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I woke up to see this:


Definitely time for a ride. The main roads have been clear enough to ride on for the past few days, but over-eager drivers combined with shoulders made of 3-foot (or deeper) plow banks means that my usual rush-hour bike commute is still kind of on hold. An early morning ride a little longer than my usual commute was definitely in order. Partially to shake down Frank in real snow, testing out the new cyclometer (which read -5.2°F by the time I got back home) and partially just to say I've ridden in colder than -5. My previous cold record was about 2 and a half miles at -4.



As for snow handling, these 2.25" tires handle amazingly well, but they still don't have the floating capacity to handle the un-plowed church parking lot down the road from me. In fact, powering into the un-plowed mass grabbed my front tire with enough oomph to throw me into what had to be a comically slow-mo endo. As usual, I love playing in the snow.

It snowed Friday night into Saturday morning, and we got about an inch near my home. The wind scattered it around and cleared the snow from some spots while forming deeper drifts in others. No photos, sadly. This morning greeted us with 6°F and wind from the Northwest -- a crosswind for most of my trip.

I'm still trying to think of a name for my Schwinn. It took the patches of snow and ice in stride, but it's really slow.  I think I need to start leaving earlier. My clothing log let me down today, too. By the time I was a mile into my ride, I was way too hot. I was adequately layered up, so it was easy to fix.  For those who wonder what I ended up rocking today:

Head: Seirus Thermax Headliner balaclava. This one is really thin, and it spent about half of its time covering my mouth and nose, on and off. It's pretty much my favorite balaclava ever.

Torso: Cheap "Champion" brand base layer shirt plus the thin windproof outer shell of my skiing coat.

Legs: Chamois, base layer pants, flannel and cargo pants. I could have ditched the flannels, but it wasn't too hot.

Hands: Cheap "Thinsulate" mittens

Feet: 2 layers of smartwool socks, work boots

Except for my eyes, I stayed warm. I didn't want to mess with the ski goggles. Again, though... everyone is different. Your body type, fitness level, metabolism, effort and dozens of other variables make it hard to tell people what to wear when it gets cold outside.

I think this morning was the first ride of the season where the temperature was in the teens. Most of you know how I handle the cold-weather season by now. I know what works, clothing-wise because I've kept track of it since my first winter. I'm seeing the usual cadre of local cold-weather bike commuters as they ramp up for the chilly season, but I'm also seeing a bunch of my other cycling friends take a stab at it this winter. That's cool, literally!

As usual, I'm interested in all the different ways my fellow cyclists solve their problems. It sounds like some of them are opting to give pogies (or bar mitts) a try. I don't think they'd work well for me, since I have to leave my bike out in the cold.

Since this is my first winter at the new job, people are already in full-on quiz mode. The truth is that I might revert to the car a few times this coming winter. At my last job, I had the option to take any of four different bus routes when the going got tough. These buses would drop me off anywhere from 300 yards to 3 miles from my place. Now, there's no way to get home by bus, and the roads I have to take to get to and from work are likely going to be treacherous at least a few times over the winter. I'm definitely not shooting for the "more hardcore than you" badge.  I'll leave that to folks like Doug, who was and continues to be an inspiration for my winter cycling habits.

Of course, I plan on riding when ever possible. I'll probably be picking up The Mesa next week, and I'll start outfitting it for winter commuting.  I'll need a few things to round it out (see the Wish List, which contains other stuff I've been saving up for, too) but as far as I'm concerned, winter is on! Who's with me?

I opted to take the bus this morning, just so I was certain I'd show up fresh and on-time. It's nice to have a Plan B.

I had a great first day at work. Officially, my title is Linux/Windows Administrator. Practically, I am helping a relatively small IT group wherever they need it. After a brief orientation, I went up to my new office, caught up with my new boss, got Windows 7* installed, and started familiarizing myself with my surroundings.

