Fifteen months after moving in with MTB and I’ve logged over 4000 miles and around 318 hours on my bike. Just getting back and forth from our home to my job. Whew. That’s almost like riding from here to Indy and back.<\/p>\n
My work commute is about 20 miles round trip, and I telecommute one day a week, but do\u00a0I ride year round. Thank you, gear! And by gear I mean fenders, rain jacket, booties, gloves, wool shirt, etc., all of which gets me through the larger chunk\u00a0of my commuting\u00a0days. Some weather does keep me out of the saddle, namely snow and ice. And while I fucking hate wind, and I will talk about it at length later, even on the windiest days last year, I rode, as long as the temperature or wind chill didn’t drop to, or below, the low 20’s. Once it gets that cold, my hands and my face can’t stand up to\u00a0a 45 minute ride. It just feels miserable, even after I get off my\u00a0bike, warming up my hands is so painful that sometimes I cry a little.<\/p>\n
These day, I’m actively trying not to think about those kinds of conditions. I’m conserving my mental energy\u00a0to\u00a0adjust to the fall —\u00a0to\u00a0dark\u00a0mornings, shorter evenings\u00a0and\u00a0cooler temperatures. And to the rain.<\/p>\n
Sigh.<\/p>\n
The rain.<\/p>\n
It’s supposed to rain every day for the rest of this week and weekend.<\/p>\n
When it comes to\u00a0high temperatures, I\u00a0have lots more tolerance. When it\u00a0got into the upper 90’s or hotter\u00a0out here\u00a0this past summer, I was fine. I just drank lots of water\u00a0and slowed down my pace. On a couple of occasions, like when everything was on fire and the wind covered Portland in smoke, I loaded my bike in my car, drove half way to work, parked and then biked\u00a0in the rest way. And a couple of other days I rode to work in the morning, and then\u00a0met\u00a0MTB afterward and we loaded the bike up\u00a0on her car for the drive home, which, interestingly, took us about as long as it would have taken me to bike\u00a0the same distance. Portland car traffic is real. Stupid real.<\/p>\n
Since moving, most of my bike mileage has come from my work commute, and, on the books, that makes sense because\u00a0it’s a\u00a0longish commute. But, also I’m doing less of the other kind of riding that I used to do, which was a combination of biking around to run errands and to go out, or to meet friends, or just to take a ride\u00a0because riding is fun. I think I do less of this kind of biking, in large part, because I\u00a0live further out now, and getting to places takes more effort and planning and logistics, and all of this, I will also talk about more, later. But even though I don’t bike to as many different kinds of\u00a0activities as I used to, during fair weather I do\u00a0ride more. And that means that for 3 months out of the year, I might be averaging more like 100 or 120 biking miles a week. And that means that I’ve probably biked somewhere upwards of 4500 miles since I moved in with MTB.<\/p>\n