The evening commute to day was very short, barely 1 mile to the LBS, where my bike got dropped off for a tune-up. My wife then picked me up and drove me the last 6.5 miles home, nice, warm, and dry.

Nice ride in. Ride home was a little more exiting. I rode some rough roads yesterday and thought I got all the bolts tightened down. Wrong! I was accelerating on the hoods when the handlebar rotated down and almost threw me down in front of my bike . Don't I feel like an idiot. Luckily, I hung on, came to a stop, got out my multitool and made sure everything was really secure.

just about the most insanely perfect weather to bike to work that you could have. 11 centigrade. high light pale grey luminous sky, perfectly uniform colour like what you sometimes get when it's snowed. wet roads with the light on them. trees all around with still just enough autumn colour on them to set off all the shades of grey. gusty winds from all different directions, but nothing too strong - just a lot of fresh air. it was beautiful.

spent half of saturday mooching around on outdoorsman's-strip down on broadway, theoretically looking for waterproofing for feet. but really just kind of hanging out and looking at stuff. i looked at a lot of options and dithered a bit in the direction of waterproof hiking boots, but in the end settled for the things i'd wanted to go get in the first place: the serious 3-ply goretex booties from taiga. always kind of yearned after those booties. to me they're the badge of the serious bike commuter. wasn't actively raining by our standards when i set out today but i wore them anyway, and a good thing i did. the Puddles That Ate Manhattan are still lurking all over the mup. it was FUN to go through those things and not even get a tiny bit wet; completely worth it.

the resident building handyman-type guy is a bit of a bike dude. he's got an old rocky mountain thing he uses for around the site that i've always kind of liked, so when i found out whose it was we had a few conversations about the whole bike-lifestyle schmear. he was fetching something from the storage zone while i unlocked the cage; he did that double-take thing and said 'you didn't ride in today, did you?'

yup. yup, i sure did

45F this morning with winds coming off the lake and gusting to ~25MPH into my face. Not my fastest ride.

I hooked the rack up to the car and the wife and I drove to the voting booth. Once we'd voted I took off the bike and managed to get into work in a reasonable time frame (only about 5-10 minutes later then normal). Good ride

Last nights ride home was brutal...58 degrees and a headwind that clobbered me. I swear I would have gone faster backwards if I stopped pedaling.

Fun Fact: Polls in Michigan open at 7am. I was there at 7:02am and I was the 18th person in line. Dang seniors with nothing else to do!

That's how I felt this morning. At least I'm blaming it on the headwind at any rate.

Had a great ride home, really felt good about both rides yesterday (Monday), though I was damn tired last night after the riding I did on the weekend caught up, too...

I'm aiming for an early rest and try for 4/5 this week so I took today off, and I looked out and it had rained - would've been another nice test for the fenders.. Many more chances, I'm very sure.

Ride in was fine. More middle of the road and lane splitting. Got to work and had a good conversation w/ a co-worker I hadn't seen in a while. We joked about him losing one of me (he's lost over 200 lbs) and he said he noticed I'm riding into work and congratulated me on it. I told him I could lie and say it saves me money, time and is a good workout, but the truth is, it's fun and that's the only reason I do it. The rest is just benefits of the fun.

We finally dipped under 40 degrees this morning, which I'm happy about -- seems like every day I'm calling the weather and it's 43 degrees. I swear, I had four or five days in a row of that. Nice misty fog out too. Almost bit it on a patch of leaves though.
Supposed to rain buckets tomorrow morning, which is a bummer.

I rode to the polls on the way to work this morning and I was very pleased to be one of 3 cycling voters at the time, including a mom with two toddlers in a trailer.

Then I decided to take a longer way in, along the river path. I stopped to watch a big crane load rocks from a barge onto the farside levee. Took off my sweater and rode the rest of the way in a t-shirt. Such a gorgeous day that I think I'll take a long lunch ride.

Oh man - I'm so stupid, I shoulda stayed home this morning.

First off, I'm late for work, so I don't check the weather before hopping on my bike.
Little did I know that two days of rain was only minutes from beginning.
Unprepared, I arrive at work soaked, cold, miserable.

Then, on the way home for lunch, a split-second of inattention and I'm colliding with a parked car.
It was a graceful glancing blow, but I still took a spill into the road - soaked, cold, miserable, and now in pain!
I think I win the Darwin Award for the day.

Today was pretty rough. I lugged a ton of gear for starters (I don't have a rack yet, so it goes in my ridiculously large camelbak), which must have weighed 20 lbs or so... Fog, rain, wet, clammy, and a headwind all the way in. Pretty slow ride, but I did the right thing, I put it in a lower gear, and actually road slower, rather than killing myself to maintain the same time. Left early enough to take it fairly easy.

Good news is, my new bike jacket my Mom got me for my birthday worked like a champ today. First real test since I've had it. It's the Endura Lomond, which I think is discontinued, but Nashbar still has these on sale. I got the only one which was on their "returned merchandise" list. $60 as apposed to the usual $90, so thanks Mom, for picking that up for me.

Ride other than the nasty conditions was pretty tame, only one guy honked at me, and it was hilarious, because he passed me pretty slow, and I got to see his wife hit him pretty hard in the arm. I laughed, and waved. All the truckers down going down Atlanta road; if you read this forum, any of you, thanks for giving me some room today.

