Beautiful day for riding...upper 60's and cloudy...

Beautiful stars out this morning. First day riding on a Marathon Plus tire. Not sure about it yet. Pain in the butt to get it on the rim. I hope to God I never get a flat with it because it will be really, really hard to change out on the road.

I saw another bike commuter! He pulled up next to me at the light (the one where I cross the six-lane state highway) and started talking. He told me that he almost got hit at that same intersection yesterday...he said his bike wouldn't trip the light, so he ran it.

It took a lot of self control not to say, "Well, there's your problem, silly!"

Instead, I just volunteered to hit the pedestrian button, wished him a good day, and watched him drop me like a bad habit. (I always lose when commute racing...I am slow and lazy)

Nice morning, the legs (for some unknown reason on a Monday) felt great, and knocked 5 minutes off my time.

Was tough trying to decide how to dress, it looked like rain and temp was about 57, couldn't decide if I was going to get cold and wet or it was just going to be muggy and uncomfortable.

Wheee!!!!

I think I'm finally back to normal now. No lingering pain or swelling from last April's hamstring tear!! Took long enough.

I am still working up to the 10 + miles each way, and got reminded this am why i want to bike commute. when i got my son fed and all ready to go went out to start the car and WOW! It wouldn't start. amazing. So no commute partial or not today by th time i round up a way to get D.J. to school it will be so late... what a morning uggh.

Great commute today. A truck stopped to let me cross the road, which is a first for me. I also felt faster and stronger, so perhaps my strategy of pedaling as hard as I can for the entire commute is starting to pay off. When I get off my bike I feel like I just did a quad workout at the gym, which to me is a great feeling.

A couple of weeks ago the street department patched some wheel buster holes on about a mile strecth of my commute. this weekend I rode part of my commute to look for a way around a dangerous stretch of road. Anyway they had taken a grinder and ground down about 3 inches of pavement where they had just patched the holes. No holes but it was terrible to ride on. Any speed at all and it would vibrate my waterbottle out of its cage. I had to go about walking speed. So now I have to find an alternate route for more than a mile and the dangerous stretch. But a very nice ride.

great commute, finally getting the hang of my new bike and speed is up as a result.. dropped about 5 minutes off my commute.. warm and muggy, but not that bad..

The ride in was pretty nice. Not too cool with the long-sleeved shirt.

Speaking of ninja commuters, I saw a guy at 6:45 a.m. this morning (nearly dark) riding a black mountain bike, with black shirt and pants, black backpack and no lights. He was riding on a very busy 4-lane road, the most dangerous part of my commute. Incredible. Are people really that stupid?

I ordered some new tires last week for my commuter -- Continental GP 4000s with reflective sidewalls. Hope they arrive before my current tires go kaput. Noticed over the weekend that some threads were starting to show on my rear tires. I've gotten a lot of use out of the tires (Michelin Axial Pros) but not really sure of the mileage -- probably at least 2,000 miles. I'm fortunate that the roads are pretty good on my route without a lot of debris, so I don't need bombproof tires like Gatorskins. My route is very hilly, so I would rather have tires that are light as well as durable.

It was a balmy 7C... a hot one compared to last week.

I am soooo tired today. I feel like crap. I think I have a cold or something. On the rride in, my wife decided to put the hammer down on this one guy, but she didn't have the juice to get more than 6 feet past him. I just drafted off them both. Turns out it didn't matter, since the guy was a scofflaw and blew through the next two stop signs, whereas we stopped. Traffic was fine, although it did get backed up in weird places.

nice ride in, temp was warmer than I expected (+7C). My back is still spasming, missed all of last week because of it. The ride helped as I do feel a little better today.

Started out a bit dark. Was in ninja clothing so I ran blinkie and headlight until I got on the MUP. (Only about a mile of residential streets involved.)

Nice tailwind. Passed 3 riders. Caught a 4th and 5th before I left the MUP.

My ride this morning was uneventful and cool, temp here was 59 degrees this morning, good for t-shirt, shorts and zippered sweatshirt, which is too warm by the end of the ride 20 minutes later.

ElTwitcho, next time you are tempted to confront a motorist, consider that he may be armed.

On the other hand, on my commute home last Friday, I was cut off by a driver turning left in front of me in the pedestrian crosswalk, illegally in front of traffic just as the light turned green, and I shouted "***hole!" after him. I admit further I would have liked to confront him as elTwitcho did, but he was long gone.

