Hit a good series of lights on the way in, got the opposite on the way back. Luckily theres lots of cute girls around for me to smile to while waiting. If only I could ride in backwards circles... then maybe I'd get laid.

Settling in to the new job, I think its gonna work out well. The ride in is enough of a workout that its having an effect but not killing me.
The earlier time is noticeable, Plus, more bike commuters, Minus, this morning , as Pinkrobe said, 2C.
Didn't really clue in to what that meant till I crossed a wooden decked bridge on the MUP.
Hang on, thats white and sparkly, WTF! Its still August!

Calgary!

Nice again this morning. Mid 60sF. Blue sky but a little hazy and humid. Mild headwind. Saw several riders going the other way. Passed a couple going my way.

School must have started. Several students (High School, from the looks of 'em) were milling about the usual bus stop location, along with two(!) Soccer Mom Vans. Why do parents coddle their children like that? It's bizarre. Drive the kids what amounts to less than 1/4 mile (I know where one van "lives"), and sit there until the bus comes? What babies those kids must be. :rolleyes: Oops. Rant off.

Today's commute was uneventful.
Very very humid this morning though. Almost felt like it was about to rain, but it never did.

Warm and humid again. Uneventful commute. I tried a different route this AM which is ~ 1 mile longer but avoids 6 or 8 stoplights and 2 interstate exits. A lot less traffic too, so I think I'm going to use this route more frequently in the future. Despite the added distance, 26 mile RT now vs 27 mile RT using the new route, it seems like a better, safer alternative.

It has warmed up a bit since yesterday. It's also dry, and should remain so for the next few days. Only 1.85 days of work until a few days of vacation in the mountains. I can hardly wait...

Coolish, with lots of very small bugs, and kind of interesting.
First, there's a long downhill into the urban area, with a stoplight at the bottom and an immediate uphill. The light favors cross traffic, so I rarely get to breeze through and hold my momentum for the uphill. Today, seeing the flashing "Don't Walk" signs for the cross traffic, it looked like the timing would be right for me to jam through at speed, but I was concerned that apartment construction to the the left me to lose sight of traffic until I was into the the intersection. I slowed and peeked around the plywood wall,and "zooosh!' - a Toyota blew thru the red light at 30+mph a full 5 seconds after it had changed.

I was glad to make the climb from a dead stop, after that.

Then waiting for the train, my occasional riding buddy's girlfriend showed up - dressed identically to me. Same Dirt Dawgs Racing jersey (designed by me for the local drinking... err... mtb racing team), with baggy shorts, same style ride - old gray road bike with downtube shifters and one pannier. Pretty funny, actually. We debated sitting on different cars, but decided that was excessive ;).

Nice cool, early dawn commute this morning. First ride with the headlight this season
Woke up too early, but I was anxious to commute on my new CrossCheck that I picked up yesterday.
All I can say is wow, what a great ride along my bumpy greenbelt compared to my other bike I was using for commuting, my old KHS Easton Aluminum frame. Steel rocks!
Not too much traffic to deal with or any freaks on the greenbelt telling me I'm going too fast for this city.
However I did just about run into two people walking their dogs in the middle of the street this morning, but they heard me coming

Yay! Summer is on its way!
Last night i rode home with only a t-shirt, and this morning i woke up to sunny blue skies and warm weather, wore only a t-shirt for the ride into work also.
Luckily i did not let the weather distract me too much because this morning a car ran a stop sign directly in front of me, but i was able to stop in time, thankfully. Other than that it was a normal commute.

Only in SF can you get away with that I guess. :)

Al

I had to detour off my regular MUP route. There were yellow police lines securing off a large area and a cruiser guarding a "scene"

I think they may have found a "Stiff" I see if I can get through on the way home.

Pretty typical today. A nice smooth ride in. It will be a little hotter on my way out however...

I cut short my planned long ride this morning to have a nice quiet breakfast with my 3 year old daughter. I can't say no to those big brown eyes.

