Just a crabby commute this morning.
A steady east wind was against me, ruining the downhill section.
I didn't feel energetic, having stayed up too late last night because I took the car yesterday and had too much energy to go to bed at a decent hour.
Heavy trunk bag today. I took a heavy chain lock and a heavy Pyrex container with my lunch.
I got that one light red halfway down the hill that's only green in my direction for about 3 seconds, so I lost my inertia too. (or is it momentum?)
I only averaged 10.7 mph, which is quite slow; I'm usually closer to 13 mph on my gravel bike.
I wonder if I'm not a little slower because the oil in my IGH is thickening up as temperatures drop. I really like the belt drive that goes along with it, but it sure feels slow sometimes...

On the bright side, I'll have a tailwind to push me uphill on the way home and I did get a nice little bit of exercise before work.

I just executed a lunchtime grocery mission. It felt so good to get away from my desk and get the heart pumping.
About 6 miles and 210 calories burned, as well as a car trip saved this evening. 13 mph average; how was I 2.3 mph faster than this morning's commute downhill?!

I picked up:

• A block of sharp cheddar
• A pack of sliced sharp cheddar
• A Quart of lactose-free half & half
• A Prescription
• Two packs of lunchmeat
• Two squeeze bottles of brown mustard

Smaug1 I bet the lower speed was more due to wind than your IGH. When I look at the speed data from my commutes, it seems dominated by wind speed and direction.

I take a backpack every day, and I've been putting it in the basket which is on my rear rack. Every so often, I'll decide instead to wear the backpack because I don't want the trouble of lashing it on with a bungee. It's not that it takes much time, just more mental energy. Now I notice that riding is more comfortable with the backpack on my back. It's because the weight of the bag tries to twist the bike over to one side. Also I guess the unsprung weight is reduced when there's no bag on the bike. So I think my new routine is just to keep my U lock in the basket. I don't lash it in. It rattles loudly but it hasn't shown any tendency to bounce out of the basket.

The basket is somewhat shallow so you can see why I lash the backpack on but not the U lock.

...unless the wind swings around in the afternoon like it often does here. I think riding downhill against the wind is more disheartening than riding uphill against the wind.

noglider Strava said it was only a 6 mph wind, but it sure felt like more to me. Looking back, I think it was a combination of not being well-rested in the morning and the headwind. When I went out for a "lunchtime mission" I felt stronger, and when I rode home (uphill) I felt stronger too. That was after drinking coffee and sitting in my desk chair all day.

Re. your bike setup, how is the lock prevented from bouncing out of the basket? I'm thinking you could run the shackle around your seatpost or seat tube with the lock bar securing it to the basket. I like the lugged frame and springy steel fork. I bet it's a nice ride. I look at modern steel bikes and I'm sure they saved some weight and gained some vibration damping by going to a carbon fork, but the ride is almost certainly better with steel, shaped like yours.

Is that a dynamo hub I see out front?

BobbyG I agree. Having a descent ruined by headwind is worse than uphill. For one thing, the hill blocks a climbing headwind somewhat. For another thing we weren't going fast to begin with, so it feels like nothing much is lost.

I drove again today, as Thursdays, I go to get my daughter right from work. (sigh) that's two bike commuting days lost this week, as I was rained out Tuesday. Seems like November is our rainy month this year. It was October last year. October was wonderful this year. I got over 600 miles in.

I may get out for a night ride tonight.

My (main) commuter bike is a 1974 Raleigh International, so it's butted Reynolds 531. The fork rake is long, and I suppose that makes it feel springy.

Modern steel frames might be slightly heavier than old ones. They need reinforcements for disc brakes. Modern steel forks are definitely heavier than old ones. This fork is slightly more than HALF the weight on the Surly Cross Check I had a few years ago. Liability! Maybe the extra strength is justified. But the bike with all of its bolted-on accessories is about 30 pounds so it doesn't feel light. As I mentioned recently, I'm crazy with tires so I have Continental GP 5000 tires on it. Not practical, but I just want them.

I've blogged the building and renovations of the bike in this thread: noglider's Raleigh International Frankenbike

I don't suggest you read it all.

The lock doesn't bounce out because I don't hit the kind of bumps that would cause it. Or I could say because it's heavy enough to bounce only a little. It's the Kryptonite New York model, weighing around 3 pounds.

Yes, it's a dynamo hub. The taillight connection from it failed long ago, and I haven't had the energy to fix it, so I'm using a battery powered blinky taillight and the dynamo (steady) headlight. It's a good setup for me.

Rain in the forecast?...Challenge accepted!

Because I drove yesterday, and need to drive tomorrow, I biked today even though it was forecast to be rainy and in the 30s. Another busy day awaited me at work and I was running late so I chose the big, heavy RockHopper because the bar-end shifters are trouble free.

