Chilly again...I'm having to wear a long sleeve shirt or a jacket in the morning, might need a stocking cap for the wind. And that torks me off, cause the afternoon is a lovely 80 some degrees...so I have to lug home stuff I don't need to use in the afternoon, but I need it the next morning. Grumble.

Other then that, it's nice:) I'm way more awake in the morning then my coworkers :D

flats, flats, and more flats
 

ended up walking home the other day because I got a flat and the stem on my spare broke while I was putting it on. the metal piece in the presta valve that has the threads on it busted right in half when I was takin off my pump. hopefully that won't happen very often!

Back to commuting after a week on vacation...

Today is the last day of 'summer' for me, kids start moving back to town for the fall semester tomorrow.
NOT looking forward to the influx of confused cagers we'll have occupying the streets this week.

Third day riding in. Getting easier already. Cool, overcast morning. Temp in the low 60s. Met up with a friendly bike commuter and rode together most of the way. Looking forward to predicted sun for the ride home.

Ordered some proper bike shoes & a Topeak frame pump.. Time for a proper taillight for the rack, too.

Did 46 miles last week. Hoping for 3 days/70 miles this week. This is fun. :)

Nice commute. It was a tad cooler than usual. Time to switch to winter clothing shopping.

Also, after one week off I am restarting my exercise plan. The new goals are: cadence of 100 (from 90).
Push ups and sit ups. Drop 5 lbs initially and 10 lbs in the long run. I plan on being at 150lbs in a month or two.

Just increasing my cadence almost killed me. ugh
That and I have absolutely no upper body strength and could only manage 10 push ups. Oh well. Have to start somewhere.

Going home Friday, I stopped to help a guy with a comfort bike who had broken his chain. He seemed amazed that I had a special tool for popping out the broken link and reconnecting the ends.

Then Saturday, I went for a long ride, got home and discovered that I'd left the zipper slighly open on my seat bag when I stopped to help him and lost the dang multitool somewhere along the route.

I'll try to keep in mind that one of the hex ends in the tool had stripped out two seapost collar bolt heads, and I wasn't liking it much anyway...

No riding today. :(
It's that time of the month again. :D


Can't show up hot and sweaty.

I'm amazed at the total lack of traffic today. I could actually merge safely!

It was 48 this morning for me. I had my Performance poly arm warmers on, but didn't wear the knee warmers. I thought the arm warmers were completely useless. Until I got to work and peeled them off while doing my cool-down laps around the back parking lot. As soon as I took them off, I realized how much colder it was than I had thought. Guess they do *something*.

Heavy legs again this morning after Saturday's hammerfest and Sunday's brick workout. I didn't realize how heavy until I got passed by a midtown hipster chick on a 50 lb. cruiser at 16th and L. I called down to the engine room but there was nothing left. She put me in a spot of bother.

I've been commuting again for the last month or so. My route takes me by an elementary school. I wasn't sure if they had started yet or not... until this morning. The answer is they were not open before, but they are open for business now. Kids, cars, parents, everywhere. It was kind of fun today darting between cars, riding on the other side of the road (small side-street), but I could see where it could get annoying, if not dangerous, pretty fast. I'll have to put together a different route.

My rear tire has a slow leak. It will go almost flat overnight, but I can pump it up in the morning, and it's still good for the ride home. Gotta work on it one of these days. I need to take the tire off anyway so I can measure my rims to determine which new tires to get. I currently have 700x35's on my Trek hybrid, I'd like to get something narrower -- as narrow as my rims will allow according to the red & green chart on this page:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire_sizing.html

Weather was perfect again. About 62, sunny, no wind.

My two cents: I would definitely find a new route. I'd rather ride through the bar district at 2 am than a school zone at 7:45 am.

340 revs on the 52t ring going home Friday (140 revs going in) over ~13 miles r/t commute (no revs on 52t ring for lunchtime errands).

Today's ride in was made annoying by my freaking front derailer that I just cannot tame. My main goal now is to get it assembled enough that I can ride it back into town to LBS after work. Right now, w/ no tension on the derailer (cable disconnected), the cage is centered over the middle ring. Makes adjusting L limit screw tricky.

I had a flat today. 3 weeks ago, I rode on a 500 mile tour. This weekend I went on a 250-mile tour. No problems. Then on an 8-mile commute, I get a blowout! Go figure...

