The cold that my coworkers brought to work and shared with everyone --
thank you very much http://users.telenet.be/eforum/emoti...t/sterb126.gif

-- is still hanging on. Made the ride in a little slower and not as enjoyable as usual.

Tried coasting on my fixie. Remembered quickly that I couldn't and managed not to get kicked off the bike. That was a good wake up call. :)

Now that the snow has melted [mostly], I was back on the skinny tires today. The -4C and heavy fog had me worried, but my headlight kept me visible in the grey, post-dawn light. I did happen to forget that ice can build up on rims rather easily, making for a little panic as I blew through an empty intersection. The only bad part of the ride is the weird noise my chain is making, clicking and popping. I'm concerned about breaking it when cranking up a big hill or something.

Anybody miss me ? I won a couple bucks playing poker so I had to take 10 days out to go diving in Cozumel, Mexico. I really, really needed a vacation !

I drove today since I had too much stuff to haul, and aparently I'm still in lazy mode. Tomorrow I ~must~ ride since I added on a few pounds at the all inclusive :)

Probably should mount the studded tires as well...there seems to be a bit of ice around now in the mornings.

Doncha just love that gloriously immediate feedback?

My fixie is still on the workstand in the garage, awaiting the arrival of its new wheels, so today I rode the Bomber. Very pleasant ride on a slightly different route than usual. I wore a wool sweater and cotton pants and was perfectly comfortable until I walked into the building and got on the elevator. Why do they keep these buildings so danged hot? By the time I got to my floor, I was practically dripping. People must think I've got the flu.

Yup, but seems my legs are smarter than my brain. They handled the kickback w/o lifting me out of the saddle and tossing me off the bike. I chalk it up to being Monday.

Had a good nights sleep, procrastinated the departure for a bit this morning and left late, but had a great ride - legs still feeling a fair bit of burn from the weekend ride (which included going up the Bayview extension from the valley floor).

Warmer for us today, 6C / 42F so I left the hoodie at home and just had a bandana thing for a skullcap.

Pretty heavy rain this morning. The guy riding a few lengths ahead on the MUP ran over a duck :( It almost took us both down.

So I head out into the rain and I'm thinking, "Dang! My legs feel really good. And I'm just flying along today, too." Then I realize there's no sound of wind whipping past my ears, because I'm travelling dead even with the 18mph tailwind. Not a bad start to a Monday commute... the steady increase in the rain and wind all day is gonna make the ride home quite dreadful, though.

No commute for today - that makes two days missed due to my very sore and bruised right big toe (rammed it into the boards playing hockey Thursday night). Feels like someone hit it with a hammer. It's even painful to drive let alone pedal. Figures it had to happen when it's perfect fiding weather. Hopefully I can try tomorrow with my sandals.

Another cold morning ride in this morning. Nothing exciting happened but I did have the extra weight of my laptop on my back which slowed me down a little bit. Might wear shorts for the ride home if the temps climb high enough. Probably won't ride tomorrow since there is some heavy rain heading in.

Maybe the wind will turn around by the time you head home. It seems to always do that here for me, east-to-west in the am, west-to-east in the pm.

I only biked my kid to school today, borrowed car to head into work to retrieve computer and head home. Will bike kid back from school at 3. We're supposed to get 2-3" rain today. I don't have any problem biking in that, but I'm not really set up to transport a computer in that kind of weather.

Lovely! We've been treated to a freakish spell of almost summer-like weather here in Toronto! I rode home in a short-sleeved T-shirt! :)

The cagers are funny creatures. There was one who just HAD to pass me kinda dangerously on a little residential street to get into a long line of cars stopped at the light. I passed him literally the next second... and just kept going, filtering to the front. Now the SWEET thing is that the first car at the light turned out to be a left-turner (no pun intended), and there was also a long line of cars in the opposite direction (this little street parallels a major arterial that has lots of construction right now) and no left-turn signal or lane... so that moron had to sit through at least one more light cycle. :lol:

Managed to remember to keep pedaling. Passed a couple other commuters and rode mostly in the middle lane to avoid the right turners every other block and all the double parked cars. Amazing what a day off the bike can do as my legs felt fresh for the rides in and out.

20 miles today. This morning after pedaling a little over a mile I realized I had left the air pump @ home so I had to turn back to get it. The ride home was just plain great!

GreenAnvil

I had a nice ride home earlier today. The sun was setting and I caught up to a guy riding an older hybrid/mountain style bike. He was moving along at a fast but comfortable pace so I decided to stay behind him. As usual when I follow people, I tried to stay far enough back so I didn't bother him.

After a while he stopped pedaling and slowed way down. I figured, okay, he must not like me behind him at all. I'll pass. But it turned out he wanted to ride together. He was new to the area and exploring the MUP. We chatted and rode for about 3 miles or so before splitting up. First time that's ever happened to me. I should have pointed him to this site. Oh well. :rolleyes:

He said my tires make a lot of noise and that's how he knew I was behind him. So much for stealth riding. :o I can't believe he heard me! In the spring I'll have to get slicks.

The evening commute to day was very short, barely 1 mile to the LBS, where my bike got dropped off for a tune-up. My wife then picked me up and drove me the last 6.5 miles home, nice, warm, and dry.

