It's been clear and dry for a month here, but for the last two days it's been overcast. That makes my 6:15 departure kind of dark. I've got my HID off the bike for some maintenance, and rode in this morning on my LED light. It forced me to go a lot slower than I'd like and even so I hit a lot of rough spots on the gravel road part of my commute; moved my time from 35 to 42 minutes.

I gotta get that light back together. I've sort of been waiting for BatterySpace to get a new inline switch/regulator in stock, but I'm going to have to put it back together this weekend without it and worry about that later.

I leave at 7 AM myself. It has been nice weather recently. The overcast is no fun. Where in MI are you at?

Good commute, although I had some annoying headwinds on the way in.

*sigh*
Came in late this morning to see the other U-lock gone. It had only been there a few weeks and it was being used less and less. It was kind of depressing to think they threw in the towel. Maybe they just took it so they could use it to lock their bike at the store?? probably not they haven't ridden since at least last tuesday.

Adjusted my rear derailleur last night, per SRAM's manual. I was careful, honest.

Chain skipped this morning, everything I did made it worse, and it finally came off and jammed both wheels.

Got it back on, couldn't figure out how to undo the bad adjustments, chain was skipping all over the place. I am now back home with my kids. Preschool is cancelled and I have grease everywhere.

Apparently rear derailleurs are next on the list of things to learn more about.

noteon: Check out Park Tools. They have how-to guides for doing almost everything you can think of for your bike.

Streets were quiet this morning. Almost like a holiday weekend. Weird.

Nice and cool ... good change after the +30 of a few days ago.

Summer winding up?

Thanks. I chose the SRAM Dual Drive manual over that because, well... it's a SRAM Dual Drive. Silly me.

I took it to the LBS. They said there was something going on inside the Dual Drive clickbox, but since the mechanic doesn't speak English and the owner's translator skills are less than optimal, I don't know any more than that. But after they did whatever they did to the clickbox, all it needed was an adjustment to the low limit screw, and it seems fine now.

And I still don't know exactly what was wrong. One of the down sides to living in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood...

I keep seeing the same guy commuting the other way every morning. Looks like a poor guy, raggedy clothes, commuting on some generic freestyle bike. I get the impression that he bikes because that's the only mode of transportation he can afford.

So I hesitate to tell the guy to start riding on the correct side of the road. He's always on the sidewalk going against traffic. I doubt he's cycling for fun if he doesn't know that basic rule...Oh well. What can you do.

Ojala que this might help: https://sheldonbrown.com/es-eng.html

Nice ride in this morning, no rain for the first time in a couple days.

Hmm... it doesn't have an entry for "The doofus thinks he's a mechanic."

Which they were too polite to say while I was there.

But we were all thinking it.

Just over in Chelsea. The weather has been miserable; it hasn't rained for about 6 weeks. Finally we got some this evening, but we could use that every day for a week. I've been having to water a lot of plants and the gardens daily for weeks now.

If it'll actually RAIN I'd take the overcast every day, and happily ride in the rain.

Been busy, so haven't posted much. Nice uneventful rides, for the most part.

Except for Thursday, when I was riding home, minding my own business, and suddenly one of the cranks fell off. In the middle of an intersection. Didn't crash, and did manage to get myself over to the side of the road & call my husband to come get me and run me + bike over to the LBS. They fixed it with some locktite and all seems to be fine.

Except that the nice friendly creaking noise that I had gotten so accustomed to seems to be gone.

This isn't quite a commuting story but I'll tell it anyway.
I try to do a quick mile jaunt on my lunch break in order to get in some exercise. Well, I'm coming back to work from that when I see a woman walking ahead of me. A guy is following her across the street and all of a sudden closes the gap on her and smacks her in the head (ah love, Pueblo style). The guy then walks a bit up the street away from her then starts following her when she starts going down another street. Just so much that you see from a bicycle if you actually take notice.

A note of caution, apparently the police have been given a hand out for the DNC which states, among other things, that cyclists may be potential protesters,

Had a fantastic commute over to the roller derby arena yesterday. 12 mile trip, nobody tried to run me over or honk at me, weather was good and the bike was running in tip top condition. Life is good on a bike

That does seem odd for sure hmm. Whatever floats the boat I guess.

As far as the commute today, well it went well until I took the first wrong turn and never did quite recover after that, ended up just riding home. Not to say I will not do it again, I will just call today my Pre Ride of the Route, so that next time I know which way to go and get there in record time. Half Full Of Course

Today's rides were by car, tomorrow's will be too.
I sprained my neck over my weekend. I stretched wrong, pulled something, and had muscle spasms bad enough to win me a neck collar (do not like) and some Flexeril (HATE). Hopefully I'll be riding again on Tuesday.

I did report this incident, but I guess both of them had left by the time they got around to it and they were just out of camera range. i guess the moral is keep your head up and look around every once in a while (that's something I have a problem with). What you see could amaze you (in both good and bad ways).

People exercising their rights? Acting like Americans should? They must be stopped!

I added Ergon grips to Little Red over the weekend, and now getting her to fold properly is a pain. The grips are very comfy though.

Yesterdays ride was very nice the temps have cooled down some over the last week. Only once car passed me on the way home. Some overcast and I thought I was going to get rained on, but made it home dry and safe. We will see what happen today as it looks like rain and I do not know if I want to take the kid out in the rain for the commute to work today. [ Yep my son rides in the Chariot to work with me, wife and I work in the same school ]

The commute was great. It's thunderstorm conditions here, so I used it as an opportunity to finish configuring and checking out a bike I'm putting together for rain (a 1989 or so Peugeot Iseran). I've procrastinated finishing the work on it, but now that it's raining regularly again I put it on the road. The ride in told me that the rear derailleur and rear brakes need some fine tuning, and that I've forgotten how to use bar end shifters effectively. But other than those things it was a nice (though damp) commute in.