Been totally offline for 4 weeks. No riding Sat and Sun's. Spent 4 solid weekends needing to button up the house and finished up on Sunday. Whew. I needed to do a lot of things and now I can rest easy.

Still been commuting though, once or twice a week. Like today. Voted at 7:15 am. Hopped back into the car and drove to Littleton. Rode the bike to work in Lowell. A wonderfully warm day for November.

30 miles round-trip. Totally riding back now in the evenings in the dark, but it's fine and working well. I'm using a slightly different safer route out of Lowell/Chelmsford in the dark as it's a bit crazy in a couple of places even in the light. Some of the route has street lights but half is dark. The cars whiz by at 50 or so on the main part of my route but I see them giving me a wide berth so they certainly see me. I love the lights I chose. In the dark parts of the road, the amount of cars are pretty steady and their lights offer me a sweep of light in front of me so I can see ok.

I put on about 500 miles so far commuting this year. It has been an entirely positive experience. I have found that the drivers are extremely courteous to me. Many stop and let me go, wait for me in some cases. There's one spot where I have to cross the road before I begin. One morning I was standing and waiting to cross (just coming out from my car) and there was a huge dump truck screaming up the road. He stopped to let me cross the road.