pinkrobe

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!

Lossy

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.

luckysnafu

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.

knobster

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.

caloso

Rode the race bike to work again, hoping that I'll get the chance for a long detour home tonight. And doubly hoping that it doesn't rain because I've got no fenders and I just washed it.

Itsjustb

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....

ActionJeans

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.

HardyWeinberg

Nice sunny day. Ahh...

particleman42

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!

GreenAnvil

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

nukemm

Ride to work this morning was great. Heavy enough traffic that I beat my neighbour to work by nearly 20 minutes . 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!

urban rider

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.

jyossarian

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.

marqueemoon

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.

tokolosh

gee, thanks for that reminder

wasn't cold going in this morning that i remember, but that's not surprising at 11am. drizzly and cool, very nice. left work at 4-something because of arrangements to go to a friend's house and watch game 5 of the mets/cards series. i just rode in my regular clothes because (of course) i got kept longer than i intended and because they're not such good friends yet that i want to spend four hours in front of them in spandex. riding in street clothes isn't much fun when you're in a hurry.

dark and cold by the time i left there and headed for home. guess i'm getting re-acclimatised after the summer, because it wasn't that cold. i'm still riding kind of slow and clunky because i'm still pretty tired.

GreenAnvil

49F, light rain. Great commute.

Arrived @ work to find a new bike rack the company just purchased set up on the building's parking lot, right under a light pole. That's way much better than locking against a tree which is what I used to do.

Ran into a neighbor at a local grocery store; he was all excited about my bike commuting. When I come home in the afternoon families are hanging out on the street and they all see me riding by. I live in a small rural community where people may not all know each other but for the most part they know if you live around the area. Folks along my commute route are starting to get familiar with me; it's a nice feeling.

GreenAnvil

chipcom 

F_ing wet!

jeff-o

Despite the rain, it was a pretty fast commute. The rain was just enough to soak my coat by the time I rolled in to work, but fortunately it wasn't too cold. I don't know if I timed my breakfast properly, if it was the newly lubed chain, or whether the rain reduced the road friction, but I was flying to work at least 2 or 3 km/h faster than usual. It'll be raining when I ride home too, so we'll see if my average speed is still higher... that will at least eliminate the breakfast theory.

Novakane 

It was a nice ride in for me this morning. It was only 5C but I bought new full-finger gloves which kept my hands from being cold. I also picked up new brake pads, rear shifting cable and cork handlebar wrap this weekend. I finished up getting it all re-assembled last night and rode in this morning - it was a treat to have more than two gears again!
I also remounted the rear rack with better bolts so it doesn't warp or come loose so much with the extra weight of my laptop in the panniers. I got extra long bolts so I can use the same attachment point for my electronics.

I did hit one heck of a pot-hole along the way. I saw it last second and managed to slow the bike a little bit before I hit it good. It was a strange thing, as I was stopping, to watch my LED light launch up in front of me, do a lazy twist in the air and come crashing down. I guess due to the forward motion it was launched with, the light was matching my speed as I braked so it appeared to just hang in the air like it was zero gravity for a second. Totally surreal - until it hit the ground. Still works OK, but it certainly justifies why I usually elastic the light to it's bracket. I misplaced the elastic last night and didn't bother to replace it - oops. My panniers popped off the rack too, but they're also strapped on so they couldn't go anywhere. Thankfully my rims are OK.

pinkrobe

The wet snow on the streets melted somewhat and turned into ice overnight - except on my commute in. I didn't have time to get the spiked tires on the bike, so I sucked it up and rode in on my skinny tires. No worries, no problems. Oh, except that my helmet broke when I put it on and I had to superglue it back together. Suxxorz!

Itsjustb

The latest trend in auto-safety is to see me signalling a lane change to the left, then speed up to almost hit me. Twice in two days--both BMWs. It may be too early to say it's BMW drivers, I'll go out on a limb and say they're related.

Forgot to put the fender back on the bike this morning. See the attached local doppler image. I think I'm gonna get wet this afternoon.

Novakane 

As a side note, I was just coming back into the office and my bike is in view as I enter - and I notice that my pot-hole incident earlier also bent one of the stays on the rack. It bent back OK. That's what happened when my laptop (in a protective bag, in a waterproof pannier) slammed into it after the pannier came un-hung, I guess.

jyossarian

Part of my commute is now on brand new pavement, freshly laid last night. I wonder how long it'll be before Con Ed comes by and rips it up. The rest of the unpaved, torn up road is still nice and dirty so clouds of dust and dirt get kicked up by trucks and buses and the wind blows all that stuff right into my face. I hope they pave the rest of it tonight.

On the way in, a couple of cars, a taxi and a Porsche, tried to edge into my lane before they'd passed me or even pulled even w/ me. So I did what any right-minded cyclist would do: I forced them back into their lanes by pulling slightly ahead and moving into their lane. It worked!

MikeR

I never take my fenders off. Lite rain this morning but ride was fun. Rain is supposed to increase this afternoon.

Relaxer

Some mornings I relish the prospect of commuting in a cold rain. This was not one of those times. It was cold, wet, I was running late, I didn't pack well (am wearing damp white athletic socks with my dark brown suit until I can dash out to the store a couple blocks away) and I forgot to bring cash for lunch, so will have to go out in the rain to the ATM.

On the plus side, I finally got to use my new rain pants and was delighted in how well they worked.