You're probably right ... It really served me no purpose to run the light.

The only issue is when I'm sitting at a light, to turn left, waiting on an arrow, and there's no car in sight to trip the sensor. Encountered this, this morning. There were no cars coming in either direction, nor any across the intersection. In this particular case I went ahead and turned left. I was three blocks from my office.

I actually ran across a line in a bike brochure put out in BC that if you waited a suitable length of time and the light does not cycle for you then you are to just treat it as a stop sign and procede when safe. I think it referenced a code in the motor vehicle act also. I will see if I can find it again.

First commute in 2 years today! I got in before the rain started, it has cleared up this afternoon as weather people predicted. The 11 miles right away in the morning is FAR harder than the 11 miles I did after work last week to verify that I would be able to make the distance. Now I'm half excited for yet half dreading the 11 miles home in a couple of hours.

The nice thing about bike commuting for health is that I'm pretty much locked into doing the ride home, like it or not.

Yeah, most states have provisions for that. You need to wait a certain amount of time and then you can go. Most of the intersections around me have sensors that are easily visible, so I just line up the frame over the sensor and it trips the light every time. Good photo of the sensors: Motorcycles and red light sensors, what to do? - Baltimore Motorcycle Travel | Examiner.com

Of course, sometimes they've been paved over, but I can usually guess where they are and get them to trip.

35°F on the way in, 55°F and sunny on the way home. Spring has officially sprung in Anchorage! Geese are back, motorcycles are out, and a winter's worth of dog poop has surfaced in the backyard, which I spent three hours shoveling on Sunday. Dogs: 90% awesome, 10% terrible.

The MUPs have been plowed down to only a couple of inches of slush, and that should be melted by the end of the week, so hopefully I can get off the road and back in the woods by Friday. A few tunnels are still solid, smooth ice, so the studs will stay on until they melt out completely. Still, after running four inch wide studded tires all winter, the one and a half inch studded tires on the road bike feel wicked fast.

Shoveling the poo? Doesn't it help the grass? It's usually greener where the poo is in my yard :lol:

My first real (had to aggresively brake) right hook. The guy had his small business name and phone number emblazoned all over his mini-van. Was tempted to call him and vent, instead I just blew it off and enjoyed the rest of my ride.

54F 12 C beautiful spring ride in.

great ride yesterday in the 40s but I was comfortable. I am getting better at figuring out my layering system for different temps/ wind conditions. Rode this morning with just Knee and arm warmers plus my new vest. I really like how the vest fits and its visibility. I hope I can avoid the thunderstorms and have a great earth day community 10 mi ride this evening.

A cool 4C/39F, overcast with a bit of mist/fog/spray in the air; I had to ride without glasses because in the dusk, I couldn't see well and with the potholes in the roads that we have, not seeing them is dangerous. Forecast is for a bit of showers this afternoon but a bit milder temps. Rode a longer 18km/11mi route in, didn't time it so I don't know how long it took but then, I'm not in "racing form" yet as I am just getting back into commuting by bike. I think I'll be able to move up to the 25km route for next week and then the biking kms will start racking up.

I know the calender says that it's spring, but it's starting to feel like summer here in South Florida. Yesterday was pretty, rode the long wheelbase recumbent to/from work, and again today. Yesterday the high was only about 78 degrees, but we are supposed to see 90 by the end of the week and into the weekend. Had a FAST commute yesterday with a 17.4 average over the 15.6 mile round trip. The ride into work was quick, but there was a 10-15mph wind from the north in the afternoon and I was running in the 20-22mph range most of the way home. A lot of fun for an old, fat man like myself.

Tractor Tom in Okeechobee, FL

I think I jinxed myself; the light didn't give me a left turn arrow this morning, even though I was right over the sensor :(

Fantastic ride in. Had to remove a layer halfway to work. I'm very glad I wore shorts instead of pants. I had a close pass by a pickup truck. The truck was being followed by a cop, but he didn't pull him over. The cop probably wasn't paying attention.

I get mad at spandexed out cyclists who blow lights and stop signs, but that's no license for a car to yell at a cyclist. I tell myself they're just jealous because they're locked into a box, secretly longing to be free! I notice I don't get yelled at in the winter no matter what I do!

Very pleasant 56F but windy. It was in the low 70's on the way home last night - I'm diggin' it!

Question (possibly a stupid one) re: the sensors ... do they pick up aluminum bikes?

.

How was my commute today? Karmic! Instead of waking up when I should have, I rolled over and tried to snooze for another 15 minutes. I reverse commute since I work nights, so I'm riding in at rush hour. Normally I leave my place about 4:45PM, and I realized today that leaving at that time usually gets me through the first industrial area I have to pass through before it becomes a race course for hundreds of asshats who get off work at 5 PM.

