Cycle Ti Thunder

Yesterday was a windy ride home. Wind Speeds and Gusts:WNW at 22 mph gusting to 33 mph.  I was struggling along at 17 KMPH at some points.

I have not been riding my bike so much this week. My hammies were getting sore and i decided to back off for a few days. I have a history of doing things until I am exhausted so I do not want to burn out on biking. I have had a crazy project load and I was car pooling with a co-worker. Sometimes it is nice to take a break and rest up the legs so they can be ready for the long riding season.  I have been thinking about riding off road all week so when I got home I finally decided to go for a fun ride. Tonight after work I decided to test my Jekyll on some of the open spaces near my home.  Albany Georgia was built on swamp land.  It is so flat that developers dug deep holes and the low water table fills them up and they call them lakes.  Most neighborhoods have drainage channels running behind houses and some dump into large "retention ponds" or lakes. The ground here is so saturated with the recent rains that there are plenty of soft spots and larg

Temperature is 52 degrees. ODO is 2379 KM. Sweating in cold air with a headwind makes me really cold.

 Tonight I took the long way home (#ttlwh). The Mud Creek Road and the segment on Tallahassee Road have the highest elevation gain of all of the bike commute routes in my arsenal thus far.  Compared to Portland or even Austin it is still basically flat, but I love finding any bump in the road that goes up for more than a few hundred feet.   This evening it was really windy with strong gusts in all directions. There were big steady winds from the west and I rode for a good while directly into the wind. I did not care about it as I was just happy to be out in the sun relaxing on my bike as I rode home with no worries.  It is hard to capture the beauty that I see during the photographer's period of golden light. I took this video and you can not see the vivid green grass and ground cover that was so bright against the barren trees.  I may start hauling my big Canon 10D to chronicle the changing seasons as I ride through pecan groves and cotton fields.  I do decide to stop on

WARNING: do not try this if you have dependents.  Thirty somethings with a life of responsibilities should stop reading right now. You know you are getting old when you have to use a calculator to figure out how old you are.  Although I am young in my mind I pretend to say that the Senior Specials on the IHOP menu are for old folks.  I am not afraid to admit that that I'm sixty one at the time of this blog post.  As a life long bike commuter I have a memory full of adventures on my bikes.  Tonight was one of those adventures and I decided to write about this one. I have been getting bored riding the same routes to work and back home.  Granted I am whining about some of the best bike commuting routes that I have had in all of the states that I have lived in.  You know the saying "The grass is always greener in the pasture that you just left", well sometimes at my age the memory of past rides get better the longer it is since I had the ride.  Well today I decided to

One of my favorite commercials is the Buick ad with Shaq .  He says his shoes are bigger than most hybrid automobiles.  This got me thinking of all of these expensive carbon fiber bikes that folks ride so they can get there faster.  Today I dug out my Ortlieb bags , yeah these bags cost me more than most bikes in Walmart 10 years ago. I needed to take my laptop back to work as I bought it home in my truck on Friday. I decided to ride it to work on my bike.  I have not hauled gear in the Ortliebs in a long time, but it was time for a change in my training so I went for it.  When my ego thinks I am riding too fast I need to weigh my bike down so that I can come back to reality. I still made a pretty decent time to work even with a slight headwind.  Nothing rides smoother than a carbon steel bike with 20 pounds holding the rear tire on the ground.

Well I have 2,049 Kilometers (1273.19 miles) under my belt this year.  I started bike commuting on a regular basis last September.  I am glad that it is finally daylight savings time because I was getting tired of riding in the dark during the week.  I have not been able to ride my bike on the weekends because of home projects and other family activities that do not involve cycling.  I am glad that I rode during the cold dark days of winter.  Now I  can start to ride longer after work and still have some daylight to enjoy.  I really like riding down the country roads around Albany, GA. My personality is one that I get bored doing the same thing over and over.  When I am doing something that is routine like a bike commute I try to make it interesting by taking different routes or by noticing how the seasons change as i ride the same route.  When it is dark i can not see anything so I get lost in my thoughts.  getting lost in thought is OK for me most of the time, but on my bike I real

Today was another ride in the bitter cold, at least it was for me down here in SW Georgia.  Another dark ride in 32 degrees, but as I say my worst bike commute is better than my best commute in my truck. Last night was a commute against a cold 15 to 20 MPH head wind.  I took my short route.  When folks ask why I bike commute I site a situation like I had last night.  At five PM I was staring at my computer trying to decide if I was going to call my wife, Sylvia, to come and get me.  I did not feel like riding home in a cold head wind.  In my game of bike commuting if you ride to work you have to ride home, unless there is the threat of death due to lightning strikes.   It is easy to commute by auto and then decide to drive past the gym on the way home.  When you bike commute there is no option to get your exercise. If you want to get to work your ride and if you want to get home you ride.  So at 5:25 I walked to my bike barn on campus and then rode home. Today I decided that I wa

Last Friday I got some goggles. Today I rode to work using them. They worked OK, but I am going to have to get use to riding without my Look mirror or devise a way to get it to work with the goggles. My first ride impression is that I like them.  I purchased them so that my eyes would not be subjected to the wind driven dust and pollen in the air.  I will have to get use to the small blind spots that are present around the soft foam lining of the goggles that protect where they contact my skin.  I really like the fact that on my ride today I started in utter darkness and ended up in bright sunshine and my goggles transitioned from yellow to shaded so I did not have to change lenses.