Tough: first commute in snow this year, I am still getting the setup right for riding in winter conditions, still beats driving the truck though!

Wet and cool. My jacket kept me warm and dry and a slower pace kept my shoes from getting completely soaked. Everything should dry out just in time to get soaked on the ride home. I'm also going as carb-free as possible in order to lose weight so, we'll see how I feel later in the week. I'm hoping for an all ride week this week, we'll see.

Good to be back riding, after a week off for Thankgiving. I did manage to get a short ride in with my brother-in-law on one of his extra road bikes in Charlotte, NC on Thanksgiving day.

I can't imagine riding in weather as cold as some of you. It was 70 degF this morning when I rode in. It is supposed to cool into the 60s by the end of the week.

I took the car this morning and I'm not sure if it was the right choice. It was below freezing and there was a fine layer of ice in spots on the road. It wasn't everywhere and it varied in thickness from a few twinkling crystals to frozen puddles. I debated, I waffled, I questioned my own motivations. Finally I decided that since I had never ridden my bike in such conditions before I would play it safe and drive. My tests at the stop signs showed me the roads were slightly slippery, I could spin the tires but I had to try, and my stopping ability was just fine. I am still wondering what it would have been like on the bike.

Blah. I feel like crap. Got chills right now and had sweats when I left this morning. Rode down 2nd Ave. which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be except for that stupid hill near 42nd St. Still, I'm glad I rode cuz I'd feel horrible on the subway. I debated working from home, but figured the exercise would do me good. I think tonight'll be a fun night of alternating chills and sweats interspersed with coughing and hacking. I hate getting sick.

I refuse to believe weather forecasting is a science. The prediction was the high teens for a low this morning. More like the high 20s. I was over prepared for the original temp forecast and thus significantly over prepared for this temp. Stripped off a layer or two and was fine.

I need to invest in one of those fancy thingamagigs with mercury in them. :p

Otherwise, completely uneventful.

What, a fish?

It snowed over the weekend. The ground was quite warm, so the first bit of snow melted when it hit the ground. Then it cooled off and made a nice sheet of ice. Then more snow fell, but just enough to cover the ice and not stick to that layer. Then people drove on this combination and spun their tires at every opportunity, creating black ice on almost half of my commute. Last night I put the skinny tires away and brought out the Schwalbe 304 Ice Spikers. I would have commuted way more in past years if I would have had a set of these. Not a hint of slippage at any time, whether braking, climbing or cruising. Delightful. They also handle well in slush, not that there was very much. They don't exactly corner well on pavement, but that's to be expected.

I've been away on vacation for a while so haven't posted anything. Vacation was a bike trip also to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, if you would like to read of that it is at www.mtl2.crazyguyonabike.com

I've been back for two weeks now, jet lag messed up my first week back, so I commuted by bike, only once. Lat week I managed 4 days out of a possible 4.

Today it was cold in Ventura County but the commute was good. I got the Atlanis running earlier in the morning and used it tooday. The ride was finished in just under 10 minutes as I was caught at a stop light.

Cold and wet. But I'm glad I rode. The shower room is in the office library and as I got off the elevator the librarian said "Surely you didn't ride in this rain!"

I said, "I did ride. And stop calling me Shirley." *ba-dump-bump*

Felt cold for the first time this year...mostly due to a 20+mph head wind. It was actually only in the high 30's. The wind should still be around this evening though for the ride home. Woohoo tailwind!

Back in the saddle after a week off for thxgiving. Beautiful crisp morning and I was flyin'... it felt like my fixie was geared too low for the first half of the ride!

It gotta bit cooler here. Was 34F on my ride in, previous low for the year was 45F so this was quite a drop. Otherwise nothing much to report.

Al

:( I drove today, which is just inviting trouble. Forecast is that it might be snowing here in the afternoon but I hope it doesn't because I really don't want to miss the first snow. It's certainly been colder than normal and I think the next few days are 'bout to be even colder (as in less than 32 F)

Nothing to report on the ride home which is fine by me. However, at lunch I was almost the victim of two (2) doorings and actually saw another dooring. First almost dooring on 42nd St. near 3rd Ave. by a green bimmer (swerved to avoid). Second almost dooring actually happened after a passenger in a stretch limo doored the VW Jetta in front of me. I saw it and slowed down. The passenger then opened the door again and almost doored me except I swerved and stopped. I then asked the passenger if he was trying to kill everybody. I don't think he heard me or even noticed that he'd doored the Jetta and almost doored me. Oh well, he's important enough to be in a stretch limo so I guess the rules don't apply to him.

Ride home was uneventful today.

It looks like I will be paying for taking a vacation last week. I am traveling all over S. Florida tomorrow and Wed, so I won't get a chance to ride again until Thursday. And a meeting in Ft. Lauderdale on Friday, so I will only get two days in this week.

WoW! 55 deg f, wind on my back, sun out, traffic pretty cool on the way in, 69deg f on return, clouds, with the wind again pushing me along... why are there no other bike commuters here in this town (who i see anyway)? WoW!

