Ride into work for Thursday, 30 June

Moderately heavy rain today and the fact I'm missing a spoke in the rear wheel made me go fairly gingerly on the ride in this morning. I managed to get in without breaking any spokes. I did, however, discover that the cheap $20 "water resistant" panniers were not particularly water resistant - they managed to hold about an inch of water on either side! Oh well, I suppose I can wax them up, but it's about what I should expect for $20.

I took the bike into Ideal Bikes, and the mechanic on duty recommended a Mavic cyclocross rim, describing all the ways he'd abused them without any problem (his favourite seemed to be a 5 foot jump ending up with him landing sideways on the wheel). I don't think I'll be pulling any stunts like that, but hopefully it should do the trick for me. He going to try to get it done for me today, depending on whether he can get the rim in or not...

Distance logged: 12.621km
Time: 35:32
Average speed: 21.2km/hr
Max speed: 44.6km/hr
Temperature: 13C, raining
Cumulative distance: 3027.411km

Ride home for Wednesday, 29 June

Day ended up nicely warm after the threat of rain and fog this morning. Broke another spoke on the way home. I went to change it aaaaand... found I'd run out of spokes of the right size. I think this is a sign that it's beyond time for a new wheel, so I'll go into the bike shop tomorrow and hopefully be riding a new wheel home tomorrow night...

Distance logged: 13.873km
Time: 42:00
Average speed: 19.8km/hr
Max speed: 55.4km/hr
Temperature: 26C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 3014.790km

Ride into work for Wednesday, 29 June

Foggy ride in this morning, which covered my glasses with condensation, a bit of a pain.

Muppet of the day was a rollerblader skating uphill on the wrong side of the road with headphones on coming towards me as I was going downhill at around 55km/hr. Then he skated to my right (ie, into oncoming traffic) to go around me. Yet another candidate for the Darwin awards. This was in the same place as yesterday's muppet, too.

Distance logged: 12.988km
Time: 33:00
Average speed: 23.6km/hr
Max speed: 63.0km/hr
Temperature: 17C, foggy, windy
Cumulative distance: 3000.917km

Ride home for Tuesday 28 June

Nice ride home, right up until I broke a spoke on the ride uphill to Clayton Park. I debated stopping to fix it, but I was only 4km or so from home, so I decided to keep going but take it easy in lower gears to put less stress on the remained of the spokes.

When I got home and changed the spoke, I found out the hard way that the rim tape was pretty well shot when a spoke nipple went through it and punctured the tube. I patched up the spoke tape with electrical tape and put some more on the places where it looked like it was about to go, but I'm going to have to do a proper replacement at some point.

Distance logged: 13.113km
Time: 42:03
Average speed: 18.7km/hr
Max speed: 68.9km/hr
Temperature: 27C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2987.919km

Ride for Tuesday, 28 June

Cool start to the morning due to the fog that was hanging around. I started off with armwarmers and kneewarmers, I took off the armwarmers at the halfway point (if it wasn't such a pain in the jacksie to take off my boots I'd have taken off the kneewarmers too). Nice ride in otherwise, apart from the sidewalk riding muppet who decided to become a road riding muppet when I was about 10 metres away travelling at around 50km/hr. What a muppet...

Good to be back in the saddle, anyway. No back pain that I noticed, which is always good.

Distance logged: 12.979km
Time: 32:06
Average speed: 24.3km/hr
Max speed: 63.4km/hr
Temperature: 13C, slightly foggy/misty
Cumulative distance: 2974.806km

Ride for Sunday, 26 June

I saw the doctor on Friday and he cleared me for riding so long as I felt comfortable with it. I took a rest on Saturday just to be sure, then I went out riding today with the trailer. It was a gorgeously sunny morning, a little humid but nothing too bad. We went riding along the fire trails in the area, and explored some of the subdivisions and found a couple of hidden trails which were nice - going through a wooded section gives some nice shade in the heat!

Distance logged: 22.539km
Time: 1:38:45
Average speed: 13.8km/hr
Temperature: 25-29C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2961.827km

Not dead, only resting

I had an email asking why I hadn't posted in a while. I was in a car accident last Wednesday, and I've injured my back. Ironically, it was the first time I'd been downtown in a car in about two months. We were rear-ended at low speed (3mph?) at a set of lights, no damage to the car, but over the next couple of days my back got worse and worse. I now have an inflamed vertebra, so I need to wait till that's all sorted out till I can ride again. It looks like I'm going to be taking a week off work...

And people say riding a bike is dangerous?!

Ride home for Tuesday, 14 June

Bit of a windy ride home, there's rain forecast over the next few days. Saw a lot of cyclists - perhaps 30 or 40 or so. I didn't think I was going all that fast but I overtook all of the ones that were heading in the same direction as me. As usual,I saw some rather bizarre interpretations of the rules (riding on the sidewalk, on the wrong side of the road, etc), but I think the most amusing was the chap with a baseball cap on, with a bike helmet carefully balanced on top.

