no ride today, alarm clock malfunction...did a great 50 mile group ride on Saturday though, and I'm now TOTALLY hooked on group rides. just 1, that's all it took, but i'm gonna go ALL THE FREAKIN TIME now :-)Total rush to see my average speed read 20.5 after 40+ miles of riding. And leading the train even if just for a little bit (compared to the stronger riders), was totally awsome. I loved the draft especially! :-)

Nice ride in this morning, 50F, sunny, I took the long way. We'll see what the rest of the day brings. They are talking rain and cooler temps, we'll see.

I had a nice ride in this morning. It was foggy by the river, but very comfrotable otherwise. It's really nice outside now (about 75 F), so I think I'll take a long route home.

Today was payback for driving my car on Earthday! Hailstorm woke me up at 4am to let me know how the day was going to go. 32 degrees and raining, grapple bouncing off the Marmot precip jacket. Sugoi subzeros hadn't been used since February. "no such thing as bad weather~just bad clothing". My workplace makes me park my horse outside :(. Ride home dry, 37F, 15 to 20 mph cross headwind. Saw another commuter on a towny. Washed and lubed bike first then take care of rider.
Greeley, Colorado~very weird beginning of the week here eh?

a left rear spoke broke on the way in. after return ride home, spent 45 min re-sew replacement ss spoke and trued wheel on stand (the best i could do). Ready for tomorrow!

No commute today because I'm on a mini-vacation visiting my dad. The old Fuji I keep here is still in winter mothballs, so I took a walk to downtown Traverse City in the sunny afternoon.... I got a kick out of watching the office workers ride home on their big comfort bikes, their neckties streaming behind them, briefcases bungied to their racks.... I saw a guy riding a cool adult trike, sitting very upright with stingray type riser bars. He said he built it himself, mostly. I wish I got a photo for you guys....

It was a perfect spring day, almost 70 F, but my dad said it might snow tomorrow. :eek:

I ended up doing 17 miles after work today, didn't have enough time to do 20 like I wanted, but it felt good. I'm amped to do the long commute tomorrow morning.

Broke the rear der cable this AM about halfway to work. Ended up wrapping the cable around my left hand and shifting. Would've left it in high gear, but 46x11 is just a leetle too tough for taking off and some of the hills in my commute. I've only got one chainwheel on my crankset. Purchased a replacement cable and fixed it myself before leaving work. Had never replaced a der cable in an indexed shifter before. The ride home was great and the new cable cured a slight shifting problem I'd been having. Now I know why. Yet another hurdle crossed in my ongoing growth as a completely self-contained(ie, no need for the lbs)commuter/tourer.

nice ride home, too. I like uneventful rides.

friggin' great ride today! fantastic weather, friend along with me, I accidently rode over a bunch of glass and it didn't get my tires (yet) lots of cyclists out there.

I had my sweetest roundtrip today. I had been off bike for about 10 days waiting for parts, tools and time to replace the bottom bracket in my ahem, department store acquired Schwinn mtb. The results were astounding.

I had no idea how low a manufacturer would go until now. The ball bearings looked like they were 12 guage buckshot after being fired into a refinery fire.
They were originally caged ball bearings. By the time of my disassembly, they were Frankenstein looking pieces of disintergrating metal.

Any way, new bb, crankset and the commute was one of my best times ever.

First commute on the new road bike. Flying to work. I tied my best ever commute on the MTB, and I had a tailwind then and a headwind today. Rain tomorrow, so the MTB comes back out as the rain bike. Allergy season is here! Help!

i am one tired puppy, as the baseball saga continues. the entire problem with working life is that 8.5 hours is about .5 hours too freaking much. one single hour less every day would make all the difference.

really nice ride in, aside from the fact i was late according to the Master Plan. pretty quiet traffic at 8:48, but even so when i got to the bridge i had a moment of wild hope that i'd misread my clock and was an hour ahead of myself. the gridlock levels seemed kind of odd, but i've been kind of delirious with tired all day, so i wouldn't quote me. went straight from the shower to the cafeteria where i could eat a tuna salad sandwich and about 3 chocolate bars.

left work a bit after 6. the ride home was easier than i'd been expecting, and i made much better time today, compared with friday. out and at the park for the top of the 3rd or something, with my stop-watch still under an hour. apparently i just missed my kid's 2-rbi line drive over 3rd base, but eh. so long as he does it, i guess. i'm not really bike-minded even as i do the commute, compared with last fall. too much other stuff going on. no other baseball this week until practice on thursday, and thank god fasting for that.

songs: dublin blues, guy clark; general grant's visit to dundee, michael marra; c'est pas la peine brailler, can't recall who.

Good commute to work & home .I hope the rest of the week goes this well. Have good nite.

I think I dodged all the raindrops today. There was actually a light Sleet/Snow here this morning. It was nice to ride in it. I thought I was done with the balaclava for the summer, but I broke it out this morning. Again, I missed the rain on the way home. I stayed totally dry, but I'm sure I won't be so lucky for the rest of the Spring.

Im Back!
 

Well fellas, I am back into commuting. After a 7 month hiatas because of a temporary move that took me 45 miles from work, I had to stop commuting for awhile. Well, my wife and I got out house built and I am living much closer to work now. Not as close as when I was commuting 7 months ago, but closer then 45 miles. My commute now consist of a 22 mile one way commute on backroads going down into the Ohio valley torwards downtown Cincinnati. Route home will be courtesy of Metro, (the local transit authority) making use of their bike racks.

So I am back commuting and loving it! Best thing is that I am not losing any commuting miles, before my commute was 24 miles round trip, now it is 22 miles one way.

This feels so good!

