Chilly Morning

Today, at around 11:30, the Alaska Fire Service was doing a smoke jumping demonstration just west of the building. I believe that there were six jumpers total aiming for a small area just north of the Botanical Gardens where a bunch of elementary kids were assembled to watch.

The skies were clear and sunny this morning but the thermometer said 32°F. I hoped that there wasn't much water left on the road from yesterday's rain. Most of the roads this morning were nice and dry until I turned into the back entrance to the university. It was very wet with a slight glaze visible and had little if any of the morning sun. I poked my way through campus on my bike and even looked for a little bit of gravel for traction. In reality, the road surface was probably above freezing even if the air temperature was floating around 32°. It was still a nice ride in though, sometimes, I wish the commute was a little bit longer. It feels like as soon as I get going, my turn into the university comes up. Last summer, I used to take a long, circuitous route into the university but that seems a little irresponsible even though I get almost 50 mpg on the old bike. From reading some of the posts on the BMWMOA forums, I shouldn't be taking these little short rides since there isn't enough time for the battery to recharge. I'm thinking that maybe the charging system on the bike had already been upgraded by one of the previous owners. After all, everything else seems to be in pretty good shape.

Yesterday, it was raining during the ride in as well as the trip home. There is still a lot of gravel on some of the roads and I have to admit that I go through those areas very carefully now. One of the worst ones is at the bottom of our road. It isn't any problem if there isn't any other traffic since I can sort of cut the corner so that I'm going straight through the gravely section. Yesterday afternoon, there were several cars waiting to turn so I had to modify my approach to try and minimize any side loads on the tires. It makes me think which is good.