Kodama

This morning was nice, warm and once again no wind. I personally feel you can't win on the commute - I never have enough energy in the morning and in the evening the trail is too crowded. Of course the second a cloud appears that traffic dries up. Viva la Autumn!

Turbonium

mine was scairy!! i had to ride in the night without light! i wasn't prepaired for it! i found it cool though, see ing the light reflection of the car behind you on the road, thinking if they are going to hit you or not.

Ritz

Praise God that you made it safely home! There are some awfully tiny rear lights on the market. Vista light comes to mind. Maybe you should consider putting one in your seat bag (just in case).Their fairly cheap too!
Please be careful Turbonium.

Ed Holland

Hi Folks,

Good riding for me the last couple of days. Plus, despite feeling tired this morning, good average speeds.

Bad luck Turbonium - I hate it when that happens. Unfortunately it seems that the seasons are on the change again - it is time for those of us in the northern hemisphere to make sure our lights are ready for action. Or we could all fly south for the winter...

Cheers,

Ed

darrencope

Another very nice ride this morning - although despite what some of you are saying, summer does not seem to be giving up here. This morning 19 degrees and humid! Today is supposed to be a high of 32, and thunderstorms.

tchazzard

Today will be my first ride since August 1st. I have been touring Italy sans bike. It will be nice to be back in the saddle. The only downside is that we are in the middle of a heat wave. It will be about 90 F, high humidity and poor air quality by the time I head in.

creep dog

I had a good ride this morning. I'm getting in a good routine and comfortable with my new route. I think I've just about got the super big intersection I have to go through figured out. I passed a guy on a road bike out for a morning ride. He saw that I was coming and kept looking back at me over and over. when i passed i said "good morning, How's it going?" he looked at me like i was crazy. Maybe he was just mad that I was passing him on an old mtn bike with slicks on it. HA!
Yesterday one of my co workers tried to talk me out of riding home. he said "Bud, it's 101 degrees out here. Get in the truck." How do you tell someone that you’ve been waiting all day just to get back on your bike?

Take care,
Creep dog
Woof!

caloso

"I appreciate the offer but I've been waiting all day just to get back on my bike."

Andy Dreisch

Folks, I can't begin to tell you how nice it was to commute in today. I was on vacation for two weeks where I got a couple good rides in but I was still suffering from two-wheeled withdrawl symptoms.

Then, when I got back Monday, I was raring to commute to work but I got a nasty cold over the weekend that only now is letting up. So today was my first commute in a few weeks.

It felt so good. Not only b/c I missed it but also b/c (a) I took the "wintertime" route which is a nicer ride, and shorter by 7 miles (13 total), and (b) my bike was absolutely gleaming. I actually washed it and lubed it the other day. (I do this only once or twice a year ... who's got time?) I also changed out my tubes and put in self-sealers giving my an added boost (psychological, anyway).

Where normally my bike sounds like some kind of tank, waking up whole neighborhoods with every turn of the crank, today it was eerily silent. I was just humming along.

It's nice to be back. I think I'm well enough to do the normal 20-miler home tonight. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, one other thing. The winds are starting to shift and planes are starting their "wintertime" pattern, approaching SJ airport from the north. I expect to see noticable clues on the way home tonight that summer is slipping away.

Ritz

If any of you fella's really miss summer that much you can always come hang out in Houston, We've still got plenty of summer to go around.

Ritz

Just to give you a refference point, the radio just said the heat index is 99 degrees right now. (Where's the spell check button?)

Kodama

Really nice ride in today, a bit warmer than the last few days and no wind. The trial was oddly empty for such a warm morning. Today I get some additional riding as we are having a company picnic at a park a few miles away.

Jean Beetham Smith 

Heat & humidity back in full force, just when I found a new way to get lost and turn my 9 mile trip home into a 35 mile ride. Good week of riding all told, lots of new hills.

caloso

An intense storm just roared up the valley this afternoon: cloudbursts and lightning strikes and the whole deal. Probably par for the course to our Cheesehead, Illini, and Golden Gopher forum-mates but really rare and weird for Nor Cal.

