Phew has it been hot the past few days. Generally speaking 90-100 degrees doesn't bother me that much, but the last week, pairing that with 80% humidity and no wind, and it's just been hot. Driving a car with A/C, you really forget just how hot it can get out there on the pavement. Wed. night, I had to go home and mow the yard (every 3-4 days right now, it's been that wet and hot, the bermuda is going nuts), so I stopped by the grocery and picked up some groceries for the wife. It's pretty sad when your grocery list is 5 2 litre bottles of soda, 2 gallons of milk, salad, cheese, eggs, french bread, a 10lb bag of potatoes, 2 bottles of Juicy Juice (great stuff btw, too bad it's sooooo darned expensive, I'd rather drink that to sodas), crackers and a few other sundries, and the hardest thing to carry on the scooter is the french bread (it's too long, and too soft).
Then home to mow the lawn while the wife makes dinner. 45 minutes later, dripping with sweat I'm eating dinner on the patio under the deck with a fan trying to cool off and not poison the air in the house with the toxic stench that is lawn sweat :(. Jump in the pool to rinse off and play with the kids for a few minutes before they head off to bed, and into the basement to work on some website stuff.
Thursday, more of the same, with a short lunch time ride to decompress. If there is one thing I love the most about the area I live and work is that while there are a couple of main roads that traffic tends to suck on (Hwy 9, GA 400, Windward Pkwy, Peachtree Pkwy) there are hundreds of little backroads that are often more country lane than anything else. For lunch yesterday, I had to go meet my wife at Office Depot to gear the kids up for another school year. From the office, this is straight down hwy 9, and left on Windward Pkwy. Boring, often nasty traffic. Fortunately, there's a great back route that gets there running past a few farms, past a couple of high end apartment complexes, and in the back entrance to the Office Depot shopping center. 1 stop light, 3 stop signs, no traffic. Sure it takes a little longer but, honestly, do I care about an extra 5 minutes given the alternative? not even a little.
Then last night, it was skate night, so off the greenways at 6pm for 18 miles of roller blading. Needless to say, at the end of that I was sweating bullets. This is the one instance where I find it hard to ATGATT. When I go skate, I wear jeans and my jacket over bike shorts, down to the greenways, and change into shorts there, storing all my gear on the scooter. The problem is that when I get back and I'm hot, and my shirt (and shorts) are so wet I may as well have been swimming? Putting jeans and a jacket on really doesn't appeal, but I do it. Safety first, but to quote my 12 year old daughter; 'ewwwww', I think I agree. The wife and kids where off school shopping so I was on my own for dinner. Something quick, Panda Express and eat out on the patio, as the sun sets. Turned out to be a very nice pleasant evening, finally getting home at 10 til 10. All in all, a great, if very hot day.
Unfortunately all of that skating meant, I was sore and tired this morning :-). Got up late and got a late start to work which meant the short route, but I'm hoping to get out of the office early today and run over to Vespa Atlanta and see if Floyd has any summer gloves in stock to replace my Icon Patrols that are starting to get a little ragged.