Mars

Well, week two is not starting off on a positive note for me. I have a TERRIBLE cold that is kicking the crap out of me AND the forecast is calling for a "wintry mix" featuring freezing rain for tomorrow. None the less, I am riding the long miles tomorrow and all week.

CommuterCat, great to see another Vermonter mixing it up! TheDL, make sure you post how it goes for you this week. Bloodstallion, glad you got the slicks, you will be going so much faster. Faster is fun and you will be in shapoe in no time.

Good luck this week to all you long distance commuters. Make sure you write in and tell us how you are doing. I know, for me, it is inspiring to know there are others out there when I go out the front door for the big ride.

christie133

[QUOTE=Mars]Well, week two is not starting off on a positive note for me. I have a TERRIBLE cold that is kicking the crap out of me AND the forecast is calling for a "wintry mix" featuring freezing rain for tomorrow. None the less, I am riding the long miles tomorrow and all week.

So inspiring, Mars...Usually sickness coupled with a wintery mix forces me into my car. Sickness alone, I believe (contrary to my b/f and other friends), is easily chased away by a bracing commute! Hope you feel better soon. Maybe mix some of those Emergen-C packets into your water bottle. They work miracles.

I'm happy to be getting back to my commute after three (well, five, including the weekend) days off of work. Does that make me weird, that I can't wait to GO to work after a few days off? My legs are itchy--haven't been on the bike since Tuesday! I think the weather's supposed to be nice here tomorrow. My only problem--I lent my favorite warm socks to a friend who was going snowboarding. Well, if that's my only problem, life must be pretty durn good.

Bloodstallion--I'm also happy for you w/ those slicks. You'll be ready for bikini season in no time.

TheDL

Monday: Well I met a little wind today as I got closer to the river but nothing serious. I also got to test out ALL my rain gear for the first time and I'm happy to say it all performed fabulously. The only reason I was wet on the inside was because of sweating but I stayed plenty warm. And I am rather proud to say that the wind and rain seemed to have no effect on my commute time. My CatEye light should get delivered to me at work today so I'm stoked about that.

Travel time (one way): 1hr 19min
distance (one way): 17.4 miles

Mars: Hope you feel better soon. Take that vitamin C and sleep all you can.

::Edit:: Met some headwinds on the way home today. Luckily that stretch of my route is pretty short. No rain on the way home, so that was nice. Just finished watching the weather forecast for tomorrow, looks like solid rain. My legs are exhausted. I'm gonna go mount my new light...dunno if I'll ride tomorrow though. I may have errands to run around town that requre the cage-on-four-wheels.

Zin

I've been following this (and related) thread for some time. I just wanted to stop in and offer a pat on the back to everyone. My commute is 6.6 miles on way. As the weather gets better, I wish it was much longer.

YOU V-L-Cers ROCK!

Zin

Gojohnnygo.

Hey Mars, your famous in Plattsburgh. Every time I roll into one of the three LBS in plattsburgh. (when its sub zero out). They always mention this guy who rides from Burlington to Plattsburgh almost everyday.

IF it's you? Thanks for the inspiration. It gave me the needed will power a few years ago to keep me riding on my 13 mile commute one-way 26 total.

Thanks
John

Mars

Gojohnnygo, N7CZ, and christie - wow, I'm overwhelmed! Thank you everybody for those kind words. Now I can honestly say that my week is off to a GREAT start.

Gojohnnygo, I don't know if that is me or not. Pretty funny if it is, I just thought I was riding aong in total obscurity. But who knows, maybe there is someone else even more crazy than me out there.

I rode today. It rained the whole way there and the whole way back again. My cold is rampaging through my so called immune system. However, the thought of riding through the rain with a bad cold was worse than the reality. Once I got out there and spinning, it wasn't that bad. One good thing, the wind was light. There is nothing as bad as horizontal rain on a morning commute. I would rather be back in the -25F than that.

One effect of my cold, though, was my heart rate. I ride with a heart rate monitor and try to keep in a certain range. That usually means ridig about 17 or 18 mph on the flats. Today, I was riding about 2 mph slower and was still in the target range. Whenever I climbed hills or just rode hard for the hell of it, my heart rate shot up really fast. Interesting.

Tomorrow, the weather is calling for partly cloudy skies. Hopefully, my cold will be going away, though there have been a couple of ominous sounding coughs comming from my chest. C'mon antibodies and white blood cells, get in the game here!

