Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1585:

Woke up to the sound of the wind howling. That's never a good sign. 30 mph headwinds with gusts of 50 mph. We received 1/2" of fresh snow last night, which the wind was blowing all over the place. Because there was still lots of ice hiding under the new snow I took the bike with studded tires.

The morning temp was a very reasonable 30°F. This morning at 6 AM was the day's high, and the temp was supposed to keep dropping all day. Next week is expected to mostly be below 0°F. Negative temps every single morning, and no daily highs above single digits.

I had two laps last week and three laps this week. All on the MTB since I've got a torn calf muscle and wanted to have a shifter. Also was able to take the twins to kindergarten on their bikes three days, and got the older kid to ride with me for one of those. Good bike week in spite of none of it being remarkable

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1586:

-11°F air temperature this morning. Thankfully the wind was light so the windchill was only about -20°F.

Because it was below -5°F, I did the split-commute thing where I rode 1.25 miles to the bus stop, caught the bus downtown, then rode the remaining .5 miles. This makes these frigid temps pretty do-able. The coldest part of the whole endeavor was standing motionless at the bus stop waiting for it to arrive.

I decided to leap into the 20th century, and downloaded the transit app onto my phone. This lets me pay my bus fares electronically. Also, if I buy a 10 ride pass I save 30%. While the savings are nice, I really like not having to scrounge through the house the night before trying to put together exact change for the bus. Just show the driver my phone and get on. Pretty slick.

The high today is supposed to be 1°F, so I'm planning on riding the whole way home.

My short term goal is to commute on bike once a week and then increase it. I didn’t get a chance to do my regular 26-mile round trip last week except I had a one-day assignment which was two miles away. I did that on Citi Bike.

Today I rode to work. I stepped outside expecting mild weather. It was raining, and that was a surprise. I didn’t change my mind. A few minutes in, I thought I might regret this. It was about 37ºF (3ºC) which can be nasty when mixed with rain. I wore long baselayers under my clothes, and that proved fortuitous. I didn’t get cold. The rain even turned to light snow for a while. I was fine. When I got inside, I realized I was clothes were slightly saturated. I didn’t feel cold. I stuffed some paper towels into my shoes to dry my toes off.

Still no bike parking at work. I parked the bike across the street from the school in front of a synagogue. My impression is that Jews have left this neighborhood (Kingsbridge, Bronx), and I wonder if the synagogue is in use at all.This picture is shot from my classroom window.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2eb40f525.jpeg

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1588:

This morning the air temperature was -7°F. This was 2° below my wife's threshold for allowing me to ride the entire way, which means on a normal day I would do a split-commute and take the bus for a portion of the trip.

However, on this particular morning I had a blood coagulation check appointment (yay mechanical heart valves) scheduled before work. The good news was there was a bus stop right there at the hospital. The bad news was, the stop was on a different bus route than the one that is closest to my house. The worse news was, in order to try and ride the bus(es) to the hospital, I would have to get up several hours early, catch a 1st bus downtown, wait in the cold 1/2 hour for the next bus to arrive, then take that 2nd bus to the hospital where I would get there 45 minutes prior to my appointment. More or less, it wasn't a better option than just riding the entire trip.

So that's what I opted to do. My wife was still in bed so she wouldn't know, and it was one of those "easier to ask forgiveness than permission" situations. I first rode the 4.25 miles to the hospital. On the way, I found myself about 200 yards behind my friend Scott (@Labrat here on the forum). I'm not a fast rider in normal temps, let alone below zero, so there was no chance of me catching him. I did wave to him as he was going over a bridge after a pigtail turn, and I was just going under the bridge. He stayed in view ahead of me most of the way to the hospital (where coincidentally he works) until about the last 1/2 mile when I lost him at a stoplight.

Thankfully the wind was extremely light, so the -7°F temp wasn't bad at all. My only issue was the normal fight I have with my goggles icing over. I arrived at the hospital good and sweaty. After my appointment I had to put my soaking wet gear back on for the next 2 mile ride to work. Yuck.

For some reason the city was unusually pungent this morning. Maybe it was due to there hardly being any wind? Various scents greeted me throughout the commute. The area around the hospital had the distinct smell of weed. When I got downtown I thought it smelled like a cat box. I wrote it off as just a figment of my mind until a coworker mentioned that "it smelled weird outside today."

I hope you are doing ok with your heart thing. I got taken off my miracle drug because I showed too much improvement and now I'm miserable again

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Tundraman inspired me to ride today, though 23° F is a bit cold for me! I was rushing this morning and a few things didn't go as planned. Forgot my gloves and found my tail light dead (it's the cheap battery type) but wore a reflective vest, used my headlight and stayed in the bike lane mostly. I'll get the hang of this soon, I'm sure, but today was a big rush to get to the train station...I made it on time!! Did have to get help loading the bike onto the train (steep steps). Still a beautiful morning to ride.

