How Was Your Commute Today?

[ZenBiker]

I had a great commute today. Masterfully handled traffic. However head wind. Tremendous headwind.

My sympathies. During April and May where I live, there's almost always a west wind in the afternoon, which is a head wind for my commute. Today it was 15 mph, gusting to 25 = no problem. Some days it's 25 gusting to 40. That makes me say bad words.

[NadiaMac]

So, updating my last post: I've managed to keep up some momentum with the commuting and have managed to ride to work two or three times a week each week. Mostly, I take the more direct route, which is about twelve miles, but i've ridden in over the neighboring mountain twice with a co-worker, which is pretty cool. I've ridden in a few times with a big group commuter ride- over 60 people showed up last Friday! Most of the folks go much further, over forty miles to work!

on the process side: I located the showers at work - pretty nice ones in the building next to mine, and our company provides towels and shampoo, soap etc so we are very spoiled in that regard. The other "improvements"- I picked up a chrome commuter backpack and the thing is great a big improvement for carrying clothes to work (two tiny comments, I may review it later). I also obtained a brighter headlight, though haven't used it much since it's pretty light in the mornings now.

The one thing I haven't worked out is carrying my work laptop in on the bike. The thing is a brick and I do work at home a fair bit especially on the weekends. I have some neck/back issues and am loath to carry it in my backpack, but at the same time, I like riding my road bike to work and am not into putting a rack onto it. I do have a backup bike with a rack, but it's clunky and way less fun to ride. So, at the moment, I ride in only when I don't need the laptop at home the night before. This is the major limiter.

[7rider]

What a cluster this morning.

So, I go to put air in the tires this morning on my commuter, which lives out in the garage. Flat rear tire. Maybe, I can pump it up, get to work okay, and pump it up again before my ride home.
Pump, pump, pump, hissssssss
Air was coming out nearly as fast as I was putting it in.
Back inside. "Hon....can I ride the Big Buzz?"
Sure. Good to have an abundance of bikes and to be approximately the same size as DH.
So, I unpack my pannier, re-pack in another pannier, b/c my Arkel doesn't "work" on his rack without major adjustments to the hooks - which I don't want to do. Pump up the tires. Throw the grocery pannier on the other side of the bike (I need to hit the grocery store at lunch - plus I was bringing in pretzels for the office), put on DH's shoes (about 1.5 size too big for me ), and off I go.
Whap. Whap, Whap.
The Big Buzz is a "wicked cool" bike - but it doesn't have very long chain stays and my heels keep kicking the bags - especially the grocery bag - especially with DH's big water-ski shoes.
So it was a delicate, slow cadence, heel-up sort of pedaling style in this morning. Sigh.

[lovelygamer]

Commute yesterday and today was cold. 50 degrees 10mph winds. Not very fun in my opinion. Looking forward to a warmer ride home (it's warmed to 70).

This week is not promising. They are calling for 30mph tomorrow and 50% chance of severe storms Weds/Thurs.

Let's not even get into the lady that tried to mow me down INSIDE the parking lot to work. She couldn't give me 30 seconds leeway.

[Melalvai]

I had a routine, uneventful commute. To be honest I don't remember most of it.

Just figured I'd throw that out since everyone else had trouble today!

[radacrider]

Today was finally a beautiful commuting morning here in the pacific nw of Oregon!

Since this week is suppose to be nice I got out the road bike (Radac) - forgot how fun my 19lb race frame bike is to ride.

Rode with my son the first 2 miles to his high school, then had a short cat 6 with another commuter until we hit the little bit of rise, he ran out of steam; evaded a car that attempted to blow a stop sign on a side street, then just plain savored the sunny warm morning.