Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1599:

Today was my first day back from our vacation in Las Vegas, and let's just say the commute was... interesting.

Half the reason it was interesting was self inflicted. My wife and I spent the previous seven days in Vegas enjoying 60+°F weather, staying up until 2:30 AM, sleeping in until 10:30 AM, and eating whatever food in whatever quantities we fancied. Neither one of us drink, or it would have been even worse. Our flight home landed at 9:30 PM last night.

The other non-self-inflicted part of the reason it was interesting was while we were gone 13" of snow fell, the wind whipped it into a blizzard and then the temps plummeted to below zero. In fact, the airport opened back up just in time to prevent our return flight from getting delayed.

Once I was back in Sioux Falls I had to trudge out to the far edges of the airport parking lot to unbury our car. When I got home last night I then had to stay up to blow snow out of our driveway. It was 1 AM before I fell asleep, then the alarm went off at 6 AM (which my jetlagged body told me was 4 AM Vegas time.) Ugh.

The plows still hadn't run on the side streets and the MUP, and the air temperature was -9°F with a wind chill around -30°F so I decided to do a split-commute with the bus. Thankfully the buses were running again today after shutting down for a couple days, so I at least had that option available to me. I rode/carried the bike through the unplowed streets and made it to the bus stop, where I (quite literally) stood in snow up to my knees waiting for the bus. The streets from the downtown stop to the office were plowed, so that portion of the ride was a little easier. Thankfully I made it to the client's office without having to drive a car.

Sometimes it takes a little bit of luck to keep a consecutive streak like mine going. This is the second time this winter where I coincidentally happened to be out of town during a major snow event that likely would have broken my streak.

I got only one lap this week. Two days of kids off for Prez Day, Wednesday riding, yesterday errands, today California weather making the east coast news again.

I went back and forth about riding today. It was sunny but drenched in the morning. I got over it and hit the road. The lagoon bridge that’s sometimes frosted had sheet ice on the planks.

In the morning I guess I was preoccupied with the cold but in the afternoon it was dramatic how hard spring has sprung. The trees haven’t fledged yet but the ground is thick green.


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No hint of rain this week so I got the hat-trick in with three commuting days out of three. Not much to report other than on this afternoon's ride home I didn't need to switch my lights on at all. Spring has sprung!

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that's what the cup holder is for, right? Discovered a new coffee spot today, happy to be back riding again after last week's work schedule had me driving

The number of times I've lost the lid is significantly nonzero, tuck it in! :) Depending how you like your coffee you'll be sticky or scalded

better yet, plan ahead and bring your own travel mug haha. I'm sometimes getting good at this... that looks so messy!

Some excellent stories there!

I saw an egret this morning, pretty close. He was hunting frogs on the meadow above China Wall. I had already passed him and was moving away when he took off. I don't think I scared him. Maybe I spoiled his spot somehow. Egrets are just really cool looking birds. Why did Scot Nicol go with an ibis? the world wonders

I came home early on the most direct route. My wife tested covid positive and I had to take the (negative) kinders to school and then go test the 3rd grader. I first called the school - Yes, you need to test him. He can stay if he's negative. We have tests here. No, we can't give him the test, you have to. @#$%ing government!

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A bit chilly this morning (about 33° F) but will get up to the 50s later on I think. showing off the new separated bike lanes near campus! not sure if you can see the bike traffic signal up ahead on the left. Yay DelDOT!

decided to just minimize my bike's and make a road bike my commuter too. luckily the new road bike has fender/mounts and nice proprietary fender set that looks clean.

the seattle misty damp cold winter isn't fun to commute in but I've been loving the 1.8 mile hilly ride so far. again the garmin varia, fenders, lights, and nice new bike has made my days more enjoyable.

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Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1611:

The last few weeks of commuting have been mostly uneventful. Over the last month we've had a minimum of 3" additional snow each week added to what's already on the ground. Last snowfall total I heard put us at 64" received so far this season. We've started to see some daily high temps poking up above freezing, which has started to melt a little bit of the snow. I'm hoping for a slow warm-up this spring to try and prevent flooding. If we suddenly get a 60°F day we're in trouble.

There was no melting happening this morning. It was 12°F air temperature plus a 20 mph cross wind. The humidity was again pretty high for temps this low (80%) which meant the temps felt even colder than it really was. The humidity has been higher than normal for most of this winter. I wore an extra layer of thermal underwear under my pants. I arrived at work chilly, but not frozen.

