You call this winter?

I've been regretting the fact that my last bike ride was Thanksgiving weekend and piling the guilt on myself until I couldn't take it any more. Admittedly, I have been kind of busy with the holidays, Ben and Emily's wedding and working on "The Mother of All Projects". But today I resisted the tyranny of the urgent and when I mentioned to Irma that I wanted to take a bike ride, she replied "you should do that first". My wife is awesome! I was out the door in minutes.

It was 45° with a 15 mph wind. Not exactly Yukon conditions but cold for a ride none the less. I was anxious to see how some of my Christmas gear worked out, so with winter bike pants and REI wool socks, I suited up like a ninja with a Coleman cooler helmet and headed out pushing between 10 and 20 mph with a red blinking light under my seat announcing "crazy" "crazy" to all the passing motorists.

Mile 1: doing good, head is a little chilly.
Mile 2: warming up nicely.
Mile 4: warming up a little too nicely.
Mile 6: getting hot, legs are starting to sweat.
Mile 8: sweating my @ss off.
Mile 10: finally a stiff headwind, cooling me down a but.
Mile 12: been pumping hard into the wind, feel like I'm not going much more than 5 mph.
Mile 14: still hot, but almost home.
Mile 16: made it home and ripped off a variety of layers, trying to cool down.

I went outside in just my bike shorts and a T-shirt to chucker the dog.
Is this all you got, winter?