Joan, my views

Well its now winter in Jamaica.

I know. laugh all you want but the fact is we have very serious winters here sometimes. Anyway, there are two recorded occasions when snow flurries were seen at the Blue Mountain Peak.

But you don't have to go to the Blue Mountains to freeze. I do it all the time. At Munroe, Spaldings, Colleyville and my hometown of Malvern, I am forever cold.

Neither is Kingston exempt as the members of "Fun and Thrills" have been demonstrating over the past two weeks. For no longer can we find most of our "dedicated riders" on a Sunday mornings at 6.30 am, for they all claim that it is too cold to get out of bed.

This Sunday was no different for we only four of us rode out of our headquarters at close to 7 am. They were Michael, Chris, Barry and of course, myself. Damit joined us about an hour later in Maryland.

Talk about cold! After riding uphill for over an hour, when I got to Maryland and got off my bicycle, the cold bumps were still visible on my arms. It must have been at least 72 degrees!Then horror of horrors, none of my brave Tarzan like colleagues jumped in the water. At least last week, two did show the spunk and jump in. This week, none did, but each one was urging the other to jump in but they never did! The water looked like ice and the air outside gave enough warning about what awaited anyone who got wet!

Well at least the breakfast was wonderful. Last week, Coy introduced us to gungo and salt fish and it was absolutely delicious. And guess what, he did it again this Sunday and although I did not know it could have been improved on, it was even better this week.

So whether its winter or summer and whether I am freezing or not, I suspect that Coy's breakfast will remain a magnet to drag me out of bed to continue doing the Sunday rides. Unless of course it actually snows!

To be fair to Howie and Heather however, despite the fact that its winter, I am sure they would have gotten out of bed, but they had gone to Negril to enter the "Reggae Marathon"and they did fantastically well in the half marathon category with Howie doing 2 hours and 8 minutes and Heather 2 hours and 40 minutes. I look forward to Howie's report (on everything, not only the running part!) on his blog.