February Wrap up

The month of February found me wondering if I'd be able to do what I commited myself to do. I was having to see the chiropractor way too often. My back was killing me, I was constantly in pain. I was wondering if I should have gone with the recumbents after all.

My wife came to the rescue again. A trip to the library yielded one really helpful book called The Complete Book of Long Distance Cycling. Surely someone had to have some exercises or advice besides stop riding and long distance cyclists ought to need to help more than us regular folk, right?

I thought that I had been doing enough to strengthen my back and core but there were more exercises that came in handy that allowed my back to better deal with the new strains that were being placed on it.

Between the back, ice, rain and maintenance on the bike I only was able to 2 times to work. So far I've only been able to save 5.6 gallons of gas this year. Despite the lack of money savings I have been figuring out winter weather gear. A light wind resistant bike jacket over three layers of polyprolene, head band, balaclava, two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, tights and a helmet cover kept me warm enough to ride in at 25 F.

January Wrap Up

Since I live in Maryland I do have to deal with winter, specifically ice and snow. Yes, I know that there are many people that deal with ice and snow on two wheels. Hopefully their tires are wider and they have more experience riding in this stuff. I'm not quite ready to tackle this stuff yet. Maybe next year.

So I only commute on days that meet the following criteria

1. Snow shouldn't accumulate, a few flurries never hurt anyone though
2. Ice has not formed on the roads

So three days meet the criteria. I also ran errands on the bike close to work or close to home.

So the tally for January 2008:

$10.30 saved on gas

The first post

Why add the to clutter out there on the internet? Who knows maybe I can write something that will convince someone else to try commuting by bike, waste time better served doing something else, or provide specific examples of why the internet needs better editing.

For several years my wife listened (patiently) to my wondering if I could actually commute by bike into work. I had several problems that were holding me back. Perhaps you've seen these before?

1. No bike.
2. The commute from Pasadena to Annapolis (32 mile round trip) would be too long.

Here's one that you might not have heard. My wife and I commuting together and she was not interested in going by bike there wouldn't be any cost savings or environmental benefits to my riding in.

Last year my wife decided to leave her job and we decided to foster and hopefully adopt children. She encouraged me to get a bike and give it a try.

First I went the cheap route and got a bike on sale from Dicks Sporting Goods.

The Quest Crestwood was a good start. It has nice wide tires, upright riding position, seat post and front fork suspension. Fitting a rack to it took some effort though.

I started driving about 24 miles of the way and biking 8. I gradually moved to riding all but 9 miles of the commute. During the course of the summer I had issues; the rear wheel hub needed replacement and we were fostering two kids at once. This led to me only rinding about 250 miles in 2007 on my bike. I realized that I could never really eliminate the car from the days I was going to ride in with the Crestwood, especially if I wanted to minimize the time I spent commuting. It took to long to rack the bike on the car, drive, park, take the bike off and pack up my clothes, etc for work.

Did I mention that my (saint of a) wife was home alone all day with two foster kids? I couldn't ask her to be alone more that 10 hours a day (8 hours work + 2 hours commuting) and I didn't want to be worn out from commuting when I got home so I could actually help with the kids.

So long story short, I picked out a Trek 1.2 at Bike Doctor in early January 2008 after checking out recumbents and hybrids. I went the road bike route because my commute is on pretty good roads and paved trails, (the appearance of) speed is good and it felt right. They did a good job with the fit. The recumbents that I liked were a little out of my budget, harder to transport and the shop I'd get one at was an hour away so maintenance might be a issue for the trickier things.