Dressed *just* right! Good thing too! It was hovering about 1 to 3 degrees when I left the house this AM. Squeeky snow...
Starting to get anxious about my studded tires getting here. Put my older-ish set on the girlfriends commuter and ordered the Schwalbes. I have another week to wait.

Should have ordered them earlier. Might have pushed my luck.

Yeah, I love that look. :eek:

You're still doing twice the miles I am- 60 miles for me is 4 days of commuting. When I first started commuting, I was pretty happy with riding about 1/3 of the time. Then... I got a new(er) bike and started riding every day if at all possible. I usually ride 4 days out of 5. This was the first 5-day ride-to-work week in at least 2 months. Ironic, since this has also been the coldest week all season so far.

Great ride this morning. Temps in the mid to upper 20s, wind less than 10mph (if I'm to believe weather.com).

Switched from the Descente Shelter gloves I bought on Chainlove back to the Outdoor Research Grippers, and my fingers (especially the thumbs) seemed a lot happier about it.

I don't pay any damn attention to the weatherman any more. I only have one bike, and it has the studs on all winter. I dress for the 5AM temp and figure either it'll be warmer in the afternoon, or I'll just have to work harder to keep warm if the temp drops. I don't think the weatherman can tell if he's going to get wet with someone halfway through throwing a bucket of water at him. At least, not in Michigan where storms and fronts dodge and scurry all over the place as they cross the state.

I'm a little bummed, I drove Thur/Fri this week, it's almost unheard of for me to drive at all. But I really overdid it at TKD on Monday, and I'm supposed to test there on Friday, and my legs were so sore from Monday that I could barely walk by Wednesday. Then I gave blood on Thursday, so I didn't want to get at all dehydrated before TKD testing on Friday.

I would have rolled over 16000 miles today too. Oh well, next week.

16k miles??? Over what period of time? One year? :eek:

i have been having fun this week riding on the new cross tires and finding some different routes to and from work which involves riding some short trails...it's more relaxing since i cut out a lot of traffic

Balmy 27 degree's this morning..but hey, it's dry cold!!

30F sunny dry roads; my 7 yr old had kind of a crazy wipeout, he stood up to hammer right when he was telling me a story about building a ramp to jump his bike off when he just... fell off his bike into a shrubbery. He lay there in silence, which concerned me when he didn't wail at air-raid levels, then he said 'ow' and got up to tell me which parts hurt, then said he should have been paying attention rather than talking, and then got back on his bike and rode on the rest of the way to school. Whew

Posting again after a hiatus (in posting, not in commuting!). Just hit 1500 miles for the year (well, since February). Next year 2000 for sure.

3 flats in the last 2 weeks. Must stop riding by the thumbtack factory.

25 f and comfy.

Bare and dry roads.

39F and 100% RH. Chilly and damp. Somehow managed to hit every single red light.

Luckily it was warmish (45) and calm on the way home because.... I had to change a flat.:notamused:

My gloves and fingers indicate that the temps got colder than forecast as the day wore on. I was fine this morning at 25F, light snow, into the wind...but my fingers told me that we'd reached the lower limit for my windstopper gloves on the way home this evening...which is about 20F. Guess I gotta start wearing the warmer gloves already...which means wearing the warmer gloves AND liners AND balaclava AND additional layer AND goggles AND winter boots isn't far off. I hate when that happens. :notamused:

I cheated on Tuesday evening on the way in and Wednesday morning on the way home. I only rode the first and last mile and the rest was by bus.

Rode all the way in tonight, 9.1 miles. Even with a headwind, I made much better time than on Monday evening (at 6 miles, I had already improved by 7 minutes).

lots of commuting miles today- 10 in and 10 home and then back in again so 10 more and then 10 more home so a 40 mile commuting day. This was a great week for bike commuting weather was pretty good for this time of year.

Interesting ride into Boston on the bike path tonight at around 5:30-6 pm. Saw far more commuters than I see on my ride in the morning. I passed about 6 cyclists on the way in and saw probably a dozen riding in the opposite direction. All of them well equipped for night riding in the cold- impressive.

One weird thing was just before Mass Ave there is a temporary bike bridge where some road work is being done and as I roll onto the bridge I see a bicycle lying on it's side across the bridge and a cyclist hunched over on his hands and knees obviously in some kind of distress. Naturally, I stop to assist but he's had the wind knocked out of him and, I think, was a little ticked off at himself for whatever caused the solo crash so he wasn't in the best of moods. Since I couldn't tell if his surly mood was due to a whack on the head or something else quite serious I didn't want to just leave him there but he was pretty insistent he needed no help. Another cyclist came along and we offered to call for help, walk him to a cab, whatever but he wanted none of it.

The funny thing was right as we pull away from him the other cyclist who stopped, who looked like a pretty competent cyclist, suddenly catches his handlebar in the wire mesh along the side of the bridge and does an endo over the handlebars and onto the deck. Fortunately, he sprawled onto the ground without injuring anything other than his pride. But man, that bridge was jinxed tonight.