The sun has melted off most of the rutted ice on the pavement, except for areas along the edges. The center part of the roads and trails are pretty much ice-free now. The big exceptions are under bridges, along the north side of tall buildings, and dense tree areas. In those spots the rutted ice is still pretty severe as the sun doesn't get a chance to do its thing. I rode the winter bike with studded tires.

I didn't sleep well last night. I think it was a combination of the time change and the stress of life. I wound up only getting about three hours of sleep, and very little of it was consecutive. I'd snooze for 45 minutes or so, and then my brain would turn on and I'd find myself lying awake for a long time and thinking about things. It's dumb of me to lay there in the middle of the night obsessing about stuff I can't control, but when it happens it's fruitless to try and convince my mind of that fact.

When I rolled out of the garage and turned on my headlight the button immediately turned red, indicating low battery. That was concerning, as I just charged it up the previous evening. I think the battery on this light is reaching end-of-life. I've already purchased its replacement, but I'm trying to milk the old one as long as I can. Sure enough, the light died completely about halfway to the office. Of course it went out right in the middle of a big icy stretch, leaving me navigating the area in the pitch dark. I finished the remaining four miles to work using my backup light I keep zip-tied to the top of my helmet. It's been a few years since I've had to resort to the backup. I'm glad it had enough of a charge to get me there.

The Take-A-Look mirror I have attached to my pair of clear glasses has been getting looser and looser, causing the mirror to frequently fall off. I thought about using a little bit of tape to keep it in place, but decided to try a slightly more elegant solution. I cut a length of heat-shrink tubing and put it over the area where the mirror attaches to the glasses, then shrunk it down. It is extremely secure now, and if I need to replace the glasses I can easily remove the mirror by just cutting the tubing. No sticky tape residue to deal with. I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with this idea. Little accomplishments like this make life more enjoyable.

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I am also struggling with the daylight savings time situation this week and yes, not sleeping well. I can't wait for nicer weather. Good job on your glasses! Have you thought about getting dynamo lights? I think about that sometimes because dead batteries suck to deal with when you need working lights. But I guess they don't really light up if not actively pedaling (or flicker at times?), which I don't really love the idea of.

I've thought about dynamo lights long enough to decide it's not the best for my situation. I have six bikes that I will ride depending on the weather conditions and/or the load I'm carrying. I purchased mounts for each bike and I'll just swap my set of lights onto the bike I happen to be riding on that particular day. Having to retrofit all six bikes with dynamo hubs would be cost prohibitive.

I'm only working three days a week now and the past two weeks have been identical with two cycle commuting days and one 'bus day' due to heavy rain and high winds (on one of the days I was almost blown off my feet walking past an alleyway that was funnelling the wind). My fitness is improving and I smashed my best time for riding home this week (about 10 minutes lower than when I started on this commute in January).

My Cannondale CAADX is doing a good job but I can't help thinking about what bike I'll use when we get good weather in April and May. I've got a low-end Giant Contend (8-speed Claris) that's ready to go but I've also got a 2013 Giant TCR2 (SL) aluminium frameset that I'd like to build up. I've also seen a new smart-looking lugged steel frame (Reynolds 520 tubing) that's caught my eye but I simply can't justify buying it.

I had one lap this week. More WFH due to a sick kid needing a parent in the house.

On my one lap I found this, inches from the bike trail. Someday long ago, maybe when the trail was made, a limb was cut off this tree at ground level. The interior rotted. The hole is a secret little cave, like a forest version of a tide pool


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Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1614:

Today wasn't the most challenging commute I've had this winter, but it was the most challenging I've had in probably the last month.

We received 2+" of fresh snow yesterday. It started with a couple hours of steady rain, which left a nice wet layer underneath the new snow. Then the temps dropped into the teens causing all that wet, slushy stuff to freeze solid into ruts and chunks of ice. Then the wind came up hard and blew drifts of snow over the top of everything.

When my alarm went off I could hear the wind howling. That never puts me in a good frame of mind for the commute. The temp was 14°F, and it's supposed to continuously drop throughout the day. Had to fight the 20+ mph wind on the way to the office, but at least I should get a good push home.