I've got a great team to work with, and they've each got a unique and complementary set of skills. The pile of stuff I was handed this morning is almost entirely related to bolstering the company's security stance. A cursory look, however, shows that the team has managed to really stay on top of things. Over the coming months, I'll be streamlining all kinds of security-related processes when I'm not helping the team with system administration duties. Basically: this is a dream come true.

I took a bit of a pay cut, but when you consider all the benefits of having a job this close to home (and without interstate taxes) it's worthwhile. The small size of this group and the growth speed of the company means that this is a genuine career opportunity, not just a paycheck.

For those of you not in the Greater Kansas City Area: today was filled with cold temperatures, massive rain and biting winds gusting over 30 MPH. In the morning, the bus schedule agrees merrily with my work schedule. It stops running homeward around 4:00 or so, well before the end of my work day. Due to her medical issues, my wife needs her car. My car is currently out of commission in more ways than one. Homeward, there is no Plan B, and this photo doesn't do any justice to my aqueous, breezy journey. I was way under-dressed for this evening. It felt like a blustery, October day. I was, as you might imagine, dressed for the average May rainstorm, which usually doesn't call for any special gear.


* Windows 7 is one of the slickest operating systems I've ever used. I'm anything but a Microsoft fanboy, so that's saying something.

I was hoping I'd get a chance to test the Urbana's 2.6" wide tires on the snow. While Fritz may have sand, I jumped at the opportunity to goof off in 3" of snow. This stuff had a thin layer of ice on the pavement, with slush in some spots, and a thick, wet snowpack on top of that. It's the stuff that I love riding my mountain bike in.

I was a tad apprehensive about the Urbana's tires, because they're very lightly treaded, an attribute that really helps keep the rolling resistance low.


Let me make myself clear. This is bar none the best handling bike I've ever ridden on snow. You want to stay seated to get moving, but once you're up and running, these tires are very confidence-inspiring.


The fenders did their job, and didn't get terribly clogged, either. There's still a lot of snow all over the place, but it kept the slush off my pants and out of my face.


While trying to slide sideways, the tires grip hard again as soon as you let off the brake. It's hard to actually wipe out in the snow. It's not impossible, though. This blurry mess is a still frame from a video clip where I found myself sliding on my ass in slushy snow after laying it down.

I posted that photo yesterday of riding my bike in the snow. You know what? Aside from the initial part of getting moving, riding my 25mm road tires (in my case, Bontrager hard-case) really wasn't too bad at all, in fact, it didn't feel much different than the Baxter's OEM Vittoria Randonneur tires.

I know the folks on BikeForums.net told me years ago that a road bike does just fine in light snow, but I never really put it to the test. Last night, nothing had really frozen yet and it was a genuinely pleasant ride. That's a good thing, I suppose, because my mountain bike needs a LOT of work to be road-worthy again.

Tell me this doesn't look like fun. And yes, they are using studs. Via Cyclelicious.

Yesterday, I took the bus that drops me off at The Maul. Kind of a misake: Quivira was trashed. There was one and a half usable lanes, and cars were still treating it like two whole ones, even with me on the road. That meant I was getting buzzed. A LOT. And even taking what remained of the outside lane, people were still cutting too close for my comfort if it was dry out, much less with snow still adorning the roadway. I wasn't going to risk that again. The sidewalks were unusable, as well. Quivira's a no-go.

So I was betting on 87th street to at least have sidewalks that'd been smoothed over and trampled down by people. The sidewalks on 87th are generally ridable after a good snow-storm. The street itself was NOT going to be ridden on with the fresh snow we got today. Vehicular Psychlists and you Followers of Forrester: just shut up right freaking now, unless you tried riding 87th Street over I-35 today. Usually, I agree with you guys on the VC thing. Not today.

Having set my mind on 85th/87th, I decided to take the Antioch bus to get closer to home today. It was running a bit behind schedule, so I took some pics.






