Commute #3: March

I battled the previous night with trying to change out my studded cross tires with my regular ones (blew up a tube, then couldn't get the second try to seat the bead) and gave up in a slight baby-hissy fit. Eventually the big baby grew up and grabbed the road bike off the trainer and took that instead.

Turned out to be a good choice. The rail trail was fairly free of debris. The ride into work was pretty foggy - at times hard to see about 30 feet in front of me. I was soaked by the time I got to work, but I got there about 10-15 minutes quicker than usual.

The ride home was a little different. Started out really strong - at one point doing 26mph on a slight downhill with a calm tailwind and riding some sweet clean and new pavement. The only scary thing was the evening rush and flying past parked cars (expecting to get doored).

Of course, once I turned north on the rail trail, there was a beautiful headwind. Some guy came out of no where and decided to pass me and squeeze between two sets of walking people. I guess he was trying to be Mr Tough Guy or something, because I later caught up with him on the steep pedestrian bridge crossing West River Road. Dumb. He stayed steadily in front of me, which means his act of being super man was just a farce.

I was super tired when I got home. Need a hot shower (was getting cold) and wifey made burgers, pork chops and red potatoes on the grill. Yum!

Three commutes down, nine more to go.

Fat Bikes!? We don't need no stinkin' Fat Bikes.

Went out to Luton for a ride this morning. With another warm forecast for this week, I knew the snow was going to melt and get slushy/muddy - and the trail would be closed for awhile. I have never been out to Luton for a ride in winter, so figured what the heck - with all the talk about Fat Bikes around here I figured there would be plenty of tracks for me to follow. Negative. One set of tracks and they only lasted for about 1.5 miles of my 2.0 miles of riding. Stuck to the green loop and blue loop only as it turned out to be kind of tough for the ol' cross bike today. My thumbs were cramping and it was as if I were riding drunk in pure sand. If you strayed anywhere off the 6-8" wide fat bike track and shoe prints from runners/walkers, you were toast. I had to walk for the last half mile as the trail was way too fluffy and not packed down by nothing more than 4 sets of shoe prints.

Here's some funny stats:

2 miles ridden
1/2 mile walked
4.7mph average (ha!)
20 miles driven in car

Yeah, pretty pathetic. Although my bike did get a bath afterwards due to massive slush and salt spray during transport.

Oh well. It was still sweet to be out there in pure silence - and to be the only idiot on a skinny tire bike.

Slush wheels after transport to lot.

 Blue Loop first bridge crossing.

 

Orange/Blue connector.

 Green loop return to parking lot. This was the section I walked.

I thought I could sit on this log for a rest for awhile. Turned out to be pretty rotten and down I went.