Seventy-five degrees in late November?

I don't think we're in [Kansas] anymore.

Up first: a photo of the fantastic Colorado jersey my mom sent me. It's much more yellow than anything else in my wardrobe, but it's kind of fun to be sportin' the home state on my rides. I have another photo of the whole shirt -- it's cute with great mountain scenary -- but I'll have to retake it. I thought this one was cute too. Except get a load of my teeth -- they look like monstrosities in this photos. Maybe they are. I wonder if when people meet me, they think, "My, what monstrous teeth she has." I've not heard.

So on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Emily was in town and we decided to hop on our bikes and head down the river (road) for a while. It was freakishly (if you're from CO) warm and I couldn't resist. I am not a huge fan of the river road because it's not terribly well-paved, but I do like leaving for a ride with scenery and not too much traffic right from my front door, and this ride is good for that.
Though after about 8 miles, we were overtaken on the road by a band of wayward Harley-riders. There were probably upwards of 30 "bikes" and you can sort of see them here if you look down the road. I couldn't (didn't) get my camera out fast enough to get a good shot of the pack, so all you can really see is a few motorcyles growing out of Emily's helmet.
For a while, I took the lead (single file is a must on this road) and Emily more or less stayed on my back tire. Then we switched and I followed her for a while. She set a pace around 18 mph. I was happy just pedaling along at that pace. Then she brought it up to about 20 mph which I can maintain, but wasn't sure how long I wanted to maintain it. I watched her chain-ring and thought, 'if she bumps it up to her big chain-ring, she's going to be at 23mph easy, and I don't know how long I can maintain that.' I kept watching her gears. In less than a minute I watched her chain move out toward the big ring in front -- and off she went. 23-24 mph. I bumped my gears up, tucked my head in and kept it going. I was just starting to feel the rhythm and enjoy the speed and I was just getting ready to pick up my cadence a bit and Emily backed off and I whooshed by her until I was able to slow down.
She said, "Corgi sprint," as I went by. Her little corgi dog can run really really fast, but it fizzles out in about 40 seconds and has to stop to rest.
It was fun while it lasted.
A bit later we saw a sign coming up ahead with an arrow pointing to The Old Sugar Mill. I've passed by the sign many times, but never turned down that road. I called ahead to Emily and asked her if she wanted a detour -- I think she was torn between wanting to ride and wanting a break. So we stopped.
[Some of these photos didn't turn out so well because I couldn't see my view finder all that well and my camera wasn't focusing on the right things.]

In this old sugar mill are five wineries' tasting rooms. There is a hall for weddings and receptions, and huge warehouse space for wine-making (I think). I have a friend from law school whose last name is Carvalho, so we decided to start our wine tasting at the Carvalho Family Winery.
Our pourer was one of the Carvalho brothers and he told stories and recommended wines and was altogether fantastic considering it was pretty clear that we weren't going to be buying any wine at that time as we had no reasonable means of carrying it (unless maybe we put the wine bottles in our water cages, but they're probably a touch too big).

The wine was good and I was trying not to taste too much because I knew that I still had half my ride ahead of me. We decided to make Carvalho our first and last winery of the day. Next time, I'll try some of the others.

There must have been some fancy event that day because we saw this unnecessarily large stretch SUV gas-guzzling limo waiting outside.Though, now that gas prices have come down, we should all be driving around in giant cars and going places just for the heck of it. I'm thinking of trading in my hybrid for a Hummer and my bicycle for a helicopter.

Here we are on our way out of the Sugar Mill and off home -- though it was a warm day, a chill was settling in the air and we didn't want to be on our bikes when the temperature starting dropping.
There are those teeth again.