First flat tire while commuting in nearly two years this morning, clear glass hidden by a puddle. (Clear glass beer bottles should be outlawed I tell you! :-)

Found out my patch glue had dried up in the tube, used a bandage from my first aid kit as a temporary patch until I got new glue over lunch.

Cold, but my SmartWool is really earning its keep. I know we're only getting started, but so far it seems like I'll fare so much better this winter than last. Will probably be riding home in a heavy rain, but my baby's well equipped, and it'll make the dynamo-driven christmas lights stand out even better.

40F, sunny, damp. Basic cold and clammy except for the sun. 8 yr old home sick w/ mom so I trailered soon-to-be 5 yr old to her school. 1st geared commute in a month or maybe more.

Beautiful ride this morning. Finally cleared up after a few days of rainy weather, the streets are almost dry, and there is that crisp clean day after rain smell in the air. I took a more scenic route this mornin, and noticed some tendrils of fog clinging to the foothill canyons at sunrise. 42F this morning too, so I didn't even wear my ear warmers...just jeans and a sweatshirt. Pure bliss! Should reach 61F today, can't wait for the ride home!

Is there any better way to start the day than to ride a bike?

Flatting in the wet seems to be a common problem. I too have punctured under similar circumstances. It is amazing of how much debris we avoid under sunny skies especially glass reflecting in the sunlight, which also seems to be absent this time of year.
Joey, I find it hard to imagine that the neighborhood of your unfortunate delay is such a hazard with unsavory people, which requires your friend to keep watch. I find it hard to imagine because in my city the worst that might happen is some old timer trying to show you his way of changing a tube.

My commute was fun. I got to play with autos for two hours.

Lbs visit and after work stuff.
I bought a Ulock finally. Just a cheap crack. My rope lock is getting old.
Need some beef where I am locking my bock up soon.

Bought a tube. 7777 on my odo comming up be for 2010.

Here is a sample. Complete with construction zones, rude people, and sunshine 72f.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG9qHZgwRIw

I got to ride in my cycling shorts. I am about 2 miles faster in them on average.
That gets me up to 14mph 15 mph people.

I spared you from watching the whole thing. More of the same, rude people, and sunshine.
I am so glad I don't have to live where it snows anymore.

NEW SHIMANO DEORE LX CRANK SWEET! Saturday, December 19, 2009. Yesterday I had my new crank mounted. That thing is nice. Can’t wait for the final phase of replacing the rear wheel. I replaced the front wheel last week with a brand new Velocity rim with a Shimano XT hub. Real nice. 4am, I broke the new crank in by riding in our first significant snowfall of the season. Woke up to about 1 ½ inches of a wet heavy snow. The side streets were slushy and slick. Steady snowfall. The main roads were good. First day of the season for using the Snowstuds. 31f in the morning, I overdressed with the Wickers Expedition balaclava and the mittens. I stopped to change gear. I was getting hot with the mittens. And changed to the lighterweight balaclava and cotton gloves. Much better. 35f in the aftn. The roads were better in the aftn. Altho the rolling resistance from the Snowstuds was substantial. But it doesn’t take long to get used to riding with them. It’t all up to the air preassure. Pump em’ up harder for the clear roads. And softer for deep stuff.

Yeah, "They just sprout up out of the ground" as my riding bud says.

About a year ago my bud and I were riding homeward after dark. I accidentally dislodged my frame pump as I reached for my downtube shifter on my road bike. Luckily, the pump fell to the ground and missed all the moving parts of my bike as we were doing near 25mph at the time. So I yell up to my bud that I dropped something, swung a U-turn and went back to look for it. I could not find it because two dudes that "sprung up out of the ground" had already picked it up. My bud saw them holding it and told them it was mine. They offered to sell it back to him. Just then I was returning from looking farther up the road. My bud snatched it from the guy's hand and instantly handed it off to me like a relay baton. Then he sprinted away from them. Luckily, no guns were involved.

I would have let then keep the pump. Might have suggested exactly where they should keep it too.

Foot+ of snow on ground,snow drifts lining the bike paths .no commute for me (

Heh - How're you DC-area guys holding up? I lived down there for a few years. I know they don't "do snow" well at all.

Light tailwind for me and around 15F. Pretty sunrise. Passed another cyclist.

