30F, pea soup fog

We still have some snow on the sidewalks and edges of the roads, which is not the snow that fell there, but the slush that the plows threw up from the roadway. Up to six inches thick in places, it's lumpy but soft and slushy in the afternoon. I rode right through it on the way home yesterday (my route this week involves three miles of a multi-lane parkway with an esplanade down the middle; it's hard to cross so I usually ride on the wrong side :eek: on the sidewalk if I can. It was kinda fun. But this morning all that stuff was frozen solid, so I had to stay on the shoulder of the road... not a big deal.

It was nice and clear this morning with a bit of frost in places. Now it's >50F & sunny. I'm not used to large temperature variations within a single day!

I started out about 5-10 minutes late this morning and noticed that there were a LOT more bike commuters than usual. Timing? or good weather?

I'm glad you didn't take a dive on the broken ice. Closest that I've been was on the small Harlem Meer hill in Central Park. The sheet of ice went across the road at an angle. It was also fairly large covering the wiidth of the road and maybe 12 to 15 feet or so top to bottom. I just did your technique holding really still and trying not to pedal. It worked! But I think I'll probably dismount and walk on the grass (or at least off of the edge of the road) next time...

Just catching up on the past couple of days post - fascinating stories and weather all around!

A bad cold hit me hard on Tuesday night and I stayed home both Wednesday and Thursday. Had to drive today due to still feeling blah and having to leave early enough to get a daughter to practice. It's a bummer too because we have great riding weather, maybe a bit windy yesterday but good temps.

Staying home yesterday did allow me to watch more basketball games than I could shake a remote at.

29F this morning. The 25 mph SE wind that I had to fight on the way home last night was still in full force, so I got a nice push back to work. The wind is supposed to stay steady all day so I'll get to make up for it tonight.

Most of the ice has finally melted off. The only patches that remain are in the low shady areas, like under bridges. Despite there being less ice than there has been, I rode the winter bike for the first time this week. We're supposed to get up to 5 inches of snow this afternoon, and it will start with freezing rain. I decided that even though I didn't really need them this morning, I'll probably be glad I have the studded tires at 5:30 PM.

Spring in South Dakota is like the old James Brown act. Just when you think winter is over and running out of steam, it throws off its cape and returns to the stage with full energy.

Clear and cool ride, but warming up fast. I walked out the door and started riding, asking myself "Why did I go with knee warmers instead of tights?" 45 minutes later, the question was, "Why am I wearing both a base layer AND a jacket?"


Forsythia has started blooming, I let the boxwood kill ours a few years back and miss it. Cardinals and mourning doves are singing in the early morning glare, and the mockingbird is nesting in a bush in the front yard. I may have to keep a tennis racket handy to make it safely back to the garage...

I took the subway to work yesterday and took Citi Bike home. I knew the wind would be brutal, but it was much worse than anything. Half (or more) of the problem was being on Citi Bike. The bike weighs 50 pounds and puts the rider in an upright position. The front basket is a vertical wind barrier, too. When I got home, I thought my GPS app would show that I averaged only 9 mph. It turns out I averaged 8 mph. I was wiped out and fell asleep early. I think I may be exercising too much on weekdays. My wife suggested I dial it down a notch, and I took the subway to work again this morning.

32F, clear

Thanks to some white powder!

About 36 degrees, not too wet but some snow flurries part of the way in. Damp enough to make 36 feel cold.

Was a good ride in today (around 35F and no wind). I saw Bob and his wife Lea on the route in Ft Lee. So rode in with them and chatted a bit. Was nice to have the company to talk to. I hope that its not too windy later on. But the forecast for winds up to 20 mph. So will see when I leave for the day later on. I also heard that my train line was fococked (or NY Penn Station trains were sent to Hoboken) because of a bridge issue. Glad I was cycle commuting in. Here's one site with the info on the bridge being "stuck open":

Murphy: Malfunction Of Portal Bridge ?Unacceptable? « CBS New York

“This morning is an example of what happens to commuters and the economy when the federal government is missing in action,” Heh. Well, a 111 year old bridge might need some maintenance once in a while. It should probably be replaced. But that's going to happen like the Amtrack tunnels under the Hudson River are going to get fixed. Not holding my breath. This was an interesting article on Penn Station and the Amtrack tunnels and some history on it:

http://www.governing.com/topics/tran...e-newyork.html

Not too cool at 50F, but the overcast was dark -- like 15 minutes before sunrise, instead of 15 minutes after. It couldn't decide whether it was raining or not, so nothing worse than a little free sweat.


Here's hoping that overcast hangs around! If it clears up, it'll warm up, and as one of my co-workers said, that's pucker-up time in tornado season. If it stays dark and cool, there won't be that much energy in the air, so the cold front tonight will be a mere electrical show.

The headwind was cold and brutal today. We've been having a lot of wind for a week or more, and it's normal in March, but I sure am looking forward to milder winds.

