No-no-no! You aim to JUMP over them ;-)

My late dog once spot a muskrat. These creatures can make a creepy spine-chilling high pitch when in distress too! I remember it vividly. (Be careful though ’cause rats may carry diseases.)

When you missed, I hope you said, "RATS!"

It was a damp and dreary morning here. Only tree rodents in my way here. At least two kamikaze squirrels trying to get the acorns fallen in the street.

Tree rats, yum. Tasty in Brunswick stew.

Commute was ho-hum. Light shower, enough traffic it was hard to sit up and look around. Rode with a rain jacket on, so the damp on my arms is sweat, the wet on my legs is rain, and on my torso it's a mix from riding with the zipper open.

I took Citi Bike today as I normally do on Fridays. This time I wore my helmet. I've been skipping my helmet on Citi Bike, and I've decided that's a bad practice, because ya nevah know. I'll even carry my helmet this weekend rather than leaving it in the office as I did last Friday evening.

The headwind was strong today, and I am TIRED! I need to recover from all that effort. I got a bike with a NuVinci hub, and surprisingly, it was working perfectly well. A lot of them don't give the top range of ratios.

Yesterday I took the road bike to work as it was supposed to be clear all day. Sometime in the late evening to early morning we were supposed to get about 3" of snow, but that wasn't scheduled to happen until after I'd gone to bed.

Well, they blew that. I glanced out the window Thursday afternoon at 4:20 and noticed it was snowing. The temp had been below freezing for several days, which meant the ground was cold enough that the wet snow was freezing when it hit the ground and anything else. Crap! I rode the wrong bike.

I decided not to wait around for conditions to get worse, so I ran and changed my clothes and headed home as soon as I could. I had originally planned to run an errand after work but I decided to push that off. Good thing I did. The ride home was pretty "iffy" in spots. Those thin 23c tires on my road bike don't grip very well in snow and ice. To make matters worse, a couple miles down the road I hit the brakes and.... nothing. My brakes were completely frozen. I worked on things and got my front brake about half going, but obviously in slick conditions that's not the one you want working. I gingerly finished the ride home taking care not to make any sudden turns or needing sudden stops. Thankfully I made it home without incident.

This morning the 3" of snow never arrived. We got about 1/2" out of the previous evening's mess. There was plenty of ice on the ground still so I took the winter bike for its inaugural ride of the season.

Temp was 14F and there was a 20 mph headwind. Wind chill was -6F. Between the temp, the wind and the fact that my winter bike is a hog I averaged about 9 mph. The fastest I hit down some big hills was 15. To add insult to injury, I had to work really hard to maintain those pathetically slow speeds, so I arrived at work a sweaty mess.

This was my first ride with my new bar mitts. I've decided there are plusses and negatives with them. On the plus side, they worked really well to keep my hands warm. I still wore my regular winter gloves, and with the added layer of protection of the bar mitts my hands were toasty. The negative side was the mitts really limit my hand movement, and I didn't realize how often I make slight hand position changes even on a flat bar. I found my hands and wrists getting pretty tired by the time I got to work as I couldn't move my hands around very well inside the mitts.

33F, gray. This week I have ridden more than last month, sad to say.

Can't believe it rained last night given it was -12c a few days prior; roads were super icey (the yard at work was worse; had to go find a chunk of 140 chain from the back 40 and was skating around the yard in workboots lol). Studs are my friend!

Chilly but not too bad at 37F this morning. Rain is coming and supposed to last all day and into the night. I may get a pick-up after work if it is bad.

Traffic was low this morning as schools and other businesses are closed for Veteran's Day. I took the kids to our small town Veterans parade Sunday afternoon. It was sunny and nice out for that.

This morning I realized that whenever the temperature and the headwind read the same number, the commute may be a bit on the slow side. 18°F with an 18 mph wind. Although it hasn't been above freezing in about a week, the ice from Thursday night's snow had evaporated so I was able to take the hybrid rather than my winter bike. So at least I didn't have to fight the resistance of studded tires on top of the wind and cold.

My clients are closed for labor day today. Our office isn't which means I still had to come to work. But I don't have to ride anywhere during the day for a change. I can stay here all day and don't have to worry about riding until it's time to go home. In fact, because I'm not spending my lunch hour riding to a client's office, I can probably take a nap on the couch in one of our break rooms. It's been a while since I've had a good mid-day nap.

