jaxy357

Hi all and happy bike month! Today was my first commute on my new to me Terry bike. It went great and I hope she’s still locked up at the train station when I get there in about 30 minutes.

Terry “Susan B” 21 speed

jaxy357

I’m out of the loop. what are you studying? I did grad school years back and advise grads now. Might start taking fashion classes for fun this fall.

noglider 

I'm getting an MS in Education, specifically Special Education for grades 7 through 12. I'll be a subject matter generalist, ready to teach Math, English, Social Studies, or Science.

Strawbunyan

I woke up really tired today and finally decided a nice bike ride in the 15MPH winds should wake me, and I needed deodorant, so I took the Ole SLE up to the dollar general for its first commute. I made it there, got the stick, and made it back faster than my wife does in the van the bike rode excellently. I don't know why but this bike handles up hill riding better than my other bike that has HUGE rear cogs... pure math says this should not be the case..maybe I just hate spinning? Maybe it is the 10 pounds this bike doesn't have compared to the other? I don't know. Either way, today was a good day.

I took a route I don't normally take and all the traffic was very kind about me being in the road. Until now I have been riding on the right side of the white line ( my big giant hookworm tires made this possible without much worry about debris or riding off into the grass) but I am not giving any right of way on this thing, they are just going to have to deal with the fact that i am indeed a vehicle

pdlamb

Back on the bike after a storm the other day. Lots of trees still down; fortunately, the utilities company took responsibility for the tree that took out my power line (and internet!), but there's at least one that somehow missed the power line completely blocking a nearby intersection. Not sure when the city will get a round tuit, but we had a parade of roofing trucks yesterday that changed their sign by yesterday afternoon and now they're advertising stump grinding.

Clear, warm air unless you're exposed to the cool north wind. (No, I don't understand what I just wrote, but it seems to describe the situation.) Big "news" is that the cicadas are marching north. Wednesday I could hear them singing south of one east-west thoroughfare; this morning they've moved one big road north. They're like riding in a sci-fi movie, high-pitched, low volume background noise. (Maybe I can't hear them nearer the house for all the chainsaws and heavy equipment revving!)

Strawbunyan

Beautiful day today after a couple days of thunderstorms and since I had finally done enough shakedown cruises and made enough excuses....I rode the 1982 AD SLE to work today for the first time.
I usually fast during the day until about 4PM but on the days I ride I was eating a snack first...I forgot to do that today and had to pull over and barf a pot of coffee onto the side of the road. I also stopped for some photo ops on the bridge for the C&V forum. I still made good time though. The first half of my ride i averaged 18.6 MPH which i impressed myself with. Top speed was good considering i was on the breaks for that hill. Had i hit it wide open and spread my arms i would have been flying. All and all the bike did great, and I have a lot of work to do on the Motor.

Strawbunyan

And one from the ride home. My top speed has not really increased much but my average speed is up 3MPH from my original bike so I guess the flats and uphill areas are better.

pdlamb

Cool, clear morning ride. At least it was cool while I was rolling -- as soon as I stopped I was drenched in sweat and took an hour to cool down. Fascinating where the cicadas are singing and where they're not. Recent construction (in the last 13 years)? Nothing. Quiet, established residential neighborhoods? Yep, there they are. Going through some woods. CICADAS ARE DARNED LOUD!!

I think I need to wash my bikes again. Wore out a tire over the weekend, so I swapped front to rear and put the new tire on the front. This morning I was accompanied by a pair of banshees that cut loose every time I hit the brakes! OTOH, they seem to work much better. I'm thinking I must have wiped the rims clean(er) while dismounting and re-mounting the tires. Maybe that's why my hands were so dirty?

Strawbunyan

today I decided I would take it easy, and ride slowly instead of trying to audition for the TDF like I normally do. Somehow, that made me faster? I never got out of breath, my legs never wanted to die and i made it to work in record time. Hmmmmmm.
I did have my first angry driver.he was in an oncoming lane on a 4 lane road so a full 3 lanes away and going in the opposite direction and felt he needed to prove how ignorant he is by yelling at me to get out of the road...mind you, I was 1/2 an inch to the left side of the white line with NO other traffic on the road. I wonder who hurt him so badly. Stay in school kids......
I just gave him a thumbs up and kept moving.

Another gentleman tried to motivate me??? By screaming at me angrily to "go faster" LOL. (Also from oncoming traffic 4 lanes away and across a median)
These people should get bikes, they might stay in a better mood.

gaucho777 

Belated update from Friday...I decided to take one of my alternate, long routes home. My normal commute is only about 4 miles each way, but it's mostly uphill on the way to work, and I get some nice views of the SF Bay when I reach the summit. The nice thing is that it makes for an easy ride home at the end of a long day. However, if I have time and energy, there are a lot of non-direct ways for me to go home. On Friday, I did just that, and took my '72 Cilo Pacer through some back trails in Tilden Park in the hills east of Berkeley, CA, which extended my total commute to around 17.5 miles and 1,900' climbing. Livin' the good life.

Tundra_Man 

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1895:

Just realized I hadn't posted on this thread since April. Oops!

Today's forecast pretty much called for rain all day. When I got up this morning it wasn't raining at that point in time, but I could tell it rained quite a bit during the night.

I resisted the urge to take the road bike, and loaded my waterproof pannier onto my hybrid bike with fenders. The temp wasn't bad; around 60°F and humid. However, this morning was supposed to be the high temperature of the day, and it then was supposed to drop until it gets into the 40s.

In the first mile I encountered two idiot drivers. I suspect both were high school kids on their way to school. The first incident happened at a blind intersection in my neighborhood. There is a 4-way stop, where I turn left. There are large bushes and trees completely obscuring the view from the left, and because of the lack of visibility there are "no passing" lines painted on the road. As I reached the stop sign, a driver pulled into the oncoming lane to pass me, completely ignored the stop sign and turned left in front of me from the wrong side of the road. Had there been any oncoming traffic one or both of us would have gotten smoked.

Then about a quarter mile further down the road I reached another stop sign where I turn right onto a busy street. Traffic is usually heavy enough on this road that I have to find a gap between cars and try and join the flow the best I can. I picked my gap, and as I pulled out I hear the sound of an engine roaring. A driver behind me who was also turning right went at the same time as I did, and proceeded to pass me in the same lane mid-turn. Thankfully after that I had no other altercations and the remainder of the ride was peaceful traffic-wise.

The first 2.5 miles of my ride were bone dry. Then it started to sprinkle. At the 4 mile mark the sprinkle had turned into light rain. At the 5 mile mark the light rain had turned into steady rain, so I pulled off underneath an overpass and removed my socks and put them in my pannier. I find socks turn into giant sponges and wick moisture into my shoes. My feet actually stay drier in the rain without socks. As long as I was pulled over, I threw my phone in my pannier as well, rather than having it get soaked in my shorts pocket.

By the time I hit the 8 mile mark and pulled into the office parking lot, the rain had turned into a downpour. My sweatshirt was soaked and I wrung water out of my gloves. I figured out I'd lost my badge somewhere so I didn't have access to get into the building. It was now 7:15 and the front door doesn't automatically unlock until 8. Thankfully another coworker had also arrived early, and even more thankfully he saw my text to come and let me in the door so I didn't have to stand in the rain too long.

Normally on Tuesdays I do a split commute working from our company office in the morning and a client office in the afternoon. With the rain I'm probably just going to stay at our company office all day and work for the client remotely. When I first started working for this client they were pretty adamant about me being on-site as much as possible, but there's been a change in management at the client since then and the new management is much more laid back about my physical location, so I'm sure they'll be fine with it.