It was vey wind today , But still a god ride .
Have a good nite .

giggle.

i rode too. go me. after a whole weekend of fretting and stressing and biting my nails about so-called minus-eight weather this week, i went out during the day on sunday to look for space heaters, rode all over god's armpit before i found some, and had to admit to myself it was pretty cold out there, but not impossible. today i looked up the temperatures during that ride and saw -4c once they counted the windchill factor. well, heck. i'd scratch my jock and knock the dirt out of my spikes and do a little cool-dude spit-on-third-base kind of schtick, only it would probably freeze.

um. anyway. they changed their minds about the week's forecast but it was still pretty cold this morning, 1 or 2 degrees. i did see ice here and there, but just in puddles. the road itself was nice and dry all the way. i actually tried to 'practice' on some of it, but couldn't see any difference. it was interesting to see how much the ground changed as i came down the hill towards the river. up around my home: an inch of frost on everything, frozen clumps of leaves and little patches of ice; down at the river level, nothing at all. a few chunks at the height of the bridge, but i'm not even sure that was ground-ice. it might have been the cubes out of some yozo's big gulp. and speaking of: boy did i find i get thirsty when it's that cold. don't know why, but i sure did.

it felt great to swagger into work in my bike gear this morning, after my weekend of not expecting i'd ride. i did a great ace-rimmer impersonation for the first half hour, until someone's random remark made me realise i'd left all my blinkies on and i had to scuttle out to take care of them.

for the ride home, i started checking the enviro-can site an hour or two before. this is pretty much a mistake. if you're going to have 26 kph headwinds, gusting crosswind to 36k, and you're a wimp about heights and bridges, it's just better not to know about it. the upside was that a) the crosswinds were going to be pushing away from the river and towards the road, and b) it was at least 5 degrees. i'd been kind of dreading it and dragging myself, but as soon as i actually got on my bike and swooped out of the parking lot to start home, i got one of those 'ain't life just great' moments come over me that lasted for the whole ride. i actually got that mountain bike to go fast!

it's pretty sure that it is going to snow eventually. i know this because the cat is draping herself over my typing arms again and locking on. it's going to freeze too, but i feel much more cheerful about it now. all the worried discussions at work about snow tires and ice and rear-wheel drives cleared my last doubts: bike is the way to be through it all. and we're less than four weeks from the winter solstice, AND i'm four weeks from a week off work and only seven weeks from the end of this contract now.

A nice 30MPH headwind off the lake this morning. Offset by the fact that it's 60F degrees outside. (Northwest Vermont...) Very strange weather this year.

The last few days I've been on the winter beater due to snow and ice, but today I rode the Peugeot because everything is clear again. On my ride home today, I will pass the 2,000 mile mark for that bike this year. Got a few hundred more on the winter bike. All commute miles. Well, 99.9% commute miles, at least.

My week is going well and uneventfull ... .other than being 25 dergees warmer than it should

It was great to be back on the bike today, the first time since last Wednesday. I missed the tailwind of last week but I made respectable time on my commute anyway. That's what fresh leg muscles are good for.

I didn't see another soul on the road until I wanted to turn into the parking lot at work. Right then two pedestrians were walking in front of the driveway. I couldn't take the best line for climbing the hill in the parking lot but I just widened my turn and went in after they passed. I find it funny that with acres of empty pavement here at this hour the only people outside want to use the same little patch of it.

Great ride in this morning. Like Foible said, fresh legs make for an easy commute. After tinkering with the bike all weekend, I completely forgot to adjust the break pads. So I squeeked all the way in.

Fun with Golf Courses

So, last night, I decided to take an alternate route through a golf course complex. (This being Maine, it was closed for the season.) First I found a paved golf cart path that cut through the green, which was nice. I was a little nervous that it would be a bit slick, but it wasn't, just wet. It occurred to me that I couldn't do this most of the time, because it would be unmaintained in the winter and have too many people around in the summer. (I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to be there.)

When I got to the end of that, I was on an full-width access road, unlighted, which I knew would take me back to the main road. I was glad to have my headlight, it was pretty dark, but I feeling aware that it wasn't really looking too far ahead. Sure enough, a light brown patch of something was ahead, and I was just considering moving out of the way when OH SH*T! IT'S A BIG SAND PILE, AND I'M GOING RIGHT UP THE SIDE OF IT!!! My momentum carried me over the top, probably about 6 feet high, and I semi-purposely laid myself and the bike down in the soft sand on the far side. No injuries to either of us, save a slight abrasion in a tender area from the seat, and a slight ache in my left elbow. (Not even noticed until I woke up this morning.) It *was* nice soft sand.

This morning, I decided to take the same route going the other way, since it was light this time. Plus, I found another golf cart path to get onto earlier, so I didn't pass the sand pile anyway. Wouldn't you know it, though, I met a pickup truck with a plow coming down the path. (We don't even have any snow on the ground today!) I moved aside to let him pass, but of course he needed to stop and tell me that bikes weren't allowed on the path. I fibbed a bit about not being aware of that (be still my guilty conscience), and we went on our ways. No more incidents.

No, I won't be doing this too often. My wife won't be pleased if I get arrested for repeated trespassing. But it was really much nicer than the busy road, although I wouldn't want to take on the sand pile every time. :)

Blah. Still got the cold or whatever it is I got this weekend. Had the sweats as I left this morning and got more sweaty on the ride to work. Wore just a t-shirt since it was in the upper 50's. Still, made it to work in the usual time and saw a few other bike commuters on the way in. Also noticed a new bike locked in front of the bldg. along w/ the usual cast of misfits. They really need to install more bike racks out front.