COLD! I'm just getting my lazy ***** back on the bike and forgot how cold it can get with the wind, and am not used to the idea of 40° mornings yet :eek: Time to dig through my drawers and find my hat & gloves again.

Can't complain, though, considering its Oct 31 and the pavement is dry in PDX!

Still got the officer's name? Send him the article about the lady here in NC who was tried and convicted for assault (or was it attempted murder? I forget) for throwing something in the window of another car while driving on the highway. Sure, the speeds are different, but considering we're riding without airbags, seat belts, etc., it's just as dangerous....

I'm kicking myself because I didn't get the officer's name. I'm hoping they'll make a courtesy call to follow-up but I don't know if he even filed a report. I have the police department name and the time of the incident. If only I had photographic memory.

:( No ride today or yesterday. Got a flat (pinch at the valve stem) and I was all out of presta valve tubes. Oh well, I guess a little rest is nice. It was a fun bus ride in today ;)

pictures
 

vtjim,

I live across the lake in NY in Peru..

You took some tremendous pictures of the Adirondacks which are in my backyard..

And your pictures of the bay in Burlington (I think thats what they are of) are equally beautiful.

My hat is off to you.

Jerry

Hey thanks. :) Take some pictures of Vermont from Peru! :D

I had a nice ride home. Terrific tail wind shoving me along. I rode at 5 over the speed limit on one street. :o Almost squished a squirrel on the MUP. Stupid rodent!

A woman was out walking with her cat on the MUP. :rolleyes: Knowing cats, I slowed way down, and sure enough it wandered right in front of me. The woman apologized but I smiled at her and said, "That's a big cat!" :) It was pretty huge.

I might have been tempted to make a somewhat less politically correct compliment. :rolleyes:

Nice Halloween ride. Had to take the speedy road ride in this a.m.- woke to yet another flat tire. I think this Michlelin I just put on the back is a little prone to pinch flats. I've got to double check the mounting of the tire every time.

Nice ride home in the dark.

Perfect commuting weather here in Virginia - low 50s and no wind. The ride in was fabulous - lucky at traffic lights, no near-misses with deer, no acorn-related traction problems on the paths. I have to check the bike computer but I am pretty sure this morning's run was my PB for elapsed time.

A fine ride here in Raleigh too. My first ride in ~ 2 weeks, since coming down with bronchitis. Glad to have a nice warm morning to get back on the saddle. Lot's of candy wrapper litter in the neighborhoods, which is kind of pathetic.

gloves
 

Funny thing, I stopped at REI last night with my wife. Took another look at their gloves, and ended up buying a new pair of Pearl Izumi Cyclone gloves for $40. They were rated their highest (10) for cold-weather protection. My wife always has trouble shopping for me, so I found the right size and told her to buy them for one of my Christmas presents. PI makes several other models that have even more cold protection, such as the AmFib and Gavia.

I'm trying to ride to work every day this week after getting skunked last week. Today was day 4 out of 4. I rode one of my faster bikes (Merckx Corsa) because it was warmer and I didn't need to carry as much gear. Also, my new light (Fenix) is very easy to switch between bikes, so it wasn't much trouble setting up the Corsa for commuting.

Amazing how much faster I ride on the Merckx, and it isn't psychological. I easily averaged 16 mph, about 1 mph faster than usual with the same amount of perceived effort. The main difference is the tires. The Panaracer Paselas on my main commuter are durable and flat-resistant, but have a lot more rolling resistance than the Michelin ProRaces on my Corsa.

Odd thing happened on my commute to work yesterday. I car passed me on dark road with no headlights on. I thought I heard a car coming, but didn't see anything when I looked in my mirror. Then this small red car came whizzing by with absolutely no lights, and it was totally dark at the time, on a street with very widely space street lights. Fortunately I didn't swerve out to avoid an obstacle.

Damp and dark. Low 40Fs. Sunrise was 7:29 and I left around 7. It was overcast and raining so it was essentially "night." Had to use my headlight for most of the ride, then switched to my front blinky once things got brighter.

The MUP was a ghost trail. :) Only one soul along the entire 5 miles I was on it: A guy walking his dog. I see him just about every day.

Humid out and mid-50s. Nice ride except for the part where I dropped my water bottle and nearly ran over it. Ha. Yesterday on the way home I was making a left turn from a neighborhood street onto a semi-major road. I looked left, looked right, started to pull out into the right lane and out zips a lady on her phone in her Mercedes heading DOWN THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. Clearly she didn't feel like she should wait in the line of parked cars at the light, pulled out and was trying to go around them. Scared the crap out of me.

