Yes! Enough snow melted away from it that I was able to start using it about three weeks ago. Last week we had a string of days in the 60°F range so that pretty much took care of the lingering snow piles. The only snow remaining are the sites where the city dumped all the snow they'd removed from the roadways all winter, and the piles were (seriously) over 100' tall. They're estimating that those piles won't completely melt off until June. But for those of us out on the road and trails, everything is finally snow and ice free.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1638:

Rain today and 40°F. I took the hybrid bike with fenders. Normally on Thursdays I do a split commute where I work in our company office during the morning and a client location during the afternoon, but I'm not motivated enough to get soaked three times today; twice is plenty.

I bought a new set of tires for the hybrid last week, but haven't gotten around to installing them yet. Because I'm still running the old tires, there was a "thump, thump, thump..." the whole way to work as my back tire has developed a bulge. I noticed the bulge a couple weeks ago and got the replacement tires ordered, but since then it's been nice enough to ride the road bike so I keep putting off installing them. Hopefully this weekend I can get around to mounting them and get rid of the throbbing, and the associated fear that the tire will finally let go and strand me.

I've got a solo guitar/singing performance scheduled for May 7th and preparing for that has been soaking up all my extra time. I've performed in a band setting thousands of times, but it's been over 10 years since my last solo gig so I've been woodshedding new material instead of doing things like bike maintenance. For anyone else who plays, I've been working to incorporate a looper pedal into my skillset, which has proven to be extremely humbling. The learning curve has been much steeper than I anticipated.

I've run Kendas on my hybrid pretty much since I bought it. They're cheap and seem to be pretty durable. However, the last few Kendas I bought have developed a bulge like this. This latest tire only has 1,300 miles on it. I decided it's not saving me any money if I'm replacing tires more frequently. So this time around I spent a few extra bucks and went with Continentals. I run Continentals on my road bike and have been satisfied with the performance and durability I've been getting on that bike, so I decided to try them on the hybrid as well.