Colder than I thought

This morning was a bit colder. I was expecting the teens and woke up to single digits (8 to be exact at our house). I'm know for a fact it is colder other places, I'm not always comparing against others, sometimes sure, not this time. It was a planned diesel drive in today. Dealer called and can't complete the registration stuff w/o me going to do the VIN check on the car. RI has this great wonderful DMV process. Get a car from a dealer or register the car here from out of state and ya need to go down to your local police station and have them look at the VIN number, check that it is the same in two places on the car, record the odometer, describe the vehicle and give you a big fancy piece of paper that you then go and take with you to register it. And of course it isn't free. At least the EP folks don't charge too much. So yeah. I drove in because I have to do that today so I can get the real plates stuck on the car before the temp tag expires.

Didn't plug the Golf in last night (Passat doesn't have a coolant heater or frost plug installed yet) and both cars fired up with the first cycle of the glow plugs. Fired right up. No hesitation. Pretty slick. Granted I'd recently changed the adaptation for the glow plug cycle duration to close to the limit so they are on in the Passat for about 15 seconds and in the Golf about 12 seconds. But they both chugged to life and were purring away w/in a minute or two.

I underestimated how cold it was on the way home last night. I saw the temp display reported on the weather web pages as being 27, light wind, and figured hey no big deal. Well I got home and it was already 19 degrees. Ooops, no wonder my lips and cheeks were feeling a bit stiff and the lobster mitts weren't quite enough.

The best part of driving in is having my travel mug (a kick ass one my sister gave me last year or two years ago) full of ginger with a slice of lemon here at my desk. Love the smell and it tastes so good. No rushing to drink it down at home like normal. Maybe I should break out the old trusty IBIS Hot Unit and holder...

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.
- Hesketh Pearson

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

I went looking back at 2008 Feb postings and I miss the bike path. The winter is great. Last night I got home and my wife had printed out some shots from early in january when the path was still ridable and one had some ducks and geese. I miss seeing the waterfowl. Miss hearing their chatter. The path is sort of a zen recharge in a way. A peaceful stretch of a good handful of miles where I can just key into the tiny changes of the season, notice the tides, the change of flotsam and jetsam on the high water mark. The changing dynamics of the species and numbers of the birds. Even the stupid flying rats. This is the prime bombing season, but I guess with a path covered in snow dropping mussels and clams on snow isn't going to help open them. Even still I long for the DEM to just run a blade up and down the path after a snowfall. It would be really nice. Weaving around the carpet bombing of the flying rats is really not as bad as dodging grumpy cold and irate terrorists in big metal boxes. Yeah. I've come to associate road rage and angry drivers with terrorists. It would be an interesting precedent if a lawyer prosecuted a road rage case using the terrorism laws in the books now. Seems reasonable. An aggro driver is really just hoping to instill terror to get the more timid out of their way. Bad culture. Bad stuff. Relax, chill, slow down behind the wheel. being an aggressive dipshit doesn't help anyone. How to get that idea into the heads of people? I don't know.

I've got a bunch of "getting faster" musings. But then the public mockery of just ideas about getting faster, having a longer range plan/hope, talking about things is actually quenching the desire to expound on it. The internal debate is ranging close to turning all comments off, but i keep stepping back away from that course of action. It is pretty funny the notion of "look you are a failure unless you do everything in your power to be fast this season" as if the next season is your shot at going pro and that's really all there is to live for. The idea or notion that just improving every year is a good thing is selling your cycling short is prevalent with the vocal internet terrorists. That thinking about things and looking realistically at your life and setting a goal that isn't too far out of reach is crazy. Some people get it. it makes sense to me.

It is along these lines:

But what I do is far from perfect... It may work for a given athlete for one race but not as well for the next. That’s because we are humans and not machines. There are many variables in our lives. Actually, I’m glad it’s that way.

(the ellipsis is actually employed correctly for a change in this blog in that quote). Source or quote here.

We're human. Given different abilities, physical and mental. We all have our own demons to wrestle through.

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