tonight coming home was the first ride where i felt actual cold. no idea what the temperature was but it wasn't murderous or anything. just - well, cold. better start getting used to it.

Nice commute on the way home yesterday but I can tell cooler weather is here to stay. :crash: It was cool enough that I needed my vest and thought about pulling on the arm warmers. :(

31F this morning, but very still with great clear skies. First time I've used a full-face balaclava with ski googles; that worked great, no fogging of the googles and no crying eyes. Only had liner gloves and my hands and arms felt a little cold. Great to start making the transition to cold weather; I hope to ride through the winter so today was good training in terms of learning what type of clothing works and what doesn't.

GreenAnvil

Not happening this morning. Not yet ready for real rain riding (we're in the middle of the "worst drought on record" or whatever...) Basically 24 hours straight of rain, with expectations that it will continue until tonight, means I'll be in the pickup for the drive in to work...

My commute will be warm and dry all week. I'm on vacation. :D
Everyone have fun. I'll be thinking about you.
I'll be back at it next Monday. :o

This morning's commute was a treasure. Ended with a 2 minute ride into one of the most beautiful dawn skies I've ever seen. I stopped and stared out in front of my building. I finally decided to head in and turned to see a rainbow in the west. How cool is that??

Worth every bit of the rain that falls on me on the way home today!!

Dalmore, I'm glad someone else saw that sunrise this morning. I'm especially glad that I had to be in the office earlier than usual and got to stop to enjoy it. I made a special side trip to get to the highest point along my route but quite get over the tree tops. The sky was just an unbelievable color.

I caged it this morning, but yeah the sky was incredible . Pink, red, and purple all swirled in together. I almost put the car in park while in my driveway just to sit and look at that sky. The traffic on my road stopped me long enough to look at it without having to shift into park :D

First snow fall of the season. Front lawns and parked cars had an icing suger layer covering them. The wet fluffy stuff is coming down at a pretty good rate keeping the roads real wet. Left the slicks on because it was more like riding in rain than snow, and I'm guessing the afternoon is going to be quite nice with no evidence a snowfall occured. It was 0 C.

First commute to work after an unexpected 3 weeks away from the office. Managed to keep a 25+ mph pace to keep up w/ traffic for a few blocks until we hit the part of the road where the top layer's been stripped off making it slow, rough and dusty for about a 1/2 mile. Feels good to be commuting again.

The leaves are peaking as was the sun this morning, through low clouds. Very inspiring. Love to see the trout fisherman on the river again--my MUP passes along the Rocky River in Cleveland area. I got to join them sometime.

Ditto! Also worth mentioning is that this was my first day bike commuting in three weeks [1 week business trip, 2 weeks on a cycling vacation]. The last time I rode, I was in shorts and a t-shirt, and today we have wet snow. I also have a new blinkie on the bike. It's cool!

I just can't get myself to ride in the morning, but every afternoon so far.

Yesterday I was riding, towing the little trailer, and I swerved around a piece of styrofoam. Apparently the bicycle trailer tracks far differently, it popped over the piece of sytrofoam and ran into my tire. I applied the brakes and didn't over turn, but I hate to think what would have happened if my kid was in there. It was dragged overturned for several feet!

I also need to figure out where to store my bike inside in my apartment.

Nice cool morning for the ride in today. Last week the coolest morning was in the upper 50s and this morning was in the low 40s. Wore pants and a sweatshirt to keep warm and was sweating by the time I arrived at work. Took my time to enjoy the cold air and the sun rising. One of these mornings I will stop and take a picture of the fog over the golf course with the sun rising over it.

A little further West in the town of Greensboro, it hit a balmy 39.. I got to try out a bunch of new gear this morning. I wore my Showers Pass Century jacket, a poly thin pair of long underwear, cotton long sleeve t-shirt and a pair of wicking sweat pants. Only thing that was cold was my toes. Guess those wool d-feet socks aren't enough... My new trekking bars made my commute very enjoyable.

Lossy, thanks for the head's up. My wife and I are expecting our first Thing ;) and I've been thinking about getting a trailer. Reading this made me start thinking about what I'll need to do to get ready--practice turns & avoiding objects, stopping with the extra weight, etc.

Oh well, if it means more hours on the bike to make sure I'm ready, I'll just have to deal.... :D

Commuted Sunday (yesterday) and Monday (today). Sunday was nice, cooler than I thought, but ended up being very nice. No real wind, no hassels, very nice.

Monday, cool, and pretty damp when I left the house, I wasn't wearing enough up top, but broke out my tights for the first time this year (I wear shorts of the top of em', I find it lessens my aggro rating amongst motorist). Headwind at about 10 mph all the way in, didn't let up hardly at all. So, I just picked a lower gear and spun, rather than wear myself out. I pretty much always have a carb shot at about the halfway point, just to stay fresh. Found some new stuff called Hammer Gel, tropical. Taste pretty good, seems to go down easier than both the Powergel and Gu. My LBS had it in, and I thought I would try it. If you're getting gassed half way, and have a commute longer than 15 miles, I highly recommend packing one of these in your bag/shorts. Big time pickmeup.