Distance logged: 12.854km
Time: 36:32
Average speed: 21.1km/hr
Temperature: 16C, sunny, windy
Cumulative distance: 2939.288km

Ride into work for Tuesday, 14 June

Took the mountain bike in due to the threat of rain. Felt quite different after riding the road bike for a while, I think I need to raise the seat a bit as my knees felt a bit strained...

Distance logged: 13.505km
Time: 37:30
Average speed: 21.6km/hr
Temperature: 10C, overcast
Cumulative distance: 2926.434km

Ride home for Monday, 13 June

A good day to be riding a bike in Halifax; I'm not sure what was going on, but traffic was gridlocked all through downtown. I saw quite a few roadworks, which may possibly be a contributory factor.

The weather this week is forecast to be rainy with possibility of thunderstorms - just when I was starting to get used to summer!

Distance logged: 13.084km
Time: 40:54
Average speed: 19.2km/hr
Max speed: 50.0km/hr
Temperature: 17C, overcast
Cumulative distance: 2912.929km

Ride into work for Monday, 13 June

A dull and overcast ride in - at least it hit today instead of over the weekend. As I was carrying in a lot of gear (complete change of clothes, boots, laptop and laptop gubbins, etc) I took it fairly easy as I didn't want to risk trashing my rear wheel. I trued it yesterday and found a pile of spokes that were really loose; I tightened them all up and straightened up the wheel and hopefully I won't have any more break on me.

Distance logged: 12.737km
Time: 34:12
Average speed: 22.4km/hr
Max speed: 66.5km/hr
Temperature: 15C, overcast
Cumulative distance: 2899.845km

Ride for Saturday, 12 June

Ride back from Oak Island. I managed to break a couple more spokes on the way back, fortunately I had one of the guys pick up some more spokes for me when he went back to town to pick up another guy who was doing training. A very sunny ride back, I think I may have got a mild case of sunstroke towards the end as I stopped sweating and started getting a touch of a headache. As I was only around 5km from home I pushed on home but took it easy to avoid over-exerting. Got home OK and spent an evening lying on the couch not doing very much at all!

Distance logged: 83.428km
Time: 3:29:13
Average speed: 23.9km/hr
Max speed: 99.9km/hr
Temperature: 20C-23C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2887.108km

Ride for Thursday, 09 June

Today was the ride down to Oak Island for a conference. Set off around 9:30am, got there around 2pm. Broke a couple of spokes on the way down, I'm starting to think it's time for a new wheel. I've only put a 1000km or so on this wheel, but it is second hand, and looks fairly well used anyway. Additionally, I had my panniers pretty fully loaded with supplies, plus I was carrying 6 litres of water and gatorade, which probably didn't help.

Quite an enjoyable ride down, very little traffic on the roads and what traffic there was was very considerate - almost all drivers went into the other lane to pass me if they could. The exception was when I went through Chester, when suddenly it was like being back in Halifax with cars squeezing by closely - even though Chester is essentially just a small rural town, the big city attitudes seem to be in evidence, unfortunately.

Had a few comments from co-workers on cycling down, mostly positive. I think the oddest comments were, "did you cycle all the way down?" (well, it's not like I grew wings for part of the way and flew), and "how did you manage to cycle all the way?" (press down on the right-hand pedal with the right foot, then the left-hand pedal with the left foot; repeat).

As usual, I did a GPS map of the trip, too.

Distance logged: 82.638km
Time: 3:20:00
Average speed: 24.8km/hr
Max speed: 61.8km/hr
Temperature: 18C-22C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2803.680km

Ride home for Wednesday, 08 Jun

Took it easy on the ride home, since I'm riding to Oak Island tomorrow.

Greased up the road bike in preparation. Found the source of the creaking in the handlebars - there is a corner piece that didn't get any grease and has been creaking constantly. It's now pleasantly silent. I also adjusted the front fender, since the bolt on the left-hand side occasionally bumps against the tyre, which I figure can't be good. Hopefully I'm all ready for the ride tomorrow now!

Distance logged: 12.787km
Time: 38:51
Average speed: 19.7km/hr
Temperature: 21C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2721.042km

Ride into work for Wednesday, 08 June

Started off in thick fog, so I probably overdressed a bit, as the fog burnt off and I was riding in sunshine towards the end. Took the mountain bike in as I wanted to keep my road bike clean, ready for the trip to Oak Island tomorrow.