Nice and warm this morning - in the mid 50s. On the commute home last night, there was a car stopped at a stop sign but not moving. As I approached I saw a cat in front of it on the right, and the woman driving was obviously trying to see where the cat was before she started driving again. I hissed at the cat as I drove by, but the cat didn't budge. So I pulled a U-turn and came up on the right side of the car, scared it into moving, then did another U-turn in front of the car and was on my way. Got a friendly wave from the driver.

I was sick yesterday, but I guess all that time surfing the web and eating leftover roast beef paid off. I was a freakin' bullet train today. I may not have to reduce my gearing when I switch to studded tires. Woot!

Very nice. Dry! Clean trail (for who knows how long). Pretty sunrise.

A nice, incident-free commute. Halloween traffic through the neighborhood was navigable, also.

A little chilly this morning. Wore only one shirt and the windbreaker. Figures it was about 3° but it sure didn't feel that cold. Maybe this commuting business is making me a bit tougher (arrrrrr :) )

Think I'll work until 5 today like yesterday. I do this so I can maximize the number of cars I pass since they bunch up for some reason :shrug: :D

Weird atmospheric conditions this morning. According to NWS, it was 48F, with a 47F dew point and 96% humidity. When I got to the office I noticed ice crystals on my sleeve cuffs, knee warmers, and shin hair (!). Is this a reason for shaving in the off-season?

Unfair! Gentle wind from the south in the morning, as I rode SE, then about a constant 10-15mph wind from the north on the return. Double headwind days should not be allowed.

Also, shorts and a thin long-sleeved polyester shirt both ways. Crazy, since I needed gloves and thick socks on Monday.

flat tire again!- third one this week- turns out the old Michelin tire I put on last week had a very small piece of wire in the tread. It didn't poke through enough to feel it on the inside and it was really hard to spot from the outside but if I happened to hit a good bump while it was on the ground side it was putting little tiny holes in the tube. Figured all this out later and finally remembered I'd been getting mysterious flats with that tire last year and that's why I'd taken it off.

Didn't have time to diagnose what was making it flat in the moment so I ran into a bike shop with 19 minutes to buy a new tire and new tube (I'd run out of tubes), change my old set and to get to work, which was about a 7 minute ride away at that point. Despite the fact that I told the guy at the bike shop that I was trying to make it to work he seemed way more interested in putting my name, address, zip code and god knows what else into the computer. Even though I was the only customer it took the guy longer to ring up my transaction than it did for me to change the tire and tube.

Ended up 10 minutes late for work.:(

I like my new tire though. Much prefer the Specialized 1.25 slick to the 1.5 heavy treaded Michelin. :)

PERFECT!
55F, perfect after a couple miles warmup, averaged 16.5mph :), new lights leading the way. Fenix P3D's, 2 of them!
Buzzman, convert those slicks to Tubeless with a Stan's kit, and never have road-crap flat worries again. Seriously. I have over 2k miles w/o issues.
Cheers

That's normal for me during the summer. These days it's still pitch black at 6:00 and the wind hasn't woken up yet :)

My ride this morning was the coldest yet. Minus 5 (20something for the US folks). Need thicker jacket. One layer of nylon is just not enough at this temp.

Pretty good this morning. Left about 5 minutes before civil twilight, and got to work about 10 minutes before sunrise. No wind. Clear sky. Temps around 30F.

I saw a fox on the MUP. That's pretty rare. (The four-legged animal, not a cute female...) :p

Great ride in this morning, but I'll pay for it this afternoon. A cold front is moving through, so I had a strong tailwind from the NW pushing me on the way to work. I'll be swimming up stream on the way home, and we're supposed to have sustained 20-25 mph winds by this afternoon.

Hey Buzzman -- I've had the same problem with small wires causing flats. However, if you make a habit of always mounting your tires with the decals at the valve stem, and then carefully examine your tubes to find the spot where they are flatting, you can usually identify the cause or recurring flats. I had a slow leak earlier this year that would cause the tire to go flat overnight. When I removed the tire, blew up the tube, and identified the location of the leak, I was able to find the spot on my tire where the flat occured. I found a very small wire that I never would have noticed otherwise.