Rode the Santa Ana 200k brevet after work on Saturday. It was so hot I couldn't start until after 7:00pm so I was a bit worried that I might not get to the turn-around control by the time it closed at midnight. I broke my personal best getting there at 4:10 hours but I payed for it on the way back.
For some reason there was a whole Christmas carol's worth of wildlife on the bike trail including an owl, two possums, three skunks, several frogs and mice, and a ton of peewits and rabbits. Didn't hit any, though, and fortunately none of the skunks hit me.
It was a good chance to try out my new cold-weather gear from Pearl Izumi. I replaced my arm warmers, leg warmers, and jacket courtesy of Performance Bike's 20% off sale. It only got down to 60 degrees so the arm warmers and vest were all I needed.
I heard an interesting article on NPR today. There's a small-town prison in Brazil where the prisoners can literally cycle to freedom. The local police department donated four bicycles from their lost and found department. Someone hooked them up to generators that power 10 street lights on the local promenade. The prisoners ride the bicycles eight hours at a time (I bet they don't have Brooks saddles) and earn one day off their sentence for every three shifts they complete.
The program is so popular that the prison authorities are hoping to get ten more bikes to power all 34 street lamps in the downtown area. If Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio introduced such a program in Arizona, I wonder what the response would be?
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