Wow, it was HOT today! And unfortunately I was listening to fast music as I rode, so I rode fast... in the terrible humid heat and into the wind. Good workout, I suppose. But I actually was forced to take a break by the side of the road before climbing the biggest hill of my commute. I'm grateful for all that anyhow. I want summer to keep going!!!

Calgary? By the fort? Yes, it was a stiff. Murder victim I believe. :(

Calgary but not by the Fort. It was by the MaxBell Arena. Apparently it was another stiff. The news called it "human remains" so it sounds like it may have been there for a while. Its kinda scary as I ride by there almost every day. There are often peculiar smells in & around that area, I wonder if any of those were coming from .... ewww... never mind.

The "scene" was still secured on my way home. One of the officers said that the area will be closed till Friday.

Riding east to visit my wee one, I called out to a fellow cyclist "Have a good ride!" and instantly I heard, and felt the tone "Excuse me?!" and she was about to start yelling, I called back "I said, have a good ride - relax!" - I figure she thought I was saying "learn how to ride" or something.

She later caught me at a light and said "sorry about that man, you don't hear nice things too often". I chuckled with her, and we had a brief chat during the lights. I again wished her a good ride and went on my way. Funny story, but sad really.

Even though I feel a comeraderie / fellowship with cyclists, there's still a strain sometimes to even pick up a nice "Hello" at a stop light, it's too bad we're still stuck in our worlds too much sometimes (I'm guilty of this too at times).

Ride was good, got out east fairly quickly - warmer weather, but coping. Gotta saviour it while it lasts, really not looking forward to the cold at this point (even though I prefer it overall :p)

It's partly the wind. Makes it really difficult to hear what others are saying to you. Plus, when you're cycling on the roads, you're probably in a defensive mode by default, expecting nastiness and dumbness from everyone around you... have to, if you want to stay alive and unscratched. :(

80% humidity @ 70F. Sort of uncomfortable compared with the last few days. Nice ride though. I saw a whole pack of high school students riding the other way toward the school. It sort of improved my outlook for humanity. :p

Oh and I saw a big dead frog on the road. Eiw.

Brilliant weather. Clear, sunny, and just a bit humid. Mid-60s. The perfect summer morning. Shame there won't be many more like this. Fall comes too early.

Stupid driver day.

Riding down a main street got passed by a semi. He then slid into my lane and immeditely into a right turn lane giving me abot 1 foot of clearance behind his back bumper. Then he stopped at the red light. As I passed him on the left, I punched the door of his truck. The thin metal actually dented in. Had I punched harder, the dent would have stayed and he would have had to explain it to his dispatcher. too bad.

He yelled at me about riding on the (non-existent) sidewalk.

Beautiful morning. Actually it's quite dark at 5:30. All the cars that passed me (maybe 15-20) gave me the full lane. Guess it's easy to do with nobody else on the road :)

I wanted to be at work by six so I broke a sweat in the first 10 minutes of the ride. Made almost record time - and as it turns out I could have taken another 10 minutes to get here.

We met up with many JAM ******bags on the way in today. The more expensive the car, the worse they were - especially the Mercedes drivers. Wow. I'm glad I won't be riding in for a few days [vacation].

No ride in today--Mrs. Caloso had to be in the office early so I dropped her first, then the kids at daycare, then to my office. But I threw my bike in the back of the van and I'm hoping I'll have the opportunity to make up for it on the way home.

62 and heavy fog. A lot of cars didn't have their lights on. I could just imagine a head on happening to someone passing me because of reduced visibility and no lights.

A great ride in. It has been a week since I started riding again since my near 2mo. break. I slowly have been getting faster. It was fantastic conditions (90F/45%RH) allowing me to push myself for a 20.0mph average. My lungs still feel weak, a bit of gasping after bursts of speed. I'm looking forward to that going away, but at least its no longer painful to ride again.

Going home has been a different story. Yesterday it was 113F and was brutal, after 20min it really hits me and all I can think about it getting home to recover. Although it was beautiful with gigantic thunderheads all around, rain came about an hour after I got home and cooled it down to around 100F. Nice.

