Well it has been a few days since I have been able to commute by bike. The roads are clear so I commuted by bike my first commute since the new year. It was cold this morning at 10f degrees with clear skies and I could see the quarter moon on my ride in. I did stop at a store that is at the half-way point for a very short break, just to warm back up and head on out. It is so nice to be able to commute by bike to work!

A rather balmy 13°C this morning, and seemingly the same on the way home even though the sun had set.

Today I tried out the new MontBell "Cyclimb" softshell I bought over the holidays. Works as advertised -- blocks wind in the front and vents well in the back and under the arms. Looks sharp too.

another cold one but mercifully no wind 18F/-8C My water bottle s not up to the task, I have to stop and unscrew the whole thing for a drink...IPhone too, keeps shutting down in the cold.

Ditto for my ride this morning. 17 degrees on my thermometer, but no wind. Aside from slightly chilled fingertips (slightly) on arrival, the ride was pretty pleasant. I finally added the headlight mount to my front fork on the commuter. Really enjoyed the additional light.

Forecast is for a light tailwind homeward. Yay?

Just a couple of degrees colder than yesterday at 20F. My fingers and toes were pretty cold by the end of the 47 minute ride. Toes more so. They warm back up pretty quickly though.

My helmet goes off to you folks riding in Canada, SD, Iowa, Mass., etc. I probably won't see many days below 20, but y'all have plenty of them and snow and ice too.

I was all ready to commute this morning, but when I woke up I saw a nasty mess of freezing rain. Snow is one thing... but ice is another. So I bagged the bike, jumped in the car and slid to work!

21F, mild wind, other then a school bus driver that tried to take me out an uneventful commute

Last week when we were returning to South Dakota from Ohio, my "Service Engine Soon" light came on just east of Peoria, IL. I immediately called my mechanic (so nice to live in the age of cell phones) and after asking me a few questions he said the truck would probably be fine to complete our journey home. The soonest he had an opening to look at it was today.

So this morning I loaded the bike into the truck then drove to the shop. From there I unloaded the bike and had a relatively easy 2.25 mile ride to work. It was a balmy 31 degrees (compared to the previous week or so) and the wind was only blowing about 10 mph (calm for us in the winter.) Had a couple decent hills to climb, and combined with the warm temps I got a bit sweaty even on this short ride. They're predicting freezing rain/sleet for later today but so far it was dry.

This afternoon I'll reverse the process: ride back to the shop and load my bike, then drive home. As long as I have the truck out I'll probably run to the home center on my way home too.

One benefit to bicycle commuting is that not only does it reduce wear on your cars, when they do break down it's a pretty painless process to have it serviced. No need to bum rides from family/friends or rely on a shuttle service (which in the case of the little shop I use doesn't exist.) It just turns into a normal commute day with the added benefit of taking an interesting route to work I don't normally get to ride.

I took yesterday and today off. Noticed Monday that my work bike had a flat, so drove in yesterday to bring it home with me, and today was resolved to hit the gym instead. Maybe tomorrow is looking good for a ride.

My wife and I drove her car around for nearly FIVE YEARS with the Check Engine light on during most of that time. I took it to AutoZone a few times to have them pull the code, and it was always the same thing - "EGR Insufficient Flow" which was really no big deal, maybe just a slight hit on fuel economy (no emissions testing 'round here). Finally, last year, I pulled the EGR valve off the cylinder head and found the metal pipe coming off the valve to be clogged up solid with carbon deposits. Took me almost an hour to get it cleaned out, but ever since then no more CEL and better fuel economy to boot!

If your light ever comes on again you can always stop by an auto parts store and they should hook up the scanner and tell you the code(s) stored, for free.

Ride home last night was dark, and cold. I was running late all day long yesterday - late leaving in the morning, late eating lunch, and late leaving the office at 4:55. Didn't make it home until 6:15. Wife wasn't too keen about that.

I had my GoPro running for the full morning commute, and with a 32GB card that left only about 55 minutes of video available on the card. So I just turned the camera on and off several times going home, mostly during the sections with the most traffic. I found out that on dark rural roads, the camera is darn near useless. It picks up the small area where my front light shines, and that's about it.

Also I was having problems with the mount letting the camera tilt forward, and it was vibrating so much I wouldn't have been able to get any useful license plate information even if I wanted to. Here's a sample from yesterday morning:

Coldest ride since last winter for me, with temps in the low 20s F. Temps in this range don't bother me as I've got good winter gear, and I actually prefer the cold to hot, humid weather. However, my toe warmers are getting pretty ragged and apparently need replacing as my feet were colder than usual. Fortunately, I have another pair of them that I can put on my shoes. My eyes also watered like crazy, which I'm just going to have to deal with this winter. I bought new cycling glasses (prescription) in the fall and they are not as good at blocking wind as I had hoped they would be.

I had a close call on one section of my commute where water has been draining across the road all year, apparently from a leaking pipe of some sort. I've reported it to the city a couple of times, and they fixed it once but it broke again. Anyway, I forgot about the leak until I was almost upon it and fortunately saw the white ice on the road and was able to swerve around it. I probably would have gone down if I had hit it. I had sent another message to the city several days ago about the leak, but they still haven't fixed it.

My mechanic just called. It's a cylinder temperature sensor that threw the code. The part is only $35 but it's 4+ hours of labor to get to it. He cleared the code and it's not coming back, so he's hoping it's a fluke. The part supplier doesn't have the sensor in stock anyway, so the mechanic told me not to worry about it unless the light comes back on. If it does then at that point he could order the part.

Those darn things that are hard to get to, I hate repairs like that.