Yes, so far so good. I'm coming up on 4 years since my open heart surgery. The aorta above my valve got stretched out prior to the surgery, and for some reason the surgeon opted not to fix it while he was in there. Now it's starting to slowly enlarge even more. I'm still below the threshold for them to need to go back in and fix it, but they're monitoring it closely. Once it hits a certain point the odds of a sudden rupture (and not coincidentally sudden death) go up exponentially. At that point there's no putting off another OHS. In the meantime, the doctor has me on two different blood pressure meds to try to keep my BP as low as my body will allow to try and slow the enlargement.

I'm also on blood thinners for the rest of my life in order to prevent clots around mechanical valve from my body trying to reject it. Because of this I have to go in for regular blood tests to make sure my warfarin dosage is keeping my blood thin enough to not clot, but not so thin that I bleed out from a minor injury. I've been on the exact same warfarin dosage for 3.5 years, which amazes everyone at the coagulation management office. Apparently most people aren't near as stable as I am and require frequent tweaks to their dosage amounts to keep them in the acceptable range. So I have to say that aspect of it is going extremely well.

Now if I could just drop about 50 pounds I would be in like Flynn. I'm a stress eater and our family has been buried in it the last five years. I need to figure out a less self-destructive way of dealing with stress other than filling my stomach.

Sorry they took your drugs away from you. Kind of a tough place to be in when you feel better when you're actually doing worse, and vice-versa.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1589:

Today was a blip in the temps, where we were going to be above zero for a day until we return to negative temps tomorrow. When I went to bed last night the forecast was 10°F this morning.

When I got up, I was confused. Google told me it was 9°F. My phone told me it was 13°F. My kitchen thermometer told me it was 17°F. I wasn't sure what to believe, and subsequently how to dress.

I decided to dress for the colder temps, reasoning that I'd rather be a little warm than a little cold. Due to an all-company meeting happening today, I needed to be on-site instead of working at a client location. So this morning's ride was 8 miles to our office. I'm not sure what the "real" temp was, as it felt closer to the 9°F that Google reported, but a bank sign I passed said 18°F. I think the high humidity and the 15 mph cross wind really threw a wrench into how cold things were feeling.

For the ride home at 5 PM it's supposed to be 0°F and falling, with an even stronger wind. Not really looking forward to that.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1590:

It was a good news/bad news kind of morning.

Good news: I arose to discover the temp was -2°F. This was five degrees warmer than what they predicted, and meant that I could ride the entire way to work and not have to hassle with catching the bus for a portion.
Bad news: Halfway to work I got a flat tire. I was still 2 miles from the office. I don't try to repair flats out on the road in these temps as that's a recipe for frostbitten hands.
Good news: It appeared to be a slow leak, so I thought maybe I could pump the tire up a few times and make it the rest of the way without having to push the bike.
Bad news: I discovered that my frame pump had frozen to its holder, and that my valve stem cap had frozen to the stem.
Good news: After a bunch of pulling, twisting and emitting many caveman-esque sounds, I was able to get them loose and pump up the tire. It actually stayed inflated enough to get me the rest of the way to work, but was pretty flat again as I arrived.
Bad news: Thinking I could fix the flat later in the day during a break, I pulled my repair kit out of my bag. Then I discovered that I never swapped tubes for the season. There were two new tubes in the kit, neither one of which was for a 26" wheel, and neither one was a Schrader valve.

Hopefully I can make it home by pumping up the tire a few times along the way. Next week is my seven year anniversary since the last time I drove a car to work, so there's no way I'm going to call the wife for a rescue. I'll walk home the whole way first.

What are the chances of same day delivery to your office? There's a gig app where you can get someone to buy you something and bring it but I can't remember the name of it. Like Door Dash but with shopping

or would that score as a defeat for car light

I moved to Seattle last August and live only 1.8miles away from work. Waited until December to start commuting by bike to work. Sometimes I would do the 33-36min walk 1.8miles which was pleasant.

Doing the math it takes 6-10min to drive to work and on bike it's 11-15min. Commuting by bike is a no brainer.

Also the bike parking situation is good (covered parking and well monitored/video cams). One thing I didn't expect was how hilly Seattle is! Its like San Francisco level steep and plentiful hills. 1.8miles should be a 10min bike ride on flat land but I'm in the granny gear going up the big two hills to and from work. Also the Seattle permanent mist/light rain/heavy rains over fall/winter are a downer when commuting on bike. Over the next weeks the commute/hills did become easier and now I have a built in 10-15min HIIT workout if I want lol.

