Oh, what a difference a day makes! After all the snow yesterday morning, it was nice to head home last night on dry streets. This morning it was nice and clear all the way in, with minimal traffic and a tailwind. If all goes well, I should be able to roll up my shants and ditch my jacket for the ride home! :D

Commute in was pretty nice. Got started a little later than normal, but the bike was riding well. I seemed pretty fast today (about 10 minutes faster than the 'normal' pace over 22 miles). Slowed to ask a guy with a flat if he needed any help with a tube, patch or CO2 (he didn't). After that, a guy on a Giant T-mobile team bike was riding my wheel - finally passed me on a climb, but he never got more than 25 yards in front of me. I was able to keep up until my turn-off. (my JTS with fenders, rack and 32mm tires is a LOT heavier than the TCR he was riding, and I'm sure I outweighed him by 20 lbs). So, I felt pretty good about the ride.

Rode in with full rain kit on and got more wet from the inside out than the outside in.

Rode home with 30 MPH tailwind. It was a quick ride home :D

Bless your heart! I've had 6 flats in the past few weeks (it's a long story - I think I'm running too small a rear tire so I'm getting pinch flats on nasty bumps and the slime tubes are a monster to patch well) and in all the time I've spent on the side of the road with literally hundreds of cars, three or four bikes and several golf carts passing, only one of the golf carts stopped to make sure everything was Ok. Getting completely ignored by the other cyclists was by far the worst...

I'm trying to balance out my karma - two weeks ago I had THREE flats in one ride. One guy was nice enough to let me use his mini pump (I ran out of CO2), and another guy gave me a tube. (I'm now carrying 2 in case I run into him again). A shop that was closed opened up when they saw me get out my cell phone to call for a ride, and they sold me 2 tubes. So, I need to pay it forward a few times to make it up.

If I see a cyclist by the side of the road, I'm at least going to ask if they need help. There's nothing like being stranded.

Early start, 3am to drive wife and Thing 2 to airport for x/c flight. 104 miles on the freeway there and back, then bring sleepy kindergartener thing 2 back into house to resume sacking out until it was time for him to get up and at'em. He was alert enough to have noticed that I jacked his training wheels up to their max height while we were biking to school (why do my front and back wheels reach all the way down and the training wheels don't go that far anymore? I think was the way he phrased it).

Then, partly to atone for a poptart mixed in with the usual cheerios for breakfast, I again tacked on my 10 mile out-and-back past work, even though I was pretty far behind schedule; got in a full 50 min late, what can I say, it's been a crazy day.

Good grief! You rode in that bike lane?? I would declare it basically unrideable and would ride in the regular lane. Except the surface is crappy there too (not nearly as bad as in the bl though), especially between Dundas and College, so I've been mostly avoiding Beverly the last few months. Although St. George, its continuation north of College, has absolutely beautiful smooth pavement now... Let's hope they fix Beverly soon!

My commute today... was in a bus 'cause my bike's in repair right now. Then I got a ride back from a student I tutored. While in a car, we had a conversation about cyclists and I got to do a bit of cycling advocacy and explaining the cyclists' right to the road. She had all the common reactions "Oh, I thoughts cyclists were supposed to be on the sidewalk. Oh, I would never have thought sidewalks were that dangerous!" I went on to say how cyclists are allowed to not only be on the road but to take the lane if necessary and all by herself she came to the conclusion "Oh, so you treat them just like another vehicle!" Good, very good! :)

Wotta head wind -

I was crawling through my ride home in low gears almost the whole way home. At least the rain held out. On the plus side, I found a Topeak basket waiting on my front steps for errands on the weekends.

Good training. Changed the route home and added 400 feet of gain. Most of the gain was on a 2/3 mile stretch of busy road with a nice shoulder bike lane. Good feeling knowing most of those motorists zipping by were semi awed by the cyclist going up the hill with two fat bags on the bike. This same hill has two more bail out points on it so I can get as much training as I want. On a weekend in that same area I can climb over 3,000 feet in 10 miles without repeating the route. Goes near Levi's neighborhood.

warmer today- so much less ice. I've felt kind of out of it this week, though. real sluggish. funky winds and temperatures and a really busy schedule have made the commute a bit more of a grind than usual. Though I must admit I'm so glad to have it for the decompress time it gives me after some of these long days. As I left the other night (at almost 11p) my colleagues at work- we were all exhausted- couldn't believe I was about to cycle home. Given that some tempers had just flared in a meeting I'll bet by the time I got home my blood pressure was 20 points lower than any of those who drove home. In fact, by the time I got home I'd pretty much forgotten what everyone was so upset about. :p

depending on where you live in Michigan you have both gray wolves and coyotes-

http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7...1682--,00.html

we get some pretty massive coyotes out here in New England these days and they look pretty wolf-like.

This mornings ride was nice and quiet...only 36, but a light wind. Love starting out my mornings that way:)



Well, that outline does look a heck of a lot like what I saw, but being a bit further south, it's just as likely it was a dog. Though that would be cool if I saw one...so long as it doesnt attack :b

I'm late, I'm late, I'm late for a very important date.

Overslept. Still rode in, nice an easy pace, I was already going to be late, so why not enjoy the scenery?
Othehrwise and uneventful commute.