Beautiful morning with temps in low 50's. Cops had a speed trap set up on my trip in and he said with a smile as I passed that I had better slow down. I stopped and we had a nice, fun talk for a while, very friendly feller.

One thing about commuting, you don't have to worry about speeding tickets.

great commuting week for early December in New England. Managed to do 6 days of commuting and a total of 140 miles. It's so nice to get that kind of riding in at this time of the year. Getting a bit colder now and touches of ice. I have a feeling studs are going on this week.

Nice.....

I commuted for 10 years from Lexington to Cambridge and never used studded tires.......not sure why though only had one ice related incident........

Maybe as I age I feel more vulnerable........

I've commuted in New England since the early 70's and it wasn't until 2005 that I finally succumbed to the whole studded tire thing- and I have BF's to thank for it!:thumb:

Never had a super serious fall on ice but pretty much a tumble or two every year. Maybe it's age or just that, "Oh, 'sheet'! here we go again!" :cry: feeling when the bike slips out from under me that I'm tired of at this point in my life.

And I've tended in the past to claim to "ride all winter" but the reality was that there would be more days that I'd take the bus when I was riding non-studded tires in the winter than I do now that I've got them. I'm a little bolder with them than without.

I left this morning it was 20f. I wore my regular Winter outfit and I didn't overheat. Felt comfortable. After watching last nights weather news. They were talking 1" with slick roads starting around noon. So I decided to switch to the Snow studs just to be on the safe side. Good thing. The snow started falling about 10:30am and progressively got worse. It didn't take long for the roads to get slick and icy. When I got off of work at 2pm traffic was backed up on 161. So I rode alongside of it on the berm. The Nokian 294's gripped the road real good. While on some side streets I was doing some zig-zagging, trying to get the tires to slip out from under me. They just kept maintaining their grip. Outstanding. Last year I put a Mount&Ground 160 on the front and I thought that they did well. The 294's have still yet to be tested on ice. We have plenty of time for that. So I rode down the path from Antrim to Bethel Rd and turned around and rode across the Broadmeadows bridge and made my way up to High St. I saw another set of bike tracks on the path. By now the snow was coming down pretty good. It felt good riding in the snowfall. A few people were amazed to see me riding a bike in it. After getting used to riding on the 294's, I didn't even worry about slowing down to corner or anything like that. As far as rolling resistance. They were about what I expected coming from a snow stud. They only add about an extra 5 min to my normal commute

When I left this morning it was 19 degrees F. It was cold and dry, I was warm but my lungs hurt...they aren't used to the cold yet. My body on the other hand is becoming more and more used to it...so I am really enjoying cold weather riding. It is very peaceful.

On the ride home it was 22 and snowing, plus there was a chrismas parade finishing up, so traffic was horrible. Wore a pair of thermal pants under my jeans and a wool sweater over my base layer with a windbreaker on over that. Sitting in the cold and not moving was completely warm. Felt nice, especially when a lady stopped to ask me what I was doing, when I told her I was riding home she replied "well that is good honey, at least someone in this town cares about their health and the well being of others, all year round." Advocacy anyone?

The ride home this morning:
By mile 5, the windchill started cutting through me. By mile 6, I could no longer feel some of my toes. By mile 8, I could no longer tell that I couldn't feel my toes. The post-ride hot tea was quite nice, indeed. The sunrise was nice, too.

The ride back to work this evening:
I pushed myself because I was runnning about 15 minutes late (compared to my performance earlier in the week). I made up 10 minutes by mile 6 and was ahead of schedule by mile 9 where I arrived almost exactly 50 minutes after leaving my house.

I was passed twice by the same guy who was no poser. Dude eased past me the first time; I think he had about 3-4 mph on me. I coasted down a long fast hill and was spinning my way up the other side at maybe 2-3 mph when dude passes me again, this time with 8-10 mph on me; fast enough to make me jump, anyway. After he passed he was shaking his head as if he was thinking, "those slow Freds..." Of course, I was moving between 100-130 lb more than he was up a pretty decent hill... I may be a Fred but at least I'm not (usually) a cager. :D

If they ever get you on a speed trap you'd better have that ticket mounted and framed ;-)

Commuted for the first time to my 2nd job. Had to be there at 5am, woke up at 4am and left the house by 4:35am, got there at 5am on the dot. It's about 6.5 miles or so, never really checked.

Way there was nice, saw maybe 3 cars, the roads were dead. On the way back about 1.5 miles from home I got a flat, was taking a turn, and there was loose gravel I was sure I was about to go down, but somehow I managed to keep myself up. Felt the front slide out and wobble, corrected it and was still up, and surprised. Then, 4 seconds later heard a big hiss, from the front tire, changing it wasnt too bad.

Weather was crisp and perfect.

Forgot to mention, saw an Orange Porsche GT3 RS on the way home, the driver noticed I ***** his car with my eyes, so he opened it up..music to my ears.:love: Such a sexy car, the only Porsche I'd ever buy.

Not a bad commute at all.