Shortest Day, Longest Ride

Today is misleadingly referred to by some as the "shortest" day of the year, also known as the Winter solstice. Of course, the day is not actually shorter in time, but daylight is (was) at a premium. I kinda like it. It means the days can only get "longer" from here.

Today also happened to be my last working day of 2018, and possibly my last chance to take a decently distanced ride until next year. My choice of blog post title is also somewhat misleading, because I didn't take my longest ride ever (or even of this year) today, even though it may have felt like it. For starters, if you take a look at this Jolly Roger flag I spotted on my ride home, you can see it was pretty windy today:

My commutes to and from work added up to about 24 miles, but the wind always makes any ride feel much, much longer. Some estimates today had gusts up to 20MPH coming out of the northwest, which just so happens to be the direction I need to take to get home.

Today's ride seemed even longer because I was also powering through a toe injury I sustained the other day while my girlfriend and I were out for a routine errand:

This was caused by some miscommunication on my part, which led to me colliding with her and wedging my foot between her front wheel and fork. Sounds gruesome, I know. It looks bad and it's definitely sore (and probably fractured), but I've honestly had worse:

You're probably asking, "Why the hell did you decide to continue riding when you should be resting your foot?" Well, I'm crazy, you see. Also, it only hurts when I apply pressure to it. I changed my pedal stance just a bit and I made it through all those miles mostly fine other than some minor discomfort while dismounting. These are certainly not reason enough for me not to ride.

I'm also constantly in competition with myself, and my reward today was going over 100 miles for the week and 200 for the month (in December, mind you), both of which are firsts since I've moved to Ohio, believe it or not:

There's also the inherent good feeling from just riding a bike, of course. I'm also very close to reaching 3,000 miles for the year, provided I can take the family on some rides during our busy holiday stretch over the next 10 days. It shouldn't be a problem because we'll have more daylight to do it, right? :P

Anyway, happy solstice, happy weekend, and happy holidays to all of you! Ya know, just in case I don't post again until next year.