the best part of waking up is foldgers in your cup......how about.....The best part of waking up is bicycling into work......anyways I believe my roadie was a evil person in it's previous life. It attracts rain! I was on the MUP yesterday the Musketawa trail Marne to Muskegon MI. In Muskegon it started to rain I got so soaked! Today on the end of my commute into work it rained again! I finally got all the dirt out of my cloths after taking the MTB down a muddy two track which was fun. :) Last night I gave a great speech on How to practice bicycle safety, and be prepared for your next bicycle ride I do belive I am going to get a good grade thanks for all of your help at the A&S forum. I think today I will have some green tea, and a good muffin :)

A perfectly ordinary commute today. It's getting close to leg warmer weather in the mornings. I had to swing by the bank for some cash and then on to the bagel shop for a honey whole wheat bagel with peanut butter. Trying to catch a green light I kind of cruised through a yellow right in front of a cop but he didn't budge. Then to the office where I really hated to stop but it's Friday and that means I need to work on my TPS reports, complete with cover sheet.

Good ride this morning. Light drizzle kept me cool, though it slowed down traffic. My new Freddy Fenders were awesome, definitely looked underneath and found plenty of grime and water. I love the cool fall weather.

I'm SLOWLY getting used to the idea that arm warmers, knee warmers, vests, and full finger gloves will be needed most mornings (like today). I sure miss those 70+ degree mornings. :o

Had to stop at Kinkos to pick up some oversize copies. While I was waiting someone remarked, "I've been meaning to get my bike out and start riding again."
He looked like he was ~40 years old. I told him it was great exercise and a lot of fun. He was slightly embarrassed when I told him I would be 62 in a few months. :)

The ride home yesterday was just about perfect. Wonderful temps 79F. Tons of cyclists out.
I was stopped waiting for traffic to clear and noticed a female roadie on the other side of the road. No, this is not my usual hormonal post. She was trackstanding in a different manner than I have seen before.
Her cranks were at a 45 degree angle matching her downtube while sitting perfectly still. That and her front wheel was perfectly straight. Dang it! I was so jealous. I can't seem to trackstand more than several seconds. I think I may need to try and copy her method.

This morning I was feeling less than excited about working and left 20 min late to discover that my front wheel had flated in the garage. Serves me right for saying I hardly ever flat. Also, removing my tuffy tire liners was an idiotic idea that I fixed while replacing my tube. At least I am getting quick at changing my tube. Too bad my cheap floor pump only takes schrader valves and my mini pump takes forever to pump up to 105psi. I think it is time to look for a road morph.

I had a coworker tell me she didn't think I would be doing this in my 30s. For one thing, I am 31. Another item are the 70-80 year olds I see pedaling along from time to time. Silly lady.
People annoy me.

I packed my backpack and laid out my bike kit last night in the hopes of a long ride this morning but Dad duties this morning prevented me from leaving the house until nearly 8. Oh well, maybe I can get a long detour home.

Gorgeous day, perhaps my last sunny weekday commute for several months. Leaving at 1pm didn't hurt either. I took a couple different routes to avoid a detour (officially marked) and some other hassles. At one intersection there seemed to be a lot of directions on the button you push to get a walk signal. I was so caught up in reading them that I didn't notice I got the light, but it was a good thing 'cause a school bus BLASTED through the red and totally would have clobbered me if I'd hit the intersection the moment my light changed.

Ever have one of those days where even though you have a headwind on the way home you just feel sluggish? Then you get home and realize that your rear brakes are rubbing because the night before while towing your trailer with 4 big bags of groceries you must have pulled the wheel forward in the dropout on the drive side (presumably at least). Here's to quick pre-ride inspections for stupid stuff like rubbing brake pads :)

The ride home was nice. The traffic was bearable.
Usually I'm a little tired by Friday afternoon, but not today. :beer:
The afternoon temps are starting to feel a little cool. Bibs and s/s jersey were barely enough to keep me warm when I hit a shady spot. :o

I'll see how energetic I am tomorrow morning when I have to head out at 8:45 to teach a bike class at REI.

Nice ride home. A little cool (50F) with a slight breeze, but braved it with only a s/s jersey; after warming up I didn't feel too cold. Decided to pick up the pace a little bit and what I normally do in 45-50m (9.5m) I did in 39m. Obviously lots of room for improvement, but I'm a newbie and this is my 3rd wk. Learning spinning/cadence (I still need to measure myself) and getting used to the toe clips. Did 75 mi for the week; not a lot but more than I've ever done before in any given week. The 700x38 Armadillos roll fine; at least better than the previous knobbies.

I might go out tomorrow and do a 20-25 miler just to try to complete 100 mi for the week.

I feel great!!!! (but boy, do I hate my job... the only positive is it pays the bills and I get to ride :)

GreenAnvil

Good ride home. 80F and sunny as usual. Very little wind.
I am meeting up with a BF member saturday to ride the foothills and Boulder. I hope my legs can take it. 220 miles since sunday + 50 or more tomorrow. eek!
That reminds me, time to pull up the Boulder bike map.

Typical but for the dead skunk in the bike lane a mile before I got to work.

Very nice coming home. Went 3 miles the wrong way 1st to double my 6-ish mile commute, felt great to have the time for that. Verified that stretching a detour around a big construction project to a big nasty road is a lot quicker than taking the detour as it's marked.

Days like today make me cringe. Halfway in, I notice my chain rubbing on my front deraileur. Odd... I just adjusted it two nights ago. I don't think anything of it until *plunk* chain drops from the big ring to the small. I try to shift it back and there's no resistance in the brifter. Great. So I pull over and take a look and find out the cable came loose from the deraileur. No time to fix it though, I'm already a little behind. So I just ride the rest of the way in the small ring and fix it when I get to work.

