Channel 4's five o'clock just finished. There was some very valuable information to be learned. First, was a story about the early shoppers doing their Christmas shopping on this day after Thanksgiving. Included in the story was an insightful interview with one shopper. I paraphrase... "It was crazy. I don't know they were all doing. It was like Christmas time." Reallllyyy???

Then Donna Savarese followed up with a story about the warm temperatures. She started her report with the words "Deck the halls without a shirt on" That got my attention. Unfortunately, Donna was not doing the hall decking topless.

Speaking of the warm day, I got an early start and cleaned up the last of the leaves in the yard. Then, I pulled out the 'dale and a hose to finally clean the remaining caked on mud from our ride a couple weeks ago. She's all pretty and mostly clean again. I lubed up the chain and cleats and got everything working smoothly again for my hour or so ride in the afternoon.

The ride was not terribly hard except for the fact that I purposely stayed in the 53x17. I went down to the Bottoms and cruised along nicely. For the heck of it, I rode into Lower Meramec Park and along the walking path. This path used to only go for four or five hundred feet. Much to my surprise, I got to that point and I kept on riding and riding and riding. I thought it would end soon enough but it followed along the banks of the Meramec and was paved the whole way, eventually leading me all the way back to Kerth and Meramec Bottom. It's probably a mile long now. Very nice. I'm not sure I would ride the path much but it could be a nice diversion occasionally.

The gearing was nice along the Bottoms but going through the hilly subdivisions, into Suson, up Hagemann and along the rollers of Keller made for some good hard pedaling.