17°?!

Winter commuting is fun in a strange way, but this morning was simply cold. No fun snow, only one smidgen of ice. It was 17 degrees F when I started this morning, cooler than most of my winter riding, and it's still autumn! But of course it was nice to ride, the sun was out, and along the wonderfully wild Mill St. I had to cut through a bold group of 14 adult turkeys.

The thing I had most forgotten is how bad the car exhaust smells in the cold. I guess it's just that the engines are cold, but it really feels like the pollution is a couple times worse than when it's above freezing. This will be an incentive to take lower-traffic routes, even though they're longer.

Post-Carbon Comics

I saw this in a recent DirtRag magazine, and a couple clicks in google located it for you. Interestingly, the next-to-last panel was bowdlerized in DirtRag - is it too gory on the blog? Also, there's a prequel comic on the April 2008 page that's a bit different from what I would have guessed.

Almost my favorite part of the comic is the logo for Post-Carbon Comics, a bit too small to read on the blog. The center of the logo is a mound labelled "world oil production", and an arrow pointing to about 1/4 of the way down the slope to the right with a tag "we are here". Nice!

Mine Falls

E and I had a beautiful ride at a spot in southern NH long recommended by MF. It's a relatively easy place to ride, and we had no injuries. But E did have a rather spectacular crash, captured here. He laughed as he slid in those pine needles.

Later, he found the steep and tall, but smooth descent shown here. I was nervous about him riding it, and if I were alone I probably would have skipped it, but E really wanted to try it and a few minutes later we were both enjoying it. (The picture is at an angle, making the path appear less steep than it really is. You can see how the bases of the trees are bent to make them vertical.)

Halloween

E dressed as a space alien, adapting a homemade costume A and I made two years ago. I became a lounge singer; my main song was Brandy. M, the dog, always looks ridiculous, so she's not really dressed as anything - just extra ridiculous.