Warm and humid ride in this morning. Fairly fast for a Monday morning though:) I am hoping to avoid any rain or storms this afternoon on the way home.

Today I listened to music on my bike for the first time! Sounds nice. :)

I stayed on trails for just about the whole commute, however, and was shoulderchecking like crazy to make sure I wasn't one of those annoying, oblivious to everything mp3 junkies. :)

I had a bad run. I called in at a servo to top up my tires, and the compresser had stopped, so I ended up with a flat rear tyre. I thought this wasn't a problem as I had a little hand pump, but then that broke as well. I now had a flat tire, and no way of re-inflating it. I then walked my bike to the next servo, but that had an automatic tire inflater that I couldn't get to work with a bike tire. The next one also had an automatic inflater, and the one after that didn't have air at all. I ended up walking about 4ks until I finally found a servo I could use.

First commute on the new Trek...I was smiling ear to ear

Commute home today was good. To work last night at 10:45 however I had some hooligans yell at me and attempt to hit me with a beach-ball looking thing. I might get a helmet HID to blind them with for next time. A sound investment I think.

Rode up to the vet after I got off work to pick up food for The Monster. Why is it that cars treat me better when I'm hauling a 10 pound bag of cat food on the back of my bike?

they're scared you might sic the cat that eats it on them :D

nice day today. woke up early, but took a long time to loosen up enough for the ride, so in at about the usual time. there was coffee at home but no milk, so i treated myself by stopping at the gas-station first and buying one that i carefully carted over to the business park, then took specific time to loll around drinking before i went on with the day. i keep wanting to get up and get out and get there early so i can do that more often, just to enjoy the independence of being right there at work . . . not working yet.

i'm noticing something new these past couple of months. my feet don't like this. fine during the ride, just like the rest of me, but the rest of the day is all twangy and tender once i get there. the ligaments ain't happy, i guess, but right now it's more interesting than troublesome.

i've lost the headlight i've been using. had to chain the bike to a non-rack part of the cage this morning, due to overcrowding. did my best to keep it away from the slide-back door, but i guess it got banged anyway because the clip that holds the front casing on is broken. eh. i wanted to go buy things for my bike anyway, and in the meantime there's duct tape around here somewhere.

eventually i will get the bike in to the shop for its 2-month checkup and readjustment.

I made my first commute today following the birth of my daughter 3 weeks ago. Even though I hardly got any sleep it was a nice peaceful way to spend 90 minutes and left me feeling the most awake I have felt for a while.

I bought some panniers at the weekend which are fantastic. I also ordered some SKS mudguards which will hopefully arrive before some rain does.

If anyone else is thinking of commuting and has a kid on the way, I seriously recommend that they sort out routes and equipment beforehand as I did. I doubt I would be capable of working up to a long commute now, especially as my weekends are no longer empty!

OK... ready to battle the crazy auto and foot traffic on move-in day at Duke... wish me luck!

p.s. Triangle folks-
We're starting up Cruiser Tuesday in Carrboro again: first ride of the 2006 season is tonight!
http://www.cruisertuesday.blogspot.com/

Get a mirror, and ride faster than everyone else. That's how I do it. :D

Nice morning ride except for the headwind. ~60F. My chain is producing a sort of grinding sensation every once in a while, even when well-lubed. Actually it gets worse after I clean it. I fear it's near death. My inner chainring is badly worn so I can't just replace the chain. I may have to take the bike in for replacements before the chain detonates. It's the original (1987) drivetrain. :eek:

Almost killed a kid.

Going over 40kmph down hill, and i see a lady comeing my way so move away more to the right cause i was going fast and there was water spray... then! this kid moves our to my right (in front of me, his left) from behine the lady to get in the puddle i was avoiding, so i slam my brake (front) but that didnt help even though it slowed me down to maybe 20 i was too late and going fast enough to dice this kid (3-5 years old) lucky he didnt go all the way to his left. i barly had room to avoid him, with a ditch on my right. Well i made it through and heard the lady scream at the boy just as i passed him... scary *****s...

And a few days ago it was raining like crazy and my v brake would fail to work untill the wheel revoved 2x or 3x, got my heart pumpin a few time lol.