Saturday, May 31, 2008

End of May Report

Totals for the year so far:
27.70 gallons of gas saved
$90.04 dollars saved.
915 miles on the bike.

The Plant Bike Freddy Fenders, O2 cycling series rain jacket, small Nashbar Fly bag, Nashbar Handlebar bag, new rear light, and bottle cage showed up Tuesday.

The rain coat seems to be a little on the cheap side, but it was a return from nashbar so it was only about $20 bucks . I already wore it this week on Wednesday, there was a little rain when I rode in to work. It seemed to work fine, but I'll need to be careful to not rip it.

The Nashbar handlebar bag was 72% off, but I'm going to have to either rig up something to keep it up or return it. I'm wondering if the Arkel small bar bag is too expensive of a Father's day gift to ask for...While I thinking about it, the utility basket looks pretty good too, once I get the rack moved to the Quest, no way is that going on the Trek.

The small fly bar works good for holding my park multitool and a spare tube. There's not a lot of room leftover. I should be able to put on some tire levelers in it. It is pretty easy to attach to the seat and there is a loop to hang my Nashbar Brillant Taillight.

I haven't been able to put the fenders on the Quest yet. And the rack and panniers are still on the Trek until I figure out the handlebar bag situation.

The riding has been good. But the roads can get quite a bit of debris on them, I'm wondering about the kevlar tires to help reduce the chances of puncture flats.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Another Flat and a plan

The rear tire on my Trek 1.2 was flat this morning. I think that it's the fourth rear flat that I needed to fix since January. Instead of taking the time to replace the tube, I turned to the old Quest Crestwood. The transition from road racer to the cheap mountain bike was jarring. The barrels passing as tires were a sight. But they made short work of the debris that was still on the bike lanes after all of the storms. It only took my 65 minutes to get in, or ten minutes longer than on the Trek. Now I am thinking of setting the Quest up as my bad weather commuter and short errand bike (when I normally drive) by adding fenders, moving the rack and paniers, getting another cage for a water bottle and also moving the pedals and toe clips to the Quest.

The Trek will get clipless pedals, a handlebar bag for lunches and small clothes, a seat bag for tools and tube. Hopefully this will get more weight off my rear tire. This will be the my fair weather commuter.

The Quest will have the rack, panniers, the old Trek pedals and fenders and I use it to transport clothes for the week to the office and ride in wet weather and after storms until debris. Since it's a cheap bike, I'm not too worried about the rain. Hopefully I can get this setup fairly soon.

2008 totals:
$73.22 saved in gasoline
23.05 gallons saved
750 miles not driven

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

May Weather

So far so good this month. I've been able to ride the bike 3 out of 5 days. As an added bonus, My wife and I got recertified in adult/child/infant CPR and we got to eat a dinner overlooking the harbor in Annapolis.

The trial keeps getting busier, there are quite a few people out with their kids during the evening commute home.

I broke down and bought a watch/heart rate monitor from amazon. I wanted a watch to time contractions and to time legs of my trip in. Hopefully the HRM will help my target training that will led to shorter commute times.

So far for the month I've been able to save 3.14 gallons of gas. And my best time in is now 57 minutes.