February 27th -- warm & humid

I went out for an early ride again today -- 7 a.m. and back by 11:30. The winds were not with me today -- calm on the way south to Merritt Island and then 10+ mph headwind on the way back. Oh well, I got a workout -- in fact I thought that I was getting such a workout that my legs were complaining, but then realized that they were sore from the prior day cleaning out the gutters, squatting on the roof, and then later in the day squatting in the den putting together a computer for Alex -- more on that later.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog that on the east/west road to the visitors center there was a dead hog by the side of the road -- a big one, must have been at least a couple of hundred pounds -- not that I'm a good judge of pig weight ! It was mobbed by large carrion eaters - the ones with the brown and red heads that are around here. On the way back there were two park trucks parked by the pig evidently planning on getting rid of it, because it was gone today.

Sandy is still feeling under the weather, going through boxes of kleenex like I did, although she does not like using any cold remedies. We went out later in the day to the wine warehouse to stock up and did some grocery shopping on the way back.

I started building Alex's computer last night, getting all the parts in the chassis, and then today tried to load up Windows. I'm running into problems though since the version of XP that I have is very old and does not support the newer, large disks. It refuses to create a full sized partition in the boot disk so I'm trying various approaches with the disk in and out, creating the partition on another machine, loading Windows over and over -- getting tiresome -- but I hope to beat it somehow.

We were hoping to go for a boat ride tomorrow, but it does not look like Sandy will be up to it. I plan on taking a break from the bike anyway, perhaps only doing a short ride to break in some new shoes.

For today's ride I moved the Specialized tires over to the Mavic Helium wheels -- the S tires are much easier riding on the rough roads on Merritt Island since they are 23's vs the Michelin 20's that I have on the Heliums now. Also the S tires are more impervious to punctures. I plan on using them on the ride across America.

Nutrition -- 3.5 bottles of water; cliff bar at 20 miles; gels at 35, 45, 55 & 65.

Ride stats -- 74 miles; 16.6 mph.