I found $5 today!

No excuse to commute--I'm home grading exams. But I went out anyway to run errands, put in about 5 miles and discovered I forgot my lock so I just turned around and came home. :) But I still have to grade the exams. :(

Who says that commuting doesn't pay for itself :thumb:

Wet again this morning. After a record breaking dry May, June is already looking like it's going to be record-breaking wet...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/water-iss...258948976.html

Other than that, an uneventful ride.

Take care when confronting motorists, Jeremy - what if he had had a gun? That said, a bit of driver education can also be a good thing. Just try not to lose your cool!

I didn't find any money. Boo.

Got caught in some rain on the way home. (Surprise!!) Luckily it was light enough that the laptop didn't get wet, in spite of the 2 inch rip in the top of my backpack. Perhaps I will spring for some real panniers one of these days....

LBS says my husband's bike is ready to pick up! He's been looking very wistful at the idea of riding, but his bike's been hanging in the garage for more than 5 years and he was feeling shy about taking it in to get it tuned up :p. So I took it in for him as a birthday surprise.

I took the long way home… turned my 15 mile commute into a 36 miler. The weather was perfect. I spooked two deer that ran a hundred feet ahead of me for about a quarter mile… That was cool! Great commute!

The massive thunderstorm that was threatening my commute home, and which led to my very nice partner offering to put my bike in her car and give us both a ride, cleared up five minutes before I left. YAY!

It was a beautiful ride home, too...cloudy, humid, cool, and mellow. It took me half an hour to get home; not because of any real delay, just because I liked being out in the nice weather so I rode super-slow.

Not sure why, but that made me laugh out loud.
I save $4.40 every time I don't use public transit...

Yikes! Got caught in the hellacious thunderstorm that passed through this afternoon. According to the Weather Channel, local airports were recording 50-60mph blasts. I didn't get any of those, but it was pouring buckets and blowing pretty hard--motor traffic was slowed to a crawl.

Unfortunately, I also found that I had not put enough tension into the canti arms on this new bike--it's a bad feeling to have both levers bottom out on the bars at ~20mph while approaching a 4-way multi lane intersection in a violent thunderstorm. Sheesh! The look on my face was likely priceless!

But frankly I had some luck and got through it. Got off the main drag and snuck home safely. Problems fixed, lessons learned, and no harm done (but I'm not discounting my luck--in another situation I might have been seriously SOL).

Had a great ride this morning! As usual. ;) It was cloudy and a little windy, ncie enough for biking. Broke my speed record pretty good, almost 5 minutes off a ride that's been taking me 30 min usually. Sped past two cute little rabbits that seemed to not have had enough time to run so they just stood by the road and stared at me trying to look inconspicuous.

Today's going to be good. :thumb:

This is my first post here; great site and so many great commuting resources.

I've been riding to work for about three months now. I've only had three bad commutes and none of them involve drivers, rather they involve equipment failures.

The first was in March- a tooth on the rear cassette snapped and the chain fell off at an intersection as I was starting off
The second was in May - my right pedal broke in half while starting off at an intersection. Again with the chain falling off
The third was today- again at an intersection and this time the chain just snapped and fell to the ground. I had to walk 2 miles home, put my bike in the car, and drive to work with it.

Thank goodness none of these have resulted in me being killed. I was surrounded by cars and a dump truck in all three cases, but no one ran me over.

Anyway, I think it's time for a new bike, one perhaps with an internal hub. Maybe I should check out the Clydesdale area of this forum.

Did the guy look like this? :D
http://www.bergen-filmklubb.no/image...lling_Down.jpg


My ride was dry and in the upper 50sF but the humidity is way up in the 90s and both my mirror and my riding glasses were fogging up. :rolleyes: I caught a guy on an MTB and stayed behind him for about 4 miles. He was just cruising along at a nice comfortable 15 or 16MPH. Not sure if he ever knew I was back there.

Loads of cyclists heading the other way. Not sure what was up. Hybrids, MTBs, comforts, and one roadie in a kit. :p

Either:
a: you have been very unlucky
b: you need a better quality bike
c: you are putting out an absolutely phenomenal amount of power on as you pull away

I'll leave it for you to decide which!! :)

Rainy and squally again in Sydney tonight. Pet peeve: pedestrians with huge umbrellas not looking where the are going on the MUP

No ride today :-( Instead of riding, I spent the early morning hours working in the garden. Still had some lettuce growing out there, and knew it wouldn't last in the ~100F heat we're having.

On the way home yesterday, I saw a really cool looking vehicle I had never seen before. Don't even know what to call it. Looked like a jet ski with wheels. 2 in front, one in back. I could tell it was gas powered by the motor noise, and it appeared to be street legal. Anyone know anything about this contraption?

Man, this morning's ride was incredible. It was one of those rides where you have all the energy you need, no hills bug you, nearly zero cars, and a killer sunrise to boot. Saw 5 other bikes today, which was an added bonus.

The ride was ok today, it was cloudy and the streets were still wet from the showers last night. I didn't put my fender on so I got a nice stripe up the butt. Other than that I was pretty dry when I arrived at work.
My shoes got soaked on the ride home last night and they are still drying at home. I am missing the sun already.