I am super happy to have a co-worker suggest getting a Garmin Varia or any other radar/lane assist. It really is a game changer to know when vehicles are coming also when you need to take a left turn and have to go into the lane. I also tried the Cadence APP for iphone and realized that my bike rides are almost no different from driving now, I have a live map, speed sensor, and lane assist on my phone/handlebars while riding. I had to go to a nearby post office and I had turn by turn directions on map with lane assist on a bike friendly route (through residential streets closed to through car traffic).

Commuting for the last couple of months renewed my love for cycling. I ended up buying a road bike and now I'm going to buy another road with electronic shifting and get back into riding around the city for exercise and pleasure too.

My commuter bike is actually pretty old now but still clean and going strong!

https://i.imgur.com/ZzOK8EDm.jpg

I don't know if I would count that against my commuting streak. More like count against my frugality streak when I know I already have a cabinet at home with the correct tubes in it. lol

Three days out of a possible four this week with two of those days on my longer commute of 10-miles each way. I'll be working at two locations until the end of March and generally working 3 days at the farthest location and just 1 day at the nearby location (3-miles each way). After a full year of not puncturing on my short commute, puncture anxiety has crept back into my life simply due to the amount of glass seen on the bike paths on my longer commute so I'm allowing about 15 minutes spare time. We've got a great weather forecast for the week ahead so I'm looking to get all four days in.

No tree crew in evidence today on my mile of bike trail. Seems like everything that fell over propped on another tree or hanging over the trail has been dealt with. That Ponderosa that I posted a week or two ago has had its upper half taken apart but the lower half still sits

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1592:

Temps have been a little better the last couple days. We even saw them poke a little above the north side of freezing for a few hours the last couple days. The down side to that is ice. The temporary warmer temps cause snow melt, and softens the snow pack on the pavement causing wheel track and footprints. Then when the temp drops back below freezing the snow melt becomes sheet ice, and the wheel tracks and footprints become rough rutted ice. I definitely rode the studded tire bike this morning and took it easy on the more treacherous stretches.

Was 23°F this morning with a 20 mph cross/headwind. But compared to last week it was a pretty easy ride to work. I rode out to our company office today, which is 8 miles from my house. Should get a good wind push home.

Found 50¢ on the ground, so I guess riding my bike paid for itself today!

Tundra’s post made me think about how SF Bay Area weather is the same but different. Here’s how our current cycle will likely go. Winter, esp Jan and Feb we get occasion heavy rains. Last years grass has died and gone away. The storms bring out the utility company and their trucks to fix up the wires. The truck tires create big ruts in the mud along side the path. As it gets a little warmer, like today the grass starts sprouting. Becomes like a lovely meadow. When it warms up those ruts turn into solid rock, actually adobe clay rocks. Once the path traffic increases there are more likely occasions where there are occasions where diving off the path into that soft green green seems better than running into the toddler/dog/family. Don’t do it! Hidden under the grass is the hard ridges of the ruts waiting to grab your tire and throw you down. That’s what happened last year. This year I will stop with both feet down and make a little joke. Really.

Beautiful morning, looking forward to getting a milk crate tied on my rack soon instead of this silly net/bungees!
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7ed509abe4.jpg

Looking forward to adding a milk crate to my rack soon, this bungee net is a PITA. ;) Beautiful morning here in Delaware and will be unseasonably warm later on.
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Don’t be so sure that a milk crate is a good idea. It’s been my experience that if the crate is pushed right up to the seat that it interferes with your ability to sit properly. I mean it will knock against your back and be uncomfortable.

I only got two laps in this week and the 2nd was a bad idea. There was a 3 day "dry run" meeting T-Th two time zones away on zoom, the kinders had early schedule Th-F. I've got a meeting first thing when I wake up tomorrow before I put kiddo on the bus and then an echo at 8. None of that lends itself to the commute schedule.

No rides next week, on work travel. Got to go two time zones away for the real version of the 3 day meeting in person. In Huntsville, AL, which despite having a few signs up proclaiming bike routes, looks like a terrifying place to bike commute. In theory I could ride the exercise bike in the hotel but I never do

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1594:

Today was supposed to be number 1595, but yesterday had a wrench thrown in it. I awoke to discover water dripping from a ceiling light fixture. My first thought was broken pipe, but upon investigation figured out it was the mother of all ice dams buried under 2 feet of snow on the roof. Once uncovered the ice was about 25 feet long, 5 feet deep and varying from 7" to 12" in thickness. Behind it was a lake of water that had nowhere to go but into my house. I unexpectedly wound up taking the day off work and spending 8 hours up on the roof busting ice with a sledgehammer. The good news is I got the ice removed. The bad news is today I'm reminded that I don't normally spend 8 hours swinging a sledgehammer.

This morning the temp was 7°F. Wind was very light, so it wasn't a bad ride to work at all. Way better than busting ice.

