Nice ride this morning, pretty well lit by a half moon. A fox ran across the road right in front of me, caught right in the beam of my headlight. I steered a little to the left to keep the light on him as long as I could. Pretty cool.

Yesterday I missed a phone call while on my ride home. It was the woman thanking me for sending her cards back to her. Apparently her purse was stolen from the church pew on Easter Sunday.

Me too, I think it's been 3 or 4 years. Except that I have to keep narrowing the definition from "bike to work". Airplane trip to another office, carpooling while I'm there, train to a work conference, working from home, and now running once instead of biking, I don't count those as breaking the "streak"

I skipped the bike yesterday because of the forecast. The rain was in the middle of the day, so I would have missed it, but the wind warnings were severe. Walking home from the subway, everyone on the street was leaning hard into the wind to stay up. This morning, I looked at the wind map and saw that it was still severe, but I felt up for the adventure. I lifted my weights vigorously before leaving home, and that got me pumped up, so to speak. The wind was a crosswind, and as expected, it was sometimes ahead of me and sometimes behind me, and it required a lot of effort, but I was in the mood, so it was good. It was also colder than usual, 33°F, but I'm prepared for that. After riding home in the cold rain on Tuesday night, there's a lot I'm prepared for.

Clear and calm this morning, vice the headwind home last night. Cooled off 25 degrees from the other morning. The calm and chill seemed to knock down the tree pollen - it's probably sitting on my windshield instead.


There was a tree just shy of the most difficult intersection on this route (stop sign instead of light with heavy cross traffic) that was ideally positioned. It would block the morning sun while letting me look around it to see traffic coming down the hill. Was; strong winds the other night blew it over about 15' off the ground. If it'd been 20' up, the trunk still would have worked.

44F, gray, clammy

Congrats! Love the Omnitech concept. Sherwin-Williams-esque

It's supposed to be a spring, but a lot of people think it's a tornado.

We're a software development/consulting firm. There's also a shredder company named Omnitech, and Columbia makes a line of jackets called Omni-Tech. As a result, we often get phone calls from people thinking they're calling one of the other companies.

A lovely 25F this morning. But, no snow, no rain, no 30+mph winds. C'mon Spring, you can do it!

About 49F and drizzly, I wasn't planning to ride in but my commuter got filthy from last night's commute so I tried getting it cleaner by putting it on the bus today. Wasn't enough rain on the way to do much of anything.

When I rode to the building bike locker, another commuter came in and said, "Spring can't come soon enough." I just chuckled.

44F when I left early to go to the gym on the way to work. I wore light gloves knowing I won't need them later on, so of course my fingers got a little cold on the downhills. A nice, clear morning though.

And, it's Friday!

40 and windy this morning.

It's funny....when it's 40 degrees in January I'm all like "Yeah!! Spring weather!! Wohoo!!!!" and wearing a t shirt.

When it's 40 in April I'm wearing a thermal long sleeve top and bottom and a balacava screaming "I have frostbite from head to toe from this endless winter! It's the apocalypse!"

Wow, that was a cold ride. 16F with a 25 mph head wind. Even a few snow flurries fell on occasion. I didn't wear my winter pants (hey, it's Spring) so by the time I got to work my thighs were on fire from the chill.

Now taking volunteers to go tell Mother Nature that it's April.

It was supposed to rain this afternoon, but it started before dawn as I was eating breakfast. Oh, well, the spare car is parked at work, I have to ride anyhow. Started rolling, and it looked dark to the west, but lighter to the south, so I chanced it and headed for "daylight." That just meant two more miles of rain. At least it wasn't too cool, 45-50F.


I noticed last night something I haven't before. There's apparently a difference between when the white dogwoods and the pink dogwoods blossom, at least this year. Most of the whites are at peak, while the pinks are just starting to blossom. My white dogwood, at the northeast corner of the garage, is one of the exceptions; it hasn't had enough of the afternoon sunshine and heat to be an early bloomer, so it's just now coming out.

freeze warnings the past two mornings. 26F I think yesterday and today 36F on the morning commute. I am tired of the cold. It is APRIL and NORTH CAROLINA for goodness sakes.
some people were rude and passed closer than usual. School has been out and traffic is lighter. The sunlight is almost there on the morning rides. My bright green coat looks like it is glowing the past few mornings.

53F, gray. Supposed to get up to 65 later.

50-52F, some rain. Learned my lesson from earlier in the week and wore my black leg warmers, not the white pair. Nothing unusual on the commute until I reached the corporate campus. A facilities truck was more than forward without any turn signal into a 4-way intersection but then decided to turn right. I was mad but the driver apologized. I shouldn't have gone around him, that was dumb too. Hopefully we'll both be more careful in the future.

32F and snow again. Last week it was pretty, this week it's obnoxious

A cool 43F this morning with possible rain. I only felt a few drops as I neared the end of the ride. Spring is definitely slower to get her this year, but I think I'm okay with it. We'll have enough 80+ degree days over the next few months.

Tough ride in today. The temp was 26F and hardly any wind, so that portion wasn't bad at all. The tough part was the snow. 5" of fresh stuff fell yesterday. This late in the year the plows aren't doing much more than keeping the emergency snow routes open as it usually takes a couple days to plow every street in the city and the projected temps after today means by the time they finish plowing most of the snow will probably be melted off the pavement anyway.

As a result, the back streets and MUP were in pretty bad shape. I could have ridden the main streets, but due to the condition of the back streets the traffic that normally would have been on those roads were now out on the main roads too, which just made them all that more busy.

The snow came in layers. The bottom layer was heavy and wet, the middle layer was powder and the top was a frozen layer of thin ice. I would crunch through the top layer, sink in the powder and then ride over the bottom layer which was now solid ruts and very rough. I averaged about 5 mph and was pretty sweaty by the time I got to the office.

This is not what riding in April is supposed to be like.

26 This morning, but it feels like Spring is finally coming.

Was on vacation last week so no riding for me then. Looks like I dodged a crazy windy day bullet on Thursday. We were driving back from Baltimore on that afternoon and the wind was enough to blow the car a bit on the highway. We saw the National Aquarium, Fort McHenry, Fells Point and a kids indoor play place. Overall a good time and will have to go back someday to see the rest.

Today's ride was good but still a little cold at 35F. Spring is just taking it sweet time to come, eh? Am looking forward to the end of the week (should be up to 70F on Friday but will see).

40F, foggy

The drizzle sent me back into the house for shoe covers, but other than that an uneventful ride. One of those where you see more deer than people, and you never see another cyclist. Maybe it says something antisocial about me, but I feel like it's the silver lining in this type of weather.

I wound up waiting until Saturday to jog up to the office to bring my bike home, and it was an unusually slow run even by my standards. I guess I'm not committed enough to the bike-run-commute idea. But I'm still going to try the full 2-way commute when the weather improves.

50F, dry, and partly sunny. Over the weekend I washed my bikes, waxed the chains, removed all the spacers under the stem on my road bike, and moved my cleats back toward my heels. Today I blew away my old PR on the largest portion of my commute by over 3 minutes (35 min to 38).

But I think my speed is actually due to eating mostly chocolate since yesterday. I got up at 5 a.m. for an organized ride, had a donut for breakfast, half a giant chocolate chip cookie and some more donuts at the midpoint, chocolate milk at the finish line, some more chocolate that my friend brought over at home, more chocolate milk, a regular dinner (combo breaker), then another chocolate donut for breakfast today.

Cold! Well, no colder than other recent commutes, but now that it's January 99th, you'd think it would get just a little warmer. This week's episode of This American Life was boringer than most.