Had a minor problem with a school bus, they seem to really be bad about getting super close to me. I let him know at the light he had gotten pretty close to me. He kind of made a face, but then passed me with a wide birth after that (we traded positions back and forth a few lights), at which point I waved and gave a thumbs up. Nice to see he cared.

Altercation with a cabbie, would not have minded if it was just me, but a lady was in the cross walk as he was turning right, and we both had the green, and the crossing light (I had just gotten on the curb as I realized I wanted to make a left, and rather than be a jerk and unsafe. cutting across 3 lanes of traffic, I decided to go across at the next intersection). He almost ran both myself, and her over, at which point I said, rather camly, but obviously displeased "it's called a crosswalk". He didn't like that, and shouted "what did you just say?", which I responded in a much louder voice, "It's called a crosswalk, DUDE!", he made a motion like he was going to get out of his cab, but changed his mind when he saw I wasn't really concerned.

The usual, happens at least once a week, but you'd figure people that drive for a living would know the law on, you know, driving. The nice thing was having a cab buddie of his follow me (not chase me, he was going that way anyway), and continually honk his horn. I waved when I took a left of from him, and he layed on the horn some more. Have fun with that.

Tonights apparently going to suck. Big rain, and I didn't bring any rain gear, because I'm an optimistic idiot. At least it won't be to cold.

Nice sunny day. Ahh...

Today was my first commute in real rain. It was 50 degrees so the cold wasn't an issue but the rain was coming down pretty hard. My route and timing kept me at the edge of the rain so behind me it was just sprinkling while ahead of me it was pouring. I had packing tape over the holes in my helmet to keep my head dry. My showers pass jacket and red ledge rain pants did their job very nicely. I arrived at work dry and warm. The only surprise was how slippery my mtb shoes are on the wet road. The first time I put my foot down as I stopped I almost fell on the top tube. Lesson learned!

Ride home was nice & peaceful. 65F!!! Had dinner, will take a 1.5 hr break and then do my chest/triceps routine. Feeling great!!!

GreenAnvil

Ride to work this morning was great. Heavy enough traffic that I beat my neighbour to work by nearly 20 minutes :D. I passed him in traffic about a mile into the ride, and didn't see him again until we were at work already. He started asking questions, so I started evangelising about bike commuting. Hopefully he has the crazy lack of sense it takes to commute on bike through winter in the PNW. Wet, windy, & cold... for 4-7 months out of the year. I made it to work in 24 minutes, chugging along at nearly 18MPH. Go me! That really doesn't count for anything, though, because the ride to work is all down hill after the first .25 miles, then I have a short (yet steep) hill or a long, gradual incline (depending on route), and I've started taking the long, gradual incline, and I'm able to keep over 14MPH, which is really good for making it to work on time, not to mention a great aerobic workout!

The ride home was a little odd, too. I take the steep hill home, because I book down at over 30MPH, then it's flat for over a mile before a hill again. Instead of taking the sidewalk to go up the hill/bridge, I stayed in the road. Man, I didn't know how much extra work I was putting in to go over the bumps on the sidewalk! I managed close to 10MPH up the hill, with a 14MPH average on the whole trip. I hit one red light, and while I was stopped a Transit bus was pulling up in the next lane, and he bopped me in the head with his mirror, just barely. He apologized, I laughed, and went on. All in all, a good day. I think 2 days off the bike got me some stamina back, as I'm feeling much better now than I was last week!

I decided to take another route to work today. My reward was two flat tires. As I was riding into work on the second flat I would stop every 100 feet and fill the tire up with air. I was grateful for the alleged spare tire, pump and the opportunity to get real good at pumping air. Oh well, tommorow is another day--rain, a chance to test my new rain gear.





Gas, the price of a can of beans.

The beginning of the ride home was snarled w/ cars all trying to change lanes at once meaning I was zig zagging all over the place and changing lanes often in order to keep moving. The usual.

Slightly OT: I was listening to a benefits call today when one of the audience members asked if bike commuting was covered by the Commuting Reimbursement program. Apparently it's not and when asked why, the speaker said car maintenance wasn't covered either so why should bikes be covered? Then it devolved into a short debate about energy conservation and lack of incentive to actually conserve any.

Caught and passed some dude who happened to be riding my same route and blew by everyone like he was hot **** on the first climb. I didn't make an effort to chase him and he had a 2 block gap on me at one point, but the way the lights were timed I was able to catch him on the last climb. Maybe not the most mature instinct but I couldn't help putting in a little sprint. At least it got me to work faster. :D