It was pretty slow so I had time to take it all in...

School bus drivers around here are the worst. Even though I know they all have cameras on them! Van pool drivers 2nd worst.

Thanks as always for your insight. It really is helpful.

Are you saying you are running two "headlights" simultaneously? I remember a few years back some discussion among motorcycle people thinking this wasn't always a good idea (a few bikes were starting to come with double headlights). The line of thought was that a car might see you approaching and think that the narrowly spaced headlights were actually those of a car much further away, leading to the fear someone would pull out right in front of you, not realizing how close you actually were.

Of course motorcycles travel much faster and in regular lanes of traffic, but it's just a thought.


Anyway, this is fun thread, and it's interesting to hear stories of people's rides.

I just zoned out and lollygagged today

There's a cheap camera at meh.com today (9/20) with bicycle mount. Only 720 resolution, but also only $20.

Getting into commuting again, and it feels great. Very warm day today though at about 90 deg. F with humidity. I expect it will be hotter on the ride home. Front brake caliper came off again so I had the bike shop check it when I got to work. It had just stretched out and they adjusted it for me. Third ride in a row where that happened. Yikes

A very nice ride in this morning with some winds but that beats out the fog and mist we have been having. The temp was 67 f degrees with dark skies when I left the house this am.

This was probably my most windy ride! 10-20 mph winds from NNE when most of my commute to work is heading North. Well, as long as the winds don't change direction, the ride back home is going to be a breeze! Last commute of the week for me, as I head to Vermont for the Fall Classic brevet on 23rd.

[MENTION=465722]robertorolfo[/MENTION], no the two dynamo-powered lights are a headlight and a tail light.

Last night's commute home, was hot (Temps near 90 F) sweaty, and actually awesome. I made one of my best commute times ever, 22 min for my 5.3 mile commute. I ran into another rider on a roadie in full garb who asked about my messenger bag, which is the Infamous Israeli Paratrooper Bag. I used to have one back in HS in the late '80's and it was one of the best bags I've ever owned. When I found them listed on Amazon a short while back I just had to get one again. It fits my work notepad, some pens, an office outfit, my vape gear, electronics chargers, and usually my lunch as well, so it works for me as an everyday bag.

This morning, near 70 degrees with high humidity, and a normal commute time. 28 minutes which included both a store and gas station stop.

Nice move [MENTION=60072]HardyWeinberg[/MENTION]. I was expecting some retaliation from the tailgating driver. A mad honk or something.

Nice ride in this morning. A squirrel crossing the road up ahead paused as if he was going to taunt me and make me hit the brakes. But then he saw a car was passing me and decided to bolt the rest of the way across.

75 degrees with a dewpoint of 70 for this morning's ride in.

sticky, sticky, sticky....... gross.

i for one will not be sad to see this last blast of summer heat wave leave the area for good.

yo, mother nature, bring on some of that cool clean crisp autumn air that makes life worth living.

In case anyone cares, I made a video of what my commute looks like, which I've been wanting to do ever since I got a GoPro camera almost 2 years ago. 15 miles each way, 2/3 rural (10 miles closer to work), 1/3 suburban & residential (5 miles closer to home). I basically just took the clips of when cars were passing me and put them together. I believe this shows every single car that passed me on that particular commute from this past Tuesday, and I had no problems at all from anyone that day, which is pretty much the norm.

The commute takes about 70 minutes but the video is 13 minutes. Feel free to skip forward if you like.

I had planned to ride the e-bike yesterday, but overslept again. I have to get home by 5:45 PM today so my wife can go somewhere, so I took the e-bike today to ensure a speedy commute home. I'm hoping to take the road bike tomorrow which will make this my first ever 4-day commute week!

Pretty uneventful ride this AM, except my lights were almost dead. Forgot to plug them in after Tuesday's commute. Front light was pretty dim, but luckily the sky got brighter and brighter as I went along, so it wasn't too bad. And one of my 2 rear lights did make the whole trip without crapping out on me.

