vacation day

i took a vacation day friday so i could

a) ride
b) clean house

i picked friday because, from the viewpoint of the weather forcast, it was supposed to be the pick weather day of the week. i have quite a few vacation days, and figured i really can't take big chunks at a time (i fancy myself important at work and don't want to miss out...) so i figured taking days off to ride at key times would be great.

i picked sort of wrong, i think.

it wasn't cold, really, but the wind was even worse than thursday. brutal at times, really. i started out a familiar path from home...pardee, eddie and park, robin, up weber hill road (one of my favorite hills) and down gravois. this is where i made a key decision. i had wanted to avoid most hills and just do some moderate stuff, but jefferson county beckoned. i turned left on 141 and then turned right into the maze of retail to reach saline. saline has some killer hills on it, some super steep and twisty. i had a smile on my face as i passed some of the familiar dumps along the way. after descending the cork screw down, i hung a left to stay on saline and set up to ascend "trailer park" hill. when i lived just a few blocks away, trailer park hill was a killer way to reach home. only about 100 yards long, it's super steep and overlooks a massive trailer park. i zipped up it, and down to meet romaine creek. i took that out to 141 again, and, after nearly getting hit by a dump truck, i took tesson ferry over the meramec to hegemann, and down to meramec bottom road. i took wells road out of there, which has a killer climb, just to get back up to tesson. i was knackered by then, so i just cruised in on tesson.

it was only a little over 2 hours. but, the wind was killing me. i celebrated by doing housework for another 3 hours when i got home.

3 kids, a station wagon, housework on vacation days...i'm so domesticated, aren't i??