Crazy warm today. If I wanted to, I could ride home in a t-shirt and shorts. I switched back to my skinny-tire bike and thought I was going to die. That thing is completely squirrely. It doesn't help that the handlebars are 4" narrower than my winter mtn bike. Criminy! I'll get used to it in a couple more days - I hope.

I dedicate my 1000th post to this, the king of all threads.



...oh yeah, my commute was very nice today. Carry on. ;)

Beautiful commute last night past the White House Christmas tree, the crystal clear blue sky and reflection of the Washington Monument on the Potomac. I left the office Christmas party early because I couldn't drink and ride, and without the wine, it all seemed so boring. This morning, it was clear again, and the river was icy. The Canada geese, which get in the way in the summer, were impressive floating near the ice and flying away with loud honks on a terrific day. But a couple of near misses with cars kept me alert.

I hate commuting by car. And the transit strike isnt helping. Nor the extra traffic. Or stupid drivers. Can't wait to get back on my bike tomorrow.

good rides, to/from! today i chose to use my lobster 3 point gloves, at work in am, when gloves were removed, my hands steamed almost as much as my breath, boss noticed and was more centered on "close that door, it's too cold"!
toasty warm and comfortable (nose and fingers sent warnings at start, but acclimated)
20f/35f, low brease, dry, traffic readable!

Good ride to work & home . It was a little warmer today . I hope the rest of the week stay that way . Have a good nite .

My ride has bike lanes, now 1/2 inch of gravel make travel in the bike lane more dangerous that riding in the road :eek: . I liked riding in the rain today, I'd rather be wet than cold.

My commute is all dark now, 6:30am to work and 4:30pm back home.

My commute yesterday was interesting.
Coming down a hill in on an inner city residential street and a guy in a Volvo station wagon pulls out of his parking spot not far in front of me. I'm not easy to miss, I was wearing a hivis shirt and riding in the center of the lane, the guy just hadn't looked.

Anyway, I chased him down the hill and met him at a set of lights. I pulled up alongside his door and he opened it and got out...... he was on the phone :mad: and going to check something in the back of the car.

I yelled at him "You're meant to f***ing give way when you pull out of a parking spot!" and he just gave me a dismissive hand gesture, apologised for the noise to whoever he was talking to, and walked to the back of the car.

I was so mad, I was tempted to jump off the bike and smack him in the mouth. Then I realised that I could easily grab his keys from the ignition and throw them onto the very busy street we were stopped for :D

Thankfully I took a deep breath, realised it just wasn't worth the aggro, yelled at him again "You are a f***ing tool!" and rode to the front of the lights. I did the constructive thing and found a bunch of hills on the way home and took it out on them. :D

mid day of the week, and the solstice. it's all up from here on.

i'm getting back into the groove. not really sure why i felt like i was out of it, now that i think it over. i think i had my head set down for the much-colder weather we had a bit of a while back, so then all these warm balmy days are disorienting and don't feel like they count.

today the led said 130C in the morning. pretty sure it was wrong; it was warm, but not as warm as all that. in any case, learning from yesterday i did without the tights and the fleece, and just wore a techwick shirt and a silk jumpsuit under my rain layer. muuuuuuuuuuuch better. and i made a mental note on the way in to take those 'road closed' signs seriously from now on. two nights ago i deked around one of them and met a sort of anti-speed-bump in the dark that levitated me for a second or two. this morning that speed bump was a trench six feet deep and four wide. not at all something you want to hit in the dark.

my grating on the approach to the bridge looked nervously close to being blocked up with leaves again. i dithered a bit about stopping to clear it, but i was enjoying that section too much and didn't want to waste it. the lake might be back tomorrow; if not i will, i promise myself i will - i will stop and clear it. and there's a two-by-one lying across the bike lane on the cloverleaf on the other side. i will clear that one for sure tomorrow before it hurts somebody. especially me. garbage dumping in general seems to be on the up alongside both ends of that bridge. such classy behaviour, feh.

