Cold Hands, Warm Heart?

[stormdog]

I may have mentioned before that I'm pretty sure I experience Raynaud's Phenomenon: according to Wikipedia "...excessively reduced blood flow in response to cold or emotional stress, causing discoloration of the fingers, toes, and occasionally other areas." My fingers often stay cold and white for some time after going indoors from the cold. Today, though, it took long enough for color to come back to one of my fingers to make me nervous. After twenty minutes of periodically flexing my hand and massaging my finger, I still had a white right forefinger with no feeling. Finally I had the idea of swinging my arm around in a big windmill for a while. That seems to have done the trick. I'm getting the pins and needles of returning sensation, which I'll definitely take over apparent frostbite!

When I went out to my bike after school, I had to break a layer of ice off of the saddle and handlebars. Then it tipped over, and the brittle plastic catch on my clip on headlight broke. Good thing I have the bolted on, dynamo-powered one now! I think some ice might have gotten inside the cable housings at the same time; my gearshift got stuck and I rode home in fourth gear the whole way. It was a little annoying, given that the internally-geared hug was supposed to solve the issue of frozen drivetrain components.

It's nice to be home and eating some warm dinner!