Race against the clock

Helen called me at work a little bit after 5. She said that she didn't know if she would be able to make it to pick up the kids before 6. When Helen works, the kids stay in after care, but they need to be picked up by 6 or they charge $1 a minute. I said that I would do my best to get there before 6.

I shut down my computer and got changed. I ended up leaving work at 5:25. That gave me 35 minutes to get to school. I knew it was about 7.5 miles so that should give me plenty of time time as long as I didn't get slowed down by traffic or red lights. As I started out I also started to worry about the wind slowing me down. A cold front was moving in and it was very windy. And of course it was a head wind.

I pushed hard and made it to school at 5:56. They were the last kids to be picked up be at least I made it on time. Helen got there just a couple of minutes after 6. Now we had a dilemma; My bike won't fit into her car and I really didn't want to ride home along Manchester Road. If it was a nice day I could have wandered around on side streets and found an alternate route, but I didn't want to do that with thunderstorms on the way.

We had been planning on buying a bike carrier do we decided to just go ahead and buy it then. I locked up my bike at the school and went to Maplewood bicycle. While I was buying and installing the carrier (with help from the staff at Maplewood), Helen got the kids some dinner at Jack in the Box. After that we went back to school and picked up my bike. We got home just as the first few drops of rain started to fall.

I felt exhausted that evening. Even though my commute was actually a little shorter than usual, it felt harder. Fighting the wind and hurrying against the clock really wore me out. On the bright side, that makes 8 commutes in a row without missing one. My weigh-in that evening was good as well at 197. That may have skewed a little low so we'll see how the next one goes.