Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1655:

A little on the chilly side this morning at 47°F, but the wind was light and the sun was out so once I got moving I was comfortable in shorts and a long sleeve sweatshirt. Kept finding things to slow me down as I was getting ready, so I wound up leaving the house about 15 minutes late. Interestingly enough, I saw most of the same people/cars I normally do, which tells me a lot of people were also running late today.

Got a little over a mile from home and saw a garbage truck going by heading in the opposite direction. After a few seconds my brain suddenly put all the puzzle pieces together and realized that was my garbage truck, and I had forgotten to wheel the trash and recycling containers out of the garage. I did some quick mental processing to try and remember how full the cans were, and if I could skip a week without repercussions. I decided I'd better double back and try to beat the garbage truck to my house so I could put the trash cans out in the driveway.

I turned the bike around and cranked for all I was worth. Unfortunately, I had just come down a monster hill which meant I had to try and sprint up the thing. The hill comprised a majority of the mile between me and my house. I usually go up the hill around 4 mph, but this morning managed to hold 8 mph. I did beat the garbage truck to my house (only because it had to make a few stops on the way) but I arrived so gassed I could barely wheel the trash cans out of the garage. I had to take a few minutes to try and recover before I got back on the bike to ride to work.

It's bike to work week. Each day this week the local bike shops are taking turns having special "refueling stations" for people who commute to work via bike. Today it's coffee and bagels over lunch at a bike shop about three miles from here. The weather should be beautiful so I'm going to ride over and enjoy a snack during lunch.

Backing up a couple days, on Saturday morning it was raining so I was unable to do the yardwork I had planned to do. Instead I spent the morning in the garage working on bikes. I cleaned and lubricated the chains on four different bikes. I finally got around to soldering the cable from the computer to the sensor on my fat bike, after a crash in early December snapped it in half. Then I decided to replace the kick stand on my winter mountain bike, as the end of it had worn down to the point where it was now short enough that it wouldn't hold the bike upright any longer.

This should have been a fairly easy swap. The only problem is the old kick stand that had been on the bike for 22 years had turned into one solid piece of metal as a result of years of salt and chemicals. I tried liquid wrench. Then I tried heat from a blowtorch. Then I put a breaker bar on the wrench, and managed to twist the kickstand into an even more unusable state, but the bolt held firm. Finally I broke out the sawsall and cut the head off the bolt, but the unthreaded portion of the steel bolt still remained completely melted to the rest of the aluminum kickstand. I wound up having to slowly cut the kickstand into tiny pieces in order to allow it to pass through the little frame section behind the bottom bracket. I had to be careful as I didn't want to accidentally cut into the aluminum frame of the bike. My quick 10 minute kickstand swap turned into more than 2 hours. Yuck.