Friday afternoon was supposed to be snow. What we got instead was a heavy, slushy 33 degree rain. Rode home and got thoroughly soaked. I was cold, but not as cold as I thought I might get. Tacked on an extra 3/4 of a mile when I checked the mail at the end of my driveway and found an unexpected Amazon package. The mailman had delivered it to the wrong address so I turned around and rode it over to the correct house about 1/3 of a mile away. He got the house number correct, but missed completely on the street name.

This morning was more 34 degree rain. I gambled and took the hybrid without studs even though the temp is supposed to drop and the rain is supposed to turn into snow this evening. Hopefully they're correct and I can make it home before the ice hits.

Got out the door late because my wife and I were dealing with a teenager who insisted he was too sick to go to school but not sick enough to go to the clinic. Teenagers. Ugh. I'd go back to the diaper age in a heartbeat.

Went out to the garage and put my helmet on only to be doused in cold water. Apparently when I came home from work on Friday my helmet was full, and when I hung it on my handlebars it was hanging in an orientation that wasn't letting it drain. Oh well, I was about to go out in the rain and get wet again anyway...

Cold! Nice crisp air in my face. Makes a great wake up!

I did have an odd issue this morning. I kept hearing this clicking noise and couldn't figure out what was breaking or rubbing on my bike...until I pulled over to look at it and it was a car behind me with a clicking valve. hahaha

But when I sped up the car sped up and when I slowed the car slowed so the pace of the clicking kept matching my bike! So I thought it was me!

35F, gray

33F. I think that's the first above-freezing morning commute I've had since November. Maybe next week I can take the studded tires off. There's still a lot of snow left to melt in a lot of places so I won't count on that.

My 3yo is signed up for T-ball. This has been a bone of contention between me and my wife. She's gung-ho for it and signed him up. I had few enough positive experiences with team sports, and three? The LL age rules changed earlier this decade to prevent 13yos from playing but that had the effect of shoving the t-ball eligibility down into the threes. But anyhow, yesterday was finally to be his first day, after weeks off rained-out games. So I was all set to ride home early and take him to his game. It wasn't to be, the weather was great but the field was still a mess. I guess if you send a pack of 3yo kids out into a field of muddy puddles you can't expect them to pay any mind to baseball. Next attempt is this weekend. It feels like we are three or four games off now, I don't know if they make them up in T-ball or not.

The ride in and out was perfectly nice, I was feeling good and moving fast (for me). But it will be the only one this week. Another "pattern" starting today and going through Thursday, and Friday off.

Followed a street sweeper a couple of miles this morning. The last mile had to ride around a crazy dancer, dressed in black, in the bike lane.

We are due for a big winter storm, and I'm going to a meeting tonight downtown, so I did the prudent thing and took the subway.

A subway worker died on the track today, from falling 20 feet. This delayed some lines, though it didn't delay me.

3 years old is pretty young. I coached youth baseball for a lot of years. In our program you could play at age 4, but most kids started at age 5. There were some kids who were able to play at that age, and some that weren't. Generally I observed that if the kids themselves were expressing the desire to play, then they were ready. If it was the parents pushing the kids to play then usually they weren't ready. I saw a couple of horror stories with kids who obviously didn't want to be there and parents insisting they were going to be the next Mike Schmidt.

In our area the T-Ball rules are pretty abbreviated. Swing until you get a hit. Once the ball is controlled by an infielder the runners can't advance any farther. No stealing. 5 batters each half inning. Neither runs nor outs are counted. Mostly it's just to get them exposed to the game.

I like how these days they gradually open up more and more of the rulebook as the kids advance each year of age. This allows them to slowly grow into the game. I think my son was 11 before they finally removed the last rule restriction (except for pitch count limits.) When I was 5 years old they stuck us out on the baseball diamond with the full rulebook in place and said, "go!" I remember not having a clue about what to do on either offense or defense.

Now that my son has graduated out of youth baseball, this year will be the first in a long time I won't be coaching. I'm kind of missing it already.

Anyway, back to bicycles. Today was the first day of spring. How do we celebrate that in Sioux Falls? Snow.

Snow was falling pretty steady on my ride in to work. At that point we only had about 1/2" of accumulation and it was 31°F with a light north wind so it wasn't bad. I rode my winter bike with the studded tires as before the snow started there was some rain so I didn't know if there was ice lurking underneath.

34F, foggy

Also, it's outfit switching time (around freezing in the am, pushing 60 if not 70 in the pm), and I forgot to bring the full-finger gloves home last night, so cold hands coming in today!

My taillight wasn't working, loose wire somewhere, and I was up past midnight finding the problem and fixing it (with soldering iron, dielectric grease, heat shrink tubing, etc). So when I got up, with less than three hours of sleep, I was pretty groggy. I saw a whole line of deer crossing the road in front of me, maybe five or six of them. I slowed way down to give them time, concerned there might be another one (I mean, they just kept coming for a while... ) but the last one was the last one and I was on my way.

Be careful of bucks.