I forgot where I read it (here or elsewhere) but some one recently described a bike saying that it's slow and heavy but pedals easily. That applies to my 1997 RockHopper. I rode it to work and back yesterday, and while it's not slow, it's not as fast as the super light 2006 Felt I rode the day before.

It was a little warmer than the past few days with temps in the low 40s on the way to work.

I worked a little late (again!) and rode home after dark. I encountered one ninja-salmon in a bike lane. Next to him on the parked cars he was riding next to I could see the reflection of the red blinkie on the rear of his seatpost...but he was dressed in all black with a dark non-reflective bike.

The RockHopper's very low gearing makes even the steepest hills easy, but slow. While the custom high-range gears makes it a fast bike on more level streets, and especially the downhills. And the big, 26x2.125 lightweight smoothies yield, comfort and grip especially on some of the broken pavement of some streets.

Both ways I listened to the "Version HIstory" podcast (in one ear) They discussed the failed Amazon Fire Phone. In the previous episode they discussed the Microsoft Zune MP3 player.

Now that I'm more familiar with my 3-year-old commute routes, and it's dark on the rides home and the scenery is limited to what my helmet light and head light show me, I think I'll be listening to more podcasts (in one ear).