Record time

OK, yesterday (Wednesday July 14) was only the third day doing my round-trip bike commute from home. As I mentioned before I was excited to find I could do the one-way ride in just over an hour. Since this is barely more time than the drive & bike routine was taking, it was more than enough justification to just ride all the way.

The weather was warm and I was feeling good. I made it in just under an hour. According to my CatEye bike computer, at least.




The CatEye pauses the time when the bike is not moving (like at traffic lights) so it's still a valid time in most respects. Total elapsed time from my iPhone RunMeter app is below. Cutting 3 minutes seems tough, but we'll see if I can break 60 minutes elapsed door to door. That will be my next milestone.

A Car-Free Commute

I had a great opportunity for an extra bike commute since my wife had days off on both ends of the July 4 weekend. Since I didn't have to deal with getting kids ready, I decided to get out early and take another shot at riding to work the full distance from home. Totally car-free.

Up to this point, I had cycled from home on two previous occasions. The first was one of my first bike commutes ever about a year ago. I took a roundabout route to try to avoid some hills and it took me two hours to get to work. I proceeded to get a ride home from one of my coworkers. The second time was this year's Bike to Work Day. I rode all the way from home, but, again, didn't do the round trip because I got a ride home in order to get to my daughter's dance recital that evening.

Well, this time I had no excuses not to complete the round trip. During BTWD I did the trip in about an hour and a half or so, including three pit stops. I figured I should make decent time. How good I wasn't quite sure. It currently takes me about 25 minutes to bike my normal ~6 mile route, but including the drive portion, it typically takes me probably about 50 minutes to an hour door to door, depending on traffic, etc. My route this day ended up being 15.4 miles and I got to work in about 65 minutes. I was a little bit surprised the time differential was that small. Vehicular traffic congestion is no longer a worry. Certainly a plus.

I repeated the home to work round trip again this past Wednesday (during a drizzly, wet July San Diego morning, no less).  I think my multi-modal drive & bike commute days are over. When I started thinking about bike commuting, I thought a completely car-free bike commute was probably out of my reach. I guess I proved myself wrong. Looking forward to doing it again this week!

Bumps, Backpacks, and Headlamps

With the stormy weather out of the way I rode my bike to work on my regularly scheduled Wednesday this week. This was officially Bike Commute #8, but is there any point to continue counting? Maybe, maybe not, but I guess I will anyway.

It was sunny but being winter, it was still cold by San Diego standards. I layered a long sleeve merino wool tee under another long sleeve shirt. I wore a beanie under my helmet to keep the wind off my ears, but still wore shorts. Gloves, of course. It was a lovely day for a ride and I had excellent luck with regards to catching green lights at the intersections. I only had 2 minutes of stop time versus cycling time: 22 minutes by bike computer and 24 minutes total run time by wrist watch. That might be a personal best time, I think.

I aired up my tires to 70 psi and it felt like the bumps on Kearny Villa Road were more noticeable. That or the condition of the bike lane was worsened by the recent rains. I'm not sure what pressure I had been running on my previous commutes, but I'll have to experiment with tire pressure a bit more.

Instead of the Timbuk2 messenger bag I've been riding with the past couple rides, I opted to try out my old Boblbee hard shell backpack. I've never ridden with the bag before, but the aerodynamic design certainly lends itself toward cycling. I used this backpack extensively during grad school and it was always comfortable because of the integrated lumbar support, especially with heavier loads. The stability of the backpack was welcomed after experiencing shifting with the Timbuk2 bag the past couple rides. In defense of the Timbuk2 I had not been using the stabilizing waist strap (I seem to have misplaced it), so I suppose I shouldn't blame the bag for moving around. One issue with the backpack was that there was no ideal way to clip an extra blinky light. The Timbuk2 has an integrated clip specifically for this purpose, plus built-in reflector tabs. I managed to clip my extra blinky to the backpack's top grab handle, but it flopped around occasionally.

I have a Princeton Tec Yukon light that I haven't really used much because I didn't want to fuss with mounting its external battery pack. It came with a helmet mount, so I decided to try it out for the evening ride after work to supplement my handlebar-mounted Planet Bike Blaze. My backpack has a little pocket on the top flap. I was able to stow the battery pack there, though I didn't take much care to pack in the extra length of wire. When I initially set off the wire flopped around. I somehow got it to behave for most of the ride. Next time I'll have to stow the wire more carefully or use zip ties to manage the extra length. It didn't get too dark that I noticed much benefit from having the helmet-mounted light. Towards the end, I was able to look down and check my progress on my cycle computer, which is not back lit. It was nice to have light that moved with my eyes versus being fixed on the handle bars.

First Bike Commute of 2010

January 6 I made my first bike commute of the New Year. I learned a couple things on this ride. Foremost is that I am not as fast as I thought on the new bike. Apparently this new cycling computer my brother & sister-in-law gave me for Christmas is smarter than me. Or I'm just a dumbass. The cycling computer will stop running the elapsed time when the bike is stopped for more than a few seconds. Makes sense. I didn't realize this when I used the computer's elapsed time to compare to my previous bike commutes timed with my wristwatch. Obviously the watch's stopwatch feature won't stop counting until I tell it to, so it is counting all the time I'm stopped waiting at stoplights.

I hadn't worn my watch on the first bike commute with the Masi. Since I remembered to wear my watch this time around, I figured I would run both clocks as a check. My elapsed time on the cycling computer was 23:15. My watch had me at 27:30. (I'm slightly rounding off the cycle computer time since it does still run as I'm walking the bike into the office since the front wheel continues to roll.) I still think this is a minute or so faster than I usually was on the mountain bike, so I'm still happy, just not as stoked as I was before. Aw, wait, a quick check back into my archives reveals I clocked in at 24 minutes for Bike Commute #4. I think I made all the lights that day, so little stopping. Hrrmm. At least the good news is that from now on I will know how much actual cycling time I am taking, and not counting the extended stops.

Another reminder of how slow I (still) am occurred on the ride home from work. As I'm struggling on the upside of a small valley section, an older guy on a skinny-tired bike blows right past me (I'm running the stock 700x35c 'cross tires - wide by most road bike standards). I do have one excuse: I was wearing a messenger bag, somewhat full of clothes, and it kept shifting on me during the ride home (on the way to work, it was fine). Still, I'm sure it was a pathetic sight, me sucking wind in nearly my lowest gear, and it's not even that steep a grade. Maybe I should have gotten a bike with a triple crank! I tried to blurt out "hey!" to the guy as he passed me, but he didn't give me so much as a sideways glance or nod. Why can't some people just say "hi" instead of being rude assholes?