The ride home last night with the new gearing was pretty good. I felt the difference going up the hills, that's for sure. Riding in this morning, I made a light that I normally wouldn't make - normally I'd spin out - but today I just squeaked through as it went from green to yellow.

Huge storm rocked St Louis, MO last night, swooped in from the north with 80-90 mph winds, many big branches and trees 2-3 ft diameter were down. 400,000 without power (metro area is 2 million). Traffic was snarled this morning with stop lights out and trees strewn across streets. I was able to navigate the yellow tape on my bike and kept my same route. Already families are starting to congregate in parks, which I'm sure will increase as the day heats up to 100F, 116F heat index. I love riding my bike on "disaster days"!

Boy was the weather beautiful for the ride in this morning. I was able to hit 40 going down the first big hill...of course I always dread going back up it in the evening. I would much rather have the climb in the morning and the decent in the evening...but oh well.

Fine and Freddish this morning. I spent last evening building up my tri bike and as I was debating with myself over red or white bar tape (or maybe red on the bullhorns and white on the aerobars), I realized that I was dangerously close to OCPness.

So the antidote is to ziptie a milkcrate to the Bomber and cinch up the pant cuffs with packing tape for the ride to work. And ride in very casually. It was just great.

There was a story in the Bee yesterday about high gas prices and how some people are actually forced to take public transportation or carpool! Shocking. (Not a word about bike commuting, though.) My first reaction was "Have gas prices gone up? [read in Johnny Carson voice] I did not know that. "

Nice ride in today; 1st time taking 'correct' detour to avoid mongo hole dug in bike trail (yesterday I just diverted to the main street). I found the detour going the other way last night on the way home, so had a better idea what to look for this am.

Only 3 days commuting this week, other 2 days, carpooling for fieldwork, so, no biking but I do get out of the city.

Substituting commuting for lunchtime riding for the next few weeks, due to new baby coming last week. Did a 4.5 mile loop from downtown up to UNCA.

Its nice riding to parts of town that I dont go to on my commute, but driving the pickup from home is less fun...

Decent commute. It appears that either my temper is shorter as the week grows on or people are just freaking idiots. Being passed too close is getting annoying.

Anyhow, the LBS I bought my bike from reminded me that I need my warranty tune. Going to ride there and meet the wife and kid after work. Then pick up tile for our bathroom floor.

On a related note: I purchased this bike in late March. 4 months later and I hit 3000 miles. All but a few hundred are commuting miles.
Yippie!

Finally got a chance to post something.
The ride in was VERY different. Yesterday a water main broke under the road at a BUSY, BUSY intersection near the university I ride through. I always avoid that area by riding on a neighborhood street. The water main was still broken (being repaired???) this morning and the east-west road was closed to traffic.
Well surprise, surprise!! As I rode through the neighborhood I noticed a lot more cars than usual. When I was ~3 blocks away from where I usually turn off I came to a screeching halt. There must have been 50 cars ahead of me. Usually there's only 2 or 3 cars on that road. It only took 3/4 of a second to decide that I wasn't waiting behind all of those idiot cagers. I passed ~48 cars on the left and then cut back to the right between car 48 and 49 because I was making a right turn at the intersection. Continued on my way with no other problems for the reat of the ride. :)
I hope they have that *&@#% water main repaired before the afternoon rush hour starts or I may find a similar nightmare on my way home. http://users.telenet.be/eforum/emoti...t/sterb126.gif

Ride home was interesting in that I saw a bunch of other people riding their bikes the same way as me. Traffic was the usual mess, but when I got home, I had a USPS slip telling me I had a package at the post office. I grabbed my beater bike w/ the rack and bungees and picked up my package from Nashbar w/ my new Lake sandals! I put the cleats on them, grabbed my roadie and hit the park for a couple laps to try 'em out and give some love to the Bianchi. Ended up riding all three bikes today.

it was good. I didn't get heat stroke.

Cold, windy, and it was raining (on the way home) to work t'was cold sunny and just a hint of wind... damn wind chill/ vapo chilling, all exposed skin was numb... i was in a t shirt and pants lol... lost some rear traction on a few turns, almost fell but recovered nicly... car behind probably thought WTF is he skiding for lol... fenders rocked no road water on me...