JohnBrooking

Ominous sounding coughs are not good. One of two times I had to turn back this winter (from my wimpy 5.5 mile commute) was partially because of weakness from just getting over a cold (also, my derailleurs were frozen and I had inadequate gloves for the sub-zero temps). I staggered back into the house and almost passed out. Had to lie on the couch under a blanket drinking tea for 20 minutes before taking the car to work (and turning on the seat warmers!).

Anyway, take care of yourself. Don't feel you have to prove anything to us. Better to miss a few days with a cold now than all next week when it turns into pneumonia.

Geez, when did I start sounding so old?

TheDL

Errands be damned! I rode in today...much to my girlfriends dismay. Not a cyclist herself in anyway, she worries about cars and the bad weather. Understandable I suppose. Although my new route this year cuts off about half of my "on road" time from last year.

An interesting set of events occured on my way in today. I was ridinging in with my minidisc player on random play. About 20min in to the ride, the slightest bit of day light was starting to show, the birds started chirping, there was no rain, and U2's "Beautiful Day" was playing in my ear. Perfect, right? So then about 20 minutes later as I'm approaching the part of my route that takes me through a cemetary a steady rain starts, big drops, and Interpol's "Say Hello to the Angels" comes on in my headphones, and to top it all off...the rain stops when I leave the cemetary.

Spooky, eh?

Brian Ratliff

Got to say, that is a bit spooky. I didn't have any divine intervention, but I did get a flat commuting to work today. What do they say... when you get a flat it is sure to start raining? Well, it did.

I've also got a girlfriend that worries about me on my bike. She is being a good sport about it though and being nothing but supportive. I hope to show if I come back home enough times in one piece, then she will stop worrying a bit and start believing me when I say that it is not as dangerous as it looks.

BR

Rixtory

Just NW of Boston here - I start my 11 mile each way Commute tomorrow - It will be great sun with a early morning high of 38 and an afternoon high of 55. I am very psyched to makje the trip. I am hoping to do 3-4 days a week hereafter, though I am a bit worried about riding in the rain.

rainedon

What is your commute? It sounds similar to mine as I'm going by the cemetary around sunrise too. Assuming you are talking about the cemetary right off the west side of the Sellwood bridge. I commute from the SE Woodstock down to Tualatin. Maybe I'll see you sometime?

nate

TheDL

Hey Nate,

I start out from Happy Valley and commute over to Tigard, near the intersection of 99w and Hall Blvd. You're correct, I'm talking about Riverview Cemetery. What a hill, huh?

Woodstock huh? Dang. How long (time/miles) is that commute?

TheDL

Rain can be miserable w/o the right equipment. If you want to ride in the rain spend the money on the right gear. Otherwise just hang up the bike for that day because you'll just be wet and miserable and it won't be fun anymore IMHO.

ahpook

How true that is. This morning it was raining pretty good when I first woke up, but I got geared up anyway, despite my internal monologue about how rotten it would be out there. And sure enough, by the time I left it was barely sprinkling and there weren't even that many puddles to dodge. Now it's sunny out and I'd be kicking myself if I had given up and driven... woot!

"Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", quoth hamlet.

Mars

I respect a guy who quotes Shakespeare in a conversation.

One of my many weaknesses is that I have almost no self control. If I don't make absolute rules for myself, and then run my mouth off to other people about my great big plans, I will start choosing the easy way out. So, if I say to myself that I will not ride the long miles if the weather is unpleasant, soon it will be too rainy, too windy, too cold, too hot, or I'm just not in the mood. So, I have to make myself do it no matter what, and tell others what I am going to do. That way, I will be forced to confess that I didn't live up to all my bravado.

When I look outside in the morning and see the trees thrashing and the rain falling, I just want to go back to bed. However, as I do battle with the cars and elements, the warior me starts to emerge. The discomfort and cold gives way to exhiliration and the thrill of mastery. My eyes narrow, my hands grip the bars, and I spin faster and faster. When I arrive victorious at work, I feel GREAT. If there is an audience of google eyed colleagues, who a second earlier were complaining about how awful it was to walk from the parkig lot in that rain, so much the better.

My ride this morning was chilly and foggy, but the ride home was sublime. Sunny, with a gorgeous tail wind. WOOT! Cold seems to be on the retreat, feelng much better. Tomorrow's forecast is calling for 50+ degrees. First time this season! Yay!

Mars

Rixtory, welcome to the club! Make sure you tell us how it goes tomorrow.

