A very nice uneventful commute to work to start the work week.

One of those rare mornings when I just wish I drove. The weather was nice enough, the ride was good enough, but I just could not shake the idea that sitting in my car sipping coffee would be nicer than sitting in a saddle pushing pedals. I eventually got over it, but not until about the last 5 miles or so.

I saw the car go by in the opposite direction one day, probably 3 months ago. I went to look for it a while back, but wasn't there. Then I forgot about it until the other day I was looking up directions from home to somewhere. The street view image of my house came up and I noticed it was different as it used to have the car from the previous occupant. That made me think maybe they've updated other area streets. I remembered approximately where I saw it so I just started clicking through til I saw myself.

Late night showers last night made for a humid morning today. Back to the Monday.

DARK! to start ...

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/...pswcionm3x.jpg

Had some rain last night, and the roads were still a little wet for the commute this morning. However, after the first few miles the roads dried and I actually wound up getting a tail wind for most of the ride. :-)

Felt good this morning. First bike commute in a few weeks, after vacation and a heat wave. A cool morning, signaling a return to normal summer weather with cool mornings and hot afternoons, not warm mornings and brutal afternoons.

Also, SMWBO is having twins, due in February. I don't think I'll be bike-commuting too much in 2017!

lol, good lock with that, congrats & may God bless. are they your/her first?

Was on vacation with the family all last week, so today was a shock to the system to get back into my usual routine. While we were traveling I had adjusted my sleep schedule to match that of my wife's, who's a night owl. As a result, last night when I crawled into bed at 10:30 I laid there awake for several hours. Then I finally started to doze, but would wake frequently. After about 3 AM I started to sleep better but unfortunately my alarm went off at 5:40 so I really didn't get much sleep.

I got up and went for a 4.25 mile run. I decided I had to jump right back into my exercise program as I stepped on the scale and was dismayed to learn I'd gained 13 pounds in the previous 10 days. I'm sure some of that is water weight, but I'm also sure that a chunk of it isn't. Gorging myself for more than a week was a lot of fun, but now I'm paying the price. Also, while I did a lot of walking on vacation my overall activity level actually went down from normal and that certainly didn't help.

It wasn't supposed to rain today, but while running there was some thunder and lightning, then about halfway through a light drizzle started falling. The temp was a fairly pleasant 70 degrees, but there was a strong steady wind and the humidity was high. Temps will be quite a bit warmer this evening on my way home from work. Thankfully the rain should pass.

Back at home I hopped on the bike for my ride to work. I took the hybrid for two reasons: first, it was still raining and my hybrid has fenders. Second, my hybrid has the hookup for my trailer, which I pulled to work. I'm glad I don't have to lug that thing behind me very often as even empty it catches the air noticeably.

So why did I pull the trailer to work? I returned from vacation to find a note that I had a package waiting to be picked up at the post office. My birthday gift from my brother and his fiancee had arrived: a unicycle. I thought about just riding back home and then driving to the post office to pick it up, but the client office where I'm working today is just a few blocks away and it seemed silly to return with a car. So on my way home I'm going to be on a bicycle, pulling a trailer, holding a unicycle.

My birthday gift was actually a gift card. I was leaning towards using it for something practical, but my wife convinced me to "do something fun with it." I'd toyed with the idea of getting a unicycle for a few years now, and decided to go for it. Never ridden one but I figure it might be fun to try. I've heard it takes 15-30 hours of dedicated practice before you can ride one reasonably well. I guess we'll see if this old dog can be taught a new trick.

There's a guy I see who commutes on a unicycle. Maybe I can get good enough to join him before winter hits?

I think I had a breakthrough today. First of all, I became aware of foot pain a few months ago (or really years ago, but the past year has been very bad). I've visited two podiatrists, and the second one directed me to podiatric devices that have gel pads under the balls of my feet. I've been wearing them for a week, and they seem to help with 80 or 90% certainty. I bought new shoes in a much bigger size, and I tried them today. My route is 14 miles long, and I rode 12 miles to a bike shop on the way. So far, so good, and most of my pain is relieved. I was riding cleatless, though. I bought a pair of new pedals at the shop. For my first time, I had the bike shop guy install my cleats. He had a special alignment tool which I had never seen before. I've been putting cleats on my own shoes for decades. He said proper alignment can make a big difference in comfort.

Well waddya know. I rode the remaining two miles to work. Now my pain seems to be 98% gone from my right foot and about 99.5% from my left foot, and my left foot was troubling me more than the right foot. I suspect the cleat is farther back on the left shoe, so I'll match it on the right shoe.

This is a new kind of bliss. I realize more than ever that I've been holding back on pedaling vigorously because of foot pain. Now that it's gone (more or less), I am much stronger than I knew.

