Tuesday morning just me, on a warmer-than-normal day heralding that spring was just around the corner. I thought I was riding more slowly than normal up Kings but in the end, not so bad, and I was able to keep it going for the whole ride. Making it a bit more fun than usual was a good tailwind heading west on 84, towards Old LaHonda. Fighting headwinds while descending has never been my idea of a good time! Got home about 8 minutes ahead of the “new normal.”

This morning I woke up to wet roads and decided no, I’ll stay inside and ride the trainer. And funny thing about that. You can be in your own house, in control of everything around you, dog outside the door (closed door because the dog would sit there barking at me as I rode), wife asleep in our bedroom maybe 50 feet away, and yet I felt far more alone at home than I did Tuesday, 15 miles from home, nobody around, not even many cars.

What’s the difference? Sitting on a trainer in my family room, using Zwift on a big-screen projection TV, should be semi-realistic and possibly even fun. But it’s not. I don’t have the control I have outdoors. I feel like I’m in drone mode on Zwift, where trying to get the watts up for a bit doesn’t really accomplish anything. You get a bit more tired for a short time and then you’re back to finding that power level where you can continue your droning.

In the real world, things change when you pick up speed. You feel more wind against your face, your tires sound different, you encounter obstacles with less time to get around them. Maybe a lot of it is not being able to steer. Maybe even more of it is that I don’t have one of those gadgets on my bars that allows me to change direction on Zwift, instead of droning along on the route I picked at the start.

But the main thing is that it’s a really different feeling to being alone. But the one thing I don’t miss on Zwift is black ice (which we’re way past worrying about now) or slippery oil spots brought up by the rain. One thing I never want to go through again is six weeks off the bike like when I broke my pelvis in two places 6 years ago this past February. And yet… I would love to get out in a really nasty storm again. I miss the fun and silliness of being out there, on a bike, when even the cars have deserted the roads. Maybe if we get a warm storm I’ll get out there again.