How was your commute ... today, yesterday, last week ...

[bychosis]

Going to be a hot one around here today. Yesterday I left my gear at work in preparation for a 'longer if you can be bothered getting up early' commute. Didn't get up early, but the heat hadn't hit yet this morning and it was great riding along without the usual backpack (would have been nicer without a helmet too). Took a little extension along the foreshore path and enjoyed every minute with my shirt flapping in the breeze. Perfect.

[RyanA]

Things I passed on the way in on the shared path this morning: Golfcart, Wallaby (no pic of the Wallaby)

[jasonc]

Yesterday I left my gear at work in preparation for a 'longer if you can be bothered getting up early' commute.

I do this every day I'm on my flat bar. It means when I'm on my roadie I already have clothes and food at work.

[TonyMax]

Cheapo eBay cleats I bought won't clip into my pedals so I was in runners this morning.

Riding without cleats was nowhere near as uncomfortable as the last time I did it.

Hopefully some genuine Shimano cleats will arrive in the mail today.

[oxonabike]

Wanted to test out the clearances of some conti 28 mm tyres on the roady, ahead of a planned big ride on the weekend, so said roady got the commuting duties this morning.

Apart from being unbelievably comfortable, it turns out they are unbelievably fast. 36.6 kph average speed for the 16 km ride. At one stage before our CBD, average was at 39 kph. Incredible. Normally only manage that sort of pace in a fast bunch (grimly hanging on)

[kb]

Two near misses in yesterday's early and late commutes. Around 06:30 a peahen on Ridge Rd descending to Kalorama gave me a massive scare and I was almost taken out by an owl on Studley Park Rd around midnight. Peak hour is safer

[simlin]

Got bored of the usual commute in, so took a "quick" detour and threw in 1000m of climing. First 1.5km at an average of 11% had me thinking why, why, why! which propagated thoughts of turning around, but then it was a nice steady 5% average which was very enjoyable, plus who doesn't love a fast, long descent!

Could have done without the backpack full of clothes and food though.

[RyanA]

I was hoping to ride a new variant of my bike in this morning, but seeing as I couldn't get an 11spd road cluster onto my MTB hub, nor change the freehubs, I have had to continue the commute on the old roadie (at least for a couple of weeks whilst I wait for some new road disc brake wheels to arrive ). Once that's done I should end up with a great, all-weather commuter!
I decided to extend the commute in the way in by 3km's. Doing so removes more of the road sharing, so I can now ride around 80% of the way home on shared paths, with only about a 300m stretch on the entire commute where I am in the lane with the cars. It's safer now, but I feel like I'm somehow submitting to the bullying by the motorists. At the end of the day though, at least I'm more likely to stay alive.

[jasonc]

Ryan - your sanity is worth the 3kms

Legs are still shagged from saturday. so it was more a crawl than a ride for me this morning. headwind didn't help

[silentbutdeadly]

First bike commute in ages due to the alignment of stars, planets, days off and the school drop-off. Lovely 30km blat in along the Murray in the early morning on the CX bike (first ride in its new 1x iteration - ditched the Rival D's and fitted a 42T Raceface NW ring on the Apex crank and an X9 Type 2 clutched derailleur out the back which the Rival brifter moved flawlessly) taking in quiet country roads, single track, gravel roads and bike paths.

By crikey, a 42T front ring talking to 11-28 out back just makes so much sense on a CX bike in this area...so quiet too.

[Lizzy]

Smoky this morning from numerous fires over the weekend. Rather Mondayish, yawned continuously most of the way. Fortunately not too many flies.

Noticed something sticking out of my front tyre that wouldn't let go - leaf? Twig? Stone? I lean over and try to flick it out at the lights, it's chewing gum EW EW EW

[TonyMax]

Lovely morning for it this morning in Canberra, set quite a cracking pace on the way in. The afternoon commute will be different today as I've got to go pick up a car from the repairer, will be forging some fresh tracks along some bike paths I've never been on before.

[simlin]

Lovely commute this morning!
Car parked in the bicycle lane "check"
Car blocking bicycle lane to make sure the queued cars will let them in when traffic moves off again. "check"
Emergency braking due to car seeing drivers in cars leaving a gap and not thinking to actually check that third smaller, closest, lane of traffic. "check"
Car being overly cautious (or having absolutely no concept of where the left had side of their left wing mirror is) and taking a 2 to 2.5m radius around due to new 1m overtaking laws while I am in a bike lane and we are both doing about 20 km/hr away from an intersection, "check".
getting stopped at every red light "check"

stress free ride in really.

What I really missed was someone zooming past, indicating left turn, have second thoughts about the timing and turning in front of me and come to a complete stop to give way to me.