On my way home I rode through a NPS Park Police speed trap in front of the Jefferson Memorial. I was hoping he would aim the radar gun at me, but he didn't even bother--I was doing my best to go 13mph against a 20mph headwind. I stopped to thank the officer for being out there and told him how I'm always buzzed by cars going 50mph + (in a 25mph zone) through there.

Nice sunny crisp spring morning. First commute of the year. It felt good to be back on the bike

Uneventful ride this morning. Nothing to see here, move along....

I got punched by a taxi driver this morning after he cut me off and I slapped his hood! My shoulder hurts! What a punk! He needs to take his anger, spin it into a thread and then knit a sweater of love out of it.

I'm only working until noon today, then going on a cat-ski trip for two days of sweet pow. The sun is shining, the brown haze is drifting off toward SK, and I'm riding fast on skinny tires. :D

The front derailer on my Kona Jake has always been cranky. Since I'm still a bike newb I tend to just leave it on the middle chainring and try to get out of the lowest gears on the casette asap to avoid drivetrain wear. Yesterday's commute home involved a muddy shoulder, though, so I had to drop it to the smallest chainring in order to keep moving. (The rear tire was digging in, and I'm already planning to replace it with something bigger and more offroad-ish when I get the money. Schwalbe is (justifiably) very proud of their tires.) So when I started this morning's commute at 4:30am (late because of my sick 4 year old) I got to battle with the front derailer until I finally got some decent pedal resistance and no grinding noises from the front end. It's my fourth day of bike commuting this week (Wednesday I had shopping and yoga, so I drove - the Jake won't hold an overfilled shopping cart full of groceries) and I was clearly a bit tired riding in - not quite as much zip trying to catch the lights and I was just a little more tired that I was biking in earlier in the week. Also, annoyingly enough, I must have gotten some mud or something on my rear derailer, because the darn thing wouldn't shift into the lowest gears - the shifter was giving me a lot more resistance than normal. I figured I'd sort things out once I got to work.

Well at about the 17 mile mark I had one of those "Hey..." moments and squinted down at my chainrings long enough to determine that I had, in fact, been using the largest chainring the entire time and hadn't noticed. I went ahead and rode the last 3 miles in that chainring just because I could.:D

Wow. I hope he's missing a couple of teeth now thanks to U-lock corrective dental surgery...

Heh chephy, yeah - I rode in it, wasn't too bothered about time/speed (and I'm on my knobbies right now, which seem to handle a lot of more the crappy surfaces much better), so I just stuck with it - post College was nice, so it was worth it :) Nice work with the advocacy!

This morning I rode straight directly to work along King, as I've got a long ride to North York and back down to the upper beaches this afternoon - kinda nervous about it as I'm feeling a bit off (head cold/throat swollen typical crap) and it's pretty far for me being out of shape right now - but am fuelling up ready - it's nice today, so should be a good ride nonetheless. I'm riding up that same bike lane/street again, following city route #35 all the way up, as I don't want to contend with Yonge St, I've got to go the distance but want a less stressful ride - res. streets will help out I figure :)

Ride in was basically uneventful, ran a couple of ambers because I just didn't want to stop - had a car try to sneak by me in the same lane (I was 1/3 into the lane riding slower than traffic, but not THAT slow) and I looked, he must've realised it was a bad plan and held back - he was to turn at the next light anyway (as they always do, idiots racing for the next light).

I hate violence and I didn't even touch the guy. I just stood there nice and tall looking down at the guy, even when he pushed me and then punched me in the chest. He put his nose about an inch away from mine and he smelled bad. If he had escalated it any further, I might have hit back, but there were dozens of people around and I know for a fact my place of work has 2 CCTV cameras pointed right where we had our altercation (we were right outside the main entrance to Union Station). I'm not going to waste my time with the police over some jackass trying to give me a charlie-horse though. These idiots need to think before they act; they could get themselves put in jail or lose their livelihood if they aren't careful.

Warm, dark and wet.
Hoot-owl in the rain.
Life is good.

That's the difference between cycling and the auto-mad-bile. You won't hear a cager saying something like that.

It was a little cold this morning, and I had extra time, so I decided to stop for a hot cup of Chai tea. Sat around for awhile, read a book, then high tailed it to work. Since I went out of my way to visit my friend's coffee shop I took a different route into work, and it wasn't a good one. The road was too busy, and the lanes too narrow. I'll have to find some side streets if I want to do the early-morning Chai thing again.

Unbelievable.

Highs inland will be in the upper 70s and low 70s at the beach. The morning low was 58 at my house when I departed. Temperature was perfect on my way to work and my bike shifted like butter.

My route runs from Hermosa Beach to Santa Monica along the beach.... Then I cut through the residential section of Santa Monica to Brentwood. 19 flat miles on smooth pavement. Looking forward to the ride home.

Brisk-ish, proto-sunny, like the last few days. Will probably turn to rain again, like the last few days did. Added 5 miles to commute, chopped off the last 4 (w/ big hill) I'd added the last 4 days. I was running about an hour late after all.

used budding public transit today (w/breakfast-diner break prior to walking rest of the way to work) after 1 week vacation and 1 week commute. a nice change, but missed the bike today (bitter/sweet)!
the week-end is here now for some, enjoy!

A very nice rice both directions and I arrived home not too tired. Ah the weekend!

:beer:

good for you. you made the world a better place by not giving over to it. all we need is two more people wailing on one another over something stupid. if the cab driver didn't learn anything from it then, hopefully, some of the people watching did.