It was real wet this morning, but was not actually raining while I was out. All hail the fenders! Fully overcast with dark thick clouds, probably more rain today. A bit of a headwind. Wore a real thin sweater-y type thing that was pretty comfortable. A refreshing ride for the most part.

Seems all the drunks are out right now. A heap of them in Surfers Paradise this morning (or were they just idiots? sometimes hard to tell around here!). And to think, I'm supposed to be in "cotton wool" in preparation for tomorrow's Glorious Mee ride.

A beautiful, cool, clear, still morning this morning, I had a relaxing, uneventful 15 mph ride in to work.

Yep

those days when you just can't miss your ride but you lack the energy - got an early meeting - whatever - I have the perfect backup.

Its a 1.3kw motorised bicycle - actually its more like a pedal assisted motorbike.

Does 38kmh on the flat, up hill, down hill. Tie flayling in the wind. no sweat. Big stares.

Biggest hassel is keeping the bugs out of your teeth.

Fantastic commute today. Cool weather, and light enough traffic that I could practically sprint from traffic light to light. Really got the endorphins going. It's mornings like this that make me wonder why everyone who is able doesn't commute by bicycle.

Worst commute ever

Caught in a summer hail storm. Took refuge on the porch of a new car sales lot. All the stupid sales dudes were pissing themselves laughing.

Best commute

One month latter - same car yard - bucketing rain (lucky my skins waterproof).

Stupid car dudes running around trying to stop their new cars from floating down the (now) flooded creek.

Ahhh ... sweet justice.

Today was a special commute. I finally got my computer working again, and today was the day my Terry Flora turned over 5000 miles. Most appropriately, it happened climbing Moose Hill returning home tonight. Well done, Little Pony.

Great trip home. Reasonably heavy traffic on Memorial Drive, but the weather was near perfect. I rode alongside a motorist for about three traffic lights, who finally smiled, and shouted "Great exercise, huh?". I'm finally getting accustomed to my ancient Bianchi having clipless pedals. On the commute in I rode alongside another cyclist for awhile who was riding a two year old Bianchi.
I told him mine was more like twenty-two years old. He then noticed my old down-tube shifters.

:beer: Cheers!

First time to my new office today. The office used to be in the terminal at the Montreal airport, we are now at the weather station. The "straight" distance is almost the same but because I have to go across a few highways and around the runways, my commute is 5 km longer. The route is good, mostly wide industrial area streets, the worst is the service road along highway 520, lot of dirt and heavy traffic (trucks).

The good thing are I don't have to lock my bike anymore, I have a (about) mile long really quiet road next to my office where I'll be able to ride during work (yes, I can :D ), and I'll be able to do maintenance on my bike here. Also, me and some co-workers agreed to buy some training equipment to kill time here. The other nice thing is the falconry right next to us. I love raptors.

For the past two years I have been reporting on my commute on 9-11. This year, on Thursday, I intended to take a long ride from work to the occupational physician for my annual respirator physical, but they were full for appointments. I had ridden to work, and intended an all-afternoon ride. Instead, I walked over to the local ice cream outlet (Baskin & Robins) for an ice cream treat at noon. In the evening, I took the long way home, then spent time raking my yard until my wife arrived home from her job at 8:00 PM. I listened to the National Public Radio reports during the time I spent raking. This year seemed less meaningful to me than the last two. However, I've decided that at least on 9-11 each year, it will be a time without use of fossel-fuel internal combustion engines for anything.

Today, Saturday, I participated in a local group's clean-up of a local river (Tualatin Riverkeeper's) in my canoe. It seemed fitting to spend a few hours in this way right now.

John

All this week, I faced major headwinds on the way in, which died down to light tailwinds on the way home. I shooed another suicidal kitten out of the middle of the road, and saw an owl as I came home. (It apparently had pounced on something on the road, and was slow enough getting airborne again that I caught it in my headlight. It took off, bumped into a power cord and squawked loudly, and went on. :p

Yesterday we finally got rain, and I rode to work and home in the wet. The trip home was complicated by the fact that I had 5 rotisserie chickens and a pile of library books in my panniers. :D (The local grocery store, when the chickens are unbought for too long, marks them down half-price, $3 apiece. I like to buy them then, and cut them up and freeze them for future quick microwave meals. After weeks of not having been lucky enough to snag one, I couldn't resist buying them all, when the store had 5 marked down and I providentially had enough money to buy them all. It was fun trying to fit them all on the bike, what with my books already being there.)

Anyway, any dogs who might have come out in the rain to chase me yesterday would probably have been motivated by more than dislike of cyclists.

I rode into work this Sunday morning to cover some overtime work our factory is doing today. I had a few unusual sightings. Another cyclist passed me on the left wearing a world champion jersey. We exchanged "good morning's" as he went by but i really didn't look at him. when he was about 5' in front of me I almost asked what he was WC of, but not wanting to be a smart ass i let it pass. now he's 50' in front of me and i remember that i live in Austin and Lance is back in town. Could that have been.............................................? Naaaa.
later a woman was walking through a neighborhood in her skimpy nightgown. She didn't seem embarrassed and kind of gave me the eye. Funny.

The radar now shows some storms heading this way. We’ll see.

CD

Hi Folks,

Ooooh it feels good to be back on the bike! First ride this morning since the crash last wednesday. I'm really getting back into shape now after feeling pretty bad for a couple of days. Weather is gorgeous sunshine and lovely temperature for riding.
The repairs bill on the crash victim is going to be tasty. The STI shifters got damaged and though they seem to work, I dont trust the brake levers to stay in one piece forever. Price for new Sora STIs: £90 which seems a lot of money - "lucky" it was not Dura Ace, which would have been £250... Fortunately I have another bike to keep me going until things are sorted.