My e-bike's head unit display actually has a USB output on it. I need to keep a cable in my bag so that I can plug in my front light if that ever happens again.

48F clammy, overcast. No standing water at least! But it did start sprinkling my last few blocks.

Ha, OK, gotcha. I was actually thinking that I might have been reading your post wrong, and I was right... about being wrong.

2 minutes from the ride home the other afternoon. In a few block stretch, I passed 37 cars (most of them single-occupant), a bus, a handful of garbage/recycling bins, and 2 salmon.

90 degrees + the last 2 days, so I'm just trying to focus on taking it easy on the way in to work. Plus, when I get home I have 3 kids (2 elementary age and 1 baby) so I need as much energy as possible. That's when the real work starts. haha.

I was tempted to drive today since I also went running this morning. Don't want to burn myself out. But I didn't want to miss out on riding a non-precipitation day!

That's a nice hood with good roads. Amazing that more folks aren't cyclecommuting there. BTW, 2 salmon? Where's the fish? :)

Yes, especially since fall is just perfect here. It tends not to rain much until December and temperatures have finally come down enough to make riding in office clothes doable.

Was curious as to how hot it gets in Sacramento. Looked up some temps here: https://www.usclimatedata.com/climat...tates/usca0967 92F avg high in summer seems pretty tame. Am jealous that for February avg hi - low is 60F - 41F. No snow there, I guess.

I'm sure you're careful but just please be super cautious when passing cars on the right when you're right at those side streets. I've seen too many videos of a car making a sudden right turn with no signal and the cyclist is right there and gets mowed down. And with traffic like that it's probably more likely to happen because someone will get impatient and try to make a quick exit from the line of traffic by going down a side street. Passing that much traffic moving that slowly, it might actually be better to pass along the center line of the road to avoid potential right hooks.

Thanks. I know that neighborhood. I suppose it's a possibility but it would be a dumb move because a right turn takes you into a neighborhood where there's a stop sign every block for many blocks until you get to the next N-S thoroughfare.

[MENTION=301784]PatrickGSR94[/MENTION], I enjoyed your video. Traffic is light there, from my perspective. It looks relatively relaxed.

Started out good... seat bolt decided I had to much awesomeness in my trunk. Quite the walk this morning!

[MENTION=3283]caloso[/MENTION] - the placement of that one blue trash bin seemed to be the biggest hazard. Fun to watch the cars go by.

A nice ride in this morning. I left a good 5 minutes earlier than normal, got in an extra couple of miles and had time to swing by the ATM.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

^ Happy Firday indeed! 64F, nice crisp and clear morning. Rode and chatted with a fellow commuter peep over the bridge and downtown. What's not to like? :) Mixed it up with two guys in a paceline going down Riverside Dr yesterday. I took a turn on the front when a slight upgrade came. Tried to keep the pace but had to peel off. Got back on for a while and then was dropped like a bad habit. ;) Good workout yesterday morning. I miss the group rides I used to do on the weekend in the past...

69 degrees with 96% Humidity - first day of fall so the sun was rising directly in the east right as I was heading out the door, and I commute eastbound. (Note to self always move so that you have a westbound AM commute).

I'm having a rough week after a full summer of not even the remote hint of danger.

I had the school bus thing on Wedensday I described a page or 2 back.

Then today I had THREE near death experiences on my commute. 1 of them was TOTALLY my fault.

The ride started out with me misjudging the distance to traffic when I made a left hand turn onto a road I use. I approached the road from a cross street with a stop sign. I looked right and saw the traffic stopped 100 yards to my right at a stop light. No problem. Gives me time to get onto that major road and get up to speed.

Except the cars weren't stopped. I just didn't look at them long enough to realize they were moving at 45 mph. At a glance they looked stopped. At a second glance, they looked 10 feet away. I wasn't even across the road to the right side of the lane when I realized I was about to get smooshed. Rather than continue the left turn into the lane I just kept going across and hopped onto the sidewalk and went into the grass on the other side. MAJOR "I'm an idiot" moment.

The moral...look both ways before you cross...but look for more than a 1/4 of a second. Take the time to process what you see.

But I wasn't the only moron out there today.

A half mile later I hear a car pulling up behind me to pass on my left as I approach a stop sign. He doesn't stop at the sign, but instead makes a hard right turn in front of me. Moron goes around me to the left to cut in front of me going right. My front tire is about 3 inches from his passenger door as he does this. I scream obscenities at him but he rolls up the window and I'm still rattled from nearly killing myself cross the last road so I let it go and ride away.

A quarter mile later I'm approaching a large store. I go behind it because it's a long run with no traffic and nothing is ever going on back there. Again, I'm approaching a stop sign where I make my left turn to go behind the store. An 18 wheeler delivery truck is coming from my right to the same intersection. He's slowing down and stopping so I start making the left. Then the 18 wheeler doesn't stop but instead guns it and barrels into the intersection that I'm already in at this point, presumably so the driver doesn't have to be 'stuck behind a bike' for the next 100 feet until I cut behind the store.

I wasn't in the mood to let anything go at this point. This driver and I had words. I'm still trying to figure out how in the hell he felt like he had any right to argue about how he wasn't wrong for nearly running me over with a truck.

A half mile later I lost traction going around a turn and nearly went down but I saved it. It wasn't even a fast turn. I just got into that gravely stuff that piles up on the side of the road and the rear tire slipped. At that point I was about a 1/4 mile from my office so I decided to quit pissing off the bicycle gods and I just walked the rest of the way.

In that last 1/4 mile I got passed by another biker.....who had him helmet hanging from his rear rack. So I spent a 5 minute walk pushing a bike wondering why he bothered to pay for the helmet and carry it...but not use it.

I may leave the bike at work and walk home. It's a nice day.

This morning was 76 degrees, a full 20 degrees above normal. One of the warmest September mornings we've ever had in South Dakota. Humid to boot, so it was a sticky ride to work. Tomorrow morning is supposed to be back into the 40s.

Yesterday afternoon I had a near-rage incident on the MUP. I'm usually a pretty even keel kind of guy that doesn't get worked up too often, but I had a guy really push my button.

I was riding down a pretty quiet branch of our MUP, the kind where you can see a mile in both directions. I was cruising along enjoying the tailwind when I saw two guys ahead on skateboards riding two abreast. I could also see a woman on a bike coming in the opposite direction up ahead of them. The skateboard guys saw me coming for quite a while before I actually got there.

As the woman approached, the skateboard guys slid over from riding two abreast into single file to give the woman room. I realized that the oncoming woman on the bike was going to reach the skateboard guys the same time I was going to overtake them, so I slowed down and waited for the woman to go by so I could make a safe pass. No problem. This was all working as it should.

I called out "passing" to the skateboard guys and pulled to the left side of the path to overtake. The skateboard guy at the rear stayed right, but the one in front purposefully pulled to the left side of the path and blocked me. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't hear me, and announced "passing" again. He stayed put and gave no acknowledgement that I was behind him.

So I rode slowly behind him waiting for him to get a clue and move to the right so I could pass. Finally he looked back at his friend and said, "I guess this guy doesn't know how to make his bike go on the right side." He moved slightly to the right and I passed him on the left side.

It took every bit of restraint within me not to knock him on his butt as I went by, and somehow limited myself to give him a stern "you are a jerk" glare. Man, was I angry. Once past him I dialed up the watts (the few I have) and got out of there. I needed to put as much distance between him and me as possible less I be tempted to turn around and demonstrate how physically fit I am.

Wow that one got me riled up. I'm better now.

Crisp equinox 45F and dry