i ate something real at work today, and the ride home was muchmuch better than yesterday. working a lot of late time this week purely by accident, and the guy i'm working with keeps donating food that he's forgotten to eat. don't know what that's about. i sure hope it doesn't mean he's decided Something Should Be Done about dysfunctional me.

haven't seen mr spandex's bike in the rack for weeks now. heh. found out too that he's the project manager on my project. double-heh. now that i replay my encounters with him and think of the handbasket this project is in, that figures. he's the version of pm i don't admire much.

songs: peggy's kitchen wall, bruce cockburn; that duet from tommy; me and julio down by the schoolyard, paul simon.

Whew!

Made it here in one piece !

I rode to work with the fixed gear setup for the first time... Interesting ride to say the least !

I squished myself between a bus that was slowing down to stop in front of a railroad track (they do that down here in FL) and he got real close to the edge and I had to get almost on top of the side walk edge... sure enough, my pedal gets jammed onto the side walk and certainly sent sparks flying as it ground off 2 of the teeth on the bottom of the pedal !

Lucky for me I didn't end up underneath the bus ! I just kept on fiddling to get my foot back in the strap !! Its hard enough to get my foot in the strap on the freewheel, but much damn trickier on a fixed gear !

so thats that. =)

It was nice to fly again. I took my road bike this morning since snow/ice won't be in the forecast for at least another week. I moved my headlight over to the roadie and pumped up the tires and took off. My Nashbike commuter is the preferred mode when commuting but the studded tires are killing me, I think I'll save that bike for the bad weather. Other than that, temps were in the low 30's and the path appeared to be tack-free. Looking forward to the ride home when temps should be in the 40's with 50's predicted for tomorrow.

Nice morning--crisp, clear, 18 deg. F. Pretty sunrise. I peddled into a fairly strong breeze most of the way. The river that I ride along is mostly iced over. It looked impressive, with the wind blowing snow over it and the low sun reflecting off of it. The bike path is still snowy, so I was on the road the whole way. The busy section was a pain, especially up a hill.

I got too hot for awhile, after coming out of the valley (a fairly long climb) and took off my hood. Later I had to put it back on!

Two tees, two pair of underwear, sweatshirt, windbreaker, hat, sunglasses. I did well (not too sweaty).

-1C, calm

As I approached an intersection, a truck entering from the right nearly pulled out right in front of me before he locked up his brakes. Made me question if my front light is bright enough.

I bought a pack of smokes 2 days ago, smoke 4 and threw the rest out on the way in today. Everytime I throw smokes out at home, I rummage thru the garbage when I get a craving. What's worse than smoking? Rummaging thru garbage to smoke.

"With God's help I'll conquer this terrible affliction." - Renton

Awesome ride in today! Decided to take 5th Ave. down to midtown b/c it's partially blocked to traffic w/ one lane set aside for emergency vehicles. I figured I'd just ride in there and bypass the traffic. WRONG! Cops at every corner were telling me and my fellow cyclists not to ride in the emergency lane. Oh well, I've got a better idea. At a stop light were a bunch of cyclists. Time to create my own mini critical mass! Take the lane next to the emergency lane w/ all the cyclists, and keep it to ourselves! Worked OK for a couple blocks until they started slowing down and dropping back. Then we hit traffic so it was back to splitting lanes and zig-zagging. I'm a slow rider compared to practically everyone on BF and I still managed to pass every cyclist and motorized scooter rider on my way to 42nd St., even the hard charging mtb'er who couldn't keep up the pace more than two blocks after charging out from a side street onto 5th Ave and in front of us. Also managed to dodge one woman who walked right in front of me at 59th and 5th, then stopped when she saw me. I called out, "Go ahead, go ahead!" and rode around her once she got moving. Whatever happened to "Look both ways before crossing the street"? Don't they teach that anymore in grammar school?

