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

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.

April wrap up

We adopted our daughter this month. Definately top billing.

Only 6 round trips this month by the bike. I was able to save 5.84 gallons. I used 13.48 gallons.

More bicyclists have appeared on the B & A Trial after work and around town as the weather has improved. I kinda miss the cooler weather. The trip in today was a brief reminder of the winter weather.

We had a stretch of rainy weather and during the best weather of the month I was busy working in the family room in the basement. I put in a dricore subfloor and a laminate floating floor on top of that. Now trying to figure out insulation.

I fianlly got a new water bottle that doesn't leak. Much better that the old sieve, um bottle I was using before.

So totals for the year:
19 gallons and $59.30 saved
18 roundtrips (24.25%) of my commuting miles

Everything is Fine

After I rode into work this morning, gotten cleaned up and started to work my wife called. She hasn't felt the baby kicking except for some very weak kicks since the previous afternoon. So she was coming into town to check this out. So I rode the 4 miles to the doctor's office. Everything's fine. Very good news. So I rode close to 42 miles today, instead of 32. On the way home, the traffic out of town was terrible, so I led another commuter on a shortcut.

I confess, I passed stopped cars on the right. Bad cyclist.

The total so far for the year:
17 round trips by bike (23.9% of my commuting miles)
18.07 gallons of gas saved
$56.16 saved in gas costs

Parasite be gone

I got a parasite on the ride home. Someone on the trail was practicing their drafting on me for a few miles. If you want to ride that close to my rear wheel and gcet a easier trip, share the love!!!
I'm still a little new at this but that seemed uncool.

Riding home with the boss's boss

There might be a convert to the bicycle commuting cause. The boss's boss is starting to ride in occasionally. It turns out that we were leaving at the same time, so we rode together to the B&A Trail ranger station were he packed up his bike and drove and I kept riding home.

I was a little bit faster, but that was probably the bike. He's on a hybrid and I'm on the Trek 1.2.

Since there is a lot going on the at the house, I've only been able to do the commute by bike 3 times in April, including today.

Trip number 8

My goal in March was to get 8 round trips to work via the bicycle. Number 8 was today. It was a good ride in. The windshields on the cars were frosted over when I started. So it was a three shirt & jacket day, plus tights, balaclava, helmet cover, two pairs of gloves and two pairs of socks morning commute.

I ride to the Baltimore & Annapolis Trial and enter it at the Ranger's Station heading south. I take the trail to the southern terminus at Boulter's Way. From Boulter's way you get on MD 450, cross the Severn River and pass the Naval Academy. There's a bike line that disappears after you cross the MD 450 Bridge. At that point today I was able to keep up with traffic (30 & 25 mph zones) pretty well and took the lane most of the rest of the way into work.

Since it looks like rain for the rest of the commuting month, I'll probably be driving the Geo Prizm, unless the forecast improves. Please improve!

At the end of today for the commute this month, assuming that I bike home, I will have bicycled 256 miles and driven 309.

For the year I've saved 13.26 gallons of gas or $40.17. Most of that was from this month.

I've also used 44.68 gallons of gas that cost $133.38.

I've been using a spreadsheet on Google Docs to track these things.