Ride both ways was nice. After work went to pick up a bookcase I won in a county auction and the truck died. Dead battery. Told wife I need a bike trailer. No dice, but still trying. Funny that the truck battery was dead due to lack of use. Bike commuting is great. A friend of mine had 5 strokes this week. He's inactive, smokes, overweight. That's another reason to keep riding. When he gets out of the hospital I'll ask him about riding, depending on his balance and physical limitations.

I've been putting together a geek light over the past week or so. My charger showed up yesterday and I stopped on the way home from work at one of my favorite surplus shops to pick up a pair of cheap used SLA batteries to tide me over until my 7ah battery I ordered shows up in a few days.

I rode into town and back for a jam session and back last night to try out the light, which is an $8 Malibu landscaping light from Home Desperate. It worked great, but I need a narrower beam. The reflector built into the Malibu unit is a bit wide for my taste, so I'm looking forward to getting the optronics housings I ordered so I can try different bulbs and maybe run both a narrow and a really narrow beam optionally.

It was about 19F last night on the way home, and I stopped at a gas station along the way to pick up some chips and warm up my lungs for a few minutes. There was a Marlboro rep there and he insisted on giving me a free pack of cigarettes for some reason, so I finally went along with it. I think it's amusingly ironic that this guy saw me sprint up the hill into the gas station parking lot on a bike in the dark January night and thinks I'm a smoker. I've got a coworker that smokes like a chimney I'll sell them to for a profit... :D

Car and Truck supply shops sell PAR 36 sealed bulbs the same size as the Malibu lights sold at my H.D. Just more powerful up to 50+ watts and some very tight focus types like police spotlights. Might melt a malibu holder. Consider a rubber tractor headlight mount as seen on a lot of tow trucks where they are used as working lights on the backs of the tow trucks. 12 volts. Got a 6 volt, 100 watt one at a major airport supplyj store. Wowzer!

No commute today but a nice wet ride to the grocery for stuff to make risotto.

A recumbent trike might be cheap physical therapy for him.

my first commute was today! woot, new commuter.

18 miles. Uneventfull. Rained a little bit, not enough to make me uncomfortable. We shall about tomorow.

Wet with a dose of heavy traffic.

No commute today with the rain and the need to be uptown for classes later this afternoon.

But here's an update from the weekend: I went out to Midtown to meet some friends at a show. By the time I rode over there (~6 mi), I was so hyped up I couldn't sit still. I had a beer, chatted aimlessly with some coworkers, and then practically ran out of there. I hated to look anti-social, but taking a long night ride in the unseasonably warm weather was much more fun than a smokey bar with a jam-packed crowd.

It's cold and rainy today and to top it all off, there's no heat or hot water in my apt. building so I can't even take a shower! In short, no commute today. This sucks. I need to work off the chocolate croissant I just ate.

I have crossed over to the dark side....and love it. Last night I picked up my new Single Speed bike. A friend found an old 88 Nishiki Prestige lugged steel frame and built it up for me to commute on. It is 48 x 16 with only a single front brake. Very clean, very nice! Must have been the smoothest, quietest ride I have had to date.

Really looking forward to the ride home this evening!

Chris
NW Houston

The ride in was accompanied by a drizzling rain and temps in the 30s. But I was committed to this morning's commute. Need to acquire a rear fender to fend off the street crud when it's wet.

In southern California we have these winds that are called 'Santa Ana's', maybe you have the same winds where ever you are, I don't know. So these Santa Ana winds come from the east, rather than from the normal west direction. And in this part of the VC, they blow hard, and they are real dry.

So today we have the Santa Ana's going on. My ride to work is mostly into them and they are blowing 30-50 mph. And they pick up all sorts of crap and throw it in my eyes. It sucked. I made it to the office in around 12 minutes.

I almost got blown off my bike today. The chinook winds are a-howlin', and they kept trying to push me in front of cars. Homicidal air - what will they think of next?

I know what you mean, it was crazy. I was wobbling like a house of cards, on top of a hat, worn by an epileptic, riding a bike after 10 beer and he's havin' a seizure. That's how much I was wobbling, almost got smoked twice.

rain, misty, = wet on AM in, traffic 'good', breeze on my back. PM = wet roads (no rain), drivers showed some regression, temp cooler, but the bike's carried me a-b again!

