Fresh steppin'

I broke my cleat a while back. Actually, it was New Years Day. I was half-wheeling Ren Jay up Bear Wallow hill when he turned into me and I saved crashing by putting my foot down (classic MTB save). It broke the corner off of my cleat, which serves no function in pedalling, but the missing corner makes walking a little wonky.
Anywho, our main distributor has been out of all Time cleats for months and got them back in this week, so I got some and put fresh new cleats on tonight! As I mentioned, the broken off part doesn't actually affect the engagement mechanism, but given the condition of the above cleat, I'm sure the new ones will ride better anyway.
Sunday we had a group and got out for a good ride. It was a little cold, and SUPER windy (20-30mph blowing w/ higher gusts). We took a route west toward Ellitsville that hit Mt. Tabor Hill somewhere in the middle. Tabor is the most feared climb in the Hilly 100 . I've ridden enough times to not be scared though. And we hit it from a left hand road rather than head on like the Hilly does, so I didn't realize we were on it until I got to the top and saw the famous right hander that is extra steep. Anyway, it was a good ride and while we started w/ probably 8 guys, it ended up just RS and I after Tabor (there was one guy whom I didn't know that kept taking off like a bat out of hell on the hills, but would sit up at the top. I'd go w/ him on the hills, but I don't like sitting up, I like to continue to ride hard. So when he took off/sat up on Tabor I decided to just keep going and RS [the TT beast] eventually caught me).
This week, on the other hand, has been an uneventful saga (or are saga's by definition eventful??) of roller riding, trainer riding, weight lifting and more roller riding. Blah.
Tomorrow (thurs) looks totally outside ride weather; low 34 tonight, high in the sixties tomorrow, will make a low-to-mid 40's morning ride totally doable. Oh, there 35mph wind to go w/ it all, but whatever. I'll deal.
Then the rest of the weekend I'll be in Oklahoma for my grandmother in law's 80th birthday. So I'll miss a few workouts and probably eat a few things I shouldn't, but the following week is training camp in Knoxville, so I'll consider it fuel for that.
Looks like we're leaving here early Thurs 3/12 and coming back later Mon 3/16. We'll get 4 or 5 rides in the Smokey mnts. Hopefully the hillybillies are used to seeing people on bikes by now.