Cleaning, building, resting...Week Off

With the CX season in the books, I took this past week (week of 12/6) off of riding, working out, etc. It turned out to be a good week to have taken off w/ wicked cold temps and residual snow on the ground. Toward the end of the week the weather got nice(r), but I'm committed to time off after a hard season. Besides that I had things to be done.
I needed to wash/clean BOTH of my CX bikes asap. I set out to do it Tuesday, but when I dragged the hose out and hooked it up, no dice. Or no water would be more appropriate. It was was too cold to run the outside spigot.
So I had to hook a hose onto the (inside) basement spigot and run it out to the garage and wash at the garage threshold. This worked for the most part, but both bikes froze over before I got them done and back inside. So I had to let them thaw/drip dry before I could clean them after washing. Ugg.

Then I had to clean my shoes, which I decided was a task better suited for the kitchen sink than outside. I gave them a quick "bang off" in the garage, then brought them upstairs for their bath.
I also had to "detail" clean both pairs of my race wheels. They were super dirty and cleaning them on the bike isn't really good enough. I was able to do this in the basement cement shower stall we have, so now everything's basically cleaned, lubed and put away. I may ride the CX bike still some, seeing as it's snowing rather majorly here, but it ~shouldn't~ get the kind of dirty it was.

I also made a total mess in the car. My bikes were covered in frozen mud w/ became not frozen mud (or mud as it's known) once the car got warm inside. It looked like a mud-wrestling ring in the back w/out the sexy ladies.
Our vacuum fits inside the back of the car nicely and cleaned it quite well.

Taking the week off I also had the opportunity to get my new TT bike most of the way together (it's a Giant in case you couldn't tell from the 5,000x it says it on the side)

No complaints about my old TT bike; it served me very well. But I just kind of thought it was time to step it up a bit. The Trinity has steeper angles and more aero tubing and hence should be faster. I rode my old one to some very solid 40k times and won the State TT title on it, and I feel like I rode it to its limit. Surely I didn't, but hey, a new bike is motivation to go faster, right?

Removing sticky-backed bar tape in a cold garage REQUIRES the use of a hair dryer. Trust me here before you even try it and save the hassle.
This week I am going to start some weight lifting (if you can call what I do w/ weights "lifting") and start back up riding mid week.
Lindsay is having some digestive problems and is going to have to have surgery coming up in the next week or so. This is going to mandate a hospital stay of up to a week and her not being able to lift things or generally do things for several weeks, so I'll be playing things by ear and taking them day-to-day until we get her back to 100%.
Anywho, be thinking positive thoughts for Lindsay and enjoy the holiday season!