Here near Portland, OR we've been having some nice clear winter weather, oddly getting a high of 51F today. Got my arm warmers in and boy do they make a difference.
You all are making it tough to stay on top, had to join a night cycling group to squeeze out a few extra miles :-D My daily commute is only 3.1mi each way, almost jealous of seeing some with 10mi bike commutes.
I kind of feel the same way about my commute. We're looking at moving this year, but all of the neighborhoods we've looked at are way closer to work. I get a little freaked out. "But how am I going to get my miles?" :-)
Are you using arm warmers at 51°F? I got a pair when I invested in all of my gear a couple months ago, but with the jacket I have, I haven't needed to use them down to -7°F, as I just stay warm with the jersey/jacket combo.
So my fun fact was that I thought I bent my rim on one of my tumbles, or maybe just the weight distribution with the new pannier. I noticed it on Tuesday, so I decided to stop by the bike shop on the way home yesterday. Turns out I broke a spoke. So I got to spend a few minutes learning how to properly true a tire, and install a new spoke, which was totally worth the money ($26.08). The guy even showed me how to do it from home, without anything special. It's kind of cool having that hands on stuff, as I've seen videos, but being able to be walked through it is even better. He even told me that if they wind up with another crappy wheel they would trash, he'd hold it for me so I can practice without risking the bike. I love this town!!
Yesterday, I also saw something on the phone that I didn't know how to react to. Before I stepped outside, I looked at the weather, and it said "Freezing Fog". I had no clue what that meant, but apparently it just means that
ice covers everything. Took a few falls around the lake before I realized that I'd be better off riding in the grass on that particular part of the commute. Now, I look at the weather for today (56°F) and am stoked, but tomorrow, there is yet another weather description that I do not know. "Ice pellets". WTF? It's obviously not hail, otherwise it would say that. Should be interesting, though.
Also, one of my projects for this month is the single host reboot of my Frugal FIRE show. With the flaking out of guests, co-hosts, and doing the entire thing live, I decided to pre-record segments. One of them is going to be on biking. Each week there will be some type of fun educational thing on some aspect of it. Right now, I've got a decent size list as to some of the things I'm going to cover as this segment of the show. So as an intro, I was going to do some video editing of different environments that people ride in. Do you guys want to help? If so, just take a video clip (5-10 seconds) of some part of your commute, or you and a friend on a bike, or whatever (backflips? cheering? :P) and upload it here or PM me to email it. If you want to see some of the old versions of the show (with guests and cohost), there is a thread
here. It's not monetized, and I only do it for fun. I'll post in that other thread later, but thought I'd see if any of you were interested in helping out.
Happy Cycling!
