Brrrr

Last year at the Nature Valley Grand Prix, they held a crit in crazy hard rain. I managed to avoid the huge number of crashes, despite riding a neutral bike with 120 PSI in the tires, but it took a few laps to get comfortable in the turns, and by then I had no hope of seeing the front of the race. I realized then that I hadn't really ridden in the rain for about a year. It's a perk of living in Florida, but probably not good for my skillz, so I made a resolution to train in a rain once in awhile.
Yesterday morning, the weather radar looked like this:


Ouch. So I decided that it was time for my train in the rain day. It actually wasn't that bad. Once you get moving, and everything gets wet and numb (everything), riding in cold rain is no big deal. My iPod survived under the rain jacket, and I got to try out my Christmas present:


Nope. That's not a novelty adult item. That's a ski boot dryer. I first used one after Univest last year, when my host, a muckety muck at the Univest Bank, dug those out instead of the newspapers I had asked for, which really had no hope of drying out my shoes completely. I didn't know such an object existed, and all my dumb teammates (who ski all winter), felt rightfully stupid for not thinking of it years ago. I'll be throwing this in my race bag for years to come.

Hopefully, the ski boot dryer will prevent mold and stinkiness in my SWEET NEW SHOES FROM MAVIC: (in my English classes, we called that last sentence a transition)


Check em out. And you thought my red shoes last year were bright. You need sunglasses if you enlarge that photo. More info after I get some riding in on these, but I'd like to thank Mavic for the hookup.