FYI: If you have a screwdriver handy, just adjust the high-gear stop on the rear der so it won't go beyond a comfortable cruising gear. Might be a PITA if you have hills to climb though.

I snapped mine last year as I was pulling into my driveway. Nice timing, that. ;)

Anyway, mid-40Fs for me this morning. Damp. Saw a guy on a road bike heading the other way at a good clip. It's rare that I see anyone on bikes in the morning, much less fast roadies. I got rained on yesterday afternoon.

Ugh, yucky morning. It was cooler than I prefer (though I couldn't see my breath) and there was a bit of drizzle. I'm glad I left a little early, since it just started raining a little harder as I pulled into the parking lot.

I hope the huge foam seat on my trike isn't too soggy for my ride home...

Forgive me forums, for I have sinned. Today I didn't plan well and was running a bit late, so I decided to take the motorcycle instead of the bicycle. Oh was that a mistake. The first two miles was solid, completely stopped traffic. I turn off onto a side street and get a mile of clearish road untill my next turn, which takes me the last two miles to work, through even more completely stopped traffic. I should have realized this would happen, but oh no, I got lazy and thought I would be able to get there just a bit faster. It took me 35 minutes to travel 5 miles. And now I have to do it again on the way home.:eek:

The good news is that I have just put an offer down on a house. This will knock 0.5 miles off my ride, but more importantly will make it much flatter and on bike trails the entire way.

Great ride today. Warm temps and sunshine. Who could ask for more!? Well, how about giving me the day off? :)

This was the first morning in a while that I haven't seen at least one other bike commuter. :(

I had a really hard time dragging myself out of bed. I barely made it to work by 9:00 this morning. Still, little trouble on the ride this morning, and it's supposed to be 25C by the end of the week. Hello long road ride on Saturday!

Pretty good ride today! I cleaned the drivetrain on my beater so things were feeling quite silky I must say. I couldn't back pedal without my chain fowling up. I'm hoping the weather holds off until I get out work so I can take the 20mile route home.

nice ride in today, did the 20 mile route, and was only a few minutes late, still having a hard time getting out the door, good thing work doesn't really care when I get here. I'm meeting my wife after work for a church thing, so it'll be a short 5 mile ride to her work. Still buzzin about the group ride I went on last Saturday, I can't WAIT to go again. gonna see how many strings I have to pull to be able to go again this Saturday, though we have plans for a "peace vigil" so I don't know if I'll be able to go.

good. ten minutes in the dark.

The weather was hot and my mood was hot.
Highs in the 80s, and I flipped off two cagers. Dang!

an adrenaline rush this morning! I had a dental appointment at ten and had to be at work at 12 noon. I got out of the dentist at 10:50, drove home and it was 11:10. I decided to ride to work on the bike, it usually takes me 35-40 minutes so I thought I would be fine. well, I was tooling down the sidewalk when I come upon some pedestrians and decide to get off the walk and onto the dirt beside it. as soon as I did it I thought, "Oh, no", got off the bike and looked at my tires-- they were studded with GOATHEADS. I carefully picked them out one by one.... none of them were embedded too deeply, I guess... I'd only ridden about three feet off the sidewalk before getting that feeling in the pit of my stomach, like, "I should not have done that!" I didn't seem to be losing air so I just thought I'd ride until I couldn't any more and then walk the rest of the way... but the tires held! I got to work OK. we'll see if the tires are still OK by the end of the day. F***ing Goatheads, I hate 'em.

I'm gettin armadillos, that's all there is to it.

^ Never heard of goatheads and had to google them. You learn something new everyday. Had a nice ride in this morning. Temps in the low 60s and going to be in the upper 80s today. Might be driving tomorrow if we get the storms they are calling for. Got a weather stick a few weeks ago and it was pointing straight out today and will probably be pointing down (bad weather) tomorrow. I am going to start using it to judge when to not ride in since the weathermen around here aren't worth a damn.

We have goat heads here too, (I'm in New Mexico) almost impossible to avoid them as they grow ANYWHERE, and often blow onto the MUP's around here. This is the method I use and it works great. I had an old pair of conti 3000's that I replaced with conti ultra gatorskins. The gatorskins alone helped but didn't completely fix my problem as goat heads would still get me once in a while. I had tried specialized pre-slimed tubes but the sealant just BLEW out anytime I had a puncture, worthless. What an old time rider recomended was cutting the bead off an old pair of tires and stuffing it inside my good treads. Making a "double thick" tire. I tried this and ALSO came accross some praise for "stan's no flat" sealant from www.notubes.com I found some in town though and put 1 oz inside a set of conti tubes that have removable tubes. I credit most of the flat freeness with the double tire method, but I think the stans is an extra safety net.

The right is a LITTLE rougher than it was with one set of treads, but after a while you hardly notice it (an extra layer of handle bar tape would take the slight increase in bumpiness out though I'm sure) And I havn't had a flat in almost 9 months now...so the bumpiness is WELL worth it :-)

A while back (ok 10 years) I lost both tires on my cannondale MTB to goatheads. Luckily I wasn't commuting, but I was about a mile from home and decided to cut across an open field - I made it almost all the way before I realized what had happend. I gave up on picking them out though and just bought new tires and tubes. We had just moved to El Paso, TX after several years in Germany, but I grew up in the southwest and should have known better. When I was a kid my most dreaded chore was having to pull a whole bucket of them after school every day. So Rando, I feel your pain - $%^##@#$ goatheads!

... commute, part two... I guess I dodged the goathead bullet this time because the tires and tubes seem to be OK. Rode home fine and they are still holding up. the commute home was a bit of a struggle with a strong head wind. at least no more goat heads. i'm sticking to the pavement.