Just rode home in an icestorm...but it was okay. 32F

Rode in wearing several layers of clothes. It was about 35F in the morning. Rode home at it was mid 70's. I really enjoyed the ride though. Only my second day of commuting more than 5 miles.

Slow and windy. It felt like I was pushing through something thicker than air.

All of the folks wandering into my path of travel on the local MUP didn't help, either, because I kept having to slow down to give them enough time to notice me and step to the side. It was almost like they were trying to get hit.

On Wednesdays I don't have to be at work for any specific time (usually 10AM), so the wife gave me some errands to run in the heart of the French Quarter (she knows what would take me 15 minutes by bike would take her 2 hours down there - waiting in traffic, finding parking - maybe paying $15, walking to the errands, back to the car, unparking, waiting in traffic again, etc).

I ran the errands "Messenger Style" i.e., most direct line from place to place. There was contraflow, sidewalks, double-yellow, illegal U-turns, and bringing the bike inside banks, stores, post office. Nothing too fast, but hitting every gap without stopping. I even had another contraflow cyclist yell "thank you" to me for looking both ways before crossing the one way street on which he was going the wrong way.

This experience was so outside of my routine commute through The Quarter that it made me fall in love with cycling all over again. Having knock-down gorgeous weather never hurt either - sunny and 65F.

So I run all the errands, one of them TWICE because the store opened 20 minutes late, and wonder "How on Earth can they stand to bring their cars down here?" I was in love (with my road bike) all over again!

Then......The Evil Commute Home

35F/2C and clearing--damned nice after several gloomy, rainy, low-slung days. Much as I like it out there, I don't think I'm cut out for the Pacific Northwest (esp these days--sheesh!).

I wimped out of riding the past two days, but was back in the saddle today. Tuesday it rained all day with temps in the 40s F. Wednesday it freakishly warmed up to about 65 F at 6 am with light rain, but forecasters were calling for severe weather and high winds so I drove again. Good call. We had wind gusts over 60 mph throughout the area, and a line of heavy showers and wind came through right when I would have been cycling home.

Today was typical winter weather here, dry and chilly, so I was back on my bike. It felt nice, and I dressed perfectly so had barely a drop of sweat on me when I got to work. My bike, a classic steel lugged De Bernardi, is seeing its last days as a commuter. My new touring frame should arrive soon, and I'll eventually turn the DeBe into a SS/fixe.

Yesterday's ride home was miserable: moderate rain and cold temps, in addition, I had locked myself out and had to wait for my wife to come home and let me in (note to self: keep spare key in backpack).

This morning's ride was much nicer, temps in the mid 30's but it felt kinda balmy. I nice tail wind helped too, but, most puddles and wet spots were icy. I felt/heard the ice crackling under my wheels for most of the ride and the puddles had the consistency of slurpees. I was cautious, kept the speed down, stayed over-geared, and kept the rubber side down without problem. Should be blustery but warmer on the way home.

Nice ride home. Still a bit slower than last week but no problems from motorists this morning.

Everything seemed to go as smoothly for me as it does for JoeyBike, albeit, much slower and obeying most of the traffic control devices. :p

I had a nice ride in this morning 43F and not much wind. Got to try out my new Yellowjacket. It was great. I passed a skunk on the American River Trail. Fortunately it ignored me. :)

Icy, icy, icy this am. watched several riders go down hard. Let's hope it dries out before the ride home this evening..

Some days you just shouldn't get out of bed.

Since I didn't need to bring lunch today I decided to ride the new road bike. This meant transferring all my gear to a backpack. The good news is the ride was much faster than usual (despite the wind). The bad news: as I arrived and reached into my jersey pocket I realized I'd forgotten my locker keys. :(

OK, not the end of the world. My wife has today off, so I called her and asked her to bring the key in. Since BOTH keys were in the same pocket, I didn't bother to say, "Bring both keys." Sure enough, she came to the office with only one key. Sigh. OK, STILL not the end of the world--she brought the key to the locker where I keep my clothing, which is what I really needed.

I walked down to the locker room....and my lockers were unlocked anyway. Since you can't remove the keys unless the locker is locked, I'm assuming the fitness center people did one of their random confiscation runs again and didn't lock my lockers (we're not supposed to leave stuff overnight, but I'm alowed to because I'm the only 365-day commuter).

Itsjustb:

Yesterday's weather was incredible. Winds were terrible.


Today, back at it. About 40 F with a little bit of wind, but nothing like yesterday.
A decent ride, but I'm getting SLOW!

Thanks Kudzu! I just read tarwheel's report of 60-mph gusts. I didn't realize they got that high yesterday; now I'm glad I didn't ride.

I had to take a bus in to work yesterday; I missed my stop coming back because of power outages (couldn't see my landmarks at night). Had you tried to ride, I think you would have soon regretted the decision.

First ride with my new bike. I bought a 2007 Devinci Caribou (touring bike) to replace my 1970s Apollo Prestige. The apollo just didn't cut it for the commute (37 miles round trip), it would break down way too much. I now plan on converting the apollo into a single speed or fixed gear, I haven't decided yet.

back to heavy mist/steady drizzle from horizontal downpour, very peaceful

Mucho windy today! The temps weren't bad. I only got one 'you're crazy' today from my co-workers!

These are the same jackasses that go out for a smoke in the same cold weather!

Was a day of (re)learning for me.

In the am, rediscovered that riding with studded tires is hard work

In the pm, switched to the rebuilt Super Sport and rediscovered the need for fenders.

Windy. I wound up riding along-side another rider for a bit so we chatted along the way; that was pretty nice.

23F but felt much colder...my toes hurt...

Much warmer today, probably due to the high cloud cover rather than that freezing mist. Good legs today.

FUN! I just got a new single speed 29er which i am commuting on. instead of avoiding all the bumps/cracks/sidewalks/etc, I can now aim for them! also 75F beautiful

First Commute is 3+ weeks (I was on vacation the last two weeks of Dec but did a lot of pleasure rides then). Had a lot of rain this week till today so I drove (I have next to no wet gear). Nice ride in now that the weather broke.

Got to try my $15 REI dent sale used Night Rover. Works good but the batteries are shot and it was showing that it needed a charge after 45 minutes (we played with it at work). Trying to condition the battery to see if I can bring it back. Looks like I can rebuild the pack for about $30 worse case.

Ride home was a little windy but thankfully it was mostly a tailwind with some side gusts I had to lean into since I had the panniers on the bike. Overall it was really nice to ride again.

26F/-3C. First full (5-day) commuting week in a while (with use-or-lose, I'd taken every Friday off stretching back to Thanksgiving). But dead legs, a mentionable headwind, and cold fingers couldn't deter me from reveling in the clear view of a nearly full moon beckoning me onward. Very nice, indeed.

<preaching to the choir>And people think we're crazy for doing this!? Personally, I think the crazy is on the other foot.</preaching to the choir> :D

I think I was pushing myself since it was the last ride before the weekend; I was already tired and I was just pushing myself to get home.

Last night on the way in and this morning on the way home I had several things simply fall off of my bike. Last night I lost a braze-on bolt near the drop-outs for my pannier rack (I fixed that before I left work). On the way home this morning, one of my headlights came off in my hand, one of my taillights was millimeters from getting left in the road somewhere, and the garment bag pannier tried to jump off the rack while I was crossing a busy intersection.

At least I made it home with everything ... except my groceries (which I left in the fridge at work so I can expect that they'll be thrown away before I can get back to pick them up this evening).