Al

apologies for not reading through the last 837 pages, i just opted to subscribe to this thread and will make my way through it eventually.

i'd like to share that i just started a new job, which means i am now responsible for providing clients with nutrition and hygiene type assistance (among other things). so i get paid to go shopping for supplies, but that means transporting them too. i don't drive, but i could access a car-share program or transit if need be. of course i commute by bike, so that is my preferred method. since there's a butcher shop and cheap veggie market (among many other things - i love my neighbourhood!) by my house, i will be shopping at the begining or end of the day, and transporting things to work.

which brings us to today: it was the first time using a pannier bag attached to the rack bag on my 3-speeder! i didn't carry a very heavy load because i wanted to see what it was like, and it was surprisingly easy! i could have carried way more if i brought my backpack too! yay me!

Not such a fun commute today. The weather was glorious, so it should have been great. However, I had a stinking hangover (too many Belgian beers last night) which wasn’t pleasant, especially the head throbbing when climbing the hills…

So I took it pretty easy. One part of the ride goes through a busy pedestrian area (it’s a shared bike / pedestrian path, so riding there is OK) which I often find the worst part of the ride. Anyway, this morning I’m riding through, going very slowly. I do take care around people walking, and with the throbbing head as well I’m literally going at a walking pace. I am going past someone walking, and there’s a guy walking towards me the other way. There’s plenty of room for him to move over a foot or so to give me room, but instead he doesn’t move, and deliberately shoulder barges me as he goes past. Like he actually makes point of walking into me, swinging his shoulder into mine quite hard. Very irritating indeed. No idea what his problem was.

Then later on, I get carved up by a blonde chick in a Maserati. That was quite funny actually; she pulled out without looking from the side of the road right in front of me; the road was clear the other direction so rather than hitting the brakes (I was moving fairly fast) I swung along side her, shouting out ‘whoooaa!’ as I went. She had her window wound down, and was rather surprised to suddenly have a cyclist alongside her shouting through her window – she went ‘oh f**’ and slammed on the brakes.

But with my head pounding, the final climb up through North Sydney put me in a whole world of pain…

Fine, uneventful ride. 69F with comparatively low humidity. Had a nice bright 3/4 moon as secondary lighting as I rode down some of the unlit streets...Wish I had more roads without streetlights. I find that I can see the road better without them (after my eyes have adjusted to the darkness).

Less traffic out today. I guess a lot of folks may have taken the day off to extend their 3 day weekend into 4 days.

Today was one of those days, but I still managed to ride to work. I've been out of town for three days, so that threw me off my regular schedule. Last night I went to install my Cygolite rechargeable light on my bike as the mornings have been getting pretty dark. That's when I noticed my rear tire was flat. That was odd because it wasn't flat a few hours earlier and I hadn't ridden the bike in 4 days.

I removed the tire and found a large hole right at one of the eyelets, and the tube had a dimple at that spot and all of the eyelets. My suspicion was that I caused the problem last week when trying to get the creaking noises out of my wheels, which are old Open Pros and prone to squeaking. While replacing the tape, I found a lot of oxidation around the eyelets inside the rim, so I cleaned it off and then put a drop of 3-in-1 oil on each eyelet, wiping off all the excess oil. Apparently enough oil was left that it seeped through the cloth rim tape and caused the rubber to fail in the tube. I wasn't aware that oil would do that. My suspicions were confirmed when I found the front tire flat this morning before going to work. I found the same sort of bulges in the tube at each eyelet, and the leak was from a large hole at one of the eyelets.

Long story short, I was running late today but was more fortunate than usual with the redlights, so got to work only about 5 minutes later than usual. There was a lot more traffic. It's surprising what a difference 5-10 minutes can make with the traffic congestion early in the morning. The kids have also returned to school, so the buses were out in force. I had to stop for one of them that was loading kids, and another one passed me before a traffic light and then moved to the right of the lane to prevent me from going around him.