Bicycle commuting

Here's a very short video of my first successful ride home from work this year. (An earlier attempt resulted in a flat, which led to a broken derailleur arm and a call to the SAG wagon)(Mary). Note that it's not a continuous video of the entire one-hour ride, and it's at 8X speed, so the whole thing takes about a minute.

At the time, it was still too cold to ride in the morning, so I asked Steven to drop me off at work with the bike, so I could ride home in the relative warmth of the afternoon.

I hate this hill.

Since this video, I've managed the full commute, inbound and outbound. Now of course Mother Nature's turned on me like a snake, so it may be another week before I can do it again. But once the weather stabilizes a bit, I'm hoping to bike-commute at least one day every week.

Welcome spring 2015!

Finally. I mean, jeebus, that was a long winter.

Now that the weather's broken, I've been getting out here and there, racking up some rides and coughing the cabin fever out of my dusty lungs. 

I tried to meet up with a Chainlink group for a run to Two Brothers Brewery in Aurora on March 14, but the Illinois Prairie Path was a sea of mud. Unrideable, especially on my road bike with its skinny 25mm tires. I bailed out of the brewery part but I got a nice 20-mile ride from my house to the Prairie Path and back.

My road bike is many things, but a mudder it is not.

The next day I set out to have lunch in Plainfield, about 10 miles from where I live in Naperville. A glorious early spring day -- sunny with a moderate breeze from the southwest. My goal was the Tap House Inn on Rt. 126. Well, it turned out that particular Sunday was the Plainfield St. Patrick's Day Parade, and the place was swamped -- as was every other food establishment in town. I ended up getting a seat at the Tap House patio and munched chicken wings and watched green-decked Plainfielders head for the parade route.

Gets a little bit rural 'twixt Naperville and Plainfield.

Today was my first round-trip commute to work (I've ridden home after being dropped off when the morning was too cold to ride). A relatively pleasant a.m. ride: 40F, no wind. Started out just before sunrise and got to work in 57 minutes, about average.

The ride home was warmer but head-windy. I powered the last mile to make the round trip in just under two hours (1:58:23).

My commuting route takes me through this little stretch of
Greene Valley Forest Preserve.