Headwinds are usually a challenge on my morning commute. Today was different. The wind was weak and variable and shifty, so sometimes I had a nice tail wind, sometimes I had a moderate headwind, but overall, it wasn't bad.

In summary, it was a fantastic ride in.

Thanks. We had a single kid already 2 years ago, apparently so we could get some practice in for the main event

That is wonderful. Congrats. My twins are 12 now and entering middle school next month. Seems like last week we were bringing them home from the hospital.

[MENTION=339610]Darth Lefty[/MENTION] Congrats that is such exciting news! (what does SMWBO stand for, I am unable to come up with a fitting group of words?)

[MENTION=152773]noglider[/MENTION] I am so sorry we didn't connect, that first day was a bit of a disaster. The trip was too fast. I just started using metatarsal pads that sound similar to what you are using and they made a big difference.

I just got home at about 2:30 am local time from a family reunion/memorial for my grandmother; which took place in NYC/the Hamptons. It was a great trip and it let me see people I have not seen in 3-5 years, or people who had only seen me in the hospital post-accident.

Rough.. temp was bad and slight wind at least. Haven't rode for week/half and have been on a cruise. IE getting no exercise. Need to rethink that be lazy and perhaps try to get some.

When I go on vacation I see it as a chance to run more miles than usual. I don't try to adjust my sleep schedule and am up early enough to get a good run in before everyone else is awake. I sweated off about 4 pounds when I went to Florida a month ago. Good luck with the unicycle!

Ahhh, our gym showers are back! It felt like a luxury after doing without most of the year. But it reminded me that I have to start jogging or get on the treadmill, since I signed up for our annual 5K run, only about a month away.

Warm, humid ride this morning, but overcast so not too hot. Chances of rain this afternoon.

I left early enough to get almost 16 miles in this morning.

As planned, I swung by the post office after work yesterday to pick up my unicycle. A few observations:

1. Unicycle boxes are big. They're a lot bigger than I thought they would be. Almost as large as a standard bike box. It was too wide to fit between the rails of my bike trailer (by about six inches!) I managed to precariously balance it on end and rode home carefully. Thankfully it was only about 3.5 miles from the post office to my house. I did have to stop once because the box slid out and started rubbing my rear tire. It was all worth it though for the look on the post office worker's face when she handed me the box and noticed I was carrying a bike helmet.

2. Unicycles are hard to ride. I didn't expect it to be easy, but I didn't expect it to be as difficult as it has been so far. My son and I worked on it together for over an hour and the farthest I've managed to go so far is maybe eight feet. He's gone maybe six feet. Right now we're just mounting and steadying ourselves using a tree, and riding across the grass. We started in the driveway but quickly figured out it hurts a lot less when you crash if you're not on pavement. And you are going to crash; many, many times. I smashed my shin pretty good, jammed a finger, bruised my shoulder and the inside of my legs are covered in scratches and scrapes. All that was on top of crushing my "area" countless times. I'm definitely feeling old today.

On an unrelated note, it's the one year birthday of my road bike. We celebrated together by crossing the 1,900 mile mark on the way to work this morning.

I rode out to camp (cottage) on Saturday morning, the first 44km on the paved roads were fine but the 23km (that's all I could do of the remaining 27km) on the dirt road was awful with soft gravel that was shaped into washboard for most of the way and I was done when I fell over. I walked for 2km and my son came and picked me up for the last 2km. On Sunday, I went for a 1.5hr walk with the dog, actually, more of a cross between a hike and a scramble up and down rocks (not climbing because I rarely needed to use my hands to support or balance myself) and Monday (Canadian Civic Holiday) we went again and then later on Monday, I went for a bike ride that was supposed to be on a bikeable path but the last 4km required me to walk my bike on the really rough trail. Needless to say, my legs were tired this morning: I was hoping to ride 22km this morning but it was enough for me to do 9km.

I'll take it easy today and tomorrow and try for a longer ride on Thursday.

Have a great day everyone, it's continuing to be hot here for the rest of this week.

Mmmm...
 

...approve of this.

Stat holiday yesterday, and my 7yr-old rode 84kms in 2 days on the Lochside/Galloping Goose trails...so he was pretty proud of himself.


A few sprinkles of rain on this morning's commute but all good. A lot less commuters out today--probably people extending the long weekend.

Nice ride today, heavy cloud cover temps down to 80F.

Set a PR for my morning commute :-)
Otherwise hot, humid in the morning, hotter in the afternoon w/ no end in sight :-(

No worries, [MENTION=190611]joeyduck[/MENTION]. Traveling is hard, more so with little ones.

that's exciting, what do you attribute it to?