Had a nice little surprise on my way home yesterday - my wife and 2 y.o. daughter decided to take a walk specifically to meet me on the way. They waved me down and I hopped off my bike and walked with them home for the last 1/2 mile.
This morning, 7C, sunny, and nary a breath of wind; a welcome change from the last week's worth of commutes.
Long boring story: There's a half-mile long construction zone on my commute route where the road is reduced to one lane each way and no shoulders. I've been using this stretch to try sprinting and see how fast I can go to avoid holding up traffic behind me too much. Today, I thought I was doing pretty good - in the big ring, spinning in the second to top gear (bike wouldn't shift to the smallest cog for some reason), and nearly keeping pace with the cars in front of me, though admittedly, I was falling back a couple of car lengths. I don't have a speedometer, but I figure I must have been doing at least 45 km/h (about 28 mph) in a 50 km/h zone.
And then a car passed me. It wasn't a particularly close pass - I didn't feel like I got buzzed or anything - but I was immediately ticked off. Here I am, heart, lungs, and legs working at capacity, all for the benefit of the motorist crowd behind me, and some ungrateful, unappreciative such-and-such has the nerve to pass me! Here I was expecting the drivers behind me to be open-mouthed in awe of my fully human-powered speed (flat ground, no wind), but no, I was just another barrier to their right to go the full speed limit. Of course, this pass came near the end of the construction zone too, so it was particularly irksome to me: why couldn't the driver wait just a few more seconds?
Anyway, I cleared the construction zone and slowed down to 30 km/h once the road opened up. The experience was a nice little ego check for me, realizing that just because I'm impressed with myself, doesn't mean that anyone else is!