It was chilly this morning. A little too cold for my liking at 40 degrees (I'm warm blooded. You guys who bike all winter when its' 6 degrees out are nuts :D )

But this morning may be the last chilly ride for a while. It looks like spring might FINALLY be showing up.

I feel for the rest of you, putting up with cold clammy weather. Snow. Cold rain. But I've been enjoying 70° afternoons, on my road bike again wearing my road bike clothes. 4-5 mph faster than last month, and I'll probably be riding around on extra loops just for the fun of it :D

Warm afternoon, it actually feels like spring, woo hoo!

I saw a mink swimming in the canal this afternoon. He must have been sitting on a floating log as I approached, but I didn't see him until he was in the water. He swam over to the far bank, climbed out, and ran away.

Then I saw a snake swim away from the same floating log. I wonder if that's what the mink was hunting.

Cool, though! That's the first mink I've seen in that part of the canal, a hundred yards from US Route One, car dealers, jiffy lube, shopping centers.

Same! I also did that. atleast, doubling the covers adds heat and comfort. I have to travel about 30miles a day, but i take the shortcut paths, I even lost once, gladly I have my gps tracking device with me.

Really? What's the name of that device you are using? I badly need one since i occasionally travel with my buddies.

Yay for Friday! It was a very nice commute today with a short extenstion added. It is easier to add miles in when the temp goes above 32 F degrees as it was this am at 43 f degrees.

Very nice pic [MENTION=60072]HardyWeinberg[/MENTION]!

I glanced at the traffic map before I left for home yesterday and saw a wreck on my route. I figured it would be cleared by the time I got there about 30 minutes later. Wrong. The police had the road closed and they were still doing clean-up. I slowed and the officer directing traffic away from that road said I could make it through. A little bit further up a tow truck was loading a car. I saw a minivan in the ditch, bumper up against a telephone pole, airbag deployed.

Another officer there told me I could go around the left but to watch the cat litter that was spread on the road. I saw that but was more concerned about the broken plastic from headlights and bumpers. I got off and carried my bike about 15 feet and then continued on. There were a lot of cars stopped and looked like they had been there a while. It wasn't the time or place, but there was a temptation to shout something like, "Bikes Rule!"

A nice morning today at 55F for a good 15 miles on the way in today.

66 and breezy. I got about a half mile from home when there was a sudden downpour. I mean biblical rains...but oddly before I could say "Oh crap" it stopped.

I've never seen rain that hard only last for 2 seconds. Ever. But I'm not complaining!

Third day in a row, that I saw a Great Blue Heron taking flight as I approached. They sometimes show up in the wetlands near the creek, but not for long. I think it's a stop-over on their way to more remote areas. Majestic bird, beautiful in flight and is normally pretty solitary and elusive, I always feel sort of privileged to see one. And a bit guilty about disturbing him.

62, warmest morning of the year so far! A pretty stiff headwind but not as bad as predicted and the forecast 30mph gusts and 70 temps this afternoon will make for a fun ride home

Today is the kind of day that tested my commuting mettle. For sure it would have been easier to drive.

Right before I left the house there was a monstrous downpour complete with thunder, lightning, wind and hail. Some of the hail was the size of golf balls, but thankfully most of it was marble sized. The hail stopped and the rain lightened so I hopped on the bike and hit the road. It looked like it had snowed, but it was actually hailstones covering the pavement.

I took the winter bike, as the road was covered in hail and the 35F temp meant it wouldn't be melting off any time soon. The wind was a steady 35 mph but I lucked out in that it was mostly a cross-wind so I didn't have to fight it head on. There were low areas and intersections that were flooded. Lots of sticks on the ground from the wind and hail. The news even reported a turkey buzzard that crashed to the ground as its wings got so ice laden it could no longer remain airborne.

Made it to work unscathed. The temp is supposed to drop and the wind and storms are predicted to continue all day, until it finally turns to snow. Forecasts keep changing but every time I hear them the snow amounts go up. Right now they're thinking this system will drop somewhere between 11"-14". So the ride home could be equally interesting.

https://scontent.ffsd1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...a5&oe=5B2B69CB

Last night I ran across another bike commuter on the way home. He's been at it 4-5 months, but this was the first time I'd seen him. I was on the southern route (good for a change), and led him towards home since his commutes have all been on the western route until then. Bike commuters: we are the Borg, and you will be assimilated!


Unremarkable ride this morning, except that I didn't need base layer, leg warmers, or jacket. High overcast was enough to keep the temperature up to low 60s - well that and the south headwind. The meadowlarks were singing, which makes for a nice ride!