Cheers,

Ed

The heat seems to have subsided a little. Only 27 C today, much more pleasant for riding! Southerly winds here this evening made it feel even cooler! Bliss!

all of my commutes last week were great as the DC region basked in beautiful mid-70s sunny weather - today was decent as well - as I biked by the Kennedy Centre a large fish jumped out of the water, something I had not seen before

I'm starting to get a little worried about this hurricane thats supposed to hit later in the week....

Very nice temperate weather. Thought I might have a wet ride in, but no rains came during my commute. Traffic flowed nicely on both Memorial Drive and MLK (the two main arterials I hit). I'm
working on increasing my average speed (which is limited by frequent traffic lights), and this morning I had a smooth flow the entire distance.

Cool, humid morning, had a great ride to work, stopped and picked up bagels for the morning break for the shop. The Marwi lighting system is growing on me, I'm getting used to that stupid little hard to use switch for the low beam light, the niterider is still in 1st place though.

I "commuted" from San Jose to San Fran to catch the Grand Prix action. Awesome ride for 50 miles (got a ride part way to avoid the same, tired roads I'm always on!!).

Saw Lance and Vinukirov (sp?) and a bunch of others. Can't wait to get home to dump the digital images.

Out of town this week. I'll miss the commute.

Kinda cold today. High thin clouds let the heat out, and foiled the life giving rays of the sun. A flannel kept the upper body warm, but it may be time for the long pants. Not sure what the best pant like thing will be for the fall, but I need to hit REI for a spare tube, and I'll see what is on hand.

Saw a 7 inch box turtle on the bike trail and a blue heron along the river. Then got drenced by the fountains downtown that spray out over the bike trail.

Fantastic ride in! Ride home: just so so. ;-)

saw a snake, almost ran over a frog.

Nice ride in this morning. Sun coming up, a little bit of a tailwind.

Then as I came to the last km of my commute, on a trail into a little park next to my work, I approached an older couple. They were pushing a stroller with their grand-daughter (I assumed) and two dogs, off-leash. I approached very slowly and said a good morning and announced that I was coming by on their right as the lady was way over to the left pushing the stroller. One dog seems interested in me but showed no signs of aggression. The second dog was up further and first showed no signs of aggression. I continued on and as I passed this second dog, he decided to give chase and showed a lot of aggression, with really nasty barking, growling and showing of teeth. The other dog decided to get into it as well and so I had both dogs after me and each dog was on either side of me, nipping at my feet. I started to accelerate but that only encouraged them and the gravel path didn't provide traction. I threw a water bottle at one of them and missed. I jumped off the bike to get the bike between them and me and see if I could retrive my water bottle.

The couple had trouble to restrain the dogs, but eventually the gentleman was finally able to hold the more aggressive dog. The other dog would make attempts to run at me and I threatened to fling my head-light water-bottle style battery at him. The lady began to berate me for fighting back and insisted that the dogs would not bite. I told her, at this moment I was in no position to find out. Plus, she told me that the sign that is further on the trail shows that no bicycles allowed. I reminded her that I go through the park slowly and is the only way to my office without taking a 8km detour around on paved heavily trafficked roads. ( 22km instead of 30km, what would you do?) She kept on that I shouldn't be in the park with my bike. I didn't know enough to say anything about the dogs.


Anyways, I left after having enough of an argument with ???? and a distaste in my mouth for what happened. I checked out a sign at the other end of the park. Sure enough, no cycling, but dogs allowed but must be on a leash. These dogs were not on a leash as most dogs aren't when I come across people and their dogs in the park. BTW, I come across people in this park about once or twice a week. It is a very little used nature park with gravel paths. There are no direct paved roads or pathways that cut across the business parks in this area and that can take me direct to my office. I would need to travel on a busy highway where the posted speed is 80km/hr. I'll stick to the park even though I'm not allowed.

The ride home was uneventful and the winds had changed by the pm to give me another nice tailwind on the way home. Made up for last week's headwinds.

Then I hear the news of Ken Kifer.


:mad::(

Hi Folks,

Another gorgeous ride in today. Feeling a bit tired after playing football last night with some of the guys from work, so I took it slightly easy.

Cheers,

Ed

wet and windy are the words for this morning, fogged glasses made it hard to see when there was oncomming traffic. All in all it was a good ride, I just plugged along and stretched it out to 1 hours and 15 minutes. I noticed a lot of tree fall out from the night rains, We'll have to see what the evening commute brings.

Oh man does it feel good to be bale to ride my bike to work again!:D After three weeks not being able to ride due to surgery, I was finnaly able to ride again!

Well the ride in this morning was cool. Temps in the mid 50's. I took my time coming in and actually enjoyed the ride. It was nice and refreshing. Looking forward to the ride home!

Nice cool, fast ride this morning. On a side note, I completed my first metric century Sunday...I still have a LONG way to go before the 108-mile Tour de Tucson in November!

Beautiful sunny and cool ride in this morning. Moderate traffic on Memorial Drive, light traffic
on MLK, and a fast ride nearly the entire distance.

Great ride in today. Light traffic, blue skies. Nice cool breeze at the start, though it turned into a nasty headwind towards the end.... oh well :D

Had my first puncture yesterday :( It happened a couple of miles from home just opposite the local Honda delearship... where as luck would have it I was picking my car up from its 15000 mile service :D No problem, just wheeled the bike over the road, threw it in the back and went home. I just hope my next puncture is so painless :rolleyes: