pdlamb

Riding in this morning was ... different. This side of downtown traffic was lined up half a block back, where there's usually a car (or none) at the intersection. Maybe they're all going right for some reason, got into the left lane, and -- blocked. Solid line of cars in MY right lane, couldn't get over. OK, let's take the long way to work.

Got here, locking the bike up, and a very nice lady very apologetically let me know she passed me coming in and there was a, er, shine on my bike shorts. Or through the shorts. Thanked her profusely for letting me know, got to the gym, and it looks like pilling on the shorts to me. Oh, well, save that pair for rural rides.

locolobo13 

Cool this morning. Low 80s. Sun's getting later and later in the mornings..

jaxy357

Sitting here at my desk I realized that I shouldn't have taken the train to work this morning/ridden my bike. I have a doctor's appointment in the afternoon that I totally forgot about. But luckily there's a reimbursement program for taking an Uber home in case of emergency. I only did it once so far but can do it up to 5 times a year. I will say it was very cool this morning sitting in the front of the train and listening in on the engineer training the conductors about the various types of signals (automatic versus non-automatic), not that I'm an expert now or anything.

pdlamb

@jaxy357, you're lucky. I'd have to drive a couple hours to catch a train.

Not much to report on this morning's ride, except that it's warming up. Had to run my wife by her work before I could ride in (I insist on riding!), so I started a bit late. Still, 84 degrees is a lot warmer than the 67 it was earlier in the week!

Tundra_Man 

I'd have to become a hobo to catch a train.

pdlamb

I've thought about that. One of the major's top 5 or 10 freight routes comes within half a mile of my house; mostly hauling Wyoming coal to South Carolina. Especially when they're slowing the trains to rebuild a grade crossing, it's tempting to hop on, climb to the top of a car, and see the scenery where the rails take me.

Of course with my luck, I'd get busted in the first 30 miles.

jaxy357

Not exactly a commute but trying to replace short trips with bike rides. First successful outing to the grocery store yesterday on my husband's bike, albeit a small trip. I've gone to yoga classes via the greenway, produce store, library and coffee shop, you get the idea.

Husband's bike loaded up with groceries

pdlamb

We must have had a cold front come through, this time without a line of thunderstorms -- or any rain at all. Much cooler this week, walked into work sweaty, but not dripping, this morning. It must have been in weather like this that I started bicycle commuting; I'm not sure I'd have continued if it were like last week.

Uncommon wildlife report: two chipmunks and a rabbit within the last mile.

Uncommon cager report: a large sedan (maybe a late Grand Marquis?) passed me this morning with the passenger door open and the passenger hanging onto the door. What the heck? I got a glimpse of what looked like collision damage, but no way would I drive a car where I couldn't shut the doors!

Tundra_Man 

Back in the 80s my dad drove a 1974 Chevy Impala. When the temp got below a certain point and you opened the doors they would often freeze in the unlatched state. If a door had frozen open then it was the job of whatever family member was sitting in that seat to hold it shut as he drove. After my dad would drop us off from school and he was the only one left in the car, he would either hold the door shut himself, or affix a bungee cable to the door from the inside. The latter was the most entertaining as it would let the door swing open when going around corners, then slam back when the car straightened out.

Man, I miss those days.

campfire

I'm fresh off RAGBRAI and back to my normal commute. I'm definitely in withdrawal mode. 3 days in a row I've gone out and had to share the road with CARS. No more meeting cool people. No more food vendors every few miles. No more water sprinklers. Can you believe it?



red dit sums it up thusly:



In other words, I'm getting back to normal commuting after a really neat trip.

Tundra_Man 

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1706:

Last night we went out to eat. I ordered the Panang Curry Chicken. It was very, very delicious. Somehow I showed restraint and only ate half of my supper, even though my tongue was screaming for more. I decided I would save the rest for today's lunch.

Halfway to work I remembered I had gotten distracted while packing, and left my lunch in the refrigerator. I thought about going back for it, but I would have to climb a giant hill and it would make me late for work. I'm sitting here lamenting not having the tasty lunch to look forward to.

I guess the good news is, I know what I'm having for lunch tomorrow.

Darth Lefty 

The kids are starting up school next week and I should be able to get back to riding. I hope. It’s going to be a weird couple of months. Most of August, my 1st graders have short days, but the 3rd grader doesn’t, and then in September we are going on a long vacation. So I might not be back in the groove til October

jaxy357

Today is a work from home day and I managed to get on the bike early this morning and make a run to pick up snacks and produce and such. I just bit the bullet and cancelled my parking permit at work since I can park at the train station if I ever drive in and then ride my bike to my office, about a mile away. It makes me nervous in the case of inclement weather but it's a very pleasant ride. I also have an interview on Friday for another job at the same institution but only 15 minutes away by car or 45 minutes by bike. Fingers crossed! I would love to be able to ride the whole way to work whereas the infrastructure around here would make it take 2 hours along some dangerous roads.

BLRider

Ride to work is nice, mostly dirt roads and 18 miles. I haven't overcome the lunch issue as I both live remotely and work pretty remotely (no diners close by) I am aiming at a 1/2 year of commuting this year.

locolobo13 

Rain! Woohoo! Got caught in it the last 2 mi going to work.

Oh. Wait a minute. Took me 20 min to dry off and change. LOL.

Only happens once or twice a year. If it looks like it's already raining I drive in. Didn't look that bad this morning.

pdlamb

I'm still re-learning that the best way to make it rain is to try to time my commute home based on weather radar. Just two, five-minute showers yesterday, both enough to get me soaked.

