Photos From the Saddle

The past couple days have brought new meaning to gritty urban scenes. All the gravel that was laid down during the snowpocalypse—along with all the other junk, including the chains pictured above—was conveniently ushered aside by passing traffic and into the bike lanes. No biggie, just gritty. Fun to chew on.

I won’t make the goal of achieving more riding miles than driving, but that’s okay. I’ll be roughly 200 miles short, which is mostly due to a trip to see family over the holiday. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the matter. I have my health, my bikes and a whole new year to make goals/challenges for.

Of course, there’s the thought of riding bike to work month on the KM… which would grant me more miles (reroute around hill), plus the added challenge of a single-speed. ‘Course that wouldn’t leave me much room to up the ante in the future. But that isn’t until May, leaving a lot of room for all kinds of fun.

Saturday was the day that The Storm was supposed to move in. Logically, I went for a ride just as the forecast was calling for doom to descend upon us… I ended up with soul-patch-cicles, encountered impressive amounts of ice, saw some eagles and disregarded some rules:

Got home just in time for the sky to open up and unleash a flurry of snow that’s rarely seen ’round these here parts. By 10pm we had a half-foot of powder laying around, just waiting for fun to be had. And really, who am I to deny such things? Naturally, I indulged…

Last week was certainly a cold, snowy one. It didn’t get down to 17°F as I’d hoped, but it was close enough. Snotcicles close. Curiosity got the best of me several times over, as I ventured into a variety of slushy/snowy/icy conditions. Fortunately, no crashes, though there was plenty of slipping and sliding. All of this riding in sub-freezing weather had me doing a lot of post-ride warmups.

I’ve got quite a few photos from over the past week and not many words to go along with them… but before I get to those, two things: First, I sold the One Way and second, unless there’s a significant swing in the weather and all this snow melts off, it’s looking like I won’t be able to surpass my driving mileage with my cycling mileage. I’m close, around 75 miles or so, which is actually quite amusing to think about… to think, after a year of cycling with three months of injury in the middle, I come out less than a hundred miles short of surpassing the number of miles I drove. It’ll give me a goal for next year, certainly…

So, with that, on to the photos:

I am certainly aware that 20°F really isn’t all that cold. Around here, though, snow (and cold) is infrequent enough that people freak out with even a small dusting.

When I entered the pub yesterday, I was asked how many layers I had on. “Two, mostly, but three to protect the important bits.”

Supposed to get sub-20’s tonight, reaching the forecasted low of 17 just in time for the morning commute. Honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to it.

It’s hovering around 28F at the moment and I’m debating whether to go for a ride. It snowed last night. Only a light dusting, but enough to lay the foundation for the ice sheets that now cover most of the sidewalks and streets. I saw the sole snow plow the city owns out sanding ’round 10am.

Rode all last week, mostly without any significant occurrences. Yesterday, though, I did manage to get yelled at by a car’s passenger who felt it necessary to determine my sexual preferences by the color of my fenders. Kids these days, I tell ya.

Went for a ride last night while it was snowing. It was much like the pouring-rain ride last year in that it was impromptu and a total blast. Also checked out the neighborhood’s xmas light displays, which were somewhat of a letdown. We reasoned that people were simply trying to conserve energy, so good on ‘em.

• Miles ridden: ~127
• Miles driven: 244 (136,494)

Off the bat, I’m just going to say that I got drenched in the truest sense today. But that can wait.

According to the (albeit not perfect) tracking I’ve done throughout the year, I’ve ridden approximately 3,329 miles. A full third of that was in May (and caused the Achilles injury that kept me off the bike for three-ish months). Honestly, I’m quite happy with that number. Of course I know it could be bigger, but whatever, there’s no point in the “If only” game. It is what it is. Then there’s this… according to my more stringent tracking of the miles put on my car, it was driven 3,552 miles so far this year. Which puts me at roughly 220 miles to close the gap between miles driven and miles ridden.

Do I smell a challenge? Yes… yes I do. All that I need to do is ride my bike 220ish miles (I’m gonna make it 300 for good measure) and not drive my car at all. Or, secondary plan, the car can be driven… but I’ll need to compensate for that with some extra miles in the saddle. It’s so on.

So, back to the drenching. The DWR has worn off of the Shins, which was to be expected, though the timing and means of discovering such things could’ve been better. I also opted to not wear the Elite 2.0 jacket, thinking that I’d get home before the rain arrived and/or that it wouldn’t rain that hard/much. So much for that choice.

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but we really do have a “variety” of rain here in the NW. During my years in the midwest and then the east coast, everyone was absolutely horrified by the notion that it rained throughout most of the winter. It dawned on me that their only concept of rain was that of the massive downpours that typically last only 15 minutes and then blow through. Here, however, it’s more like rain all day long, but a very fine rain or light drizzle. If one were to measure by inches, I know that there’d be other major cities that get more rain per year than we do… but I digress.

The rain tonight was the kind I dislike the most… very “fine” drops, but in excess. You never really feel like it’s raining hard, or that there’s much more than a semi-friendly little bit of water falling from the sky… However, through sheer power in numbers, you’re quickly soaked. Think of it in terms of a cluster bomb compared to a .22 rifle. So now everything is hanging to dry and I’m thinking about picking up a drybag backpack.

After cleaning the gutters of all the muck that’d gathered over the past year, I decided to go for a leisure ride on the Karate Monkey. The fog had been hanging out around town all day, giving an eerie yet pleasant feel to things.

Along the way, I came upon the guy below… who was a rather nondescript fellow, aside from an amusing look upon his face and the Back In Black that was playing loudly from a boombox he had on the bike. When I passed him, I couldn’t help but give him a big grin and thanks for the tunes. Sadly, it’s not a 12-pack of Budweiser on the back of his rack…

After spending time at an establishment, I headed back home. Everything still had a mysterious shroud to it. It never ceases to tweak my little brainspace how even the most routine routes change even within just a few hours.