The reflective sidewalls still get me every time. I love that feature.


The bus ended up getting me to my usual stop at 85th about an hour behind schedule. That's okay. I have lights. 85th was fine. Snowpacked, but okay. So was Goddard. Then, I got to 87th. Packed with cars honking at one another, my decision to stay off the road itself was quickly reinforced. That's when the Baxter decided to not move. And who could blame it. The snow was knee deep in places, hip-deep in others, and right there at the BP Gas Station, it was almost enough to bury half the wheel.


So, I hiked. It was 2 miles of walking through all kinds of snow, plow boulders, and crap. All while hauling my backpack and pushing a bike through the stuff. When I got to the 87th street and I-35 overpass, I took a quick break. Just to catch my breath. Okay, maybe it was just a photo-op. But I laid there for a minute or two anyways, allowing my heart rate to settle down a bit.


When I got to the bank parking lot at 87th and Quivira, I was finally home free, on plowed residential thoroughfares and parking lots.


All told, my commute home took three hours, but a good chunk of that 3 hours was spent waiting for and riding on the bus. The last 3 miles (one on the bike, two on foot) took a little under an hour.

This was by far the most tedious commute to date, but I was mostly dressed for the occasion, and I got a good workout from the whole ordeal.

It is interesting that in 2 miles spent hiking through the snow along 87th street, there was not one single passerby who paid me any attention at all. No honks. No "are you alright?" No anything. Not that I needed or wanted any help (I could've summoned help easily had I felt life or limb to be in danger) but I really thought that mankind was just a bit more decent than that.

Well, more than one thing is official.

The first thing is that the Vittoria Randonneur tires on the Swobo Baxter test mule are awesome. I played in the snow a few days after I took delivery of it, but today was the first true test of a commute on bad roads that had been preliminarily cleared a bit.

Saturday, I took the Baxter out to play in an abandoned parking lot, where snow was a good foot deep on average, and 18" in some spots. I thought it'd be cool to get some snowy action photos, but the Baxter would not move. I'll see if I can find some pics in the mess that show how bad it was. The tire would just spin.

I've had The Goat out in 8" deep snow before, and it worked alright, but I'm betting the really knobby tires and 1.95" width had something to do with it. Still, I don't know how well it would've fared in stuff twice as deep. If the tires sink to the ground (likely when it's powdery snow), the wheel is more than half buried, and one's feet will barely clear the snow AT THE TOP of the pedal stroke. That's when you probably would be better off on those 4-inch Surly Endomorphs.

So it's also official: This is the most snow I've ever seen come down without a melt cycle here in Kansas City, and I've lived here for 22 years and change now. The winter of '91-92 is the closest thing in memory, but I think this winter trumps even that one from nearly two decades past.

Lastly, it's official: It's freakin' COLD. 6*F this morning, but it dropped to -1 yesterday morning. I've ridden a short distance at -4F once, and the whole commute at 0F last winter. They're predicting -6 ambient later this week, and at least one local forecaster thinks that it could get into the double-digits below zero.

Therefore, this winter with its cold and snow reminds me of the good old days: growing up in rural Nebraska where 20-inch blizzards were not unheard-of and there were two snow plows for every 1,000 residents.

The morning commute
As I'd stated, the 28mm Vittoria Randonneur tires held up great this morning. On them, I encountered glare ice beneath packed snow, powder, slush, chemical-melted grime and all things in between. The ice required me to be seated in order to progress forward (it was also on an uphill) but the Randos held tough, much to my surprise. This winter does have me pondering the use of commercially available studded tires for my Mountain bike, but that will have to wait for a bit. Two fellow year-rounders I know of have made the jump to studs. I'm betting after FIVE crashes this winter, another friend of mine might be ready to do the same. Me? I'm doing alright with what I have, but this winter is one where I can see a real benefit to studded tires, unlike years past where it was mostly slush, and a really good melt-off happened every 2-3 days.

Christmas
The brunt of the snow happened almost two weeks ago, Christmas eve into Christmas day. We were to pick up my grandmother in Overland Park, then drive to Stilwell on Christmas morning for breakfast and Christmas festivities. The roads were horrible. 119th Street had barely been cleared, my grandmother's parking lot was untouched, with an average snow depth of 18-24" everywhere, thanks to the wind and the layout of the buildings. It was one of the first times I've ever had a genuine need for full-on 4x4 mode in our Explorer. My brother-in-law's RWD-only Explorer had all kinds of problems. I ended up delivering Christmas presents to them through the un-plowed streets of Olathe, KS.

Here are some of the simple things I did for Christmas this year.

In 1993 or so, I kind of home-schooled for a year. I say kind-of, because I had most of the facts and skills expected of kids older than me, so the reality is, I took a year off from school due to some medical things. I didn't do much traditional course work. I studied under my grandfather, who taught my vocational skills in hopes, I think, that I'd take over his business for him when I came of age. Unfortunately, he passed away before I could do that. That year, however, one of the things we worked on together was this ArcherKit thermometer thing that he'd packratted away in 1977, two whole years before I was even born. Some 16 years later, we worked on it, and got it almost fully functional, but then it got put away before we got to adjusting it and putting the finishing touches on. I found it recently, and finished this project that Grandpa and I had started 13 years ago, and gave it to my mother. Not only is it a RadioShack classic from a completely different era of do-it-yourselfers, but it's of immense sentimental value. I had no qualms leaving the $17.95 price tag sticker intact.







When I was learning to play bass guitar (okay, I'm probably still learning), Dad gave me his practice amplifier. He doesn't really have a practice amp anymore, and I thought I'd build one for him. This one is small enough to fit in a gig bag, and can run off a 9V battery or a power cord that I included. I soldered the circuit inside together myself, modifying some plans I saw online. It's all built into an old satellite speaker for a home theater system. It's not terribly loud, but it's a great little practice amp with a nice tone to it. I also added a headphone jack, which is nice for when you want to clearly hear what you're playing on an electric guitar without disturbing anyone else. Most of the parts for this were salvaged from piles of stuff I had laying around at home. Many of the components were removed from old, broken gadgets and soldered into place.








The device I tried to build for my sister didn't go too well, so I ended up buying a kit that you solder together yourself at the last minute. I decided that instead of soldering it together quickly (I could have pulled it off in about 3 minutes), that I'd give it to my sister in its original packaging, and teach her how to solder. She did great, and now she knows how to solder things.


I also got some cool stuff for Christmas as well, but none of it compares to the real meaning of Christmas, not to mention the gift of seeing my family smile.

9°F this morning. I can't express enough how much I love having a log of winter riding clothes.

Some time ago, it was 8°F and I had my clothing pretty much nailed. I did have a note to myself that my legs got a bit chilly with just long johns and cargo pants. I just added a layer to my legs and otherwise kept the same setup. It was a perfect, relaxing ride this morning. No sweating. No chills. Moderate effort, a reasonable pace, a warm core with a little breathe to the clothing to let just the right amount of cool air in and warm, humid air out.

This is one of those mornings where I can mark a "1 - Perfect" in my clothing log. This is one for the memory banks and should do great for the range of 5-10°F. The coldest I've ever ridden in and been able to say I had the "perfect" setup was at 19°F until this morning. I've got a lot of "2 - Good!" entries for much colder temperatures, but there's always something wrong. Feet too hot, ears too cold, eyelashes frozen together or stuff like that; where things were REALLY close, but could use a bit of improvement.

I always know I've got the perfect setup when I can actually feel a little bit of the biting cold come in -- not in one place, but diffused. If some air gets in through a zipper of a fairly loose jacket but passes through a few thin layers and distributes itself evenly, that's a good thing. All the good wicking wool and technical synthetic layers in the world won't help at all if there's not a little air flow to carry the moisture off. Soaked fabric can cause hypothermia, but I can say that wool shines here, and even soaking wet retains a lot more insulation than other fabrics.

