Work?..What work?

 I had a lot to do. Work was mounting up, there were chores to do around the house and I had managed to sleep in. I opened up the blinds to blue skies and a hard hard frost on top of the remnants of last weeks snow. I looked at the laptop where the work lingered, I surveyed the pile of washing and looked at the nearly empty fridge. Work or chores first? Washing and shopping or writing reports? Coffee was the answer, life decisions like that require coffee and toast...lots of toast. In the end I did what every sensible person in my position would do. I pulled on the warmest cycling clothes I could find, dragged the Pickenflick out of the garage and set off for a bit of fun in the woods.
 It was cold, very cold. The temperature gauge on the bike computer started dropping from the healthy 19C that it had been reading in the house. It was dropping alarmingly fast as I cruised down the bike path towards Lintgen. By the time I had started the climb out of the valley the temperature was reading -7C and still falling but more slowly. It was beautiful on that climb but slow. It is steep and the snow had been compacted by quite a lot of traffic. With the main road closed for some reason there had been a few (or more) cars choosing to detour via this cycles and farm vehicles only road. It got slippy in the steep sections and traction was hard fought. Emerging from the trees at the top was stunning.

We had a storm blow through last week and the trails were a bit of a mess. Trees were down over the paths and at various points it was more mountaineering than cycling but it was worth it. Meandering through the forest led me eventually to the stone circle and Neolithic house just below Blaschette. -9C

 
































With the temperature still falling and as the sun dropped lower in the sky I did not linger but pressed on through the trees to the "Dead Woman's Road". From there it was a fun and swoopy descent to home. This line is always a challenging way to finish as it is a rarely ridden (or walked ) route but it was made harder this time. Partly it was my frozen fingers barely able to pull on the brakes and grip the bars but mostly it was the holes in the ground. Sneaky surprise holes dug by the boar that roam the woods, half hidden by debris from the storm and the snow. It made for an interesting plummet down into Walferdange.

Home again just under 3 hours later and with another small mountain of toast and coffee consumed I was still cold. A hot shower and some clean warm clothes did little to warm me up. At least that was my excuse for not opening up the laptop and starting in on those reports. I'd do them tomorrow...let's just check the forecast for tomorrow... "-5C and clear blue skies with a hint of snow flurries". Hmm exactly when are those reports due?