Nice ride in this morning, pains me to think I may have to drive tomorrow due to business commitments. I hate that. :(

Should be a challenge tonight, 10mph headwinds for 30 miles. I may give it an extra push so that I look forward to driving tomorrow. :)

Apparently it's run red light day AND don't look right when turning right. Who knew?!

I was willing to risk myself in the chance of rain but not the toddler, so I drove him to daycare and rode from there. I got rained on right at the end, as I came through the guard gate and into my building.

Hey everyone, just checking in after a long hiatus from BF. Nice to see this thread as active as ever. I have yet to bike commute this year, mainly due to laziness and also because it's way too easy to drive since my company moved its office. Also, it's snowing today. I'll start again next week, I promise.

I was in NYC (Manhattan) last week on business and had Sunday to bum around. I did all my longer trips by CitiBike, travelling around the perimeter of the lower half of the island and over to Brooklyn (tip: avoid the Brooklyn bridge!). What a great system that CitiBike is. I mainly stayed on the separated bike paths and didn't ride much in traffic, so I don't think I got a true NYC cycling experience, but it was enough to appreciate the comparably low traffic volume and wide streets that I ride on at home.

Okay, next post here will be after a bike commute.

A very nice uneventful commute this morning with the temp at 34f degrees when I left the house. Clear skies and the winds are down from yesterday made it pleasant.

51F, supposed to be near 80 this afternoon. C'mon summer!

40F sunnyrainy

The more the merrier! :thumb: You missed the incredibly low traffic today in Manhattan. Looks like almost everybody took off for Good Friday. This must be what its like on an early Sunday morning? Great day to ride from home for me. Also had more incentive since my car is at the mechanic. :)

Running a little late I decided to save time by going slow. Blue jeans, easy ride, skip the shower or change. Normally I'm not of the "to get there fast, go slow" school, but today was a pleasant exception.

To make up for it I brought my jersey and bike shorts for the home trip, and I plan to leave a little early before traffic and crank it up.

Last night, having parked near the daycare and ridden from there, I returned via a longer route. I wanted to scout the climb I'd take if I were bringing kiddo in a bike seat. (If you know Folsom bike trails at all, it's the path from the old bridge through the rodeo grounds to Lyons park and the library.) It's pretty steep! It would be no problemo with MTB gears but my commuter has a low gear about 30" and it was a bit tougher. The route could potentially avoid streets almost entirely. I still need to ensure the first part is passable. It's a foot trail down the bluffs to the MUP at lake level, and I haven't been down it since our big winter storms. Maybe I'll scout that part on my next ride.

When I had to haul both of my kids in the trailer up the hill from the daycare to home, in a fight to delay the bonk until I got them out of the trailer and pushed them through the door into the kitchen, I finally put some work into first downgearing the bike and then switching entirely to another bike. That new bike from 10 yrs ago, the elder is now riding to high school.

East wind was kinda a bug this morning and of course the normal train, wish my route had safer bridges so I could avoid it. Hoping I got my chain adjusted properly on the Specialized. Got the Trek right but both bikes liked to pop off in most dangerous spots.

Pretty pleasant morning ride in contrast to Friday - 2 flats in one day. There was nothing good about Friday!

I did manage a faster commute on Friday, about 20 seconds faster moving time than my PR on my commute segment although a long stoplight kept the overall time back in the ranks. At age 57 and 7 years on these segments, little victories like that are feeling more significant.

It's looking like rainstorms this week though so I'll be on slower bikes.

Another nice day today. Ride in was pleasant around 63F or so. Just wore longsleeve baselayer, short sleeve jersey and bib short. Was toasty enough to want to take of the glasses and unzip the jersey when going up the hills. Looking forward to losing the baselayer later on for the ride home. Car is still at the mechanic. Its going to be a sizable repair bill. Getting rear springs, exhaust coupler, front brakes, oil and oil filter all done.

i thought I was going to be able to ride all 5 days last week but a thunderstorm when I woke up and should have been riding to work convinced me to drive. It was not bad the rest of the day but I would have been soaked in the dark on the way in.


I was hoping to get 5 days last week... this week is looking super wet and running the risk of dancing around more storms and family commitments but a ride is still better than driving almost always.

I went inside to cool off for the first time this year, and a nice ride all together

It continues to be cool in the morning, -4C/25F, but at least it was sunny and clear.

Lots of rain on the weekend and none today but some coming this week. I keep putting off purchasing rain pants thinking that the weather will warm up and rain won't be so bad but it isn't warming up (early morning that is) and the rain will be cold. However, by the time they arrive, I may be past the cold rain and just into cool rain so I'll just have to put it on the list for the fall.

80F!! Wow!

You might want to change your avatar and take off the balaclava.

Never! This morning my phone said 45 and as I got going the radio said it was 55. Both were wrong but I was overdressed. Looking forward to hot summer mornings when temp is irrelevent.

I've enjoyed the cool-morning/warm-afternoon commutes so far this week. Going to be a windy one tomorrow though.

Rough morning so far. Didn't sleep well.

Weatherman completely missed the boat today. They said it was supposed to be sunny and nice, and the rain wouldn't hit until Wednesday. About 4:30 AM I woke up to the sound of torrential rain hitting my roof. That got my brain spinning.