Had a rare (for me) inter-modal commute today: bike to Portland (Maine) bus station, bus to Boston, then back again. No precipitation on the morning bike ride, snowstorm developed during the day. Fortunately it stayed snow in Portland, so the ride home was only partially wet.

Funny thing, though. I almost never get road rage around here. Maybe it was the non-standard route, but I had not one but two cases of angry drivers for no apparent reason. The first time, I was just riding along on my side of the road, and this driver coming the other way, on his side of the road, just rolled down his window and starts yelling at me. Couldn't hear what he said, but I can't think what I could have done to make him mad. I was on a straightaway, so it couldn't have been anything I did wrong in an intersection. Maybe he thought I was someone else?

Then at the next intersection, after I turned right, legally, someone passed me and honked aggressively. I don't think he was the one immediately behind me, but maybe he was a few cars back and thought I was holding people up making my turn. So that one at least I can form a theory about.

Oh well, do I care? ;)

Commuted to the Saturn dealership to pick up my wife's car after it was serviced.

A sobering ride home. There was a motorcyclist lying in the intersection of 11th and S Streets. His motorcycle had a pushed in fork and the engine was leaking coolant. People were yelling to call 911 and a passing motorist had put a blanket over him and was telling him not to move. The driver who must have hit him was sitting in her car looking stunned.

I offered to help but there wasn't anything to do and I didn't want to cause any more distraction.

Let's be careful out there, folks.

bravo, congrats, welcome!

as for me it took me 1/2 an hour to suit up today to try to brave a winter snow storm. Got out the front door, studded snow tires and all and the snow was a good 4-6" of thick wet glop the consistency of semi-frozen mashed potatoes. Needless to say it was slow going. I got a 1/2 mile into my 11 mile ride and turned around, rode home, put the bike away, changed clothes and took the bus. The weather beat me today I am ashamed to say.

Good ride to work and home. Nice day to ride .
Have a good nite .

Ride in was 55 degrees with a wonderful 15MPH tailwind. Ride home was a 2 parter, from my regular job to my volunteer job at the Sheriff's Dept., then off to home. Eveyone at the Sheriff's Dept. thought I was crazy to be riding. They don't understand I'd probably go crazy if I couldn't ride. 49 degrees and a slight crosswind coming home, cool enough to really get moving without getting drenched in sweat.

Yeah, I rode up into the parking lot at a Sherriff's station a couple of weeks ago to ask a deputy something (he was loading stuff into his trunk). It was about 6AM, snowing lightly, a bit icy, and 28 degrees. He acted kind of nervous; maybe he thought I was REALLY crazy.

Rides here seem to have been all the same lately; 22 to 28 in the morning, sometimes breezy (random head/tail wind), 35 to 40 in the afternoon. Wish it would get cold and snow, I want to get SOME sledding in before spring.

Rained yesterday, but the bike was at the LBS to fix a clicking noise in the BB. It was ready by 6:30pm, so I picked it up.

This morning's commute to work was a test ride, also, to see if my LBS had truly fixed the BB noise. Success!

But, nevertheless, I 'stressed' over the commute, because it was just above freezing and my 700x23s slipped here and there due to ice. I didn't fall this time (like last Friday), but came close.

.

You call yourself a cyclist?! :rolleyes: ;) Seriously though, that's a lot of snow to ride through even if it was powder. Mashed potato snow would be almost impossible. I draw the line around 4 inches. It's a bicycle, not a snow plow.

Anyway, we got an inch or two yesterday. There are a couple of sections of trail where the snow is covering rock-hard ice. I saw evidence of at least five spills. One might have been another cyclist. Even with studs it was a little hairy because the ice is not smooth and if you get up on a "hill", the front tire can slip right off. Had to put my foot down once, but I was going very slowly.

First post of 2006. So far only two car days for January. One due to snow in Memphis. I could have done it but the drivers....not! It was panic in the streets!! Second, client in town and had to go to dinner. 32F this morning. Dropped my daughter off at school with unicycle, dropped other daughter and parked car at school. Rode the rest (8.5 miles) to work vs 10. Bummer getting the ice off the car. Much easier to get on bike and ride!! Co workers think I'm nuts to ride in 32F weather....I know many here think that is a summer day.