biking to work

7 miles each way as well. Can do it in half an hour fairly easily although i reckon I'll be able to cut that by at least ten minutes once I acquire a more practical roadgoing bike. I get the most amazing view of St. Paul's from the bottom of the Walworth Road at Camberwell that pretty much makes the whole journey worth the slog.

Really? Am in Camberwell quite a lot and have never noticed!

i park my bike in my building's parking garage, which is accessible to the public but sorta in view of the pay station/exit. there's usually 30-40 bikes in summer, 10-20 in off season. anyway, i forgot to lock my bike the other day in the very full bike racks. when i came back there were like 5 bikes still there, including mine. so grateful. so, crime survey-

would your bike still be on your rack if left unlocked? also,everyone just leaves their helmets around their saddles. never heard of one being taken. some people leave their blinkies. how would that go over?

must add, i met the guy who owns the rivendell atlantis w/ full xtr/pauls/brooks that parks in our racks. what a crazy expensive commuting bike to throw into a rack. nice guy tho.

anything other than a fancy looking road bike would probably be fine where i live in suburban munich. i know a guy who locks up a nice kona with what looks like a piece of chain link fence and a luggage padlock here. theft was common in oxford, but i had the impression it was mainly students looking for a ride home rather than pro crime, because the bikes i heard about being stolen were worth maybe £20 and looked it.

i leave my lights on. they are attached with cable ties, so unless you investigate they look like you need a knife/scissors to get them off. i typically lose one or two every couple of years, which is acceptable to me for the convenience.

i hide mine in the old kitchen at work. you need a different key to access it via the old entrance, so i don't have much competition for a spot. it's a sweet deal and i use it as secure parking for going to the pubs nearby and stuff.

outside there's two bike hoops. one former colleague had her 2-week-old giant stolen after being at a late meeting off-site, another had her freshly-fitted blinkies stolen (but the bike left). there is a police station down the road, fyi!! meanwhile one clunky old konya has been locked there for probably two months, helmet and all.

today i saw an old guy commuter sitting on path next to his bike, in obvious pain-- doing the old kollarbone klutch. there were several other riders about who were rendering assistance, so i only slowed, then rolled on. be careful folks.

14 deg w/ spitting snow and ice fog wrecking my glasses. broke out the neoprene half booties. so invigorating.

I need to start commuting on my bike more. It's pretty much exactly 2 miles door-to-door, but the last 1/3 of a mile is uphill, which results in sweatiness. We have a big, lockable bike shed at work for my building though, and showers and changing rooms too. I've probably only done it five times in the last 9 months though, which is terribly lazy.

I deal with sweatiness by a) being clean and wearing clean riding clothes and b) changing into clean work clothes at work. I don't usually have a shower, and it takes longer than the usual working day to start getting smelly :)

But if the shower's decent then it's worth changing your routine to shower at work if you can. I'd also change your routine by doubling or tripling your commute distance too - it's the best way of getting exercise but 2 miles isn't going to do all that much good.

Going a bit slower than you normally would is a good countermeasure for sweatiness ime.

Shasta averages a disappointing 23mph to and from work.

My boss occasionally does a 32-mile round trip over Devonshire hills.

i used to worry about the sweatiness when i got back on the bike to begin with, but frankly i only do three of your imperialist 'miles' in my commute and once i transitioned from "omg the work commute is SUCH a long way" to doing the distance comfortably, i didn't find any issue with sweat, i don't even bother with changing at work now. just put it in the lowest gear and climb the hill slowly if need be.

2 miles in 16 minutes this morning. Not sweaty. Changed from shorts and t-shirt into work clothes when I got here, did my hair, easy peasy.

Ally, who also cycles in, has a 6.5 mile journey which he did in 21 minutes. But he's an animal, and needs a shower now.

I do 14 miles in an hour dead, but am a member at the gym on-site so I can get changed (pants, socks and shirt go in saddlebag - suit stays at work just in case) and showered before starting work.

Used to have a 7 mile commute, which took about 35 mins due to having about 100 traffic lights on the route. Was far too long for my liking, a 2 mile commute I had before that much more preferable. I am a lazy fuck though.

my commute clocks in about 20 minutes, with five or six possible traffic light stops along the way.

best-ever commute effort was the dash to the city after i woke up late (boozy nite out) and saw i was meant to be at important staff meeting in 20 minutes - 4.2km in 12 minutes, including being held at three lights and melbourne's worst roundabout!

2 days in a row now; Emma even biked in today too.

i have done 20 minutes from oxford circus to brixton without pushing it too hard and with most of the lights in my favour.

usually it's about 25-28 though and don't have showers at work so try not to build up too much of a sweat. love my ride in when the weather's nice.

3 days in a row. Ema biked again too.

Emma. Duh.

