brrrrrr...

I'm not going to be a whiner, I swear, but 42 degrees is kinda darned cold!  Made the 5 mile trip this morning, my second-least-favorite route, because I slept in.  Warm blankets + pesty but cuddly cat + volume down on the alarm clock = 8 hours of sleep.  Can't beat that.  

Anyway I saw it and was like okay, I'll just throw another layer on, life will be good.  Threw a t-shirt on over my long-sleeved underarmor, threw the zip-off hiking pants on, and threw on the full finger baseball gloves that work pretty good sometimes.  

And I froze. 

Well okay, not really, but I was pretty darn cold by the time I got to work.  My legs, ironically, were the only part that were fine.  Fingers, toes, ears, chest - they all were cold.  And I whined about it.  Nice part, though, I noticed barely any sweat.  Rock!  Lessons learned for sub-50 (let's say sub-45) degree weather: 

-Windproof upper layer - I was fine when I was stopped, but the second I started moving I got chilly

-Warmer gloves - the North Face ones I have are probably fine, they get chilly themselves sub-30, learned that last year, as they aren't windproof/neoprene

-Warmer socks - shoes are fine, but the socks need to be wool.  Below freezing, I'm just wearing hiking boots

-Something to keep my ears warm.  I'm totally not too proud to wear earmuffs, I've never been able to stand frozen ears.  

In true Nebraska style this afternoon will be in the low-mid 70's.  You know, really, it could stay in the 60-70 degree range all year, and I'd be cool with that.  These whole 30-40 degree variations really mess with me, though.  That and I'm a whiner.  :) 

Going to order some Schwalbe Marathon Cross tires today.  Did exhaustive research on this one, seems like they are going to be my best compromise between commuting on pavement, starting gravel training rides and I-don't-want-to-die-if-it-suddenly-snows tires.  Looks like, from reviews, to be a great fall-winter-spring tire if you've got a MTB for the really nasty crap.  I'll, of course, provide a exhaustive review of them after I get a couple nice long rides in. 

P.S. - weather for the PCL "We're goona have a blast on gravel all day" ride this Saturday looks to be absolutely excellent.  My strategy for it, as I told Oliver on Friday, is quite simple - keep spinnin' and smilin'.  70 degrees, 125(ish) miles of gravel, what's not to smile about?