Got on my bike, and I immediately remembered why I had thought there was some sort of maintanence I was going to do to it on my big one day off. My new (plastic) fender is slapping against the underside of my front rack when I go over bumps, making an annoying noise, and probably not good for the longevity of the fender if I don't deal with it soon...and with the roads here, my commute is pretty much a constant series of bumps. :/

Make it down the hill from our place and into the first industrial district I have to pass through and traffic is way heavier than I usually experience through here and at times I don't have a shoulder to ride on, so that's nerve wracking. Get to a stop sign and just maybe a quarter block past it the road widens into two lanes. A lady in a Jetta has to let me know that I inconvenienced her by a second or two by passing me very closely at a stupid speed the moment the road widens. I give her the finger, and the phrase that goes with it, and I can hear people in cars going the other way chuckling. Unfortunately, I think they're laughing at my impotent rage at nearly being killed by some entitled jerk who thinks that is okay because they were very briefly inconvienenced, so now I'm feeling even worse.

I had checked the forecast just before I left home and was dismayed to see that not only would I have a headwind on my way in to work, but sometime during the night the wind would be reversing direction and I'd get to enjoy not only another headwind on my way home, but also rain. Once I got out onto an exposed portion of the road I realized the forecasters were wrong and the wind was actually quite a bit stronger than they said it was going to be! Good times!

Then as I'm coming down the glorified sidewalk that is the Duwamish Bike Trail, I have to stop to cross the street. Not really a big deal, except I'm running late for work and I'm usually able to cross here without waitng for the light. Making a mental note to myself to leave earlier to avoid the rush hour traffic again.

When I make it across the street and Duwamish Bike Trail is now literally just a sidewalk, I'm greeted by a bunch of runners coming at me. Just before I get to them, I have to pass two bikes coming the other way where the sidewalk narrows too much for that. I hate this "bike trail". Then I'm baffled as all the runners ahead of me do a u-turn on the sidewalk just before I get to them, so now instead of passing them going the other way I've got half a dozen joggers in front of me. At first it didn't seem to bad as they were moving pretty fast, but then it turned out the one at the very rear was much slower than the others. That's okay, I see that they are all turning left off the sidewalk to go into a warehouse and I realize its a bunch of crossfit nuts. Of course, a few yards before we get to where she is going to get off the sidewalk another conga line of crossfitters leaps out onto the sidewalk and one of them shouts "BICYCLE" into my face as they run by, causing the slowpoke ahead of me to nearly stop, and look over her shoulder. Now she's really barely moving and I'm nearly trackstanding but we're like a dozen feet from her exit off the sidewalk and she can't decide if she wants to let me around or go for it. Finally after half-heartedly waving me around, to her left, which is the direction she needs to go, she realizes that's stupid, as now we're there and she finally goes back to bench pressing tires or whatever.

Next I climb up and over the West Seattle "low bridge" and am amazed my Monday luck hasn't caused the drawbridge (swing bridge actually) to open, but my luck hasn't really turned yet. When you get to the bottom you can cross the street in the sidewalk and then cross the street in the sidewalk again to meander through the island, another lane of traffic and finally back onto the trail, or you can follow the trail around and under the bridge. Or you can do what I like to do, and that is leap off the sidewalk into the street and then cut across the road onto the handiramp for the trail on the other side. They way I do it is dependant on a gap in traffic, and so sometimes I can't manage it, but it's much faster and a lot less annoying to do it my way. It's also a lot more fun!

Amazingly it looks like I'm going to pull it off today. I keep checking my rearview mirror every second or two, and there's no one in the lane next to me going my way as I'm bombing down the bridge and the guardrail is about to disappear. There are three cars coming the other way, but my mental math says they are just going to be past me when I want to cut across the road to make it onto the handiramp on the other side.

Just as I commit and launch into the air off the curb and make my landing, a fricken road bike appears out of nowhere a little ways behind the cars! I can tell immediately that we are both going to occupy the same space if I keep going like I am, so I have to scrub off nearly all my speed so that I can let him get past, and even so I'm going to have to cut back from a little past the ramp. I wanted to be annoyed with this guy because here he is out in traffic when there is a perfectly good bike trail alongside him that leads to the bridge, but thinking about it, HE WAS DOING THE EXACT SAME THING I WAS! http://ficdn.mtbr.com/images/smilies/lol.gif Well, minus the high speed leap off the curb anyway.

Like I said, karma!

