Went in to the office today, learned that one of my coworkers tested positive for Covid and is working from home. He has very mild symptoms and thought he had a cold initially but decided to get tested on a hunch.

Spent much of the day cleaning up network drives. I had a bunch of pictures and some personal documents on my computer's C drive and moved all that to Google drive. Have been going through things updating my email wherever I used my work email. IT tells me they let retirees keep their company email for a long time and give plenty of notice before the account is closed but I'd just as soon get things cleaned up now.

There's supposed to be a gravel ride today out at Petersburg. I look forward to this every year and will have to miss it --- the wind is sustained at 27 mph for most of the day and it's been raining off and on. The ride will be a muddy, windy mess. Zwift would seem to be the logical option.
So that's a wrap for 2020 as far as organized rides and racing. It's been a strange and sometimes sad year for endurance events, with cancellations and deferrals. Two of the big gravel events --- Land Run and the Dirty Kanza --- underwent major identity transformations and changed their names to appease some "woke" special interest groups. I'm glad I rode in those events when I did.
I did see that there's a new gravel ride next year in Indiana, in the Terre Haute area. It's in covered bridge country and we've been wanting to get over there a ride for a while. That event will definitely be on my calendar.

The weather turned to crap today, with high winds and lots of rain. I even heard thunder at one point. I went to the office briefly and packed up most of my personal items from my desk. I still have to bring home my big Christmas cactus, but that can wait. How does one accumulate so many coffee mugs? There's also an abundance of tea cups with the strainers. I put it all in the dishwasher and will decide what to keep later.

Good Willed some stuff at home as well. It feels great to declutter.

Tried out a step aerobics class today using a video from Amazon Prime. I was drenched by the end and it was just a half hour class. I'm not sure why step classes are no longer in favor (safety maybe?) but it was a heckuva workout.

Took the afternoon off and Steve and I drove up to Bloomington and rode the mtbs around Evergreen Lake. There's a fantastic singletrack system there but it's kind of confusing if you don't go with a local. I found a GPS track on RideWithGPS that followed a trail all the way around the lake and dipped into the singletrack a bit. The GPS route was kind of wonky and we had to do some out and back experimentation a few times, but we made it around the lake. Clipped a handlebar on a tree going through a twisty section and took a mild spill but I was going pretty slowly so no harm done. We saw a bunch of deer. Toward the end, the route took us on a stretch of singletrack that appeared to not get much use -- it was hard to find the trail with all the leaf cover. It was getting late in the day and the sun was dipping in the west. In my mind I knew we weren't really far from the road but I was still having some anxiety about getting caught out in the woods after dark with no lights.

Legs were fried after that big ride. Had a big hot tub session that helped with recovery.

Our county is having a spike in Covid numbers and as such, indoor dining at restaurants will be shut down yet again until the numbers improve. I feel so bad for all of these business owners. We went to the pub up the street for one last indoor meal. They have a lot of outdoor tables but it's in the 40s now and it's too large of an area to use the patio heaters. It was really sad. They had removed most of the tables and there were only 3 servers working.

I'm getting a nice feel for the new mountain bike (traded the Fuse in for a Chisel). It's so much lighter and easier to maneuver. The LBS owner built me up a set of very nice wheels and is going to try to sell the stock wheels for store credit.

Steve is on a kick to replace our smoke detectors with better units. Ugh, what a project...

Our department had a Teams meeting today. At the end I made my official retirement announcement. It was no surprise but it felt good to state my intentions in front of all of my coworkers, rather than just talk about it in casual conversation.

Weather is crazy right now -- it was in the mid 70s with crazy wind most of the day and then around 4 pm a big scary dark front moved through and dumped rain on the area, then things cooled off to more seasonal temps.