Forgot to mention that yesterday morning when it was 26F (wind chill 18 I think), I decided to just go without eye wear of any kind. I had on my thick balaclava and have tried various combinations of clear glasses and even ski goggles, but absolutely nothing works for me as far as not fogging up. So I just cinched the balaclava in as close as possible all around my eyes, and left my eyes exposed. And honestly it wasn't too bad. Usually I need glasses to keep bugs and dust out of my eyes, but apparently in the cold winter that seems to not be as much of a problem.

This is also the first winter with my newer, larger helmet (got it last Spring, older helmet was an old Specialized in medium, now I have a Bontrager in large with a far superior adjustment system). I had difficulty last winter getting my helmet on when wearing my balaclava. But now I can wear both the balaclava AND skull cap inside with sweat strip, AND even ski goggles, and the helmet retention straps will fit over everything. Then I can just turn the adjustment knob in back to cinch it down. Works great, and much more comfortable!

I couldn't go without glasses for very long. The wind - even just what is created by riding - would dry my eyes out too quickly.

I use clear safety glasses I picked up from Lowe's. I wear a balaclava, but never over my mouth or nose. I can't get enough air flow if I cover my mouth. I think that's why I never have a problem with the glasses fogging.

Despite wearing my Oakley cycling sunglasses (which have cutouts in the lenses), my eyes were bloodshot when I arrived at work this morning. Not sure if its due to the coldness or dryness. Might check out goggles if I get the chance.
Anyway, today was my first full roundtrip commute of 44 miles. Haven't done that in a while, but felt OK.

Today's commute was 15f degrees which who knew 5 degrees would be a notable difference, but it was. I could not feel the cold through my clothes when just walking out of the house to get my bike ready. So it was a very nice commute this morning, I also did not have to stop to warm up my hands.

Nice ride in, warmer for sure at around freezing or just above.

Regarding eye wear, I use over the glasses ski goggles but on those two cold days this week I had a fog up problem enbough to forcve me to take them off half way in.

Wimped out today.. cold and raining. Don't care for either individually but together just miserable. Decided to drive and rest today.

Temps in the upper 30s, about 15-20 degrees higher than yesterday, with very light rain. The rain wasn't showing up on radar and my Weather Channel app said there was a 0% chance of rain today, but our local TV forecasters picked it up. It wasn't enough to affect my ride at all but made me glad that I reinstalled fenders on my Waterford over the weekend. I've been commuting on my Bob Jackson touring bike almost exclusively since I put a dynamo light system on it in August, but lately I've been getting tired of riding that bike all the time. Before I got the dynamo light, I swapped around my bikes quite a bit for commuting and I helped break up the monotony.

I had also made a bad decision to remove the fenders from my Waterford during a brief dry spell last summer. It has rained record amounts here ever since I took the fenders off. Interestingly, it has barely rained since I put the fenders back on that bike on New Year's Day. My commute was noticeably faster today and I got to work about 5 minutes quicker than riding my touring bike.

My commute yesterday was one of those days that you have to slog through. It was very cold and windy in the morning, and my commute was very slow. In the afternoon, I realized that my bike had a flat tire as soon as I started to roll away from work. I picked several pieces of gravel out of the tread, initially thinking that was the cause, but fortunately ran my fingers along the inside of the tire and found a sharp piece of wire that had penetrate the tread. I never would have seen it but I could sure feel it pricking my fingers. Took me a while to fix the flat because the head fell off my pump, and I was only able to put about 20 lb of air in it. Fortunately, my local bike shop was still open and only 1.5 miles away, so I rolled over there and pumped up the tire properly and bought a few spare tubes from them. I didn't get home until 7:30 pm. Long day.

A balmy 28F this morning. Yesterday's ride home was just under 40, a veritable heatwave. I had a PT appointment for my shoulder yesterday and didn't think anything of riding to it. That is until I walked into the waiting room (with my bike) and the looks from the other patients were, let's say, interesting?!

I get that myself. I have a congenital heart condition that doesn't affect me much (yet) but requires regular visits to a cardiologist to monitor. I usually ride my bike to the appointments. When I walk into the waiting room wearing my bike gear I'm met with incredulous stares from people hooked up to oxygen tanks wondering if I'd made a wrong turn.

The nurses aren't used to dealing with people like me (i.e. relatively young and healthy.) As part of their general script upon check-in they ask patients, "Do you feel well enough to walk, or will you need wheelchair assistance?"
Whenever they ask this I grin and hold up my helmet saying, "I rode my bicycle here, so I think I'm good."

When I was first diagnosed with my condition four years ago at age 42, my doctor told me that the reason I had gone so long without them realizing I was born with a heart defect was probably because of all the bicycling/exercise I've done. Had I not kept in good cardiovascular shape I'd have had open heart surgery by now. He tells me to keep riding like I'm riding and I can probably stave off surgery for quite a while. So on days I don't feel like riding, I can pull this reason out of my pocket for some extra motivation.

You know the look!

About 10 degrees warmer this morning compared to yesterday: 30 vs 20. Tomorrow looks to be a little warmer still. It's looking like I'll have a full 5 days of commuting to kick off the year.

Great ride in this morning. I was slow...pacing about 12.5 average mph, but I did a leg day at the gym last night so it was nice just spinning along. It was around 40, but felt colder with the overcast sky and very humid. I left later than I wanted, about 0830 - but the upside to leaving after 0810 is traffic is almost nonexistent. I won't get to leave work now until 1730, but that's okay. Traffic is usually pretty heavy, but until the University starts back up, the route I take isn't terrible (all other ways out of the city are, though!).

I am going to be looking at another bike tomorrow for commuting duty. a '92 Miyata 721. Pretty excited about it! I kind of swore off aluminum, but it does have chromo stays and fork, and supposedly comes in under 22 lbs. That's a good 10 lbs lighter than my Peug. It will be nice having more options in the morning.