Similarly, you don't want to allow the layers to get too cold. A cold core will start reducing circulation to the limbs. That's when frostbite or worse happens. So it's a fine balancing act, finding your groove in the cold.

At any rate, I hope those of you who are still out there in the are staying safe and comfortable, whether it's riding, skiing, snowboarding or jogging and whether you're getting around for work and errands or just getting some miles in.

Random Tunage:
Mittelstandskinder Ohne Strom - Live Tropical Fish
Chicane - Saltwater

Well, it started out that way: mid-40s upon departure. The forecast (which I'd dutifully checked last night like a good commuter) said that it would drop down to 18°F by the time I'd be getting out of work. I loaded a pannier up with extra warms for the ride home. I took the Baxter this morning and rode to the bus stop in my work clothes, leaving a bit early so that I could savor the relatively warm weather, and avoid sweating on the way to the bus. The Swobo Baxter BEGS to be ridden and enjoyed; It's hard to ride it without a goofy grin on your face. It certainly doesn't lend itself well to speed, but makes up for it with the fun factor.

At around 8:00 this morning, I was hunkered down over my computer monitor, chipping away at the epic pile of Monday workload. Prodigy - Breathe was setting the pace for my day, being pipelined into my skull through a hefty set of noise-cancelling DJ cans, like a rush of heroin coursing through an addicts veins directly to the deepest reaches of the brain. Tunage gets me through the day. It muffles out the din of gossiping peers, the shuffle and clatter of clumsy co-workers who insist on smacking and dragging their hands on my cubicle wall as they make their way to the coffee machine, the shitter or the copy room. Then I saw the blip. A tiny distraction on my screen. cDude alerted me to the fact that it was, in fact, 19°F already. In just two hours or so, temps had plunged nearly 25 degrees. It looked like this:



I'd dragged enough warmth downtown with me to sustain a 15°F commute home, again, including my work clothes as a functional part of the getup. After all, it's only a few miles when I bridge the trans-urban gap with mass transit. My mind went into graph extrapolation mode, and I had fears of getting out of the office to single digit temperatures. A few miles wouldn't kill me, but it would suck. Plus, I had to hit the post office on the way home.

Fortunately, the final temperature for the end of the work day was spot on. The graph above leveled out and stayed at 18°F most of the day. As I write this, though, the mercury is dropping further, and single-digits are likely for the morning.

At any rate, this is a reminder for you to make sure you look at the whole day's forecast. This time of year, it's not unheard of to have a colder evening commute than your morning commute was. This event was a close call that even has me thinking about leaving one extra layer of warm clothing at the office, just in case evening weather turns out to be more brutal than originally predicted. I already keep a full change of biz-casual at the office (just in case) as well as a towel (Ford Prefect would be proud!) but maybe a set of sweats and a pair of wooly socks left in the filing cabinet drawer or something would be wise.

40 MPH winds, -10°F wind chill. Ice, snow and slush everywhere.

Okay, I could have done without the wind, but it was a great morning for a ride.


I answer the question "Is that even safe?!" (as was asked by several cow-orkers) on BikeCommuters.com

"The Games" as I so irreverently christened them last evening, ended up being a 100% chance of rain at 33°F. FML.

100% chance of snow. I'm looking forward to it.

Random Tunage:
Check out some of my favorite songs released in 2009 (and late '08)

Even though temperatures were in the 40s yesterday, I kept the jacket off, left the gloves on, and made sure my ears were covered. My hands, ears, and toes always seem to be the most sensitive to cold. For some reason, though, I really don't care how cold my arms get. They acted like radiators for my back, which was burning up the whole ride home, since I was using my backpack yesterday instead of the panniers. All of this is from yesterday.