Slow ride this morning. Brought out the MTB. Side roads are still a mess, and I don't have studded tires. We got one of those unusual storms, on saturday, and it dumped 23 in ( 58 cm) of snow. That is a few inches more than our winter average. The air temp was not too bad at 20 F ( -6 C). The afternoons for the next couple days should be ok, but the mornings are going be slow on icy roads.

Interesting!

My normal ride to the station has two options: the path by the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and a bridge on Basin Road. The latter is out for now; being rebuilt. And with 10" of snow on the former, I wasn't going to mess with that either. So I rode in to Trenton, a couple miles farther, and took the train from there. The roads are slushy in places, and there was some black ice, but no problems. In this kind of weather, bicycles seem to freak out drivers even more than usual.

New York City streets are pretty slushy too, so messy when cars drive by. But there's no ice on the streets that I saw. The paths through Central Park are pretty slick, but as long as you don't steer, no problem. But I had to go really slow!

hvn't posted in a while...i think the new forum is the culprit, slower complicated, glitchy...

Todays commute was great! good weather.....did my 7 mile commute withing 28 minutes!

After yesterday's snowfall in NYC area everything is covered in sludge. Main streets are thawed, but smaller streets had ice, it was around 30F . It was my first commute with studded tires. It was good. It wasn't as much fun as it would be in the country: the traffic was slow but dense, piles of snow on sides so I had to stay in the middle all the time, but I was able to go at the speed of (crawling) traffic or faster and keep a distance from cars in front of me to avoid tire spray. It was quite satisfying though. I saw very few cyclists on the streets. Few times I got stuck without a way to go around, but surprisingly the commute took only around 5 minutes longer. BTW, I'm getting a front fender today

Oh, and lots of new potholes

Adam

Upper 30s. Slight headwind. Still getting used to the extra weight of the mtb. Wouldn't need it if 10% of my commute wasn't on a gravel and sand road that gets utterly torn up in the rain. I work in BFE so no way around the road unless I want to increase or decrease my commute by an unacceptable amount.

Swam.

Heavy rain, Christmas week - I was the only bike in the lockup at 7:45 a.m., in a building where at least 2,000 people work. In summer there are 30 or 40 bikes in there, almost on top of each other.

Ditto.
The only things that saved my commute to work from being one of the top two worst weather commutes was a) tail wind b) lack of flooding on the northbound side of the main route I take - which may be bad going home southbound and c) not much traffic out there!

I was soaked through. At least it was 50 degrees. However, the temp is dropping and now it's only 43. Hopefully most everything will be dry. Gloves are currently in front of a co-workers space heater drying now. Maybe it will snow soon.

Another slow ride in on icy and snow crusted roads at 20 F ( -6 C). The MTB felt good and handled well, busting its way through the snow. On the icy downhill I took my time, fishtailing only a couple times. I forgot to buckle the strap on my rear pannier and the gears sucked it up on a dark road. At first
I thought maybe the ice built up on the gears and threw the chain. I had to pull off one of my front lights and saw the strap wedged into the gears
tightly. I got it loose and will have to replace the buckle. There are too many things to remember on cold mornings. In the warm weather, everything just clicks.

-15c/-24 windchill factor & most of the ride was into the wind.
How many days till March?

10F. Calm wind. Humid though, so the cold was biting. Borderline balaclava conditions for me, but I toughed it out. Balaclavas make me overheat if it's not well & truly cold. Nice sunrise. The Adirondack Mountains were bathed in purple. Mt. Marcy looked good. Whiteface's ski trails were snowy.

I passed a couple of pedestrians and one of them said, "Wow."

Met another commuter on the way home last night. Nice to see another brave soul.

Little bit icy this morning, I realised as I slid sideways down the asphalt watching my bike slide ahead of me.

Bent the left shifter (still functional, hopefully salvageable) twisted my seat and rack slightly, gashed my left arm, but mostly OK; rode sedately the last 5k into work. Just hope I don't have to fork out for a new shifter. If I do it's gonna be a barcon.

Didn't really enjoy it much, but it was okay. I bailed on a club ride because I just didn't feel very ridey this morning, went to work instead. Realized once I got here that I had no normal people clothes, so I'm hiding out in my office wearing shorts, long-sleeved SmartWool, and my Special Shoes. I feel like much more of a dork than usual, and that's saying something!

I'm home w/ the kids. Because our son is sick my wife is leaving me the car and breaking her no biking <40F rule, and doing fine at it.

28F on the way home from the train. First day of the season on knobbies. I forgot how much they slow you down.