500 Degrees of Inner Turbulence

30 Days of Biking Mileage Counter: 508.2

Major props if you get the reference in the title.

For the second consecutive day, Philadelphia was mired in gray, overcast conditions, today's being much more water-logged than yesterday's. Today was challenging. The ride in wasn't so terrible, just cloudy. I stopped by the United By Blue coffee shop near our West Philly plant, where I picked up this card with my coffee and perhaps a bit of foreshadowing:

Foreshadowing a trip to the ER if you try to look up while riding

The card itself is pretty neat if you're into constellations and stargazing (which I am). The message at the bottom, I'd need to help me through the day. UBB's mission is to preserve waterways because we are "united by blue," blue being water. Get it? We had plenty of water today...

Today happened to be a training day, in which I showed a new cyclist some of the commercial deliveries we do for Wash Cycle in North Philly. You could say it wasn't the best day for this kind of exercise, with an all-day rain and sometimes near gale-force winds battering us. You could also say it was the best day for this, because if you can survive this kind of training, well, you can survive anything:

It doesn't look that bad when you take a picture before your cell phone camera has a chance to fog up

I actually enjoy training days in most cases. It's a great chance to ride along with someone else on the job for a change, and also a chance to get to know a co-worker. You really learn a lot about a person when you spend a few hours riding around with them, and if things go well (weather notwithstanding), you learn a lot about yourself in the process. We were on the road for a solid 10+ miles in this mess today, no cakewalk for sure, but let me assure you that both of us can survive anything. It wasn't easy, but that was a positive I'll surely take from today.

I returned to the office and had a bazillion tasks to take care of, on top of a whole bunch of chores at home that I've been putting off, and by the way, I'm still cat-sitting for my friend in West Philly so I had to venture all the way out there again today too (hey, you can't predict the weather when you agree to do these things three weeks in advance). So you can imagine that when I pulled my bike into my house tonite and realized I'd picked up a flat, I was a little deflated, no pun intended...

But whatever. I got as much done as I felt I possibly could. I fixed the tire. I even put in another 4 miles in the rain after the fact, and didn't even realize until I got back to my computer that today was my 500-mile day, one day earlier than last year. So hey, remember to look up more. 500 miles in a month for the 3rd time is pretty awesome, rain or shine.

'Sup, #30daysofbiking? We're not through yet...