Playing catch-up

This week has been an interesting one. Travelling abroad for business beginning of the week and getting home late Wednesday night meant conclusion of this short working week with Ascension on Thursday and a no-brainer day off on Friday. 
As I picked up some backlog on my cycling goal I went out immediately Thursday morning to get back on track with a longer 140K ride around the Betuwe area. Man, what a strong winds this week!

All easy going on the way out, but getting back home was brutal!

As the wind was equally strong the next day, I chose a more sheltered route on Friday, avoiding riding the dikes. Not as sunny but much easier!

Saturday I logged 3(!) rides: a small tour on the racer and a round trip on the normal / shopping bike to a party in Schijndel (20km away) to celebrate that a friend of ours is now living in the Netherlands for 30 years, after fleeing her home country due to war. Kind of a bittersweet event in the light of the current Ukraine situation.

This morning Raymond and I went for a MTB ride instead of road racing. A very welcome change from riding on tarmac the last couple of weeks. In the meantime the mountain bike has been collecting dust for a while so time to have the wind dust it off! 

We rode a very interesting route Ray picked up from one of his friends and it brought us to trails that were very narrow, not signposted and, as a logical consequence, very quiet 👌🏼.
At some stages I doubted whether we were actually supposed to ride bikes there 😀

Unfortunately half-way the weather started to change and we ended up in pouring rain for the second half of the journey. A cold, wet and windy return was our share and by the time I got home, my fingers were so cold that It took me five minutes to open the helmet clip and untie my shoes. 
So happy with the hot shower once I could release myself from my gear!

And the dust on the bike, you say?
That got washed off nicely by Mother Nature! 😂

The end is getting near, two more days to go. TTYL!