Wow. Haven't ran into golf ball sized hail yet in my neighborhood. Good on you for sticking it out. You make me feel guilty riding in 60F temp with long sleeve and shorts. ;)

It was the first ride in from home for this season for me. I guess I'm getting a bit wimpy in my older age preferring to wait until now for the longer rides. But the weather today should be glorious. 60F going up to 76F, Friday is a light traffic day, etc. So not much excuse to park and ride. I met an Aussie expat, Andrew, in Lyndhurst and he rode in with me. He's a good rider and showed just how more efficient he was on a 39x28 on the Ft Lee Road hill than I was on a 39x26. It was nice to have someone to chat with on the ride in. He was looking all she she poo poo in full Rapha clothing while I'm the usual fashion faux pas with decades old MTB jersey, old team shorts and unshaved legs. Ah, well. Any day on the bike is a good one. And from home is even better...

45F and raining

Thanks! My coworkers think I am taking pictures of the mountain but it is actually the clouds and shadows I am looking at.

Today is one of these days.

Massive respect. It must have been really hard heading out in that, in April.


Things have been nice here in the city, although this morning some try-hard in full gear tried to yell at me for going the wrong way, when I was practically touching the curb and going maybe 5mph, right where the ferry lets off and you are essentially forced to salmon for a block. I was actually tempted to turn around and tell him what the deal is, but I had to get to work and I was already at risk of being too sweaty.

I think I have to resume wearing cycling clothes, as I'm getting sweaty on my commutes now. When I get hot, I have to slow down, and I don't want to do that.

I don't post here very often, but today's ride was about the most perfect ride I've had since last summer. 49° when I left at a quarter past 5 this morning. A little damp from some overnight rain, but no wind and no traffic. I think I was passed by 5 cars total. This afternoon was beautiful! Sunny and 75°. I took a new route home. Almost no traffic, and the weather was beautiful. Can't wait for tomorrow!

The hell of a week continued to be, but I got two commutes in, along with a lunch ride and a work errand.

Salsa Timberjack ordered from REI. Due the 19th but I'll be out of town camping. So if I pick it up the 23rd I'll be commuting on it by the 24th. I ordered the 27.5+ even though the 29er might be more appropriate and $100 cheaper, because the one I got is a nice orange with yellow decals, so it will match my yellow saddle and the decals on an eventual Fox fork upgrade, while the 29er was sky blue. Vanity! I'll have them set it up tubeless when it comes in. If the tires prove to be too slow I'll replace them with some kind of big slicks. I've found a few, some 2.3 and some 2.8

Dogwood winter!


The front that came through this weekend knocked temperatures down 45 degrees, so it was about 35 instead of the 80F I rode home in on Friday. Time to find all the winter clothes I had ready to store for the summer. Again. Post-front winds are usually out of the north, but it was pretty steady from the NW this morning.


re: dogwood winter, we put in a new, pretty small dogwood tree this spring to replace the one that was killed by the drought a year and a half ago (the drought that led to the fire that hit Gatlinburg, TN). I didn't expect anything from that tiny tree this year, but it fooled me and put out one lovely blossom!

32F, strong winds, combination rain and snow... in other words a lovely Spring morning, NOT!

I'm having to double-check the calendar to make sure we're really in the 2nd half of April, because all the evidence points to February.

We had 14 inches of snow on Saturday, along with 40+ mph winds. It pretty much shut the city down that day. I rode a few miles in it just to prove to myself that I could.

I spent most of yesterday moving snow. It was an extremely wet, heavy mixture, the type of which is so heavy that if you take a full shovelful it's about all you can do to lift it, let alone throw it off the driveway. I broke out my snowblower. It's a two-stage 11hp unit. Not commercial grade, but pretty big for a consumer model. Even then I could only take about a 4" cut with each pass otherwise the chute would slush up and jam. It took two hours to clear my 40'x45' driveway.

Then I drove across town and helped manually shovel another location for 3 more hours. I could barely walk when I was finished. Drove back home to discover the plows had come down my street and packed the entrance to my driveway with a couple feet of compacted snow. Broke my snowblower trying to clear it. I'd heard the street department was having trouble as the snow was so heavy it broke a bunch of their plows as well.

This morning the roads had all been plowed (at least on my route to work) so I hopped on the winter bike. It was a brisk 17F with a 10 mph head wind. It was a good thing I had the studded tires as there would have been no way I was making it to work upright without them. While the streets had been plowed of the snow pack, there was a lot of rutted ice underneath that the plows couldn't remove. Amazingly enough, the MUP was overall in better shape than the streets, so that part of the ride was actually easier, which is backwards from normal after a snow.

Temps are supposed to top out at 33F today, so I'm not expecting much of a melt off. They're predicting 6" more snow tomorrow, so apparently spring won't arrive anytime soon.

If I had ridden to work today, I would have been thoroughly soaked on all parts of my body before I reached the halfway point. Instead, I took the subway, and I got soaked on about a third of my body, from walking about 20 to 25 minutes in the torrential rain at both ends of my trip. I changed my clothes, and I'm fine now. In fact, I was fine while outside.

40F, gray, clammy

My winter route home has been ~6 miles, but I have been taking a 12 mile route the last couple weeks, through PNW mist/drizzle. Today it is downright raining, supposed to get a quarter inch the next 3 hours (encompassing that ride home). Trying to decide whether to tough out the 12 mile route or cut it in half.