I've been extending my commute to work so that it's about 10 miles instead of 7. Tend not to extend it on the way home, although on Tuesday the weather was so lovely I added about 5 miles of my favourite roads and just rode around taking it all in.

I'm much more likely to extend the route home, I think. mainly cos my house is by about 26 miles of cycle paths along the Exe estuary, and work is on a hill.

I have begun a trend; shortest route to work (1.9 miles), taking it easy, and then string out the homeward journey to 7-8 miles, and give it a bit off effort. That way I'm not sweaty in the office and get 15 minutes extra in bed.

Hmm I like your thinking. I still find it easier to extend the route in the morning for some reason, though I didn't today since I'll be riding 75-odd miles on Friday and I'm tapering, yo.

people are acting crazy on the roads recently, this is just in the last couple of days

- lady on bicycle call me a bastard when she didn't see me approaching a junction (outside waterloo station). she was turning across the junction, it was my right of way. i was riding in a very obvious place and she just didn't bother to look, i spotted her not looking a mile off and was riding with caution, somehow she still managed to hit me.

- white van man knock into my back tyre ON PURPOSE honk his horn and then drive past/round me, also called me a cunt. i was turning right and had to wait for oncoming traffic to clear. this is at that bridge where old street meets clerkenwell road.

- school run mums (morning edition aka the most dangerous people on the road) speeding past at 50+ mph down a 20mph road, scary shit, the road has potholes that will knock you right off your bike

- old street roundabout knobheads cutting up traffic to get in front of me. arghh. so i end up overtaking them because they are lol slow then when they catch up at the lights they stop right in front of me, meaning i have to overtake them again. this really drives me insane, especcially when i'm trying to get some max effort in on my commute.

- cyclist this morning riding on the wrong side of kingsland road and nearly hitting me because i was paying attention to the million other hazards down kingsland road at 9am. FUCK YOU.

also, total a+ bike dude got hit when a car went on the wrong side of a narror road to overtake another car that was turning left. ploughed right into my friend and then drove off. he now has lots of metal in his feet. said there was nothing he could have done.

seriously, i haven't had as many incidents as i've had in the last few days in nearly a year cycling 20+ miles pretty much every day in london

now feeling a tiny bit anxious on the road, which is annoying, becuase that makes me feel like i'm more likely to have an accident

ugh, scary

man at least what i've heard anecdotally makes london/uk sound so much worse w/r/t motorists openly hating and/or targeting cyclists. i live in the midwest of the US (where everyone loves cars) and still haven't encountered more than a couple ppl saying shit like "get off the road" or w/e. and then its usually just a yell from a window.

when they catch up at the lights they stop right in front of me, meaning i have to overtake them again.

disgusting, savage.

the other day i rolled past a bunch of slowcoaches stopped behind the line, to stop in the group of go-getting dudes gathered in front of the line, who were obviously going places and fast - some of them had overaken me previously. then when the lights changed, to a man they all took off at a perilously slow wobbling pace, spread out all over the road, me trapped behind them and cars beeping.

slow startin wobblers are the ~worst~

this morning i wasted *everyone* in the bike box at the waterloo junction. mind you i had to hit a pace i would have no way of maintaining if my commute were more than 500 yards long.

- school run mums (morning edition aka the most dangerous people on the road) speeding past at 50+ mph down a 20mph road, scary shit, the road has potholes that will knock you right off your bike

yeah my route to work takes me past an elementary school these ppl are the worst, cannot wait until school is out

MUST GET CHILD TO SCHOOL BEFORE 9AM AND ***NOTHING*** WILL STOP ME!

also, at the school i pass, they all park up right outside the school then they don't bother to signal or even look when pulling out, which is annoying because it's impossible to tell if a car is parked up or if it's going to pull out at any second. usually they'll do a turn in the road too, just to make sure if you do have to swerve round them, they'll still probably hit you anyway.

i kinda hate this cyclist moaning talk, i mean i try my best to have a positive attitude on the road i always try to make life as easy and obvious as i can for cars. think it's kind of important not to be riding around hating on everyone / everything, but sometimes it's really really tough to stay cool. that guy that beeped me, bumped into me then drove round me and called me a cunt, i hate to think what i could have done :-/

Yeah I do find myself cycling with an in-built grudge waiting to take itself out on someone. It's not good. Partially a function of going everywhere at hypersonic speed. "Slow down!" is my not-constant-enough refrain to myself.

Yeah I do find myself cycling with an in-built grudge waiting to take itself out on someone.

Purely because of this, I yelled at a bus driver yesterday for alerting me to the presence of pedestrians on a crossing. Although I hadn't seen them at that point, I was slowing down ready to stop in case I had to, but he really had no way of knowing that. So I felt bad.