DL, that is a cool story. Here is my encounter with the "supernatural" while riding. I was riding home on a narrow rural highway about 10:30 one night. It was pitch black out. My headlight made a narrow cone in front of my bars. Suddenly, about 6' from me in the dark ditch, I hear a loud, sobbing, "OH NO!" Then, in rapid succesion, "OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO!" with the sounds rising straight up in the air and then sweeping away into the night. I never saw anything, my lights didn't shine that way. I'll tell ya what, the rational part of me said it was just some kind of bird, but the primitive in me lent wings to my feet and I frickin' FLEW down that road away from there.

christie133

I have a bf who is not a cyclist, and he too worries incessantly about me while I'm commuting, especially since that call he got one morning from my boss saying I was in the ER b/c I had been hit on the way to work. Now if I try to ride when I'm sick or when the weather's mucky, I get lots of disapproving looks from him. And god forbid I come home late! Even though I still believe I probably have a greater chance of dying while driving in, bike commuting now seems more dangerous than it used to.

But all that aside, it's still sometimes the best part of my day! Heck, don't we roll the dice and risk bodily harm just by getting out of bed in the morning? Yesterday was great, though I had a gusting headwind on the way home. Still, it was almost 70 degrees, which was very exciting. This morning was so mild that I had to stop and take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves!

Though I did not have a supernatural experience, I decided that the weather lady on TV this morning was just being a weather alarmist and that it was not going to rain like she said it was. It didn't! I had a fabulous, DRY ride to class after work, and then home from there!

And Mars, glad you're feeling better.

rainedon

In the morning I take 43 into Lake Oswego and then make my way on back roads to Lower Boones Ferry and then into Tualatin. I'm usually coming off of the west side of the sellwood bridge just before 6 in the morning and there is light traffic on 43 that early. Because of heavy traffic, I avoid 43 in the afternoon. In the afternoon, I come out of Lake O and I take Terwilliger up to Lewis & Clark and then down through the cemetary to Sellwood and then up Bybee to Woodstock. It is 15 miles (~1:05) in the morning and 17 miles (~1:15) in the afternoon. I ride a fixed gear, and don't know that I could handle going up the cemetary that early in the morning with only one grinding gear option.

Do you come over Mt Scott from Happy Valley? That is quite a commute!

TheDL

My route is down Sunnyside Rd to the I-205 trail, head north up to Johnson Creek. Get off at Johnson Creek and head west, pick up the Springwater Trail down to where J. Creek makes a T. Continue West to Tacoma in to Sellwood. I don't ride Tacoma all the way to the bridge though, I cut one street to the north to avoid traffic. Then across Sellwood, up Riverview Cemetery, some small streets over to Terwilliger, then down over I-5, the turn south on Barbur Blvd (up and over Capital Hill) in to Tigard. The the same way back home. 1hr and 15~20 minutes.

Uber kodos to you riding a fixie on your commute. I ride a battle-tank of a Schwinn. In the event of a natural disaster I'm sure I could hide under it for protection. I got singlespeed project in the works but I don't think I'd try my route with it.

TheDL

3 Days in a row baby! Yeah! I've officially biked to work more days this season than I did all last year. Only downside is I forgot my bagel today...dang it.

The heavens smiled on me on the way home yesterday, sunshine, dry, and low wind. The cemetery looked beautiful. It was as if the heavens were apologizing for spookin' me that morning. Hehehehe. Ride on.

Bloodstallion

Much respect to all of you who commute through rain and cold. I'm here in Los Angeles and it's 70 degrees out and sunny during my morning ride. Interestingly, though, this past season so far has been the 2nd rainiest in recorded history in L.A. Anyway, when it rains here people think it's the end of the world.

I was looking at my little bike computer and on my 30 mi. round trip commute, I burn close to 2000 calories. Anybody get the same?

The slicks I got cut my inbound trip from 1:47 to 1:25. Highly recommended.

I'm still trying to get in better shape for all the hills, though. My elevation gain is 614 feet.

Anyway, Mars and all you guys and gals inspire me.

Mars

Montag

Greetings to everyone! I've been monitoring the VLC threads chomping at the bit waiting for Daylight Savings Time to begin. Come next week, I will be joining along and adding my own stories to the mix.

Congrats to everyone! I know what a challenge it can be.

Mars

Woohoo! can't wait to hear your stories.

TheDL: 3 days? Gogogogogo! that is great man! (bows head in respect)

TheDL

Mars: Thanks for the enthusiasm. Unfortunately I'll have to cycle vicariously through everyone else here the rest of the week. I've put off the errands long enough so now I'll need to drive. On the bright side though at 34 miles round trip, that's 3 gallons or about $6.75 of gas saved for my little car this week.