pdlamb

Surprisingly warm this morning, although there's a heavy cloud layer. Back to knee warmers (which took me too long to find, after two weeks of tights) and warm LS jersey, no jacket! Not to mention how lovely the quiet ride to work was.

cormacf

Rode my not-particularly stable road bike to work in the Seattle dark and rain last week, across the several miles of I-90 bridge. Not a problem.

"Do you want me to pick you up," texted the wife? "There's a wind advisory."
"No, it looks fine. I'm good," I responded.
"Seriously, do you want me to pick you up? Wind gusts up to 40 mph."
"Still looks good,. Just went outside. Wind advisory says it's dying down."
"Just let me pick you up."
"No, no. I'm fine."

3-miles of city streets to the bridge--cake.
100 yards onto the bridge, southbound gust slams my shoulder into the guard rail.

"Um, honey... Can you come pick me up?"

Lesson learned: wives are always right.
Secondary lesson--Thru-axles are amazing when you need to take off a wheel in a rainstorm (without losing parts).

esmith2039

Lol cormacf .. That's why I didn't ride today. 50+ mph wind gusts. I've almost went over the side of the bridge once.. that was enough!

mgw4jc

A good ride in after a week plus of not riding. Very low traffic this morning and I took my shortest route after leaving about 10 minutes later than normal.

Only one more day to ride this year for me, but tomorrow's forecast looks quite rainy, so I may bail and drive anyway. More than 4,500 commuting miles this year is shorter than last two years, but still decent.

RidingMatthew

great job @mgw4jc!
i am not sure how to know how much of my riding was commuting vs just riding. Does Strava or Garmin have a way to sort them?

I rode 2 days this week. both were cold and cool but I had the right gear. I got 15 miles on the ride home yesterday. the last ride of the year probably for me. Family could not figure out why i was riding around the neighborhood. I had to get 15 for the ride. #justbecause .

pdlamb

I chickened out yesterday because of the wind and forecast rain. One more commute for the year today; the rain came and went yesterday into last night, and left the area wet (but it wasn't falling, so the fenders worked like a charm!). The main creeks had some water in them, but the little ditches were overflowing; I saw flowing water in places I didn't know it flowed. No jacket again today, mid 50s plus 100% humidity felt balmy.

Traffic was very light. I wonder if I'd do well to retire to an old rust belt city where there's plenty of road infrastructure without all those people driving around...

I'm closing in on X,000 miles for the year. I'll probably get another ride in tomorrow to cross that milestone before the rain comes back. (Again. Sigh.)

mgw4jc

Strava lets you flag activities as a commute, but I'm not sure if you can easily total against that. I keep a spreadsheet and separate out my non-commute miles. Glancing at it now I see I only rode 3 times that wasn't a commute totaling about 20 miles. So pretty easy.

I did drive today. Partially because I didn't want to ride in the rain and partially so I could take some bigger items back and forth to the office.

Happy New Year to all!

Harhir

Well last night riding home I had a little mishap. The rear rim just split in half. It had been rubbing for a few days against the brakes and I thought it was just out of line. Good think I was less than 1/2 mile from home. Fortunately I have a replacement wheel from a similar bike at home and I am going to rebuild this one with a better rim.

pdlamb

@Harhir, that's quite a failure mode! I haven't seen (or heard) of anything quite like it -- it obviously didn't go through all the intermediate spoke holes.

Harhir

First time for me as well. But the bike is a '99 and I don't know how many miles are on this bike. I just bought it last year and put around 3K miles on it so far. Probably just metal fatigue. So I am going to replace it with a sturdier 2 wall rim. Good thing I bought this truing stand last year. ;-)

arsprod 

Endomondo let's you pick the ride type ahead of time and then you can sort/see them by type on their website.

esmith2039

Rode the last day of the year even with the cold rain.. yuk. And I cleaned my bike this weekend.

Chinghis

Well, my commuting life has changed, with a new position. I now have about a 9-mile ride that ends with an 800' climb. Going home is sure fun. I have a feeling that I won't be able to do it every day, however, with scheduling and needing to drop off kidsin the morning, etc. But if I ride on the days I don't carpool, I should still be able to ride every other day and get nearly as many miles.

Today's ride was OK. I now can get some bird watching in every morning along the LA River. Today it was Night Herons, three of them, hanging out on the river bank. Egrets, coots, ducks, geese. Very pleasant, even if it was an hour earlier and colder. Still beats driving.

RidingMatthew

i know that strava lets me tag them as commute but I am not sure it lets me see how many of miles were commuting miles. @mgw4jc I just don't want to log it on another spreadsheet/ place.

arsprod 

On the strava.com website you can

mgw4jc

I hear you on not wanting to log it again. My spreadsheet is just a weekly summary. It helps me see at a glance what I'm averaging per week. I can get the same data by using a report in Garmin Connect, but I can easily see multiple years on the spreadsheet and separate the non-commuting miles.
Sample with weeks starting on Monday.

2018 Miles Average Rec miles Total
1/1/2018 101.44 101.440 2.01 103.45
1/8/2018 67.27 84.355 67.27
1/15/2018 26.18 64.963 26.18

davei1980

I wear tights probably 9 mos - year in a 4 season climate.... I think I benefit from the compression? IDK.. Prefer them to shorts on all but the hottest days

kevincgove

Started out dry but had to put on rain coat about 1 mile in. Just a light/medium drizzle the rest of the 5 miles.

RidingMatthew

@kevincgove you should post in this thread it is the 2019 thread!

noglider 

Should we have this closed now?

cb400bill

Hey guys! This is the 2018 thread. Please start posting in the 2019 thread stickied up above.

Thank you!