I don't know if it was a tailwind or exuberance but I flew to work, taking corners faster and cutting across a couple of grassy sections in the park to avoid slowing for turns. (I usually try to avoid cutting across the grass so as not to kill it). In fact, I made it to work with only 26.5 minutes rolling time...my record is 25...the usual for this short route is 30.

It began raining after lunch. I finished work a half hour late (again!) at 5:30 and walked outside to check the weather. It was 38F with a steady light rain. I put on my bike clothes including long-fingered gloves, covered my backpack and phone and donned my rain cape. I rolled out of the building and it had stopped raining. But I decided to keep the rain gear on anyway, just in case.

First problem. This was the first time I wore the cape on the RockHopper since converting it to drop bars. The reach is a tad long, but very comfortable. However, when I reached forward the right hand loop came off the cape. And unlike the Charge bike with its brifters, or the 20" folder with its handgrip-adjacent thumb-shifter, or the 16" folder with its rapid-fire shifter, I had to remove my hands from the bars to shift the bar-end shifters on the RockHopper...so having the right hand loop gone helped, while the left shifter was problematic.

Two miles into the ride home the temperature jumped up to 44F and I was getting hot, so I stopped to take off the cape. Then it was a cool joyride to the big San Miguel east hill of Union...the one that took an extra 6 months to climb after my year off the bike in 2010. But the RockHopper's granny gear makes is a piece of cake despite the bike's weight.

Then a mile from home it began to drizzle which turned quickly into a light rain. With waiting for traffic to clear on the last busy street crossing it could be 5 to 8 minutes to get home. I started to slow down to stop and change, then thought, "Screw it!" If I get wet, I'll be at home, so no big deal. I spend back up and the rain stopped again.

I really needed that ride...it was a busy day with surprise emergencies (are there any other kind?) and clients who kept thinking of changes to make.

On days like today I think about that year I was off the bike with no way to work off the day's frustrations...I was miserable.

I just love the DropHopper...so fast with the higher custom gearing, despite the weight, and so grippy around turns with the big 26x2.125 smoothies.

Update: The right hand loop was there. Apparently I was grabbing the knot in the middle that gathers the front to keep it from draping on the front fender. Will have to try it out on the bike this weekend. In my defense it was dark out.

Thirty years of reality tv and twenty years of social media have made us all very judgy and smug. We are all primed to get in groups and throw stones at one another from our high horses, and get that chimpanzee validation. It's the opposite of stoicism. Stoicism focuses on personal virtues. But also teaches you to accept what is outside of your own control. So you observe the e-bike, but a rock feels no pain and an island never cries

Not sure if I will get a ride in today. Soon to be formerly known as chemo kid is getting his pic port out. SWMBO is taking him, but that means I'm probably doing all duties with the other kids.

You're my idol.

For me, it depends on how much rain and what % and when. Maybe you do a similar analysis.

Tuesday this week it was 20-35% chance of rain all day, and it misted or drizzled all day. I'm glad I bailed on that, though I didn't get much sleep that night.

**************

I commuted again on the gravel bike this morning. I had gotten up earlier, had a cup of coffee and a protein smoothie*, chatted with my wife, who works from home on Fridays. I left the heavy trunk bag behind today and carried everything I needed in my pockets:

• HipLock zip tie type lock
• Wallet
• Work badge
• Phone
• (no lunch; I'll buy it at the cafe today)

I felt much faster than the other day. The road was a little wet, but not QUITE wet enough that I got really dirty. (I don't have the bikini clip-on fenders installed) Looking at my ride stats, I only averaged 10. wasn't, but I think it had to do with the fact that I forgot to stop Strava when I got off the bike and walked into the building. These things matter on a two mile commute.

In the attached speed chart from Strava, we can see the first dip to 0 mph was a stop sign in my neighborhood. The next one is a stop light I had to stop for. The last one (highlighted) is when I parked the bike but Strava was still running. It jumped around a bit while trying to keep hold of GPS locks while I was in the building for a few minutes and finally stopped it.

I'm going to do the same route again next week and remember to turn off Strava promptly and see how it compares.

I just noticed that the main ride stats screen has my average at 10.8 mph, but when I look at the average on the speed graph, it says 12.1 mph. I guess the former is overall average and the latter is rolling average? They could sure annotate this better...


This morning's commute's speed graph

* Smaug's Protein Smoothie Recipe:

1. 1/2 cup orange juice
2. 1/2 cup coconut milk
3. 1 banana
4. 1 cup Greek yogurt, with at least 2% milkfat (makes it more creamy and satiating)
5. 1 scoop protein powder (I use the organic vanilla one from Costco with the blue cap)
6. 1.5 cups frozen organic fruit (it was mixed berries today)

Perfect phrase for it.

I often ride Colorado Springs' Rock Island Trail to and from work.

That is EPIC!!! (...and it made me tear up a little. G-d bless you all.)

