The title of my post has basically been my weekend...lots of things muddled together but been a great weekend. Friday some friends invited me out to go sailing...which, quite frankly, is weird in December to me. It has been turning less warmish in these parts, but Friday wasn't too bad actually. Got out early enough to see the sun set and the full moon rise. It was a pretty fun time...we did have to bundle up quite a bit as it does get cold on the water, but still very weird to me to go sailing in December. But after reading a dozen posts on real WINTER in the rest of the country...i'll take weird.
Saturday I joined a few friends to do a charity toy bike ride. The part I loved about this ride was that I rolled out of my house and then met up with my friends and we rode up to the start of this bike ride...which was about 12 miles away. I so rarely ride from my house that i love it when I get to. I live in urban-ville in San Diego and i'm trying to find more ways to do this, slowly I am mastering the riding in urban-ville with traffic and all that fun and navigating my way around. With more confidence riding in traffic i'll get there...but I just loved that I could ride to the start of this bike ride.
The point of this bike ride was raising toys for kids in need. It was a couple of the local bike clubs that got together to do this ride and you had to bring an unwrapped toy and carry it on you to the Salvation Army we were riding to...which was about 20 miles from the start of the ride. There was a contest for decorated bikes and dressing up...there were some great costumes on the ride. I wasn't festive, maybe next year. Someone had even made her bike look like it was a raindeer. It was pretty funny.
There were about 200+ bikers who showed up to this...and the point was not to be an insane bike ride...but then it ended up being a pretty slow bike ride as we accordion-like snaked our way to the salvation army. That shear volume of bikers was pretty crazy. What was unexpected though was by the time we hit one of the major roads that we had to head down to get to the Salvation Army, we picked up a 3 car police escort! It is still unclear if the police escort had been planned ahead of time or if they just decided to do it for us. But they leap frogged the traffic lights and stopped traffic for us. (not like we weren't already doing that on our own...but now it was 'offical')
We got there and dropped our toys off. They had some food for us and warm drinks. Me and two of my friends I had gone with started to get cold by the end of all of this and as it got to be time to leave we just decided we didn't really want to wait everyone else and for the slow...cold...ride back. No...it's not real 'winter' in San Diego, but Saturday was about 50...pretending to rain and not exceedingly toasty...especially when I really should have been wearing long pants for the ride and more layers than just arm warmers. But the slow speed we had taken with the group was fast enough to slightly warm me up...and equally slow enough to cool me down at the same time. Basically we were getting cold and wanted to warm up and go faster. So we took off...with about 7 others with the same idea of just needing to warm up.
Granted I quickly realized I was in a little over my head speed wise and was secretly grateful for the traffic lights that allowed me not to be completely dropped from the small group. But we hammered the rest of the last 10 miles home and it was great to just hop off my bike and head up my own stairs, not having driven my car anywhere for the ride.
Sunday has just been a bunchachaos...as i needed to be at church early for band practice...race to Temecula for a christmas gig to play my violin and then cram in a run on the dreaded dreadmill (as it was dark) before my gym closed. Sadly due to the gig on Sunday...no time at the track...and won't be til next year...sigh...But all in all a good weekend.
Only one week of work til i'm off for a bit for the holidays. Can't believe christmas is almost here.
4 comments:
Verrry cool on the toy bike ride!! And I hear you, seems things are just chaos for me too lately!! Hang in there!! :)
so, maybe i missed the point, but did you WIN the charity bike ride?
What a great idea for a toy drive! We need one of those up here in SF.
You play the violin? How cool. I played the cello for a few years in my youth and LOVE the sound all string instruments.
The charity ride sounds SOOOO AWESOME! omg. We should totally do that here. Maybe something for me to organize next year...how neat.
50 is not cold. yes you should have more than shorts and arm warmers on, so I'll give you that...but still. ;)
Post a Comment