Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1712:

Woke up to the sound of rain hitting the roof, and the wind whooshing through the trees. The forecast said it was going to rain until about 8 AM, then the sun would come out. With that strong 25+ mph headwind, I wanted all the aero advantage I could get. So I was faced with a choice: ride the hybrid bike with fenders which would keep me dryer, but make me fight the wind. Or, ride the road bike without fenders which cuts through the wind a lot easier, but would spray me with water.

I decided I'd rather be wet than exhausted, so I took the road bike. I actually didn't get as wet as I thought I would. I think the strong wind was drying me off almost as fast as the rain was making me wet.

I've got one short stretch on my commute where I have to hop on a busy 4-lane road for a few blocks, then lane change into the center turn lane to make a left into the park where I'll catch the MUP. This morning as I was changing lanes, I shifted my front derailleur into the big ring and it somehow bound up, preventing the pedals from turning. I downshifted the derailleur hoping to free it up and proceeded to drop the chain off the small ring . Weird. So now I found myself in the middle of busy traffic with no way to propel myself.

Sometimes when the chain drops off the small ring I can get it to re-mount itself while riding by moving the derailleur to the higher position. In this case, the chain wedged itself between the ring and bottom bracket, so I couldn't turn the crank. It was a less than optimum time for this to happen. Luckly I had just enough momentum to get me down the turn lane to the intersection, then a break in traffic happened at the right place to allow me to slowly coast through the left turn. Thankfully I didn't have to resort to the Fred Flintstone method of propulsion in the middle of rush hour traffic.

Once I was off the busy street I hopped off the bike and manually put the chain back on the little ring. Finished my ride to work and didn't have any further shifting problems. As I arrived at work I could see blue sky appearing in the west, and now that I'm writing this it's a sunny day outside, as the forecasters said it would be.