The Weather Lied to Me

Friday, April 22, 2005, at 10:11AM

By Eric Richardson

The weather's conspiring against me today. I got up this morning, checked weather.com, and saw a high of 73 degrees. So I put on my board shorts and t-shirt, hopped on my bike, and headed off to work. Around lunch time I started to say "Hey, it's not warm out." Just now I went back to check the weather again and found this time a high of only 66 degrees, and some rain coming this evening. In fact here at JPL the high is only listed at 64. So now I not only have to deal with the chill, I also have to plan to beat whatever showers we're going to get back Downtown.

On the plus side I'm really starting to notice improvements in my biking stamina. I powered up the hill from Pasadena in one gear today, and had enough left to give it a little juice coming up to the top. The worst part of my ride, though, continues to be the hill I have to go up once inside JPL. My building's basically at the top of the lab, which is built into a hillside. Looking out my window from the 5th floor I'm even with floor 11 or so of Building 180, which sits approximately on level with the security gate that sits right at the bottom of the hill.

I also have to mention that I enjoyed the LAist post on biking today. Critical Mass and the Bike Kitchen did need to be mentioned along with this weekend's Bike Show and BikeSummer. I bash them a lot, so I figure I should mention when I do like a story. And no, it's not because they linked to blogdowntown.