80 in October

No, this is not a list of 80 things we did in October.  It's a tribute to the awesome weather we've been having this week.  I believe it's been in the 60s/70s for the past few days, but today I caught the temperature at 79 degrees.  Not sure if it ever hit 80, but I'm going to pretend like it did.  Of course, I had no idea it was so warm outside until I left school.

I had RSVPed to the Pediatric Journal Club (the Peds department holds a journal club once a month; basically an attending chooses an article to discuss) which was from 5:30-6:30pm with free pizza.  I was actually really looking forward to the pizza, but as the day went on I was not looking forward to sitting through a discussion on evidence-based pharmacological treatment of autism spectrum disorders, during which I would probably say nothing.  As the clock ticked closer to 5pm, I dreaded going to journal club even more.  I decided to text Steph to see 1) if she was going and 2) if she thought it was ok for me to bail.  I think they ask us to RSVP so they can order enough pizza, but I wasn't sure.  Steph informed me that she wasn't coming today and that I could get out of there.  So I did.

And that's when I realized how beautiful it was outside!  As I walked to the parking lot I texted Kyle that he should leave work and we should go on a bike ride.  He followed my excellent advice and we were both on our way home.  Once I arrived at our apartment, I scarfed down the remaining sweet Hawaiian bread (I ate almost the entire loaf by myself in 24 hours...I have a problem), ate some 3 Musketeers Mint Minis, and then Kyle got home.  I had stopped feeling the urge to exercise and was hoping he would decide he wasn't up for a bike ride either.  Lucky for me, he was totally still on board.

We changed into biking appropriate gear, pumped up our tires, loaded the bikes onto my car, and we were off for the Wabash-Cannonball Trail!

Bikes loaded on the back of the car.

Our ride was pretty great!  We rode a little over 7 miles with an average speed of 13mph.  I think that might actually be my fasted ride, but it was also a ride we knew was going to be short because we were racing the sunset.  The trail closes at dusk, and we've seen cops/park rangers sitting at the entrance to parts of the trail when it's almost sunset - we think they drive down the trail once it's supposed to be closed.  Anyway, there's a bridge that goes from the park, over the freeway, to the trail.  When we got to the top of the ramp of the bridge, we realized two giant gates were closing both sides of the bridge.  I said "how do we get to the other side?!" and Kyle laughed.  I spotted a park ranger SUV in the park and tried waving.  Then I turned to Kyle and said "no, really, how do we get to the other side?"  Kyle realized that the gate wasn't chained shut; it had a latch like a normal yard fence so he opened it.  As he did so I immediately thought of the park ranger waiting on the other side, ready to tell us that we were at the park past hours.  And then of course my mind went to getting arrested...and how I hadn't brought any form of identification with me!  We closed the first gate behind us, made it to the second gate (which thankfully had the same system), and by the time we closed the second gate the park ranger was nowhere to be seen.  Whew!  I had stopped my timing app so our few minutes on the bridge didn't affect our average speed.  It was a pretty fun adventure and I'm glad I experienced it with Kyle!

The bridge we almost weren't able to cross.