Distance logged: 16.349km
Time: 42:40
Average speed: 23.0km/hr
Temperature: 12C, foggy, clearing to sunny
Cumulative distance: 2708.255km

Ride home for Tuesday, 07 June

No ride last night and this morning as Roger didn't manage to get my bike sorted in time (no great surprise, since it was so sunny on Saturday a lot of people found their bikes needed work and brought them in over the weekend to be fixed).

Windy ride home, my muscles are still a bit sore from the weekend, too.

Distance logged: 10.876km
Time: 34:31
Average speed: 18.9km/hr
Max speed: 44.3km/hr
Temperature: 14C, overcast, windy
Cumulative distance: 2691.906km

Ride into work for Monday, 06 June

Pretty slack ride in as (a) I was still a bit tired from Saturday, and (b) I was running late setting off. Took the bike in to Ideal Bikes to have it tuned up ready for the ride down to Oak Island on Thursday, I'm hoping they'll be able to have it ready for me to ride home this afternoon, they usually do but with the nice weather they've got a backlog of repairs...

Distance logged: 11.229km
Time: 28:44
Average speed: 23.5km/hr
Max speed: 99.9km/hr
Temperature: 4C-7C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2681.030km

Ride for Saturday, 05 June

I'm going to be going to Oak Island for a sales conference on Thursday so I took a ride down to Chester to see how far I could get in 3 hours. I didn't quite make it to Chester, but I got pretty close. It was sunny almost the whole way, but about 30km from home the heavens opened. I stopped at a supermarket to get some shelter, but after 15 minutes it was still raining (though not so bad) so I set off anyway.

The ride took me about 7 hours in total, including breaks. I drank 5 litres of water, 2 litres of Gatorade, a bottle of Pepsi (for the caffeine), and ate 3 apples, 3 granola bars and an icecream. I did a GPS map as usual, which you can see by clicking on this link.

Distance logged: 130.600km
Time: 5:23:43
Average speed: 24.2km/hr
Max speed: 61.4km/hr
Temperature: 22C to 27C to 23C, sunny, rain showers near the end
Cumulative distance: 2669.801km

Ride home for Friday, 03 Jun

I accidentally erased the figures off the bike computer before I recorded them - oops. It was 16km, which took me about 45 minutes. I went to a friend's housewarming on the way home, so it was around 11pm by the time I actually got home.

Distance logged: 16km
Time: 45:00
Average speed: 21.3km/hr
Temperature: 26C to 18C, sunny (before it got dark, anyway)
Cumulative distance: 2539.201km

Ride into work for Friday, 03 June

Seems like the university students have all gone home now - I'm mostly seeing "professional", older commuters who know how to behave on the roads. School's out soon, though, so soon there will be a new set of problems on the road... oh well!

Distance logged: 16.828km
Time: 44:01
Average speed: 23.0km/hr
Max speed: 63.9km/hr
Temperature: 14C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2523.201km

Ride home for Thursday, 02 June

Bit of a windy ride home, particularly on the steep hill up Central Avenue - not a great place to have headwinds. I was also carrying some extra gear after I went shopping at MEC (new chain, jersey, a bunch of energy bars, sunscreen) which didn't help.

I took part in the Clean Sweep event at lunchtime and I got a tanline from that, so I slathered up with sunscreen before heading out. The downside of the "sport" sunscreen that resists washing off from water and sweat is it's a bugger to clean off, and I can still smell it on me now, 6 hours and a shower after I put it on. Any suggestions from readers on how to actually wash the stuff off?

Distance logged: 11.567km
Time: 37:04
Average speed: 18.8km/hr
Max speed: 44.6km/hr
Temperature: 27C, sunny, breezy
Cumulative distance: 2506.373km

Ride into work for Thursday, 02 June

First really warm ride into work of the season. Amazing to think that only last week, 14C would have been a good temperature for riding home in! High today is forecast to be 26C, I've filled my water bag half full and put it in the freezer so it'll be nice and cold by the time I head home...

Distance logged: 17.495km
Time: 43:01
Average speed: 24.4km/hr
Max speed: 62.5km/hr
Temperature: 14C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2494.806km

Ride home for Wednesday, 01 June

Nice sunny ride home, but a bit slow due to traffic. I think I must have stopped over a traffic light sensor, since the distance looks a bit high (plus max speed got bounced to 99.9). If the weather holds like this, I may do a run down to Chester and back at the weekend...

Distance logged: 13.786km
Time: 40:22
Average speed: 20.5km/hr
Max speed: 99.9km/hr
Temperature: 23C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2477.311km

Ride into work for Wednesday, 01 June

A nice sunny day as promised by the weather forecasters, so I took the road bike in and did a little tour around downtown Halifax. If it weren't for the fact I have clients who've booked my time for today, I'd be tempted to take the day off...

Distance logged: 17.875km
Time: 43:09
Average speed: 24.9km/hr
Max speed: 58.2km/hr
Temperature: 9C-12C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2463.525km