I figure everything is fine. At least that's what I thought until I got to a traffic light on the way home. I stopped for the red. Light turns green so I go to pedal. Deraileur cable snaps at the same moment (I was on the big ring) I push the pedal down sending the chain right onto the bottom bracket. I slam my man bits on the top tube, some how manage to unclip and catch myself from falling and limp out of traffic to the curb. I could hear people laughing. The only thing hurt was my pride thankfully. Needless to say I took it slow the rest of the way home.

Still, a bad day on the bike beats a great day anywhere else.

ain't literacy great? had a similar thing happen this morning, but not so suave. down at the bottom of the bike path where it meets the major road and has a controlled light for cyclists, i pushed the button, waited the usual five minutes and then just had this really weird total-dork moment when the light changed. i put my right foot back on the platform pedal and applied instant-takeoff pressure, without checking first that the pedal was flat. i had it on the edge. it spun round, my foot shot off it, i did this buster keaton bit i can only describe as falling through the bike . . . impressively embarrassing, but while i was painfully unpeeling myself from the crossbar some twit across the road was running the light, so oh well. guess i got the guardian angel with the sense of humour.

conversation with the qa manager when i got to work. she was skulking in the car park smoking and got curious about the bike-commute thing. i got the flash-of-inspiration answer to those who are only curious enough to ask how far you ride because they never ride anywhere, and then blithely ordain that it's a nice easy ride. 'yeah,' i said cheerfully, 'that's what i thought too before i did it.' was pleased with myself all the rest of the day :D

I'll have to admit, I rode in Thursday but because of working late and the cold rain I left my bike at work and took a ride. I can assure you that taking a ride is a very, very rare event for me. It did give me a chance to have a great run to work Friday morning and ride my bike back home in the evening. It turned out to be an awesome ride. The weather was cool and with just a sprinkle of rain. Really nice.

The weather is lovely: cool but not too cold. Little traffic. Whatever traffic is there is still annoying however. God people are dumb! As I'm waiting to make a left turn from a small street onto an arterial, this POS comes up to me on the right, turns left with me and proceeds to yell at me. I yell back of course... But there is no point in trying to educate such morons... Just pedal along...

50 miles and 3100 of climbing. Topanga was very rough for 2-3 miles due to repaving. A bit cold but warmed up once on PCH. Commute to work completely in the dark. Trailtech light did a nice job of lighting up the road, not enough for daytime speed on the downhills but enough for 25mph.
More than the usual number of hostile drivers on the way home. On Sepulveda there is a section that requires either riding on the sidewalk or taking the right lane. I took the lane. It's the 3rd lane that merges after the light. A women driving an Explorer was 6-10 inches from my back wheel despite lane #2 being available, in the intersection she passed and layed on the horn. If someone waved a gun that would be a crime, but use your car to threaten someones life and it's ok. I'm really sick of it. Open season on bicyclists in Los Angeles. When will it stop?

Again, nice commute this morning. Starting to get chilly... 44F started to use a balaclava and under armour; still felt my cold in my elbows. Really smooth ride, almost no cagers, great starry sky! Took a shower and breakfast and feel like a champion now! :)

Happy to be bike commuting and being a part of this bunch.

GreenAnvil

We're getting one of those days of fall that is having an identity crisis and thinks it's still summer. 50 when I came in this morning (20 degrees warmer then last week), and a possiblility of a big big rain storm. Fortuantly I didn't get hit with rain, but since it is getting darker, I had a chance to test out my headlight for the whole ride. Niiiiice.
Good commute :)

Fine ride in this morning. Had to carry a foam-board poster into the office, so that was a bit tricky turning with it under my arm. I would have put it in the trailer but I've been evicted for the next week because my roomate's family is in town and he needed an extra bed. So I'll be commuting from three different locations this week, possibly one much farther way from work than usual. Should be interesting.

Let's see best way to describe today's commute - WHEEEEEE!!! :D

The ride this morning was not as fun a usual, although the weather was quite nice.

At the beginning of my commute: from my house ~15 m to stop sign, left onto four lane road, ~50 m to lights to cross 6 lane road, ~100 m in left turn lane to lights to turn left onto two lane parkway. So I took the left turn lane and a jerk in a Jetta honked and buzzed me, passing on the right, to get around me so he/she could wait to turn left in front of me (behind two other cars) at the red light instead of behind me. Nice. I wanted to yell at them, but instead I waived to thank them for the morning wake-up-honk. Only the second time, since I started bike commuting in June, that I've been honked at while riding in Ottawa... so I'm not really used to it.

About 15 minutes later I stopped and waited behind a school bus loading up a bunch of kids by some big apartment buildings. Once the lights on the bus turned off I realized that all the traffic was still backed up and stopped on the street. I slowly passed the bus and a few cars and realized it was because there was a bike down, rider in the middle of the road surrounded by a bunch of people, bike off to the side on the sidewalk. :( I passed it all cautiously because there was nothing I could do to help and I didn't want to be in the way. After I got past I could hear sirens and see lights way behind me trying to get passed the backed up cars, and there was an ambulance coming in the other direction that I saw just before I turned off that road. It's a two lane road, designated as a "recommended bike route" although there are no bike lanes. I ride on it every day. I hope the rider is ok.

This morning was my first commute since last Monday - I worked from home on Tue, Wed, and Thur last week and then had to get to the airport on Friday.

Anyway, after spending Saturday morning on a 30 miles ride around the island of Manhattan on Air's Downtube, my 7 mile commute this morning felt like nothing at all! Great weather this morning, and no issues. Yay.