Beat the t-storm to work. Locked up, covered up my Brooks w/ a plastic bag and 10 min. later it was coming down hard. Traffic on the way in was ridiculous causing me to weave around traffic the whole way in. It may rain later in the day too so I put the fenders on, just in case.

I must have arrived too early today. No Marching Band or Photographers around anywhere to celebrate my 1,000th commuting mile for 2006. All I found was a pile of work on my desk....sigh.

Had to mooch a ride home last night because there was a mega storm tearing up the place at quitting time. Came back to fetch the bike later with the Jeep since I didnt feel too comfortable leaving it tied to the hitchin post overnight. That meant that I had to ride and extra 6 miles this morning to reach my 1000 miles today... bummer to have to ride the extra miles before work :) [not!]

While the common folk are amazed that I have commuted that many miles by bike, I do realize that it's a fairly insignificant number in this audience.

I'm still getting used to the bigger gear. There was a big cluster of bikes as I came up to 17 Ave. One guy jumped the light, but the roadie at the front reeled him in almost immediately. I took my alternate route and almost caught the roadie on 12 Ave. but he was big-ringing it and going past my turn-off to boot.

Way to go Floyd!! Oops, wrong forum.

Hot and humid.
It felt just like Friday. :( Oh yeah, it is Friday. I guess waking up twice during the night added to the "tired" feeling.
Did I mention it was humid?

Second that humid.
I was very sticky when I got to work. Dripping with sweat in fact. Good run though. Looking fwd. to the ride home (FRIDAY!)

:D

I'm sorry, we forgot!

http://www.k-state.edu/photo/newwebs...SI2044_055.jpg


No commute today, will be swimming in the creek. National Weather Service says to limit outdoor activity to early morning only, since it's gonna be 109° today. Which means I better get my booty out there for a quick ride though the park.

Hi Nyrome. Good to hear from you.
Try this on the way home. :D

Ugg. Last night on the way home I was taking a shortcut through a gravel alley and I ran over a huge nail. I had a patch kit and pump but I was only about a mile from home. Hot walk.

This morning I rode my newly built-up tri bike. I'm trying to work out the saddle and bar positions so it's more like a shakedown cruise.

Smoggy. Hot.
Smoggy as I have ever seen it around here. Hey Atlanta, someone didn't set ya'll on fire again, did they? 'Cause I'd swear that I was down wind from a major conflagration.

--A

LORDY that man has HUGE legs!! :eek:

-- nice to hear from you too ron,
nyrome,
*patiently pedaling to leg perfection*

Had a refreshing ride home courtesy of the rain and puddles splashed on me by cagers. While the cagers probably thought it was funny, I didn't mind since it was actually refreshing, even if it was puddle water. It had been raining heavily prior to the commute home so most of the road crud had already washed into the sewers. Gave the fenders a good workout and didn't have to worry about being sweaty when I got home. Took the FDR MUP and saw two joggers running in the rain so I'm not the only person enjoying the weather.

That's Floyd Landis whipping everyone's @$$ yesterday (Thursday) in stage 17.
I hope the same thing happens tomorrow in the ITT.

Did you get wet on the way home today?

I hit a shower at about the 3+ mile point and it lasted until about mile 6. Wet roads the rest of the way home. Gotta love those fenders. :beer:

106 degrees, hot. Extremely low humidity too. You know when you open the oven and that dry heat rolls out? Yeah, like that. Less traffic at 7pm, guess everyone was hiding inside with their fans and air conditioners, Wimps!

A fellow cyclist helped me out on the way home yesterday.

I was packing up to head home on the lakefront trail here in Chicago and there was a few drops of rain and a really stiff wind out of the north. Not enough rain to wear rain gear yet, but since the wind is cool, if it starts coming down hard, I'll probably want to cover up. So I bungeed my foul weather gear jacket on top of my trunk bag and headed into the wind.

The path crosses a couple of intersections at Navy Pier. At the last one, a SUV is partially blocking the crosswalk and, diverting around it, I hop a curb, then head off doing my best Floyd Landis. After about a mile of pounding into the wind, I notice my jacket is gone. I stop and look back for something yellow on the ground, but instead I see another bike rider holding something yellow over his head. Within seconds I have my jacket back. He tells me I lost it at the curb.

The way that wind was blowng, if nobody picked it up, that jacket could have made it to St. Louis before I would have caught up with it. So, if you happen to be reading this, jacket-returning-bike-guy, thanks again.