Highgrade Road

Our Foothills Masters Cycling Team has grown to almost a dozen enthusiastic bike riders -- but none of them wanted to join me for a Saturday morning ride up Highgrade Road. Usually, such a rejection would probably result in me giving it a miss as well...but not today. I wanted to get my hill-climbing season underway, and if that meant going alone, well, so be it.

The weather forecast called for a warm, sunny day. But since I was starting just a few minutes after sunrise, I still thought it wise to wear tights, a long-sleeved shirt, and some running gloves.

Unfortunately, when I went out to my car to grab my spare tube, etc, the temperature seemed relatively comfortable. I say this was unfortunate, because my relative comfort enabled me to completely forget about the extra gloves I was planning to wear. I'll pulled out of the parking lot with only my cycling gloves, leaving my poor helpless fingers exposed.

In less than a mile, I had realized my mistake. Brrr! With no particular schedule, and no friends waiting for a rendezvous, an intelligent person would have turned around to go home for the gloves. I, on the other hand, simply told myself that I'd warm up once I started pumping hard.

The temperature was in the low 30s, there was quite a bit of wind, and I was riding into a canyon that wouldn't see any sunlight for over an hour. The occasional "hand-in-the-armpit" trick wasn't going to keep my sensitive fingertips warm at all. And all of my optimism about internal heat providing warmth to my extremities wasn't going to change the laws of physics by one iota.

Still, once an utter moron makes a firm commitment to incomprehensible idiocy, it's hard to get him to turn back. I rode onward, alternating between hands as I rode with one on the handlebars and one nestled into the folds of my shirt. I was freezing! But for some reason, I kept going.

The good news is that there's no frostbite. And as I neared the top of the climb, the combination of warming sun and madly-pumping heart muscle worked to change my status from "freezing" to merely "darn cold".

One guy passed me going up, and I saw one biker coasting down. But that was it (and they were both wearing far more clothing than I was). Apparently, the majority of the intelligent cyclists had chosen to wait until the sun was up and able to make some progress toward removing the night's chill before hitting the road. It was a fairly lonely climb.

The dude who passed me was still at the schoolhouse when I pulled in at the top of the road. We chatted briefly over Gatorade and cookies, and I debated with myself as to the wisdom of heading toward CityView. I concluded that such a strategy was completely unwise, and that my best bet was to get down the hill and back home as quickly as I could. (A warm bathtub can have tremendous appeal at times like these.)

It's a shame to ignore the beauty of the descent. I know from previous rides that it's a gorgeous and impressive aesthetic experience...but this time it was just about somehow keeping the hands warm enough to work the brakes. The chattering of my teeth was frightening the local livestock and wildlife, I'm sure, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Gravity applied its relentless pull, and with great determination, I was barely able to wrangle the bike through the twists and turn of the descent.

Obviously, I made it home alive, and I was able to partake of that highly-anticipated soak in the tub. My fingers and toes seem to be none the worse for wear at this point; and I'm still planning to do a hard ride with Team Evergreen tomorrow. But even if it's 80° at the condo when I begin the trip, I'm taking my gloves! I may be slow, but I do sometimes learn a lesson or two.

Stay warm and cozy my friends, and have a great day!