Absolutely. A 50% chance of .01 inch over a one-hour period is nothing. A 50% chance of .26 inches over 3 hours is something else. I dropped a weather app when they began hiding the percentage and chances of rain behind an extra click.

I feel for all of you that have more than your fair share of inclement weather in the winter and plenty of wind. Where I am, it's always dead calm in the morning and I get a slight tailwind in the evening going home from work. All that changes when a storm front is rolling through but I'm less likely to ride if it's seriously rainy and windy out and the storms don't typically last more than a couple of days.

I'm still using Weather Underground, these many years later. I think I had and got rid of their app, but if so it was long enough ago I don't remember exactly. Their mobile site and desktop site work fine. The 10 day forecast is a good illustration, and the hourly forecast has both % and quantity expected.

pulled a glute Saturday, rode in Monday, shouldn't have, but made it roundtrip... 8.5 mph per strava... drove on Wednesday, back to normalish Friday. Weird how the inflammation propagates, basically everything hurt on Sunday, by Wednesday the glute was still screaming but the surrounding muscles had mostly calmed down. Right now the glute is a twinge. Really need to keep stretching...

I use the Weather Underground site on my computers, but I use the Meterored App on my phone.

Do you mean Meteored? On your recommendation, I just downloaded and am about to try it. I do like wunderground because it gives me a lot of information in a small graph. And it's very quick on my phone. Using it on my computer takes quite a bit longer to navigate to the 10-day outlook. That can be worth it because it gives a lot of information but most of the time, I prefer to use my phone.

I use Weather Underground too. Computer & phone. I just leave a window with it open on my phone's browser and when I need a forecast, I just tap 'Hourly' and it refreshes.

I'm tempted to try the paid version to get rid of the ads, but haven't looked into how much it cost yet.

*************

The saddle broke on my gravel bike yesterday, so I took my commuter eBike in this morning. I wanted to keep Strava counting most of the commutes properly, so I rode in unpowered. (we don't get Local Legend credit for eBike rides) I may engage the warp drive on the way home, as there is more uphill and I'm supposed to be facing a headwind too later.

Speaking of wunderground, it looks like not a great week for commuting.

• Rain forecasted for the morning commute tomorrow
• 20+ mph winds Wednesday (that will be an eBike commute )

That rain isn't due here until after 2pm tomorrow (Tuesday), and it's at about 100% probability, higher than for you. Wednesday we may get showers but maybe not much rainfall. That seems like a good risk for me. I won't mind getting wet on the way home. This reminds me that I should bring spare clothes to keep in my desk in case I get soaked on the way in.

I like the Wunderground smartphone app better than the web page because it's much quicker to load.

We have no weather of any note in the 10-day forecast, and not much work anticipated. So there might be a lot of riding to fill the time

Hi 30s this morning. Dressed same as for 40s, which is how I used to dress for 20s 10 years ago. Felt good actually, I guess I have been overdressing for warmer weather.

Dry and nice sunrise.

First freezing morning here, and what do you know - I get a flat. At first I felt slight bounce in the rear as I was riding and thought the tube had gotten softer because of the cold, but no, I wasn't that luckky. I thought it would be enough to use the pump once or twice until I get to work... nope. Every time I used the pump the tube went soft faster, until I think the fourth time when it went totally flat in less than 30 seconds.
It took me almost ten minutes to remove the tire using two levers, that's how bad it was because of the cold (also, Schwalbe Marathon), but once it went off everything went well, I was done in 15 minutes and got to work 10 minutes early (as opposed 35).
I fully expect something nice to happen in return, one of these days, preferably tomorrow.

Yes.. That's the one.

BAM!!! tinkle, tinkle,tinkle. It sounded like a glass bottle exploding on the pavement right in front of me except the handlebars shuddered in my hands.

I had just left work two hours late after another emergency project to cap off another busy, busy day...but everything went smoothly and satisfyingly. I was looking forward to the ride home. The ride in on my main commuter (2015 Charge Plug non electric) was fast and smooth and easy with temps rising from 32F to 40F along the way.

The temperature had fallen back down to 43F when I finally left at 7pm. I hopped on the trail and descended to the first underpass. It was full of people huddled around a makeshift fire, their belongings and trash squeezing me to a narrow passage on the opposite side of the path...then

BAM!!! tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

The front wheel shuddered and began slowing the bike. I didn't want to stop in the underpass so I pushed on a few dozen yards. Both tires held air but the front fender support had come out of the breakaway front hub clips. I pressed the right clip back together but the left clip was missing.

I was able to ride another 1/4 mile until the fender began rubbing against the tire. I pulled out a zip-tie I had in my bag but it disintegrated before even tightening it. I had an elastic band in my bag and used it to keep the fender in a workable position for the ride home

I believe I have another fender mounting clip in my bike stuff in the shed.

Still better than driving.