Post ride recovery? Chocolate cake donut. Don't I know it

Had a good ride this morning...my first big cross town commute. All of the traffic seemed to go my way. Everytime I needed to cross a few lanes to make a left the roads were wide open. It was also a nice cool morning in Arizona which made it that much better.

Great ride this morning. I'm surprised at how "warm" the temperatures are holding up this time of the year. My night commutes are in the upper 50's and sometimes even 60's.

A cool drizzle on my way home tonight. Need to adjust the rear disc brakes. Looking forward to tomorrow's ride. I'll try to ride every single day this week, God willing.

GreenAnvil

Ride home was fine except for some moron in a Benz SUV that I was riding next to decided he needed to make a right so he sped up, cut in front of me and slammed on the brakes. I hit my brakes, swerved to the left around him and yelled "Nice move dickhead!" through his rolled up window while he was talking to his friend. Even w/ the HID, I guess he just figured he's in a Benz and has more rights to the road than me. Some people are just malicious.

My trip home today was multi-faceted. I walked for over a mile to the LBS, waited for most of an hour for my bike to get finished, test-rode it, came back in for a couple of minor adjustments, and made a quick trip home with a nice and well-adjusted drive-train. =-)

Still aching from a hard weekend ride and sore throat but got on the bike and after a mile all was forgotten. Took the long route, with a singletrack diversion to Training Loop in the Don and then more singletrack along the river... by this evening it was raining but still quite warm and enjoyed the ride home against the wind. Am now officially addicted. 20 miles today and felt like it was too short.

woke up in the morning to a flat tire on my commuter bike. Grabbed the folder and was out the door in no time. got to the polls, voted and rolled on to downtown. nice ride back to join my wife. we threw the folder in the car and went to visit a friend. Got home and found out every candidate I voted for won! wow! that hasn't happened in a while. Great day. hooray for democracy.

Todays trip was uneventful as I carpooled in with my wife. Reason being is that yesterday I had a rather eventful trip in on my fixed gear Motobecane. The first 15.6 miles weren't to terribly exciting, but the last mile as I was merging left to make a lefthand turn in somewhat brisk and dense traffic I managed to strike a pedal on a curb. I was cutting over at a rather severe angle so that I could get in the lane and I realized that I was coming in too close to the median so I tried to correct but before I could I struck my left pedal on the curb, catapulting me over the handle bars head over heels onto the (thankfully grassy) center median. My Motobecane followed me and ended up several feet behind. I got up as quick as I could, checked my wheels (they were out of true but rideable) and hopped back on, trying to preserve some dignity in the process but my handlebars were way off so I had to hop off again and bust out the multitool to fix 'em. I completed the rest of the ride uneventfully and wasn't too much the worse for wear (so I thought) besides a scrape on my forehead, a couple scrapes on my arm, and a slightly sore shoulder (where I landed). I got grass stains all over my pants but what the heck, it gives them character. While at work I trued up my wheels and the ride home was very pleasant.

Later that evening my side started aching a little bit, but I didn't think much of it until I touched the hurt spot and noticed that I had a dent in my ribcage. As of this morning I was hurting a bit more and now I'm thinking I may have broken a rib. I've broken them before and there's not much I can do for it (besides painkillers) but I want to be able to ride and don't want to be loopy. I took today off but tomorrow I'm going to climb back on and ride again. I'll probably take a bus part of the way if my side starts really bothering me, but my wife and I rode to vote and then to dinner and I've been pretty active since and the pain isn't anything I can't deal with. Hope to have a better report tomorrow.

Bummer on the rib injury livewirerc. Here's hoping it's just bruised so it only hurts for a week or so instead of a month or so.

Had it not been for the November Commuting Challenge, I wouldn't have rode in today. I had time constraints on both ends of my commute, but I made it just in time both ways. I rode to the polls on the way home. The ride was plesant both ways except I seemed to hit every blasted red light on the way in.

crashed (mildly) on my way in this morning. the giant-puddle-on-the-far-side-of-the-mup had drained out, but what it left behind was a long, deep tract of silt. i guess slicks don't cut through that stuff very well. i braked too hard when i realised how slippery it was, bike slithered and went into the low crash barrier on the right side and i guess i went over it onto the grass. thank god for grass, and i was VERY glad to be wearing all my rain gear, considering the state of the slime. when i got up i discovered i'd crashed right next to the drainage grating, and it was still about an inch deep in leaves. i kicked about half of it clear before i went on (and my dears, the smell), so hopefully the next puddle won't be as serious. i wasn't hurt but jolted a couple of tendons and i'm a bit sore, and the bike probably needs yet another trip to the lbs. bleah. just when you start feeling all competent . . .

that's about it for today.

Glad you are okay. Sounds like it could have been nastier.

Why is it that some people can't wait FIVE SECONDS for us to clear an intersection before they make their turn?

Anyways... nice ride in this morning. The rain stopped about midnight last night, and we're left with mild & damp. I'll take 47° and damp anytime in November!

Seems my entries are always more about the weather than the traffic. I am blessed

Good ride in this morning. Only scary moment was passing a chow that was being walked by this little girl that looked like she weighed maybe 70 lbs. Luckily the dog was well behaved, but the look in his eyes was like..oh yeah, breakfast and its still moving to boot