Here's to L-O-N-G-E-R days. :beer:



And warmer temps. :o

Saw my fox friend again today. Ran across the path then stopped and stared as I went bye. Saw zero other commuter today. Temp was about 18F. I almost fell on ice while going around in circle behind my office to cool down.

Yay! I think you may be jumping ahead of things on the warmer temps :p

that's so cool... take him some food! (peanut butter sandwich)

I also see plenty of rabbits and would love to see the fox chasing a rabbit.

Computer crapped out on me today. Now I gotta replace the battery for the 2nd time this year. Other than that, the ride was the usual madhouse of livery cabs pulling in/out everywhere.

horrible - bike-free. Likely to be the case tomorrow too.

great past 3 days, 75 miles total commute dst (25x3)! been cold, teaching people in cages, establishing presence (new job locate). lights are working well (thanks eBay)! saw 0.0, non, zero other cyclists here.
gotta drive tomorrow, dentist appt 5:20 pm. "ignore your teeth and they'll go away" i've heard....
anyway, the extended commute seems to be getting easier as i acclimate. sometimes the rides are the high-light of my work day!
tomg

Cold....22F in the AM. Core temp was OK, but my fingers were very cold for the whole ride. Toes only got cold towards the end.

Ride home was much better...50F, and a fast ride.

Windy
 

Ride in this morning was nice, 27F, 7mph headwind, empty MUP (12 miles 1dogwalker, 1 other bike).

The ride home was nuts. Not sure what the windspeed was, but it was a huge tailwind. I was riding 25mph on the level parts not trying, hit a max of 31 when I ran out of gears. This is on the commuterized mountain bike as they were calling for flurries this morning, and sometimes we get 4 inches of "flurries" here, although today we didn't get anything. After I got off the MUP, and turned crosswind on a gravel road it really got interesting. The wind was blowing so hard that I was having to drift to keep going straight. At one point the wind caught my panniers and literally slid the back wheel out from under me. Since I wasn't going very fast, I just planted my left foot and stood up, and then walked the last 200 feet to the crossroad where I turned into the wind and road the rest of the way home (less than half a mile) on pavement in low gears. What a hoot!

brisk ride in the morning but certainly tolerable. a few patches of ice made me almost feel justified to have the studded snow tires on the bike. rode through the icy puddles just to make sure they still worked.

rode home in the cool darkness but the air actually seemed to be getting warmer as I got closer to home. seems that we may be in for a little warming trend. new batteries in my tail light- I thought it was looking a little dimmer- made a huge difference.

Started out the ride home with a stomach ache from eating too many carrots. Pedaling home actually made me feel better. Saw my fox run across a major street right in front on me. I really hope I don't find him hit one day...

I hear you on the tailwind -- I'm in Lincoln, and I kicked a$$ on the way home!

I'm getting the feeling you're going to be seeing your fox friend kissing pavement one of these days.

if there's a free darwin award going around, i claim the one for this week. sitting on the edge of my (low))bed with a large mug of coffee this morning, i had an utter brain-fade and set it down on my knees, which were higher than some of the rest of me. instant and absolute spill, inwards. how is this related to bikes? if i weren't a bike commuter, i wouldn't have been wearing new, utterly-waterproof rainpants for the event. with a zipper i forgot that they have so it was wide open. probably the fastest but not the best way to wake yourself up.

other than that, the day went quite well. forgot to mention that on my way home yesterday in the dark i rode right through a cluster of twigs that had never been there before. i kind of went huh?, was glad i wear glasses, and rode on. today i remembered in time to watch out a little better, and found out what it was: the snow pushed over a sapling on the other side of the ditch, and it's just tall enough to overhang the shoulder at face height to a cyclist. lots of those little leftover hazards around, but almost no snow anymore.

nice conversation with the guy in the test lab on the other side of my bench. turns out he gets up every morning and bikes around for an hour before coming to work - just for fun. was too tactful to ask, but i totally fail to get it. with all that mileage every day, he could be riding to work. i suspect he's probably scared to bike where cars go. he talks a looooooot about the dangers of what i do.

and conversation with the jovial little older security guard who's our usual patrol dude in the evenings. sometime after i started there he got his son's mountain bike out of storage and has been riding it around for a few months. completely the wrong fit for him in every way, but today he had a snazzy fancy super-uber pale-gold norco something-or-other that he said the company provided for him. it had his own headlight masking-taped to the handlebars but 'you need a rear blinkie' i said sternly, and he said 'can't do that. not in our line of work. how can we sneak up on someone if we have lights?' i agreed politely, meanwhile trying to figure out how a rear blinkie would let the bad guys see you coming, but a headlight wouldn't. i just reminded him that if he wasn't legal, and he did get hit by some car, provincial auto insurance would probably screw him over.

pretty bossy, convivial day, for me.

Well, the cold and the snow weren't the worst parts, unfortunately. Both my rear derailleur AND my right-side brake decided to sieze up, meaning that I basically single-speeded it to work - on a RECUMBENT. This is not a chore I would recommend to anyone, especially if you live in an area with large hills (like I do). My legs hurt.

So, what caused them to seize up? WD-40. That's the only thing I changed. I put some in the lines in the hope that it would keep the water out, no such luck. I don't know if they are frozen or if the WD-40 just loosened grit that was already there, but whatever the cause I'm going to have to fix it before I go home.

Did I mention my legs hurt?

Maybe I'm totally wrong here but it seems that I see plenty of foxes around here but very few roadkilled foxes. Maybe they are a little better at dodging traffic than some wildlife.

When I left work yesterday, the weather station in the middle of Lake Champlain was recording almost 50MPH gusts. :eek: I had a fast ride home, to say the least.

This morning the winds had calmed somewhat but I still had a headwind to deal with. Nothing bad like yesterday morning though.

Standard issue morning. 43 degrees in our nation's capital. The weather had said today would be a substantial drop, but it didn't come. Probably tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it -- it's a lot easier dressing for temperatures below 40 than temperatures above it.

Much warmer ride in this morning that the past two days. Temps almost at 50 when I left home. Was sweating pretty good by the time I got to work. Cold front comes through tonight so it should be colder tomorrow morning. Determined last night on my way home that my rear hub is making noises and that it will probably need replaced :(

Warm ride in, 47F and humid so I was sweaty when I got to work. Traffic was the usual mess and had one brain surgeon pull along my right side when I was in the right lane, but shaded to the left to get around right turning traffic. I ended up passing him 2 seconds later. Guess he didn't notice that there was a line up of cars waiting to turn right when he decided he had to pass me.

I cheated and drove in today. It was 12*F which in and of itself isn't too bad. The problem was that I had my commuter gear and slicks on my Outlook from yesterday's fair-weather commute, but didn't have time to swap the gear or the wheelsets between the bikes and still make it to the bus on time. There was tons of standing water yesterday, and that would have been a solid sheet of ice. Not doing that on slicks.

I went over a big bump last night in front of Union Station and my pannier went flying into the middle lane of traffic. Most of the cars avoided hitting it, but one manged to clip it with its rear wheel. No damage done, though. The scary part was trying to run out in the road to retrieve it.

After a very good night's sleep, I awoke to +7C temps this morning. Unfortunately, this will do little to melt the slush on the first km of my route to work.

22 degrees today with gusting head wind up to about 15 mph. I'm still new to commuting (about 8 weeks) so really wanted to try this out to see how it went. Other than my water bottle spout freezing it was all good.

Tom