Riding Solo Again

Good news and bad news. Bad news is that, as expected, Annie could not ride today. Her ankle is making progress, the swelling is down, but she's not road-ready. So I had to ride by myself today. The other bad news is that the weather is not getting any more enticing. It is oppressively overcast today and though I've taken my bike with me to do hospital visits I am now seriously worried about rain.
The good news, such as it is, is that being on my own I was able to get out of the house a bit more efficiently and ride at a harder pace and therefore road 17.6 miles this morning instead of the usual 13. The extra pounding felt good. Since, as mentioned, I have the bike with me I won't be posting today's mileage until later.
Also, since I was alone, I wore my ipod. I know there is a lot of controversy about how safe this is, but I use a one ear piece headphone, only listen to podcasts which I think are not as distracting as music, and have found no problem in hearing everything along the ride: cars, other people, etc. For those offended, my apologies. I "discovered" a new bicycling podcast, which was lucky since I'm all caught up on the archives of my other favorites, The Fredcast, The Spokesmen, The Bike Show, Bikescape,etc. and after the intense activity around the TdeF no one has been putting much out lately. So I found The Two Johns and listened to my first show on this morning's ride. Nice stuff.