Winter returns

On Monday it was about 50 degrees out. On Friday it was about zero. Windchills below zero, and the past two days haven't been much better. Oh, well. The good news is that the weathermen are saying the bitter cold is keeping the snow off to our south, so I guess that's a good thing. At least my car can make it up my street in ridiculous cold, which is more than I can say for when it's snowing out.

So yesterday morning was yet another long ride in my basement. I also watched the movie The Right Stuff because Netflix told me I'd like it (they were right) and it also happens to be about 3 hours and 15 minutes long. Perfect. Afterwards I had a not-so-pleasant transition run in the bitter cold and wind. I miss those summer transition runs where all I do is change my shirt and shoes. Transitioning between an indoor bike ride and an outdoor transition run in the freezing cold is a lengthy process that involves a lot of heavy layers sticking to sweaty skin as you try to pull them on. Today's 2-hour run involved ice forming on various articles of my clothing, as well as my eyelashes. The drawstring of my tights was surrounded by ice, a layer of ice had formed within the insullation of the front of my jacket which left most of my torso bright red and frozen. But, well, there's not a cloud in the sky, so I suppose that's something.

On an unrelated note, I must comment on another stupid product I saw advertised yesterday. It's some at-home soap dispenser that you don't have to actually touch it to get the soap out because of course the soap pump is usually germy. Um, ok, but what's the first thing you do literally the second you touch the soap pump to get the soap out? You wash your hands! Seriously, who cares if there are germs on it? Typically you are washing your hands at that moment because there are already germs on them, so a little bit more isn't going to matter, you're just going to wash them off 2 seconds later anyway.