Today marks my 7 year commutaversary. The last time I drove a car to work was 2/10/2016. I took a selfie to commemorate the milestone:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...309906489c.jpg

At long last, my first full week of cycle commuting thanks to some cold but dry weather in the UK. Riding home on Tuesday was a bit scary after a car passed me on the left (on a roundabout) just as I was about to turn left - that could have been messy if it was just one second later. I actually caught up with the driver who didn't speak English and had no idea what I was talking about. Oh, well. Not much going on under the hood there if you know what I mean.

Tundra man, holy cow


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I needed something from the office so I made the round trip on an off day. I'm going to count it

I thought it was cold enough to wear my wool base layer this morning, but with full sun I was hot almost immediately. But, I'm glad I wore it because they keep this office too cold, so I actually put the wool layer back on after my first meeting.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1596:

Temp is in the mid-30s today, which means black ice everywhere. I rode the winter bike with studded tires.

Forecast stated a 100% chance of rain this afternoon (which they were correct about) so when I arrived at the office I brought my winter bike inside for the first time ever. I then rolled it through to the back door and parked it on the covered patio. I reasoned that if the bike sat outside in the rain all day, my bar mitts and seat would turn into giant sponges, and then when the temp drops back below freezing tonight they would freeze solid and would take a long time to thaw.

I would have just rolled it around the outside of the building, but there's many feet of snow on the ground and I didn't want to have to trudge through it carrying the bike.

Supposed to still be raining for the ride home tonight. 35°F and rain with a headwind means I should be good and cold when I take my wife out for Valentine's Day this evening.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1597:

Today Sir Brad gave me a tour of the pit of misery.

Yesterday most of the day the temp was in the mid-30s and it rained for about 12 hours. Had it been 10 degrees colder we would have gotten 8-10 inches of snow. Seeing as the storm sewers are blocked with ice and snow, the rain had nowhere to go but pool in the low spots on the street. Later in the evening the temp did drop into the teens, so then the rain turned to snow and the water turned to ice.

When I woke up this morning I could hear the wind howling. That's never a good motivator to make me want to get out of bed. I looked out the window to see 1/2" of fresh snow on top of tons of ice. I came exceedingly close to throwing my consecutive commuting streak away and driving a car. My son probably wasn't going anywhere today so I could have used his. The only thing that stopped me as that I don't have a permit for the client's parking garage, so I wouldn't have had anywhere to park. Years ago when I started with this client they offered me a parking pass, and I turned it down. That's what saved me.

My boots were still slightly damp from yesterday's rainy ride home. The wet components on my bike had frozen in the unheated garage, making the bike very reluctant to shift and making the chain skip if I tried to use my small front ring. The temp was 17°F. The wind was a steady 30 mph, with gusts much higher. Of course, I had to ride straight into it. There were about three gusts that brought me to a dead stop, one of which happened as I was going down a big hill. Yuck.

Given the moisture on the ground combined with the temps, the 1/2" of snow had a weird crunchy texture that added a surprising amount of resistance to the ride relative to its insignificant depth. The bigger challenge with the snow was it camouflaged the large areas of ice. Thankfully(?) the wind was keeping my speeds down around 5 mph so between that and my studded tires I didn't slip around too much. The bigger surprises were the deeper puddles that had a thin frozen layer of ice on top where the snow could sit, but didn't have enough thickness to the ice to support the weight of me and the bike. I'd find myself in the middle of those and then the bike would break through, leaving me stranded in the middle and having to push the bike out. Yuck.

Normally I don't add a layer of long underwear until the temps drop below 10°F. The intense wind had the windchill at -3°F. I should have worn the long underwear, as by the time I got to the office my thighs were pretty cold.

The temps are predicted to continue to drop. After today it sounds like we're going back into the negative air temps. The good news is I only have one more commute left, and then I'm taking a week off for a Las Vegas getaway with my wife. The temps there are supposed to be in the 60s, which is probably cold to the LV natives, but sounds wonderful to this South Dakota boy. I may even try and intentionally get a sunburn just because I can.

First ride in about two weeks, went fine! Can't find my toolkit or my fleece gloves. Toolkit was taken out of my laptop bag when I thought I was using it for the carry-on and stashed ...somewhere. Gloves, no idea. Almost done with glove season anyhow.

Yesterday there was an astonishing forecast of snow here tomorrow morning. The precipitation has now been moved to 10am and no chance. It would have been so unusual I'd have woken everyone up to see it

Two commuting days out of a possible three and I'm annoyed that I missed out on a third day due to rain. I don't mind if it's raining on the way home but raining on the way in to work is a problem as I'm customer facing and looking like a drowned rat is just not going to happen. Worryingly, despite it only being two days of commuting, I've had three near misses this week. Two of them fall into the category of "are you f****** blind" whilst the third was so cynical that I can't believe anyone would treat a fellow human with such disdain. What is wrong with some car drivers?