Saturday, January 5th… we should be buried in snow till March. We’re not, though. And we even had some sunshine.

It’s been a month or two since I rode my Trek outside. The Diverge gravel bike is nice, but there’s not much impressive about it. The tandem has been wonderful – especially with the new fenders that have kept the bike from getting too gnarly on wet roads… the tandem is a lot of work, though.

My road bikes, though… they’re spectacular. There’s just something about a lightweight, exceptionally fast road bike that puts a smile on my face…

Mrs. Bgddy and I decided to leave the tandem in the bike room, to opt for the single bikes. She’s got the new Specialized Power Mimic saddle and I wanted to see how she liked it. And I just wanted to ride the Trek outdoors.

We I readied the bikes, including dialing in my wife’s new saddle and swapping pedals from the tandem to the road bikes. I filled the water bottles and pumped the tires.

We rolled the bikes out… Chuck had ridden over and Doc Mike was parked on the side of the road and had his bike ready. It was cold, just 25° (-4 C), but the sun was shining in all it’s cloudless glory, a faint remnants of frozen fog hung in the air – just enough to make the first five miles a little skittish.

Not to mention, having ridden so many trainer miles on the Trek over the past couple of months, my first half-mile was almost comical how wobbly I was. I actually laughed out loud… through gritted teeth, of course. It seemed it might be a little slick in places.

Then the sun did its thing. In Michigan, we get a lot of cloud cover from October till April because we’re surrounded by the Great Lakes, so it’s a rare day we see the sun like that. A good morning for a winter ride became a great day, almost instantly.

We fought what little wind there was on the way out, over the first fifteen miles. Heading into Byron I hadn’t planned on going for the sprint but Doc Mike was up front and all of a sudden he was out of the saddle and going for it. I kicked it up to hold his wheel, but then my wife popped into my peripheral vision. She was going for the sign too. That’s all I needed.

I went straight after it. Out of the saddle and crankin’. Strava says I was only three seconds off of my personal best on that stretch. I got the 5200 up to 30-mph and took the sprint by a goodly margin.

A short stop at our usual gas station and we were headed home, tailwind almost the whole way. I wore a smile on my face the whole way. Just being in a pace-line, with the sun on my smiling mug, the pace just north of 20-mph, it was therapeutic. It made me remember why I like being me so much.

We added a few extra bonus miles so we could get Chuck closer to home before splitting off and heading for home ourselves. We pulled into the driveway with 30.6 miles at just north of an 18-mph average (29 km/h). It was an easy, fun pace the whole way.

It was a perfectly, wonderfully fantastic winter day. They don’t make them much better than that – and I needed it!