On Saturday I had taken a short ride up to the grocery store on my hybrid with rack and fenders (which I call my "rain bike".) On the way home, I blew my front tire. This was the original tire on the bike, and had lasted 7115 miles before it finally wore through. I could quite literally see light through the thin spots in the tread, so I didn't even bother fixing it. I just walked the bike home and threw the tire in the trash. Then I ordered a new tire which is scheduled to arrive tonight (Tues evening.) "No problem" I figured. The rain isn't supposed to hit until Wednesday, so I could just ride my fenderless road bike for a couple days until my new tire shows up.

Now the rain hitting the roof had me rethink my plans. Of course, I could always ride my road bike in the rain. I don't like to do that, though, because it's such a pain to clean the bike afterwards. And probably a bigger issue is riding in the rain without fenders is extra miserable. All the gunk that would have normally wound up on the underside of the fenders is instead evenly distributed all over my body. Yuck.

So as I lay in bed I formulated a plan. I managed to doze off for a while, then I got up 15 minutes early. I went out and took the front wheel off my TT bike and put it on my hybrid. They were both 700c so it was a pretty easy swap, I just had to adjust the brakes a little to accommodate the thinner rim. It looks a little funny with a 32mm tire in the rear and a 23mm slick in the front, but oh well.

So I was congratulating myself on my ingenuity when I suddenly realized the bike had no chain. When I'd pulled the front tire off I'd also decided to clean the chain. I then forgot about it, and the chain was still sitting in my jar of cleaning solvent. So I had to pull the chain out and try my best to hastily dry it off and lube it, then reinstall it on the bike.

By this point it was 20 minutes past when I should have left for work. Even though I had gotten up early the extra monkeying with the chain had made me late. So I rolled the bike out of the garage to discover a couple of things: first, while I was messing with the chain the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out. So I probably could have just taken the road bike. And second, with the unexpected rain came an unexpected change in the wind direction and intensity, and now instead of a mild crosswind as I thought I would have, I had a fairly strong head wind to fight all the way to work.

Finally got to work late only to discover that my network account was locked out. So I had to monkey with that for a while.

Well, the day can only get better from here, right?

I was prepared for rain this morning but it stopped about an hour before I headed out so all I had to deal with were wet roads and puddles. I overdressed and arrived at work sweating buckets, I dressed for -7C/19F knowing full well that it was actually +7C/45F.

This is a perfect example of why we shouldn't be riding bikes but driving cars and trucks instead. :lol:

It's been so nice this week, I haven't had anything to report. Get up, drink a cup of tea, munch some cheerios, get on the bike... same old, same old. Which is nice. I haven't missed my train, and I haven't seen any car accidents, nor any deer, skunks, raccoons, opossums, or even geese. This morning a bunny ran across my path, oo we. :thumb:

I have a major road crossing on the MUP, 6 lane split road with a little island in the middle. Today, for some odd reason, a car stopped for me in both directions and both were pissed when I waved them on. Dear drivers, while you may think you're being nice by stopping and letting me cross, the other two lanes of traffic are likely not watching you or me so if I wave you on GO! Rant over

Good cyclecommute in this morning. Had to dress for 40's F since it was fairly cold. I saw a dude on a nice all chrome single speed Bianchi. Thumbs up to him for doing Harmen Meer in a higher gear. :thumb:

A beautiful day, just beautiful.

My one mile of fire road was kind of chewed up and when I got to Nimbus Dam I found the culprits. The near-flooding of the winter, and the lake basically returning to its roots as a river, led to a huge accumulation of driftwood floating in front of the dam. They had already gathered it all up with a boom and scooped it out of the lake, and made a huge yucky pile of it. Now they have trucks hauling it out.

I went to meet my wife for lunch. She is using my employment uncertainty to fantasize about moving to La France. The idea terrifies me, because I think they basically wouldn't want us there. I've got a great education and job history but I don't think they'd have a lot of patience for a poor-to-worse speaker of French. I always thought if I had an opportunity like that it would come through a job I already had. Still, I'm looking at websites of Arianespace and friends like Thales and NAMMO

Started out in a down pour which I could of handled. Half way to work the rain stop, the wind picked up and dropped 10 degrees. I hate Kansas.

Nice cool 1C/34F temperature but there was a strong wind from the east, which accounts for approximately 60% of this morning's ride so I was much slower than normal. Brought my rain gear as the forecast is for rain on the way home and tomorrow (morning anyway).

Our city announced last week that they are preparing to sweep the sand that is dumped on the roads during the winter (and ends up at the side of the road, where bikes travel) but, they are starting with the roads that are going to be used for the annual Sudbury Rocks marathon which (1) is approximately 4 weeks away, (2) won't be used by runners until the race as runners don't run on the road, and (3) cyclists have been riding for at least 3 weeks now and are looking to use the bike lanes that are covered by the sand and could benefit from sweeping now, not after they are done the race route. Furthermore, part of the race route is on a road with bike lanes (we don't have many in this city) so sweeping the sand off this bike lane also clears the sand from this part of the race route.

I made a complaint (on Facebook) and as much as I might like to take credit for getting the city to change its plans, I don't think that's what happened. However, it appears that a number of bike lanes are being cleared now (including the one that will be part of the running race route).