Heat and fog

Reminder to myself - check weather forecast before going to bed.

I was pottering around this morning, reading a few blogs and passing the time when I remembered to check the forecast. Fuck! Max of 30 degrees!

I threw my kit on and shot out the door, the aim being to be on the road whilst it was still "cool", and avoiding cooking on the way into the office. There's nothing worse than getting hot and bothered on the way in, and then stewing in a suit for a few hours because your core temp is way higher than usual.

No sooner was I on the road though than I ran into a wide belt of fog. It was thick enough to reduce visibility to less than 100 metres, and although the sun had been up for 90 minutes, I turned the lights on. Not taking any chances in getting wiped out by a sleepy driver not seeing me in the mist.

The thing about fog is that it's cold. Within seconds, I couldn't see through my glasses because of the fine layer of water drops that had formed. It's ok when it rains - enough water hits the lenses for it to run off, so you can sort of see through them. However, with fog, the water drops on the surface never coalesce into drops that are big enough to slide off under gravity. Instead of it being hot, I was almost starting to shiver. So much for worrying about the temperature hitting 30!

That didn't last long. The fog was restricted mainly to the higher ground around Five Wog ("higher ground" meaning about 50 feet above sea level). Once I hit the Bay, I was soon out of it.

There's an island in the middle of the Bay, and it was half shrouded in fog. One half was completely hidden, the other half was in bright sunlight. My photos turned out badly - I might post some tomorrow if I can be bothered.

It was an interesting sort of ride - haven't ridden in fog for ages, and I didn't expect it when things are warming up so much. We put a great deal of effort into avoiding the weather in our modern lives - climate controlled cars, climate controlled offices, climate controlled homes, shopping malls and so on. Who still drives around with a window open? Only smokers by the look of things. One can spend two hours driving around in a car these days, and have no idea what the weather is like outside. The bike strips all that away - it's a bit like going primitive.

The legs are getting tired as the end of the week approaches, although feeding them bananas seems to help. I had one before leaving the office, and fairly tore home. Nothing like a nice little carbo rush to assist with turning the pedals. That didn't last long though - I had dinner, and flaked out on the couch again. Boom, out like a light.