A Quick Tip

It's like that whole Best of San Diego business was a death knell for both my blogging and bike commuting. I must admit that I'm still a bit confused by it. San Diego Magazine never even notified me of my inclusion in the issue. That's weird, right? If not for Paul from sdurban.com, I would never have known about it. At. All. (so thanks, again, Paul!)


Anyway...

I haven't biked to work since October, I think, and I still have not done a bike commute in 2012. I did, however, get on the saddle the other day for a nice little 20 miler. Now that spring is upon us, and I'm seeing more and more cyclists out on the road, I just wanted to share this link that I saw on Twitter last week.

Michael Bluejay's "How Not To Get Hit By Cars" bicyclesafe.com contains a lot of good, practical advice.
— Kent Peterson (@kentsbike) March 27, 2012

Also, I just saw that Bike Snob NYC has a new book out...

Missing. Inaction.

These two words certainly describe both this blog and my bike commuting as of late.

If you're curious I'll offer up a brief explanation. In August we spent both a week in Chicago and a week in Lake Tahoe. My bike came with to Tahoe and I rode it only a little (I'll get around to finishing that post eventually).

Upon returning to non-vacation mode I rode to work the very next Friday. I ended up sustaining a strained calf injury that morning, though I didn't fully realize this until the next day. This wouldn't have been so bad had I not been training for my first half-marathon, which was conveniently a week away. I know. I was potentially screwed.

I sought treatment at a sports chiropractor for the week leading up to the race and was able to complete the race within my previously estimated time, despite the injury.

So that was all well and good, but I've been taking it easy on my road back to recovery. I've taken a couple short rides and was considering riding to work this week, but then rain happened.

Anyway, hopefully I will ride in at least once next week.

What's a few raindrops?

As anyone is San Diego and Southern California knows by now, we are in the midst of a series of storms set to bring some much needed rain to the region for the rest of the week. The implication of this for me is another excuse to forego my weekly bike commute. Since I just posted the other day about trying to nix the excuses, I am somewhat compelled to ride rain or shine.

Folks from the bike and rain-friendly cities of Portland and Seattle seem to find little obstacle in a little precipitation. There are people in even colder climates bike commuting in the snow. Bike Crave has some pretty decent insight as to why it is some people aren't afraid to ride when the going gets wet. It's because they're used to it.

You know the song: "It never rains in Southern California..." People here can't even drive cars when it rains. You don't even get wet doing that. You surely can't expect anyone to bicycle in the rain. Yet, there are people who do it. Many even enjoy it.

Not too long ago, San Diego's first Tweed Ride occurred under somewhat rainy conditions. Supposedly this was the first of the seemingly ubiquitous Tweed Rides to actually occur in the rain. Not London. Not Portland.

Come tomorrow morning, I'll see if I'm up for it. I don't even have a rain jacket to wear. No fenders on the bike. No excuses, right?

Get on the Bike

It's been over a week since I last rode my bike. I have been trying to designate Wednesdays to be my official "bike commute" day. I needed to stay home this past Wednessday so I missed my opportunity. Riding once a week sounds like a realistic goal, but there always seems to be something that comes up, legitimate or not.  I had ridden two weeks in a row (I think a first for me), until this week, that is.

I'd been thinking that maybe I should change the tag line of my blog from "Developing a bike commute habit" to "The diary of an aspiring bike commuter" or "21 and more excuses not to ride" or "The sometimes bike commuter" or "How to blog about bike commuting without really riding." Please suggest others in comments if you've got any good ones I can use.

It can be tough finding time to ride when you're trying to balance family and work and whatever else. I've been thinking I should bring my bike in on days I don't ride to work and take some lunch rides. We'll see if that ever happens... Even if I can't ride to work, I think I just need to find a way to get out on the bike a little more and log some miles.

So, having said that I snuck out for a quick ride as the sun was setting this Saturday afternoon. I've been wanting to tackle this hill nearby my house. It is probably not much of a climb for most cyclists, but I figured it would be a bit of a litmus test to gauge my current riding fitness. The main climb is about 1.7 miles and about 330 feet in elevation. That's a 3.6% overall grade - like I said, probably nothing to a lot of people. I don't really know.

I've seen plenty of people climb this road. Several of those people, by appearances, were in much worse physical shape than I. I figured that I could probably make it up OK on my mountain bike with the luxury of spinning the granny gear on the front triple crank (of course I never tried), but since I got my new bike I've been a bit worried about my gear range on the low end. I've got a 50-11 combo on the high end and a 34-28 combo on the low end, which my co-worker kindly pointed out is a wider range on both ends than what his more traditional cyclocross 48/36 double crankset gives him.

As Miley Cyrus says, "It's all about the climb." (Hey, I've got a young daughter who incessantly watches the Disney Channel.) It turns out the climb was not so bad after all. It is broken into two sections with a nice flat in the middle that afforded me the chance to catch my breath. I was still straining a bit at the crest, but I was doing everything to stay out of that bottom combo, for nothing more than the illusion that I've got some minor semblance of strength in my legs.

Here's the route plotted with elevation. The ride took me about 38 minutes and covered over 8.6 miles. I hit about 34 mph on the way down the hill. I also made a few poor choices in the way I handled the bike on the road in relation to cars on the way home. (Incidentally, I'm currently listening to the audio version of Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic.) I'll be more careful in the future.