This morning was kind of different. Instead of patchy fog, we had a blanket of fog, a quarter mile visibility that was pretty uniform the whole way in. Interestingly, it was thick enough to dampen road noise (tried to stay off the main drags) and even bird noise. Of course the birds may have been dripping on their perches, but the only birds I heard in ~12 miles were a crow, a jenny wren (since it was singing like a male, does that make it a jimmy wren??), and a cardinal. It was almost like 7:00 on a Sunday morning!

LostinEndicott

Today was my first commute by bike in a couple of years. The ride in was real nice, cool and not much traffic to deal with. The ride home was a little wet. We had a downpour right at quitting time. I waited about 10 minutes for the worst of to pass, then left while it was still sprinkling. I had a nice ride home. Traffic is usually crappy at that time in the afternoon, but I didn’t have any close encounters, so not to bad.

Darth Lefty 

The best way to make it rain here is wait for November.

Echocardiogram early... I drove. Then came back home for the bike. First lap for me in a month or so. Short laps now from house to work, only ~ 7 miles RT. Unseasonably cool in the high seventies around 10 when I rode in, with a high approaching 95F for the ride back. There was a new burn scar along the bike trail since the last time.

I emerged from the lab to find messages from my wife and the school. Kids get out at 1:15 thursdays, which she knew, but had a brain fart and was an hour off. They wanted to know why they still had our kids. Her call was telling me not to get riding, she did get the message. She has them now and they all are having a great time, she says.

Even nicer forecast tomorrow and Saturday, back in the hundreds next week.

groovestew

Back in the saddle again after a couple weeks off for summer vacation followed by some wet days where I decided not to ride. I had to take the long way to work because the dirt trail was too muddy.

This is the first time in three weeks that I've touched a bike. My family pretty much always vacations somewhere in the mountains, and I like to rent a mountain bike and do some trail riding, but it didn't work out this year. I still tried to stay active over the past few weeks (walking, hiking, running), but I felt it this morning.

Darth Lefty 

Another lap today. Nice one

jaxy357

This week was kind of rough for my bike commute. Mostly because I took a bike ride on my work from home day to Walgreens to pick up a few things and ended up taking a spill off my bike. My arm and ankle were impacted and it made things very tender with moving my bike onto a bus rack the next day. Basically keep bumping my arm into things and feeling a little down about it.

groovestew

Monday morning and I managed another commute. Unseasonably warm for a morning in August in Edmonton at 18C (~65F).

On Friday, I knew the dirt trail would be too muddy, but after a warm and dry weekend, I decided to chance it today. I've come to the conclusion that I need to just give up on that trail. The trail itself was mostly dry, but the grass beside was very dewey. But that narrow rut of a track made me lose my balance multiple times - I fell off twice, but because I was going uphill and slow, I was able to unclip and stay on my feet when my bike went down. And oh my gosh the mosquitos were out in force this morning, and at times I wasn't going fast enough to stay ahead of them. Not a great commute this morning.

Hope you heal up soon, jaxy357 .

Tundra_Man 

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1712:

Woke up to the sound of rain hitting the roof, and the wind whooshing through the trees. The forecast said it was going to rain until about 8 AM, then the sun would come out. With that strong 25+ mph headwind, I wanted all the aero advantage I could get. So I was faced with a choice: ride the hybrid bike with fenders which would keep me dryer, but make me fight the wind. Or, ride the road bike without fenders which cuts through the wind a lot easier, but would spray me with water.

I decided I'd rather be wet than exhausted, so I took the road bike. I actually didn't get as wet as I thought I would. I think the strong wind was drying me off almost as fast as the rain was making me wet.

I've got one short stretch on my commute where I have to hop on a busy 4-lane road for a few blocks, then lane change into the center turn lane to make a left into the park where I'll catch the MUP. This morning as I was changing lanes, I shifted my front derailleur into the big ring and it somehow bound up, preventing the pedals from turning. I downshifted the derailleur hoping to free it up and proceeded to drop the chain off the small ring . Weird. So now I found myself in the middle of busy traffic with no way to propel myself.

Sometimes when the chain drops off the small ring I can get it to re-mount itself while riding by moving the derailleur to the higher position. In this case, the chain wedged itself between the ring and bottom bracket, so I couldn't turn the crank. It was a less than optimum time for this to happen. Luckly I had just enough momentum to get me down the turn lane to the intersection, then a break in traffic happened at the right place to allow me to slowly coast through the left turn. Thankfully I didn't have to resort to the Fred Flintstone method of propulsion in the middle of rush hour traffic.

Once I was off the busy street I hopped off the bike and manually put the chain back on the little ring. Finished my ride to work and didn't have any further shifting problems. As I arrived at work I could see blue sky appearing in the west, and now that I'm writing this it's a sunny day outside, as the forecasters said it would be.

groovestew

Since I've given up riding the dirt trail (for now) and am resigned to riding on pavement, I dusted off the ol' fixed gear this morning (figuratively - I was in a bit of a rush, so I didn't take the time to literally dust it off, though I did literally inflate the tires). Haven't ridden it since last fall, but there was only once during the commute where I had to be rudely reminded that I was on a fixed gear (if you've ever ridden a fixie, you'll know what I'm talking about).

About a block from home, I realized I forgot to transfer my under-seat roadside repair kit from my other bike, so I quickly turned back and retrieved it.

I did find myself struggling a bit up the hills. Riding my geared bike has made me soft, it seems.

Darth Lefty 

1/3 of the way to the office I was called back by my wife who had my badge. So that's 1 & 1/6th of a round trip today

Hot in the afternoon at only 1pm, so glad it wasn't at five