Blurry but fun on the Turkey Creek Trail. Lots of joggers out, too.


Near my apartment complex:


A different kind of fall, no I didn't eat it. This was on Main Street southbound from River Market. I hit River Market Cyclery around lunch time to get the mounting tab for my Take-A-Look mirror.


This is corrugated plastic that's actually been zip-tied into place. Also, a lot of the deadly storm drains have spraypaint markings leading up to them. Most of this stuff looks very, very unofficial, so I'm guessing it's vigilante activism. This storm drain is not much different than the one I ruined my rear wheel on just 3 days after getting The Twelve. No, I didn't fall, but these drainage grates are a serious hazard.

Random Tunage:
Chemical Brothers - It Doesn't Matter
Paul Van Dyk ft. David Byrne - Fall With Me

Usually, come mid-September through perhaps the end of October, there's this funky transition period with nippy 40° mornings and blissful 65-70° afternoons. This necessitates lugging extra clothes around. I don't like to ride in long pants if it's much warmer than 60° and I simply can't ride in shorts below 50°.

There was about a week of that stuff. We went straight to cold, really.

Also, until the time change happens at the end of this month, even the mornings I wake up and leave late are still completely dark. Blinkies fore and aft are required gear right now, and the dark mornings make for horrible attempts at snapshottery. Anything I could post here would surely be called out as banal and blurred, not surreal and abstract.

Even though the cold usually chases the cyclists away, I've been seeing plenty of them in bike racks around town. This is in stark contrast to years past, when cool mornings mean empty bike racks all over town. This also includes a previously unseen, but far-from-new mountain bike that started showing up at my office building. It looks like something that's been hanging upside down in a basement or garage for quite a while. Old, but not in bad shape. Plenty of miles, but doesn't show signs of regular (ab)use. I see plenty of cyclists on the road, too. Full business-dress suit types downtown (some of them actually riding their bikes, not pushing them) and winter-clad fellows closer to home and downtown alike.

Then there's the inexorable rain at 30- and 40-something degrees that, combined with autumn's typically strong winds, can chill me to the bone in nothing flat if I'm not careful about my choice in clothing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'll take a 20-degree blizzard over a 40-degree rainstorm any day.

Two Bicycle website R.I.P.s came across my radar this weekend:
Rick Smith announced that Yehuda Moon -- my favorite (only?) bicycle web-comic -- is closing shop for a while. R.I.P.

A vague post on Blue Collar MTB leads me to believe that all the Crooked Cog sites' days are numbered. That includes Commute By Bike. R.I.P.

I suppose that means that as the nice weather picks up, you'll be seeing more of my Tricks of the Trade and Product Reviews right here for the time being unless someone else (ahem) wants to snag me up.

Good Friday -- Oddly enough an R.I.P. in and of itself -- was last week. Like any other banking holiday, my company was closed. I had some business to attend to at a local retirement home 2 miles away from my place, but not an R.I.P.

Unrelated side-note: My great-grandfather died in 1991 at this retirement home at the age of 107! An avid mycologist by hobby, he wrote at least one book on mushrooms. He was also the oldest person to ever carry the Olympic torch, at age 99 in the 1984 Olympics. This event and his name were even mentioned by Ronald Reagan at the 1984 RNC. I miss him, but I'm glad he lasted long enough for me to remember him. R.I.P.


My wife and I went to the pet store on Friday as well. Not surprisingly, ducklings and bunnies were selling like hot-cakes. I'm not entirely sure what one would do with a full-grown duck as a pet. I suppose you'd just let it fly off. It would be pretty hard to keep one indoors.


I rode to Easter morning service, which was held at The Commons. It's an 11 mile trip in each direction. I only barely missed the rain on my way home. I carried about a 16 MPH average both directions, including stopped time. It feels good to finally see some of my speed coming back a little at a time.

Later, my wife and I drove down to my parents' place for a late Easter lunch.