I try to be as courteous and pleasant as possible, and try never to be in a rush, but I'm beginning to think there is something genuinely psychopathic about people who want to drive their individual vehicles in, well I was going to say 'urban centres', but I mean London. It's slow, horrible, violent, noisy, smelly and aggressive, and they all snarl each other up - the cars are just too goddam big to negotiate a high street like Marylebone High Street sensibly.

And the aggression doesn't just operate at the level of the odd driver who will actually try to scare you or knock you off your bike, or who clearly hate you, but just general low-level entitlement to road space which also comes across as extremely aggressive.

I've also had a couple of incidents over the last couple of days, one of them on an all but empty road at half six in the morning, where a minicab driver just pulled a complete u-turn across the road right in front of me, which I was lucky to avoid getting knocked off by. I pulled up to him at the lights (which were red, hence his urgency no doubt) and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and he said 'You didn't see me mate'. Quite the opposite in fact.

I'm generally tolerant of less confident cyclists' tactics to avoid cycling with traffic as much as possible nowadays. However what really peeves me is cyclists going through Hyde Park, a park you'll note, as if it's their personal race track and perfectly respectable dawdlers, wanderers, sky gazers, etc are getting in the way, causing them to shout with phenomenal rudeness. Just wait goddam it, cycle more slowly, wave people through! Be more nice ffs.

Grudge-cycling is bad for all-concerned but it's so easy to get into that mindset.

I think I'me quite a good city cyclist but this morning I simply forgot to look when I turned into a road and, sure enough, the reason that other car had stopped was to let a car past. As it happened, I had enough space to look like a death-defying urban warrior rather than a broken, embarrassed heap in the middle of the road. But that's not the point. Idiot Mark.

So easy tho, all it takes is that level of permanent omniscient concentration to slip. That car stopping to let another one past is one of the most regular danger spots I think I have.

yeh jesus i hate that

i just try to remember that undertaking always = caution

i forgot to mention the dude that overtook me at speed, braked super hard and tried to turn left down a narrow road only to find another car coming up that road and not leaving enough room to get past (esp at the speed the dude that overtook me was going) so he kinda skidded forward and ended up infront of the other car waiting to pull out

this, judging by his body language, was my fault

i might come back here often to vent about these kind of things, my gf and housemates must be sick of hearing these stories

That overtaking plus left turn also happens a lot. And while I find a lot of bus drivers quite courteous, overtaking then pulling in to a bus stop, or similarly taxis suddenly pulling in for a fare also happens a lot.

BUT on the positive side I LOVE my morning and evening commute. I'm happiest when I'm on my bike at the moment, and I also know it's quicker and more pleasant than any other mode of transport.

oh and dude that got hit by a car was d@n at fitzr0vi@ cyc1es (used to be cavendish cycles before they took it over) if that's a shop anyone goes to often

Oh right, that's my main shop. Always found them really good down there. Damn.

yeh, they're a good bunch that lot.

i like buses and taxis. they're fairly predictable.

anyway home time. time for some pwnage! ride safe guys :)

had a wonderful ride to work today, just a great attitude adjustment.

at a SUPER busy 4 way intersection in the suburbs a few nights ago, i saw a cyclist pull a dipshit stunt that left me with an unprecedented reaction: i wished he'd gone down. tbh i don't know how he didnt. my two lane road intersected a very wide four lane arterial road with two turn lanes, and i had a red light, at which i stopped. fixie dude came down hill behind me and simply charged the intersection frogger style at about 30mph. when he realized he wouldn't have space to clear the intersection on the proper side of the road, he swerved hard to the shoulder of the opposite side of the road, however, that oncoming traffic lane had a car peforming a right on red. it missed him by inches.

to be all scoldy schoolmarmy, i imagine any witnesses would fucking hate cyclists at tthat moment.

Crackle Box, you tell your gf about your near misses etc? Mine is worried enough - I keep most of the negative experiences to myself, unless I actually do myself an owie.

i like to keep her worried.

"you really should get out of this stupid mood because you probably won't see me again"

n.b i tried this once and her reply was "good"

Like you Mark I tend to keep quiet, although sometimes I'm angry enough about a piece of stupidity on the road to blurt out an incident, which immediately after threats to hide my bike I have to downgrade to 'Oh it was fine really', making my anger look misplaced and foolish.

riding with a s.o, that's a whole other thing... have done it a few times and it's just too much stress in the city

as long as i wear a helmet and have disability insurance, i'm allowed to play in traffic

riding with a s.o, that's a whole other thing... have done it a few times and it's just too much stress in the city

oh man, whole 'nother can of woims.

haha oh yeah

my wife didn't learn to ride a bike until way late in life, and since she's learned, only done it a few times. we went on a group ride through easy city streets and she ran into poles and a bridge. she was a trooper though. seriously funny

mrs. shasta won't ride since our last time out and she ate it on a sidewalk apron right in front of our house. we lol about it but she would rather just run.