The high temp today is supposed to peak at 22°F sometime this morning, and then drop throughout the rest of the day. At least I shouldn't have to fight the same wind on the way home tonight.

I misread the weather page this morning, :( :( thinking it said about 50° and intermittent rain but it turned out to be 30's and heavy. So I'm in shorts and rain jacket, gloves soaked through, not fun at all.

Last night I rode through the area where the gas leak explosion happened a few months ago. It's finally all cleared up. That was a much bigger disaster than I had thought. The street has new pavement now.

This morning's ride was very nice. I'm so lucky I can enjoy my commute so much. I love my commuter bike, and it was nice to be back on it. It's so much nicer than the Citi Bike fleet.

It is also nice to ride in the rain :-)
But it was a good shower.

Less fun are people without any visibility, or those bipeds who are playing the Stupid app (holding an eyehugger device).

But it was a good shower.

Ugh. Not nice I'm sure. And here at 5pm and I'm getting a rescue from my wife due 41F and this:
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...351c2c7f0c.png

That's what I'm looking at also, but it should warm up slightly, before I leave. Better than this morning anyway.

Wet ride today. Steady rain, not terribly heavy but no escaping it, not very cold but cold enough. Hard to see the potholes and cracks in the asphalt through the puddles and glare from the streetlights. Not a fun ride.

My Ikea rain poncho is pretty good, but my feet get pretty wet, mainly from water thrown up by my front wheel. I have a good mudflap on there, too, but it's not enough.

Ugh.

I think cold rain in the dark is my least favorite and most avoided weather for biking. That's what I would have had last night if my wife hadn't picked me up.

This morning was a light drizzle and low 40s F, but daylight. I rode and was fine. Jacket sleeves and lower part of tights are damp, but I never got cold. Forecast is for rain all day, so I'll just see what the afternoon looks like later.

11F this morning, but the wind was pretty light so really it wasn't bad. Rode the hybrid without the studded tires and just dodged the ice patches, which wasn't too difficult.

I noticed the river is almost completely frozen over now. The ice won't be thick enough to walk on for a couple more weeks, but it's getting there.

Same here although was a bit more tropical.. 16-18F. Rode the winter beater with studs also just in case, a few ice patches.

Although it seems slower according to my time I was only a couple minutes slower than the other bike. Need to get some replacement studs for a few that came out. I think I'll get 10 years out of them easy but would really like to upgrade the winter beater to a bike with 700's.

31F. Windchill made feel a lot colder. Unusual cold for Texas. But comfortable with some extra layers. ;-)

29F this morning, not sure what it was with windchill. The prediction was for our first accumulating snow so last night I got the studded tire bike all ready to go. This morning... nothing. I'm not disappointed, I really hate riding the winter bike. At least now it's ready!

cold!

21 w/ a 15 mph NW wind dropping the windchill down to 9. (and 80% of my morning route is due north, right into that NW wind this morning).

my first single digit windchill ride of the season. face-mask time!

[MENTION=175954]Tundra_Man[/MENTION], your stories and perseverance amaze me.

Today is a big day for me, and I really did not want to skip the bike and spend hours on the subway. I have a rehearsal for a concert in Brooklyn at 7pm. The rain is due to stop around midday. So I wore a set of clothes I wouldn't need to change back into, and I brought a complete set of clothes, including shoes. That saying from Minnesota proved true for me today. ("There's no bad weather, only bad clothing.")

It took too long for me to pack everything this morning, so I once again learned the lesson that I should pack up at night.

Having the bike/ped path so empty was nice. The bad drainage on the path isn't so nice. Some puddles are big and impossible to steer around.

Another lesson: it is well overdue for me to install fenders on my commuter bike!

But I didn't get terribly wet, and I was too hot rather than too cold, so I have no big complaints. I feel triumphant.

I was planning to drive today, mainly because I wanted to bring some equipment home and the rain is pretty nasty, but my wife has an appointment and needs the car. It got me thinking back; I think sometime this month it is four years without driving to work, maybe five if I don't count a few days with a broken clavicle. 99° temperature range in that time, from 4° to 103°, neither of which I'm in any hurry to repeat. Right in the middle of that, today.

Today was pretty routine though, surface streets all the way since the Greenway is 2 1/2 feet over the banks and still raining and rising. That would be wheels under water in some places (don't ask how I know :o) Drivers mostly calm, the only challenge a worrisome knee twinge (when stopping!) but it didn't recur.