Sorry to hear about your difficulties, mgw4c. At least they have coincided with some not-so-great weather over the past couple of weeks.

My commute was great this morning. Very mild temperatures, about 50 F, for the morning ride, and the high is supposed to reach about 70. We had similar weather over the weekend, and very sunny for a change, which was a huge contrast from the previous weekend, when we had a snowstorms and temperatures below freezing the whole time. My wife went for a rare ride with me, and we had a very pleasant 18-miler on the local greenways. I then spent about 2 hours washing bike yesterday afternoon, as several of my bikes had accumulated layers of mud and salt. I also cleaned the chains with my new Park chain-washer and relubed them. Finally, I fixed a flat on my main commuter, the Bob Jackson, which was been idle the past couple of weeks.

I rode the Jackson today and it felt nice to be riding it again, and I had found myself missing the dynamo light that's on that bike. I have concluded, however, that the dynamo does slow me down, scrubbing about 0.5-1 mph off my average speeds. I don't really notice it while riding, but my average speeds on that bike have definitely dropped since I installed it in August.