I'm heading home in about a half-hour, but I don't think it will be too bad yet. Definitely not planing on riding tomorrow (and hopefully working from home).

I had a nice ride in this morning. I caught up to Bob's wife Lea before the bridge. So rode with her into the city. On the way home, I broke my right pedal spindle right on the hill on Ft Washington Ave in front of NY Presbyterian hospital. Lucky it was on a hill and I was not going fast. This is the third Look Keo pedal that I have broken. So stay away from the older first gen Keo with the all black body. I mean they are fairly old so maybe can't hurt to upgrade if you have them. The rest of the ride to my car was a left leg exercise...

Tomorrow is going to be snowmageddon with 8 inches to 1 foot of snow possible. So will be taking the day off from the bike and working from home. I'm sure that the trains will be ok in the morning. But getting home will be challenging. So if you're in the NYC area and can stay home, then I'd do that if I were you. My exercise will be shovel detail. Will probably split it up into 2 or 3 sessions to make it easier.

You remind me of the guy who passed me a few months ago pedaling with one leg. I yelled at him "showoff!" for a joke, and he yelled back "I'm not... showing off... I'm doing... a drill..." Well of course you are, you look foolish, and I'm joking about how you passed me anyhow, but ok, if you can do that in public then you can't see a joke, please explain it one gasp at a time.

My workplace is closed today except for essential personnel. My boss says we are not essential personnel.

Last night was interesting, with gusts to 24 mph. I'm not used to that.


Different story this morning. Crisp and cool (can it be crisp if it's one degree above freezing?) with puffs of a breeze. Bad weather usually blows through in an hour or two, this front took two days to clear out.


I took the leg that goes up beside the woods. If there's any migratory birds, they're all busy looking for food instead of singing. I wonder if they're like the hummingbird they banded in the Smokies a couple years back, which took a 400 mile detour back to the Gulf of Mexico the day before a front moved through to avoid the storms and then came back north (getting caught three times in one migration!). Either that or the bird was getting frequent flyer points. -)

30F, foggy

I wore my cleated shoes for the second time yesterday after an uneventful first commute with them on Monday. Only drama was a loose plastic bag that was drifting on the shoulder that got caught on my clipped-in foot. I had to unclip and shake it off while dodging a sliver of old railroad track. They call that stretch the Burke-Gilman Trail's "Missing Link" because it's awful and after years of litigation against the city, one business still stands in the way of making it an actual trail that doesn't suck for cyclists and pedestrians.

Several years ago I had a plastic bag get caught on my pedal. I didn't realize it was caught at first until several crank rotations had passed. It started to wrap itself around the neck of the pedal where it screws into the crank.

I was in pretty heavy traffic and I thought, "meh... it's just plastic. It should rip and fall off in a minute." So I kept pedaling.

Several hundred yards later the bag had impressively stretched but not broken. It finally stopped the pedal from turning forcing me to pull over and deal with it. At that point it was wrapped so tight that there was no way to merely unwrap it. It's like the bag had fused and became one big glob of plastic on the end of my crank. I wound up having to walk the bike the remaining way to work and then find a carpet knife to remove it. Even then, it took about 10 minutes of cutting and pulling little shards of the bag out before I got it all.

Not the best day I ever had.

I was a bit paranoid that the bag might get tangled up and do something bad to my bike, which is why I shook it off right away. Of course, I could have fallen on the tracks or drifted into traffic too. Stupid plastic bags.

And that’s why there’s a knockoff Leatherman in my bag

It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders!

Ba-duh-CHING!



I will be here all week! Tip your server!

Did it make your Operating System run smoother?

A bad cold knocked me out and I took off work last Wednesday and Thursday. I drove to work Friday. Over the weekend I went up to the Raleigh area to run a marathon. My legs were too sore and tired to ride the start of the week, but I did ride today.

A cool 32F, but no bad winds, so comfortable. I still have to drive a couple of days a week due to getting home quickly for kid taxi duty.

Nice ride today, right around freezing, no wind, clear and sunny. I noticed I tend to look east (into the sunrise) as I pass trees and buildings, even if it's 20-30' to the stop sign, to avoid the glare.

30s-50s in Raleigh, NC. Beautiful weather for riding when it's not too cold and sunny!

42F and raining

(Say the next line with an Arnold Schwartzenegger accent):

"My one HUGE LEG will beat your two PUNY LEGS any TIME!"



This reminds me to get in the order for mew pedals. Will probably go with Look Keo Max 2 since they were cheap enough last time (about $46 or so).

No riding for me yesterday or today due to the storm. It really wasn't as bad as forcasted (I only got 5 in of snow or so at home). I still decided to take today off to let the excess snow melt on the roads a bit more. Will prolly resume the cycle commute tomorrow.

Yesterday, I worked from home while many of my cow-orkers stayed home and didn't work. I got a lot done and was exhausted at night, partly from my lack of activity. I didn't even go outside at all. I get cabin fever, as our apartment has poor windows. My wife joked that the lights went off, as a reminder for me to do my occasionally daily pushups.

That's hard. Hopefully Spring is on it's way to you in short order.

I also stayed home yesterday. I "worked" from home, which meant I did actual work all morning, then spent the afternoon working on my project bike: mounted BB, cranks, rear cassette, installed and trimmed brake and shifting cables. Very satisfying day!

I rode in this morning, and the streets I took were totally fine.

Those bags are insidious little buggers. A few years ago my mother had one get stuck on the exhaust underneath her car, which quickly caused it to melt on the exhaust. It smelled terrible for a few days, but I swear you could always catch a whiff of it for at least a couple of years after.

After two clear days, the overcast and clouds are back. At least we got to see the sun for two whole days!


A fair few people have Friday off, so traffic was pretty light. There's one corner I come around that has a triangle of sand and gravel from our wintry weather a couple weeks ago (I think I saw some ice on a road!). I keep thinking I should bring a broom and sweep that up so I don't hit it wrong and go down hard. Or I could wait for the city to send a sweeper around. (Bad joke, sorry!)

It rained here yesterday followed by a clear night = LOTs of ice on the bike lanes/MUP.

No problems for me, but I do want to build an older, steel framed bike with like 650x42C tires for JUST such an occasion (riding 28s now on my bike)

Yes, ditto on the street sweeper! Been a long winter here!

38F, clammy

Where at in South Puget Sound?