[RyanA]

I was hoping to ride a new variant of my bike in this morning, but seeing as I couldn't get an 11spd road cluster onto my MTB hub, nor change the freehubs, I have had to continue the commute on the old roadie (at least for a couple of weeks whilst I wait for some new road disc brake wheels to arrive ). Once that's done I should end up with a great, all-weather commuter!
I decided to extend the commute in the way in by 3km's. Doing so removes more of the road sharing, so I can now ride around 80% of the way home on shared paths, with only about a 300m stretch on the entire commute where I am in the lane with the cars. It's safer now, but I feel like I'm somehow submitting to the bullying by the motorists. At the end of the day though, at least I'm more likely to stay alive.

So I managed to get punishment passed twice in the aforementioned 300m on the way home, despite sitting in the middle of the lane.

[find_bruce]

They were waiting for you Ryan.

At Pyrmont I saw a bloke from DHBC riding a lovely Colnago. Bike must have been good as he left me behind like I was old & fat & slow

[DavidS]

My commuting seems to get me about 8,000KMs a year. Given my bike is out of action with a broken frame and the number of kilometres I figure I'm justified having 2 bikes.

So, on the weekend I bought a second bike: an Allegro T1 steel framed touring bike. This means, assuming my frame gets replaced, I will have variety in my cycling commute - a flat bar and a drop bar tourer. I also got a steel frame as, well . . . , I seem to destroy aluminium frames in abut 21,000KMs. 2 so far! Here's hoping a steel frame will last a lot longer.

So, my commute: fabulous. So much nicer to ride to work than take public transport.

DS

[g-boaf]

Nice - on a bike with new chain, new cassette, new gear cables. Absolutely sweet running.

And then the lady in the Captiva decided she would change into my lane where I already was (right in the middle of the lane). Cue loud shouting and hurried swerve into a conviently located bus bay. Apart from that, all good.

Not bad for peak hour afternoon heavy traffic.

[WhingingPom]

Nice quick ride in this morning until somebody decided to amble across the road pushing their bike at the bottom of a 50km/h+ hill (nowhere near a crossing). Apparently, she "did see me, but thought I was going to stop for her".

Coming home tonight having a bit of a faster ride, happily filtering inside a stopped line of traffic. Left-hooked by somebody who decided that they'd had enough of sitting in traffic and were going to turn up a side street/short cut without indicating.

Evidently my choice of jersey (very prominent work logo) was a bad one as I couldn't say what I really thought after both incidents. Then again, I do call it my "behaviour adjustment device" for a reason

[Mugglechops]

Went the long way this morning with about 25 or so kms of nice quite dirt roads. And four mates for company.

Until future rally driver decides to come barrelling down the road at warp factor 5 sideways in his XR8.

He didn't even slow down for the 5 of us.

Apart from that it was a great 42km commute.

[simlin]

Took the long way too...decided on the flat coastal route rather than the hills...my mistake...road 35km into a stiff South Westerly that dropped my average speed by about 6km/hr...sweet relief when I finally turned and road the last 10km with a tail/cross breeze...should have ridden hills, at least that would have been a tail wind going up.

Lesson learnt...check wind speed and direction before committing to a specific route.

[jasonc]

sounds like you did it the right way simlin - start into the wind and fly back with a tail wind.

[fat and old]

Into a stiff wind on the way in and . . . into a stiff wind on the way home.

Just not fair. you must have left early Fat and Old, the wind turned Southerly in the afternoon.

DS

Yeah, but you had it made yesty arvo. I almost died

[fatherofmany]

Warm and windy commute in. 2 pieces of newspaper came flying across the road... 1 went past... the other committed suicide in my gears.

took a couple of minutes to free it then took off until maybe 60 seconds down the road I stopped to remove half a brick from the shoulder.

otherwise great, but isn't it always great on 2 wheels.

FoM

[bychosis]

This afternoon was hot, take-your-breath-away hot. But fortunately with a decent tailwind so I managed to nudge 40km/h on the flat with less effort than it usy takes to keep it at 28km/h. Noice. Followed by a dunk in the pool to cool.

[jasonc]

Had a Lizzy moment this morning. Nearing work there were three cyclists in front of me. I get by the first one and as pursuing i noticed something clanging against the top tube. As I pull along side it's a pair of high heel shoes. I look at the rider and say "nice shoes" (well what else could I say?). Less than a km further up the road a woman on a bike is stopped at a ramp for returning onto the road. As I pulled up behind her she moved over and stops. I asked if everything was ok. Her response was "yes just waiting for someone behind me" my response "ah the shoes". Well it gave me a giggle
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