I had several invisible, unpredictable hills today...aka serious headwind. But it was fun anyway. Cool and cloudy.

Too bad, I've heard some good things about them.

It seems to be getting like that everywhere now. You can rarely have a discussion in a shop without the sales guy/tech start preaching to you. I know it's nowhere near you, but if you are in Chapel Hill any time soon, check out Back Alley Bikes. Jason is running what I call a pure bike shop. No one cares how old, or weird the bike you ride is. And there are no corporate contract sales. He'll order whatever you want because it's what YOU want.

http://www.backalleybikes.net/

This post is in regards to yesterdays ride home.
I was riding my new fixed gear and all was well most of the ride. Then my rear reminded me how much it hates the saddle and the last third was downright painful. Now I need to decide what I am replacing it with.
The odd thing was here I was riding along and I hear interesting sounds behind me and discover another dude on a road bike behind me. I am in pain and feeling less than friendly and I get... "hey... how do you like shaving your legs? I am thinking about it and wondering ....." I forget the rest. Consequently I was quite perplexed about the topic of conversation and told him mine were not shaved (they are) and took my turn and left. Who starts up a conversation with a completely random cyclist they have never met about leg shaving? I suppose if I had been my usual friendly self I may have responded. Seriously WTF?
He did seem like a friendly guy.

Then I completely ran out of steam a mile before home and limped the remaining hills into my garage.

One word: Hot. I'm just starting out commuting so I guess it's something I will get used to.

Other than that it was pretty uneventful, but I shaved a minute off my time today. My route is extremely hilly (gotta love TN) so I'm glad I'm making some improvement.

Weather: Cool (perfect) humid (ugh) and not too much wind. Thick cloud cover. I usually won't bike when it's rainy, but I need to do some biking this week... Had a 15 second drizzle on the way down. Hoping for a dry return...

I saw a cyclist go down and I'm currently a bit shaken... I was making a right onto Queen from Beverly and she was making that turn in reverse - a left. She wanted to catch the opening in traffic so she started turning a bit before the intersection. Her tire got caught in the streetcar track, and she fell down. If her hands did go out, it wasn't until she was already near ground. She hit her chin and was bleeding all over. I was the first one over, but had no idea what to do. Within a minute, there were 5 to 7 other cyclists, and two city workers driving by. One of the cyclists was um, trained? A paramedic? He knew what to do and had gauze etc. Then a TV guy showed up with antiseptic stuff and later a camera. I think I might show up for ~1 second on TV sometime today... The TV guy interviewed another cyclist after.
We got an ambulance to come in, and they took her away. I think/hope she's OK other than a bloody chin...

All I can say is "Wow!" The wind in N Texas has been unreal for the last week or so... a calm day is 20 MPH, and this morning it was closer to 30 with gusts higher than that. Predicting that for the rest of the day and into tomorrow morning. Weatherman says it will slow down tomorrow - right about the time the thunderstorms roll in :)

Fortunately I was riding with the wind for half the ride in this morning, and across it the rest of the ride - I did have a couple issues with being literally blown into the middle of the lane, but no traffic so no problem.

If the weatherman is right, I'm thinking I'll cry "uncle" and invite the wife to come pick me up with the kids after work so we can go out to dinner. Don't have any desire at this point to labor into a 30 MPH head wind for 7 miles...

On the commute last night a driver pulled up beside me on a rural road and unrolled the window. He then drove along side of me and peppered me with questions about bicycle commuting. Now that's a sign of the times.

Saw two deer this morning.

Wussed out this morning, thunder and lightning and when I opened the window to look outside, the orange color of the sky was wrong...the way it looks when filtered through large cumulonimbus clouds. Rode the Port Authority bus for the first time in about three months, got to start reading "Phule's Company", but miss the burn on my quads.

Folks wimped out because of rain so I had the MUP all to myself! :D

Hoping she's OK. No streetcar tracks here, thank God, but when I ride my alternate commute I have to cross some train tracks, usually with a car right on my tail. Having read many stories like this on BF over the years, I'm awlays a tad nervous going over them.

Wow. I don't want to assume too much from one case, but maybe people are seeing the light.

Uneventful commute today. Forgot to post yesterday that there was a 2-car collision right in front of the entrance to my building. I arrived after the fact, but it looked like a car got left-hooked by someone trying to turn into my bldg.'s driveway. 2 cop cars, 3 or 4 company security vehicles, plus the 2 vehicles involved all stopped in the 2-lane driveway. I threaded the cops, security guys, drivers, broken glass and plastic and went on my way with several of them staring at me like they'd never seen a guy on a bike before. Meh.

Almost no-jacket weather, but not quite. I'm off to Colorado tomorrow to ride the front range trails [yes, all of them]. No commuting for a week, but I'll live. :)

Me=Wimp

Drove the gas sucking pig.. it sucked

I work from home on Tues and Thursday. It is nice that the bad weather happened on one of those days.
Lucky me. I need a recovery day.

Wind, Wind and more Wind down here in the DFW area. We are talking about 35 mph headwind on the way home! I'll just have to remember how easy the ride in was with a tailwind.