Just discovered this thread -- started in 2002 and now has over 1100 messages; is that a record?!!

I started cyclocommuting (trying to coin a word here -- I hate "commute by bike") two weeks ago after I got an awesome full-size commuter pannier (i.e. like a garment bag that drapes over the rack) at a used swap for $23. Since then, I've only been able to cyclocommute one day a week, but this week I'm aiming for 2 or 3. Mostly it's a logistics issue -- I can't do it if I have somewhere to be after work.

The first two times went really well, but today was pretty hard for some reason; can't tell if I was just sluggish (I only got 6 hours of sleep as opposed to my usual 7) or if my new fenders were rubbing slightly against my tires, or if my new front tire needs to be broken in, or what...but it just felt like I was phoning it in. I guess that just happens sometimes, but hopefully I'll have a better ride home and will try tacking on a few extra miles just to get a good full ride in.

brisk, baby. 42F. Due to hit 80F later though so I went for the t-shirt.

The sun is lower in the sky than it was a couple weeks ago. Soon I'll be riding both ways in the dark, on the street. I made sure to really pay attention to the MUP today, because I know I'll miss it in the dead of winter.

It was a fast ride home. I was amped from a busy day at work. On the way home, I heard ambulances running around emergent...I guess we didn't slow down after I left.

had a flat on the ride home today. Still a nice ride.

omgg, it was 26C on the way home... the human body was not made to withstand these temperatures.

i seemed to get more last minute, right before an intersection cager passes this afternoon. is there a full moon or something?

I got flipped off by a taxi driver today. First off he was sitting with his flashers on about 1/2 mile away from the stop sign, so I pass him to the left and go on to the stop sign. I am now sitting at a fairly busy intersection waiting for a clear space so I can go when he pulls up behind me, did I mention this was a busy intersection...so we sit for around a minute and a half, because there was no room to go. About a minute in he starts yelling at me and waving me to go...of course cars are coming both directions so I am not about to just jump out. He then continues to honk and yell obscenities at me until I finally get a clear space to go.

So...I jump out and take the whole lane, I noticed before he was also turning left, as I get my foot back into my toe clip he turns left onto the road, screeching his tires the entire time and begins honking again. I slowly move to the right giving him enough room to pass, he passed so close he almost clipped me with his mirror...and flipped me off one more time...

Fun day

I had my first flat today... Cruisin home, bike felt 'funny'. I checked the front tire and it felt a little lower than the back, but not flat. So I stopped to put some air in. I dunno if I tore it or if it was already torn, but the valve stem let go while I was pumping right where it meets the tube. Un-repairable... Luckily, I always carry a spare when i'm farther than walking distance from my apt. This was my first time changing a bike tube. It took about 15 minutes probably. Not bad for my first time.. heh, heh..

Other than that, the ride home was pretty nice.

had a doctor's appointment this am and rode over to that. Man, the bicycle racks at the hospital (Brigham and Women's) are full to capacity!

Took a little different route into work. Then a ride after work to the 24 hour post office and a cut through the North End through to the end of the bike path down by the museum. Nice ride home on the bike path. The river was still and dark, gorgeous.

On the way home today, I saw a fox. He stepped tentatively out of the underbrush that lines the strip between the sidewalk and the railroad, between the Southfield Freeway and the first building. He appeared to want to cross Michigan Avenue, but with the traffic noise, he didn't notice me until I was a few feet away. He ducked back into the brush. I couldn't blame him -- heck, I would not try to cross Michigan Avenue at that spot at rush hour.

I did not recognize it as a fox right away, but for its size and gait. Its face was whitish, and its tail was bushy only halfway down its length, with the last half nearly bare of fur. It was the rattiest, mangiest-looking fox I've ever seen. Maybe he fell into the Rouge River. I felt sorry for him and did something you're not supposed to do: I dug out a stale doughnut from my lunchbag and left it on the path he took into the brush.

Another adult bicyclist appeared suddenly next to me -- no wonder I snuck up on the fox, as I never heard or saw this guy, either -- and he slowed and asked whether it was a fox, and I said yes. Then he was gone. Although I live and work in a highly populated area, I see more wild animals along my commute than other bicycle commuters. Fancy that.

Temp was 68 degrees, overcast, calm, dry. But it's raining now and forecast all day tomorrow.