Because of the rough surfaces caused by the frozen stuff, I chose to ride the fat bike. That turned out to be the correct choice as there were a lot of spots I slowly rode through where the thinner mountain bike tires would have forced me to walk. Even with the fat bike, there were a couple of places where the snow drifts were 2+ feet deep completely blocking the MUP and requiring me to carry the bike for many yards until it got shallow enough to ride again.

Between the temp and the wind I was pretty cold when I arrived at the office 4 miles and 40 minutes later. But I made it, so that's what counts.

I had a “funny” commute yesterday. As I said recently, I’ve been taking the NYC subway every day because I haven’t gotten my “stuff” together to commute by bike. My spouse has a car, and she uses street parking, and that requires moving the car every day or so for street cleaning. She was planning to sit in the car for 90 minutes which isn’t legal but you can get away with it; she just moves it aside when the street sweeper comes. She asked me if I’d be willing to take the car to my workplace just so she wouldn’t have to do this dance. I reluctantly said yes. I don’t like driving, and city driving is the worst, but this route isn’t really very bad. Parking is not hard to find near work. So that went well. When I got home in the evening, just as I approached my building, I realized I had come home the habitual way and left the car at work. Duh.

Well, I haven’t been riding enough, so I rode my bike there. It’s 13 miles. Doing it after sunset is nice because the path is less crowded, but much of it is through a park where the entrances are over a mile apart. It seems ripe for crime, though actual incidence seems low. It wasn’t a problem for me this time. I was using a new powerful headlight, and I found that the beam pattern is no better than my weaker lights. And in fact, it has artifacts that tickles my peripheral vision making me feel like someone is coming up from behind when there’s no one there. Noted. So it’s a super terrific being-seen light but offers nothing special in the seeing ability.

I didn’t have to bring anything with me so I was lightly burdened, and I got to ride my nice bike.

I tossed the bike into the car and drove home. That’s when I hit some pretty awful traffic. I’m pretty relaxed when that happens, so I wasn’t super irritated. I did get home late and therefore didn’t get to sleep until late. This new kind of work (teaching) is really hard on my sleep. It’s taking a long time to get used to getting up at 5:30 and pushing myself so I’m never late.

I have dynamos on some of my bikes. I like them, and it’s OK with me to have the ideal setup on only some bikes. Just a thought to consider. I still wish I had gotten them sooner.

Another working week has come and gone and rather unexpectedly I cycled in on all three days despite some very wet weather in my part of the UK. Monday was a bit of a mistake as I don't normally ride in the rain but I misjudged things and after some light rain it fairly hammered down and for good measure it hammered down on the way home too. Fresh kit on Tuesday and I had good luck with the rain and again today. I'm not in work next week as I have some leave left and as my commuter bike needs a good service (I do my own) I'm tempted to strip it right down and rebuild it with some 8-speed Claris R2000 components off a donor bike. I have 'better' components to hand but my 2012 CAADX has Shimano CX-50 canti's so the brifters need to be New Super SLR.

Rainy day here, too, but not too heavy a downpour luckily. My coworker rode her bike in today (positive peer pressure) and she forgot her lock so we were chained together today, haha!
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Feb and March have been good. Almost commuted every work day. I use Cadence App on iPhone and have been seeing the power output trends (I got the sram rival power meter).

I've definitely gotten faster what was once a 11-15min commute has gotten down to times of less than 10min! 1.8miles each way. These freaking seattle hills man... Im still surprised at how hilly this city is.

at least i can get 30+mph on the downhills and get that HIIT workout on the uphills.

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Two laps this week. I think it was two. It wasn't the most important thing about the week. I'll book two

I’ve been hearing this stuck rock noise for a few trips and finally took a moment to find it and dig it out.

Tubeless FTW!


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I decided to pull out the screw. A little bubbling. At this point I should have parked it hole down but I wanted to try the Darts

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i have regrets! Can I get a do over? The dart malfunctioned and just left a smoother hole

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Fix It Stick tire levers proved to be garbage. To be clear the entire point of the dart is to avoid breaking the bead.

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Now I’m going to pull the dart through

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To my shock it all went back together, seated with a floor pump, and sealed up again with no dart.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1621:

Decided that the roads were now clear enough of ice and snow that I could ride my hybrid bike today. It was the first time since 11/25 that I've ridden a bike that doesn't have either fat tires or carbide studs. Wow, that was a long stretch. At over four months it was probably the longest I've ever gone without being able to squeeze in a day here and there on a "regular" bike.

There is still lots of snow and ice on the ground, but most of it has melted off the pavement. The only places that were really treacherous were underneath the overpasses, where the sun never shines to melt things off. In these spots there were still several inches of rutted ice. I would try to build speed ahead of these spots, then pick a line to carry me as straight as possible while I coasted across them with my feet hovering just above the ground on either side. The skinny non-studded tires didn't give me much assurance, but I made it across all of them without going down so it's all good.

Temperature this morning was 14°F with a light headwind. The humidity was pretty high at 85% making things feel very cold. Because I was on my regular bike, that also meant I was wearing my clipless shoes rather than winter boots. By the time I made it the 8 miles to the office my feet were painfully frozen. I also was fighting my goggles icing over due to the humidity. Despite all this, it was still better than driving a car.

After going such a long stretch on my winter bikes, when I got on the hybrid this morning the seat felt weird. At first I chalked it up to just not being used to the unpadded Brooks saddle, but by the time I got to work I had decided that the seat was way too low. After I put my bike in the rack I raised it 1/4". We'll see if that helps for the ride home.

*Edit: Just saw they updated the forecast for tonight. We're supposed to get an inch of snow. That means today's voyage on the hybrid will likely be a one day only event this week.

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1627:

Woke up to the sound that makes me wince: the wind howling. It's really hard to motivate myself to get out of bed when I hear that.

24°F with a 30 mph steady headwind and gusts much stronger. It was a "need to pedal downhill" kind of morning. Winds are actually supposed to pick up during the day, so I should get a real nice push home.

I was on the hybrid bike with regular tires. There were patches of fresh ice from yesterday's rain, and still thick ruts under the overpasses, but 99% of the pavement was clear so I didn't have any problems without winter tires. The west side of the state got dumped with snow, but thankfully we just wound up with a rainy day.

There is still snow that remains where it had been piled up by shovels and snow moving equipment, but a lot of it has melted off in a nice, slow, controlled fashion. That's good news, because starting Friday the daily high temps are supposed to start poking into the 50s F, and in a week into the 70s. That will be a welcome change in the weather, and because most of the snow has already melted off we shouldn't have problems with flooding. That was a big concern of mine a month ago when we had snow pack taller than me; a sudden warm-up would have pushed the river past its banks. Currently the river is high, but not so high that we're worried it will cause issues once the remaining snow melts.

We finally had a touch of Spring in the UK this week so all three days of my commute were on my road bike which was so nice and so fast and with me being a fan of the Spring Classics it was a delight to ride up this final climb to the office each day!

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I only got one lap this week. It was spring break and I was the daycare. Not enough time in office to allow for commute time.

At least the lap was on my new MTB, but it isn't really tuned up yet. Needed more air in the rear, for starters, much less figuring out the damping. And a seat post and handlebar adjustment

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1630:

First commute of the year on the road bike! I felt like a wild man. Seriously, it's amazing how much faster this bike is compared to my others. I can average 3 mph faster than my hybrid bike and feel like I'm putting less effort into pedaling.

I'd say 80% of the snow has melted. There are still areas with mounds of dirty snow where snow shovels and removal equipment had piled it up. They sit there looking like tiny glaciers. But the pavement it nearly completely clear now. Most of the snow and ice patches that linger can easily be ridden around.*

Google said 34°F and my kitchen thermometer said 40°F. I wore my regular full finger cycling gloves instead of my winter gloves. I think Google was closer to accurate as my fingers were pretty numb. But there was hardly any wind so that helped. It's supposed to be in the upper 60s for the ride home so I packed a pair of shorts. That will feel really nice after this long winter.

*Had one "OS" moment. As I was going under an overpass that I knew previously had several inches of rutted ice, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was mostly clear with just some standing water on the pavement. "The last few days of warm temps must have melted it off!" I thought to myself. I didn't slow down. As I hit what I thought was standing water, I was surprised to discover it was actually the same patch of thick rutted ice hiding in the reflection of the sun. At that point there was nothing I could do but hold on. Somehow I made it across the bumpy ice without hitting the ground or puncturing a skinny road bike tire. I'll have to learn from this incident and take heed going forward, as it looks like this stretch of rutted ice is going to stick around for a while.