My Evening Commute
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@dkel 121054 wrote:
Had a chance to ride home by way of Gallows through the midst of power lines down, cones, stopped traffic, utility workers, and police. Lots of confusion and frustration everywhere, and I slipped right through. My only detour was a short stint on the sidewalk to stay out of the way of the workers. Really an advantage being on a bike through all that! Also ran into VVill at Bikenetic on my way through there. Had a nice time talking about belt drives with him, as we both have belt drive bikes in our future! A memorable commute.
Hey me too, just around 4:00pm went through that the same way. People in cars didn’t look too thrilled
Burned by the weather forecast again!
Rode the Metro in because of the 60% chance of thunderstorms from 3 PM to 9 PM or whatever. Could have been enjoying an evening commute ride right now.
@GovernorSilver 121131 wrote:
Burned by the weather forecast again!
Rode the Metro in because of the 60% chance of thunderstorms from 3 PM to 9 PM or whatever. Could have been enjoying an evening commute ride right now.
In March, when I came to accept that my “reasons” for not commuting by bicycle were actually excuses, I too looked at the weather each morning and made a decision for what the later day would bring. After a few days of having it be wrong, I decided that if it weren’t pouring rain or blasting snow as I left in the morning, I would bike in to work . If it really were impossible to get home by bike, then I could metro. In general I have found that occasionally waiting a bit or donning my rain gear were all that was needed to get home. Once I stopped for a few minutes under an underpass to wait out the worst of some rain. I have been rained on going to work a few times, but oh well. No metro yet.
They really cannot predict weather very well here by the nature of the area (mountains throw a big wrench in things), especially since the predictions cover the state of MD, DC, and most of the state of VA. It is too large an area to be right consistently, especially for storms.
It’s just as well that I didn’t ride today, gents.
When I got home this evening, I took a closer look to try to figure out why my hub-powered head-light didn’t turn on Tuesday evening. Turns out the wiring was severed. Worse, one of the bolts on my front wheel was gone.
Now the bike is in the shop so they can fix the wiring and order a new bolt, because it’s a nonstandard size.
Wonder if there are any bikes on sale. N+1 is the answer, right.
I blew out a rear tube yesterday afternoon due to deteriorated rim tape while heading home on the MBT from a meeting near Union Station. I pulled off the trail onto Randolph Street and there just happened to be a bike shop, “Gearin’Up Bicycles,” so I went in to see if I could use their floor pump, which is a lot easier than my mini-frame pump. They not only said yes, but let me use an empty bike stand in the shop area, too. Turned out that I needed a new rim strip, and a tube, as the stem on my spare was too short to fit my rim profile (as I recently switched out wheelset but forgot to switch out spare tube accordingly in my saddle bag). While there, a gang of 4th grade boys came in, so I recruited two of them to help me and teach them about flats. They were most fascinated by eating my GU packs that fell out of my saddle bag when I got out my tools.
Shout out to Mike the shop manager and Dennis the mechanic for letting me crash their shop to do an emergency repair that got more involved than I originally thought, lending a third hand, and providing a tube and rim strip at a very modest cost. .
Check out http://www.gearinupbicycles.org for providing a wonderful community service for used bikes to DC kids as well as service to DC cyclists in general. I may go back to volunteer in the shop to express my gratitude.
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