Quiet but strong ride in this morning. My left shifter is getting a little fidgety. It need to be tightened or the bumps keep causing it to creep towards the smaller rings. Startled a coyote that wanted to cross the road on my way up the mountain and saw lots of birds in the early morning light.

1C, cloudy, and windy, the kind of wind that seems to change direction every few minutes. Trails are improving, nearly ice-free, but I will leave the studs on a little longer. Very sluggish today.

WINDY!

this morning i battled one of the more obnoxious headwinds i've had to deal with in quite some time, and because the wind was howling right at me out of the NNE across lake michigan, it was a chilly wind, making it feel much colder than the thermostat reading of 45.

now i can only hope and pray that the wind pattern from this morning holds so that i can have a ridiculous tailwind on the ride home.

Bike order woes are chronicled in a different thread, so I'll spare everyone details here. Suffice it to say new LHT has yet to be built. OTOH a friend lent me a nice Specialized MTB that wasn't being ridden. So at least I'm back to commuting. $7 a day riding metro was adding up fast; so was the emotional toll of not having a bike to ride and having my soul sucked out of me by the daily subway drudge.

Today's commute was with a backpack for the first time in a year and a half. Since it's likely to be next weekend b4 the new bike gets built, I may take the rack off my hybrid and mount it on the loaner ride... not sure I want to put up w/ a backpack for the better part of two weeks. The rack was going to have to come off anyway for its transplant to my LHT.

The ride itself was nice. Warm, windy, cloudy and with a little rain by the end, but such a blast to be back out and about on a bike after a few weeks w/o. Made surprisingly good time given that I hadn't ridden in weeks, had a headwind much of the way and was riding on 2+ inch knobbies instead of my usual 32mm road tires.

30F, frosty! Promises for warmth later in the day... (depending on how much wind comes along too)

Absolutely perfect today. 40º with a slight headwind, got to watch the sunrise over a farmers field. Very little traffic and made both of the lights I have to go through.

Awesome! I got out of the house on time (for once) and even managed to clean up the kitchen before I left. Swung by Peets to grab some joe, dropped my bag off at my locker and headed out to the bike trail to get in a nice tempo ride. Felt like I was laboring but when I looked at my Garmin, I was on track to put up my best 20' power. So, I kept on the gas. Nice.

Same here!

one of those mornings where im ecstatic to be on the bike

Today's commute was sponsored by What not to Wear. I had to stop twice to take off more layers as well as retie my shoes after the right shoelace got caught in the crank. It was so windy it shouldn't have been able to make it that far, the wind Steely Dan rode in was a lot warmer when I left. I hope it's still blowing that way when I ride home!

Beautiful day out, BUT i took the bus.....needed to walk for a change so I walked 15 min downtown to catch the bus. My muscles feel really tight the past two days, i guess i need to stretch more.

so much energy today!! no idea why.
i mashed for 30m (took the really long way) and had about 30lbs on my back.

got cat6'd by another fixed gear rider, and pounded me... but we were both spinning at 120rpm for several miles.
good day

Good, but slow ride home this afternoon because the winds shifted. I had headwinds going in and headwinds coming home, how fair is that? :rolleyes: 62F and overcast with headwinds from the NE @ 11mph. Will probably take my rest day tomorrow instead of Friday because they're calling for rain in the morning and most the afternoon.

Slow ride home against a high wind, I took the MUP to check out the flooded sections. There are several new lakes with the MUP at the bottom of them.

http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/a.../IMG_0963b.jpg

http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/a.../IMG_0967b.jpg

I got my touring bike back today. I damaged a tube putting my Bontrager Racelite Hardcase slicks back on. That is a tough tire to mount. Luckily I noticed it tonight and not tomorrow morning.

Dang. We had some slight flooding yesterday, nothing like that though. And it was all clear today.

I felt stronger on the ride home today than I did on the ride in. My anticipation of a wet ride was met by flashes of lightening and rumbles of thunder although the rain wasn't so bad. Kinda felt the a nut job riding my bike in the rain at night in suburban hell, but that's the way I like it!

Nice and warm for the ride home. 50's F, light clouds.
My lottery ticket in the "1st gen belt drive design flaw" drawing came up today, when the aluminum (new ones are steel) rear pulley splines sheared and the pulley spun freely. At first I thought it was a 'tweener fail on my Alfine, but quickly determined that the time had expired on the pulley.
This is a bad design that Gates has allegedly fixed - IRClean has had this happen, too. I'll make a post over in mechanics forum soon (with pics) to see what others are doing (i.e. replacement with the proper steel pulley).

So, this evening was spent switching the bike back over to singlespeed belt drive. While I was at it I swapped the flat bars out for the shallow drop cx bars. Good to go for the A.M.

I was on vacation last week so just a few pleasure rides.
Last couple days have been nice weather for riding, hit 80f Monday. Yesterday was cool and windy but not horrible.

My office moved last fall and I lost half my commute miles (my daily exercise). My wife has been a real sweatheart and offered to have lunch waiting since I am now close enough to ride home for lunch and I am not being alowed to take 30 min lunch and leave early. That's been a nice change of pace from either over eating with my work cohorts at a local resturant or getting interupted 10 times when eating bagged lunch at the office. It also got me back up to 9 miles of riding a day.

Today is starting off a little chilly at 49f though and has me contemplating wearing pants instead of shorts (not bike, I work in a warehouse so shorts are fine). Old man winter just not letting go. Hopefully this is the last few days of cold.

Nice ride today! I finished building my new wheelset last night, got them on the bike and adjusted everything (brakes are still squealing) and the dynohub setup works perfectly. I'm sold. Why don't all bikes come with these??

46f Nice morning, some headwind not bad though. Supposed to be thunder storms this afternoon so it should prove to be a crappy ride home

Wet this morning. Around 40F/4C. Lots of flooding around the Winooski River delta. Flooding is normal but I can't remember when I've seen it this high in the past. I went flying (C-172L) late yesterday and saw there's a vast area under water. All low-lying farmland. Good for the farmers. Not so good for the network of dirt trails I like to ride sometimes. :)

Right on! Gratz on the wheelbuild, and I wholeheartedly agree about the dynohub. I love mine.

The ride in this morning was beautiful.
It took a mile or so to settle int the new feel since last night's singlespeed and drop bar swap on the Norco. I was reminded of how much I like riding a singlespeed bike - simple.
It's gonna suck this afternoon, though. A big Pacific storm is going to roll in this evening, and the valley will have 30+ MPH winds (headwinds for my ride home) in advance of the storm. YAY!

First morning commute in the daylight in a while. I had to work until nearly midnight yesterday, so I went into work late this morning and it was nice being able to see my route for a change, particularly with all of the dogwoods and azaleas flowering right now. Made good time even though I caught every red light on my route. Curious how my commute is always so much faster when I ride in daylight vs. dark.

Nice ride in to work today, but my right knee is starting to act up. Changing the saddle was not perfect as it's taller than the old one and I can't lower the seatpost and keep the hitch for my son's trail-a-bike. But the pain is in the front of the knee, not the back. Maybe I put it too far forward when trying to shorten the reach to the bars.

Rainy ride in this morning. But not a bad thing as I recently installed fenders on my 2nd bike, an older hybrid that I'll use for commuting on days like these. They worked great to keep the road spray off, but still got wet from everything else. Also replaced the somewhat knobby tires on the hybrid with some Conti Gatorskins to speed it up, and was pleased with their performance as well. Not as fast as my road bike, but a nice change of pace as I don't get out on this bike much anymore. Ride home should be drier and warmer, temps in high 50's.