Nice ride in. Ride home was a little more exiting. I rode some rough roads yesterday and thought I got all the bolts tightened down. Wrong! I was accelerating on the hoods when the handlebar rotated down and almost threw me down in front of my bike:eek: . Don't I feel like an idiot. Luckily, I hung on, came to a stop, got out my multitool and made sure everything was really secure.

just about the most insanely perfect weather to bike to work that you could have. 11 centigrade. high light pale grey luminous sky, perfectly uniform colour like what you sometimes get when it's snowed. wet roads with the light on them. trees all around with still just enough autumn colour on them to set off all the shades of grey. gusty winds from all different directions, but nothing too strong - just a lot of fresh air. it was beautiful.

spent half of saturday mooching around on outdoorsman's-strip down on broadway, theoretically looking for waterproofing for feet. but really just kind of hanging out and looking at stuff. i looked at a lot of options and dithered a bit in the direction of waterproof hiking boots, but in the end settled for the things i'd wanted to go get in the first place: the serious 3-ply goretex booties from taiga. always kind of yearned after those booties. to me they're the badge of the serious bike commuter. wasn't actively raining by our standards when i set out today but i wore them anyway, and a good thing i did. the Puddles That Ate Manhattan are still lurking all over the mup. it was FUN to go through those things and not even get a tiny bit wet; completely worth it.

the resident building handyman-type guy is a bit of a bike dude. he's got an old rocky mountain thing he uses for around the site that i've always kind of liked, so when i found out whose it was we had a few conversations about the whole bike-lifestyle schmear. he was fetching something from the storage zone while i unlocked the cage; he did that double-take thing and said 'you didn't ride in today, did you?'

yup. yup, i sure did :D

45F this morning with winds coming off the lake and gusting to ~25MPH into my face. Not my fastest ride. :D

I hooked the rack up to the car and the wife and I drove to the voting booth. Once we'd voted I took off the bike and managed to get into work in a reasonable time frame (only about 5-10 minutes later then normal). Good ride:)

Last nights ride home was brutal...58 degrees and a headwind that clobbered me. I swear I would have gone faster backwards if I stopped pedaling.

Fun Fact: Polls in Michigan open at 7am. I was there at 7:02am and I was the 18th person in line. Dang seniors with nothing else to do!
:)

That's how I felt this morning. At least I'm blaming it on the headwind at any rate. ;)

Had a great ride home, really felt good about both rides yesterday (Monday), though I was damn tired last night after the riding I did on the weekend caught up, too...

I'm aiming for an early rest and try for 4/5 this week so I took today off, and I looked out and it had rained - would've been another nice test for the fenders.. :D Many more chances, I'm very sure.

Ride in was fine. More middle of the road and lane splitting. Got to work and had a good conversation w/ a co-worker I hadn't seen in a while. We joked about him losing one of me (he's lost over 200 lbs) and he said he noticed I'm riding into work and congratulated me on it. I told him I could lie and say it saves me money, time and is a good workout, but the truth is, it's fun and that's the only reason I do it. The rest is just benefits of the fun.

We finally dipped under 40 degrees this morning, which I'm happy about -- seems like every day I'm calling the weather and it's 43 degrees. I swear, I had four or five days in a row of that. Nice misty fog out too. Almost bit it on a patch of leaves though.
Supposed to rain buckets tomorrow morning, which is a bummer.

I rode to the polls on the way to work this morning and I was very pleased to be one of 3 cycling voters at the time, including a mom with two toddlers in a trailer.

Then I decided to take a longer way in, along the river path. I stopped to watch a big crane load rocks from a barge onto the farside levee. Took off my sweater and rode the rest of the way in a t-shirt. Such a gorgeous day that I think I'll take a long lunch ride.

Oh man - I'm so stupid, I shoulda stayed home this morning.

First off, I'm late for work, so I don't check the weather before hopping on my bike.
Little did I know that two days of rain was only minutes from beginning.
Unprepared, I arrive at work soaked, cold, miserable.

Then, on the way home for lunch, a split-second of inattention and I'm colliding with a parked car.
It was a graceful glancing blow, but I still took a spill into the road - soaked, cold, miserable, and now in pain!
I think I win the Darwin Award for the day.

Today was pretty rough. I lugged a ton of gear for starters (I don't have a rack yet, so it goes in my ridiculously large camelbak), which must have weighed 20 lbs or so... Fog, rain, wet, clammy, and a headwind all the way in. Pretty slow ride, but I did the right thing, I put it in a lower gear, and actually road slower, rather than killing myself to maintain the same time. Left early enough to take it fairly easy.

Good news is, my new bike jacket my Mom got me for my birthday worked like a champ today. First real test since I've had it. It's the Endura Lomond, which I think is discontinued, but Nashbar still has these on sale. I got the only one which was on their "returned merchandise" list. $60 as apposed to the usual $90, so thanks Mom, for picking that up for me.

Ride other than the nasty conditions was pretty tame, only one guy honked at me, and it was hilarious, because he passed me pretty slow, and I got to see his wife hit him pretty hard in the arm. I laughed, and waved. All the truckers down going down Atlanta road; if you read this forum, any of you, thanks for giving me some room today.

Post ride recovery? Chocolate cake donut. Don't I know it ;)

Great ride this morning. I'm surprised at how "warm" the temperatures are holding up this time of the year. My night commutes are in the upper 50's and sometimes even 60's.

A cool drizzle on my way home tonight. Need to adjust the rear disc brakes. Looking forward to tomorrow's ride. I'll try to ride every single day this week, God willing.

GreenAnvil