Had a conversation w/ a fellow bike commuter at our building today. I asked him how he was dealing w/ the strike and he said, "What strike?". Then he grinned broadly and we discussed all the shiny new bikes and noobs who locked their QR front wheel to the post and left the rest of the bike unlocked. If I was criminally minded, I'd have a brand new Specialized Sirrus right now.

If you see some clown walking down the street with a wheel in one hand, and a lock in the other, you'll know what happend :roflmao:

No commute for me today btw! I drove the "bucket" as I have an errand to run after work. Tomorrow may be my last commute for the next five days, but I may try to squeeze in a weekend ride or something.

When I went to bed last night the temp was 10F/-12C. Well, to my surprize I woke up at 6am to 26F/-3C, hmmm... that's nice. I had a wonderful commute in, a little slow on the back roads (loose brown snow), but cruise in on the rest of them. It's only 11am and it's already up to 34F/1C, it's going to be a great day.

I mostly got used to my skinny bike, so the ride in this morning was fast indeed. Last night wasn't bad, but the 30% higher gearing made the hills less entertaining. Today it was about +1C, no wind to speak of, and traffic has dropped off considerably. Tomorrow should be even better, as loads of people have the day off.

75F

This morning was wonderfull. High 30s. Nice and warm.

Today it is 63F. It would have been nice if I hadn't punctured my last tube. Can't even patch it. Why do I always discover things the hard way? Apparently, when I replaced the rear wheel I should have put rim tape on it. The leak occured on the rim side of my tire. Duh!
So 3 oops: 1) no rim tape allowing something to puncture the tire (the rim is smooth. must have been a spoke hole.
2) no spare tire.
3) no roughing up piece for my patch kit. yay :(

T-shirt on the way home.

That's right; Dec 22, Calgary, T-shirt.

Felt like Houston here in SF. Mid-60 temps, 100% humidity, rain. Very wierd for SF in December.

wow! cruise in at 30f, home at 36f, wind? tech probs w/ drive-train, (rear gears), all else a "gift". got a pending project w/ alvino(sp) deraileur!

Rainy today, maybe I'll get fenders, maybe not. Rainsuit works well enough. Two more days of work this week, both are supposed to be dry. That means this warm spell is over I suppose. Guess no shorts tomorrow. Working Saturday will be at double time and a half...time to hit the LBS.

Worse is not having a light for smokes you fished out of the garbage when your willpower gave out.

Been there done that. It's worth the pain to quit. I can climb hills now that I used to not even consider.

Go for it!

well, that's why god gave us toasters. isn't it?

whoa nelly this morning: WIND. i just looked it up: SE 39 GUST 52. the temperatures are so de-creddingly warm i might as well start tracking the wind instead. yesterday we had over 13 degrees celsius. i rode home tonight in just t-shirt and underwear underneath the rain gear

it made the morning's ride a lot of fun. there wasn't a lot of oomph in the gusts though, not like the last time we had numbers like that but the gusts came more frequently. it was a heck of a headwind, but it's strange: somehow even having to pedal going downhill to maintain any speed didn't feel much like work. i think maybe all the wind was getting underneath me a bit and giving me a bit of a lift. that's how it felt anyway. the bridge was calm, compared to last time; i only felt one little wobble hit me. took the whole thing slower than usual anyway, just in case.

nothing else going on. still working longer hours than usual, and my morning routine is getting later and later in consequence, just to fit in the sleep. feature-complete build coming in tomorrow for a last gasp before the week's break, so really i'd rather not have it get too far out of control and if i wake up too late i might have to drive. saw mr dev lead tonight way late in the evening, heading out to his bike in his reflective vest at about 8pm. 'we the only two still riding!' he said. i'm not the only one keeping track, then :D 13 commuting days left.

songs: memories of east texas, michelle shocked; rainy night in soho, shane mcgowan.