Other than nearly getting run over by some sort of ballgame traffic that was making a highly illegal u-turn in the middle of an intersection while I was waitng for the traffic light in the lane, my commute after that was pretty uneventful. Had the usual fun playing tag with a bus going up the hill on Jackson though. It's kind of tempting to start climbing up King Street instead, even though it'd mean a two block detour and it's steeper, because every day there's either or bus blocking the right lane (and railroad tracks in the left lane) or a bus playing tag with me as we make our way up the hill. They stop for passengers, I squeeze around them between them and the railroad tracks (and traffic squeezing past me...), and then just before I make it to their next bus stop, they pass me and start the game all over again. I ended up going for several blocks in the middle turn lane again, because that seemed like the best option. I can't win, there just aren't any good routes to my work from my home for good portions of my commute.

Oh, and the cycle track on Broadway that they had the grand opening for last summer is still closed, forcing me onto sidewalks for the last four blocks of my commute. It's supposed to (re-?)open next month, but nothing ever happens on schedule, so I'll believe that when I see it. I swear they closed it less than a month after they opened it, it was just a public relations stunt.

I don't know how I managed it, but I ended up not being late for work somehow, despite the headwind, and leaving a good 15 minutes late. I skipped shaving when I got there like I usually do, but still, I must have somehow made good time.

I missed last Thursday, Friday and yesterday due to some family travels. But a nice ride in this morning was much needed after sitting in the car all day yesterday. 54F at the start.

Possible thunderstorms this afternoon though. I will probably either get wet or get rescued by the spouse.

Yes, they do. Any metal will trigger them.

Great commute today, perfect spring morning. Rained overnight but sun came out bright with clear skies, pretty much drying everything off by but some puddles by the time I left. Cool but not cold, a bit warm in the sun the last couple miles.

I also had a strange sensation. Instead of the usual feeling of riding into a wall of air, I felt like I was riding in a vacuum, almost being pushed by air on the back at times. And I noticed i was riding a couple mph faster than usual. I think this is the fabled tail wind I have heard so much about, but never see (its usually calm in the AM for me and a huge headwind PM).

Of course my ride home should be the opposite.

Would a carbon bike trip the sensor? I've usually just run it as mentioned and never even tried to trip it.

It's the wheels that matter. The inductance loop creates a field in whatever is near - if there's enough surface area of metal close enough to the loop, it changes the inductance in the loop and a detector triggers. So it generally needs to be metal - the rim of a bike tire - and it needs to be right over the loop.

Carbon wheels on a carbon bike will not work trip the sensors, fwiw. Not that there are many commuters with carbon wheels, but I have done it on occasion. If I have glued up a new tubular I prefer to test the glue job on my Friday commute rather than on Saturday during a race.

My ride in today was completely unremarkable, despite the huge hullabaloo about the Fix50 project that has shut down most of the crosstown freeway.

Carbon isn't metal, so no. But you'd probably get the drivetrain, pedals, or wheels close enough to the sensors. It's important to get both of your wheels perfectly on top of the sensor in the road. If it still isn't sensing you, contact the municipality and they can adjust the sensitivity.

There is one light on my way home that I almost always have to trigger as there usually isn't any cars by the time I leave (it is a dead end with access to a school and park and bike path, so very light traffic in the evenings).

They have a nice painted line with a bike symbol so you know exactly where to place your wheels. My aluminum bike with carbon seatstay and for triggers the sensor with no problem.

One time I arrived at the light after someone with a carbon bike, who was sitting there an entire sequence (other direction got green, she didn't). I patiently waited a while till I suggested that we should swap places as my bike would trigger the sensor.

Maybe a carbon bike with enough metal elsewhere would work, maybe other sensors are more sensitive, but I haven't seen a carbon bike trigger one yet.

If any of you saw me during the first 2km/1.5mi of my commute home, you would have said, "Nice red tights Jules!" to which I would have replied, "Those aren't tights, my legs are red from the cold, wet rain!!". I pulled over to a nearby building, sheltered from the wind on the leeward side and pulled on my tights and my helmet cover, I felt much better during the remaining 16km/10mi of the ride. Santa would have been proud of the colour of my legs. The weather man was wrong about the outside temps, he must have been reading the indoor side of the indoor/outdoor thermometer.

My ride yesterday was pretty good. Got an extra 4mi in, so that was nice. The best part, my wife and son came and "picked me up" at the end of my shift. She was pulling him in the burley and we rode home. It was after sunset, but still quite bright. I had my Lumina 700 on strobe for visibility and I had a lady slow down her Mustang convertible to tell me that I was going to give people epileptic seizures.

Sometimes people make me smile.