The sky is clearing but not entirely friendly. I hope it'll hold for the ride home.

pinerider

Around here, the crickets are quite vocal about it - "summer's over, summer's over" they keep saying.

A smelly, foul start to the day this morning, 3 blocks from home a big smelly garbage truck pulled out of a driveway in front of me (I had to swerve to miss it) and then pulled into another driveway 20' away! The foul part was my potty mouth, calling the driver an a..hole, he failed to respond!

A hot smelly ride home, gusty headwind/crosswind blowing the essence d'industrial heartland of Canada in my direction, as well as smog from Ohio (That's what they tell us, anyways!) I had no energy, turned the easy 25 minute ride into a frustrating 30 minutes. Some days are diamonds, today was a stone!

Hey, but I rode to work and back. It was great!!!

anandi

First post to this forum - so Hello.
I'm a little biking/commuting obsessed these days,
One of the hotter Ottawa days to ride but only
the second one with my new pannier and bikerack.
A big difference from using a backpack, though
my old Raleigh with accoutrements feels like it
weighs a ton.
For some reason the ride back was the fastest in
a while even though it was muggy and 37 with
the humidex.

Cheers,
-A

Chris L

I don't miss summer one little bit, but alas, ours is only about six weeks away.

Andy Dreisch

Welcome aboard, anandi.

My long commute home was great. Even though I made only a handful of traffic lights at best I was just cruising along at about 80% throttle. The lights were killers, though. I cleared (no need to slow down) only 5 of 50+ traffic lights.

Anyway, very glad to be back. I may ride tomorrow ... 50/50 at this point.

mrfix

Beautiful morning 77 degrees 98% humidity and a nice long slow ride into work, how much better can life get.

darrencope

A very nice ride in this morning. Still pretty hot and humid, but it's tolerable in the mornings before it really warms up a lot. It's a killer going home though!

creep dog

Great ride to finish off (almost) my first week of commuting again. Cool temps and a great sunrise. I scouted a new neghborhood route to. fun. now if i could just fast foreword to the ride home.


Woof!
Creep Dog

Kodama

Fully overcast and cool this morning-- clouds just in time for the weekend. The weather has been kind of weird this summer, it'll cloud up and cooled down and then heat right back up. This cycle is going on about every 10 days with a temperature range of 10-15 degrees. Also we are just a few weeks away from the driest summer on record. I miss the rain Anyway, the ride is was nice, very little trail traffic and while I started off a little chilly It was very comfortable after a mile or so.

Ritz

Today's ride was quite the norm, loud smelly cars, rude drivers, debris on the road, etc... Like I like to say, Another day in paradise! Cool comfortable ride home, no one tried to run me off the road. I honestly wish more people would bike commute. I got to say "On your left" for the first time in a long time today. Passed a dude on another mountian bike, I saw him in the distance and took it up to 23 mph to catch and overtake. It was cool! Can't wait to do it on my 'Bent!

Paul said I have learned to be content in all circumstances... I'm still learning.

John C. Ratliff

I've had a very good week of riding to work. Each day has been very good weather-wise until today, when it clouded over. But today is my walk-to-work day anyway. I'm hiking this weekend, and need to toughen up my feet for hiking. So this week was less milage, by about ten miles, then last week (where I got 65 miles in).

John

pinerider

A bodacious ride home last evening - a slight tail wind and mainly downhill for the big commute - all 47 kilometres. (on holidays next week, left the truck at work) Sunny and warm but not hot, I made the trip in an hour and 38 minutes. I had about 18 pounds of stuff in the sports bag, got to be a real pain after about 30 km, had to stop a couple of times and re-adjust.
A great ride, too bad I can't ride this far all the time!