This morning: Cold and wet. Half-way to the bus stop, I watched as my phone fell out of my jacket, bouncing and skidding along the wet pavement for a few dozen yards. The past few four-day work-weeks have me spoiled and I feel a serious case of the Mondays coming on.

I'm paraphrasing here, but one of the guys on a local geek/tech mailing list said Kansas City will continue to have snow every weekend until our demands are met...

At first, I chortled merrily. I'm a bit of a mad scientist myself (although I'm not terribly evil and I'm certainly not a genius)

And then, I groaned. I really don't much care for this weather. It's been intermittently sleeting, raining, snowing and flurrying very lightly all day and it looks like I'm in for some abysmal elements in the morning. I'm probably going to need to take The Goat out of hiding for this one. Try to stay shiny side up out there tomorrow, fellow midwesterners.

Random Tunage:
Ferry Corsten - Shelter Me
Britney Spears - Everytime

Not that I really give two farts what anyone thinks of my (lack of?) musical taste, but check it out before you flame me for the Britney track. This ethereal gem was hiding in her 2003 album In The Zone. This was an otherwise barely-tolerable album toward the beginning of an era where the line between pop and hip-hop was fading fast. Its only chart-impacting single was "Toxic" - in more than one way. All that aside, "Everytime" managed to pull off a vibe that's distinctly out of its element, and I like it. You might, too.

Saturday, my wife and I "kind of" participated in Earth Hour. When I say "kind of", I mean that we turned off almost everything in the place, even the clothes dryer that was running. We didn't unplug anything and the server farm stayed up. All the computer monitors and our laptops were already shut down, though.


My wife and I decided to read Bible passages aloud by candle-light for an hour. To that measure, we had a lot of candles going. This shows most of them, which provided enough light in our living room to read by. I'm not sure how much carbon we really saved. Those servers probably slurped up a good chunk, and I know all these candles weren't helping too much. Thank goodness I'm not a totally crazed eco-zealot. That's not to say I don't believe in respect and stewardship for what we've all been given to share with one another -- past, present and future.


Saturday also brought with it quite a few inches of freezing rain and snow. This was a bizarre, transient storm that dumped on us all day. Sunday and into today, warm, strong south winds and clear skies cooked almost all of the precipitation away. It was very strange to go out yesterday afternoon to see the pavement steaming with dry patches, wet spots, water rushing to the storm drains, and huge piles of plowed snow all at the same time, just 12 hours after the storm came to an end. The pavement was dry except for a few spots this morning. All that was left of the plowed roadside mess was a thin trail of slushy road grime. All but the biggest parking-lot piles will probably be gone by the time I leave work.


I did have to fight a head/crosswind with gusts up to 25 MPH on the way to the bus this morning. I personally find the combination of head and crosswinds to be the most loathsome of all kinds of wind. When you've got the opportunity to take the lane like I do on Quivira in the morning, it's not too big of a problem. If you find yourself having to share a lane (including the use of a bike lane), this kind of wind will either try to curb you or throw you in front of a vehicle. That's not my idea of a good time, and it's a good reason to keep your bike out in the middle of the road, where hopefully you'll make the point that motorists should change lanes to go around. If they don't, at least you've got a whole bunch of room to your right.

Random Tunage:
Crystal Method - Blowout
Prodigy - Firestarter

Photo: Moonlit Demolition Scene from this morning at the bus stop.


Spring gave it a real go of things, but Winter continues to persevere and knock it down. We got a surprise snow-storm a few weekends ago. Yesterday, a relatively warm morning fell to its knees over the workday, greeting me with temperatures back in the 30s and a wind strong enough to work its way through my balaclava and give me a really nasty ear-ache. Not to mention the fact that it was constantly pushing me sideways toward traffic.

This morning? 15 degrees or so. Some forecasters are saying it could get even colder tomorrow morning.

/me shakes fist at winter.