continue unless whatever situation that gave me this extra duty is resolved. I've also gotten a couple of elementary routes Friday and yesterday, so those will help pad out the next paycheck. I may not even notice the two weeks of vacation as far as income goes.

I wore my snow pants this morning. I'm numb at 17F, no way am I letting the wind get to my legs at 10, ok? My windbreaker did fine with a long-sleeved shirt and my silkies. I didn't particularly like how the cold touched me without something like a sweater to keep the wind-chilled nylon away, but then I got hot and that concern disappeared. I had wrapped my scarf over my head like a bonnet so it would cover my ears and then around my neck went the rest. I had a little bit of it pulled up to cover my chin. This actually worked really well, until I warmed up and couldn't find my simple knot to loosen it from my neck. But I was having other issues to worry about, so I just stayed hot.

Apparently, at 10 degrees, the Aimee is willing but the Zoomie is not. It was surprisingly hard to pedal! I felt like I accidentally attached the trailer full of recycling to the bike. I couldn't go above 2nd gear without having to work really hard, and even 2 was a pretty good effort to keep going. 

I've heard that at really low temperatures the grease in the bike will stiffen up. Maybe I've found the temperature limit at which that happens? It's the only real scenario I can come up with to explain why I suddenly have to muscle myself to work like it was the first day back in September. I'm desperately hoping that I don't have to do that again tomorrow morning. Tig says that January and February are the coldest months, though.

Well, I still won't give up. Zoomie will have to get me to work the rest of this week and then to other interesting places on my vacation. Like the library. Maybe a park. Zoomie just HAS to show off its new bow, too. If you had a bow like this, wouldn't you want everyone to see it too?

This plastic bow was a casualty of what seems to be pretty rare winter wind here. It was run over in the road, I taped it back together and voila! Christmas bike decoration. Whoo!

Are you decorating your house/bike/self/other things? Leave a comment and share with me!