Tales from today's commute....

[fossyant]

Yesterday's homeward return was one of 'those days'. Needed to be home early to get changed and cleaned up for a dinner dance for one of my wife's 'activities'.

Left early, changed and hot footed out to the bike shelter. Argh - TWO flat tyres. Not to worry, three spares and three gas cannisters. Got those sorted fairly quickly - glass in both tyres from the Fallowfield Loop. Double checked both tyres before re-fitting. Colleague thought I was some sort of mechanic with all my kit out getting it sorted.

Anyway, phoned home let the wife know I was running late. Off I set, and doing a nice pace down the Loop. Crossed over at Fallowfield and continued on until near Kingsway... soggy front. Limped off the Loop (it's pitch black) and pulled over. Checked tyre. Loads of brand new shards of glass and one massive one through the tyre. Phoned home again. Now on last tube and cannister I have a pump). Stuck to the roads at this point and popped into Wills Wheels for 4 more tubes.

Quick change and just made it to the dinner dance as folk were starting to sit down.

Missed the rain this morning, but got caught in it this afternoon. Bike is a filthy mess again.

 

[Simontm]

Following a chat with one of the bike guys washing a test MB - soap and water apparently - got the head wind that I feared, then a sidewind which was challenging and the legs weren't as keen as this morning

Numpty count: 2 a post van slammed his brakes on so I filtered around him to find 3 car lengths of space so maybe hazing me (didn't see any cat, pedestrian etc) dunno but idiotic driving. And some loon cutting into the bike lane and nearly cutting my leg off.

Btw you guys that jump on MBs for winter - do you forget the gearing? The amount I've seen recently struggling in obviously wrong gears

 

[Supersuperleeds]

Yesterday I ordered some Schwalbe Studded tyres from Planet X ( yesterday's deal of the day ) .....

.... Just in case !!!

Brilliant bit of kit, you need to bed them in on a dry ride of 40km before you use them on ice

 

[MickeyBlueEyes]

Oh yes, passed my target mileage for the year also. 10,000 miles for the year, (5th year in a row) 6152 of those, commuting miles.

Nice work fella. Same again next year?

 

[Panter]

Disappointing one this morning actually.
I was fully expecting to be able to tell the tale of a heroic battle against the elements, a lone, desolate figure battling bravely into the teeth of the storm.
But, it wasn't actually too bad at all. Stayed fairly warm and dry, and the wind wasn't that fierce. Despite a threatened 40mph headwind, I seemed to find just enough shelter that it was OK and it only took a couple of minutes longer than usual.

The only decent wet weather gear I have though is army surplus jacket and strides that I use for fishing. So, I felt a bit of a twazzock setting out like an army reject with a Tilley hat to keep my head dry but it worked a treat!
Also seemed to get noticeably more room from drivers this morning for some odd reason? can't be the army clothing, surely?

 

[ianrauk]

Nice work fella. Same again next year?

Cheers. And of course

 

[MickeyBlueEyes]

Legs felt pretty good this morning. As I got to the point where I turn west I knocked it up a cog and span into the wind, keeping a nice constant pace. I headed past work for an extra 4 miles, looped back due east and boy it felt like we were back in summer time, sitting on the drops cruising at 24 mph. A great last 5 minutes on the commute!

 

[HarryTheDog]

Only rained for the first third of the ride and was quite warm today. A fact borne out by a guy catching me at the lights coming out of Barking wearing shorts, they weren’t even bib shorts ,a T shirt and waterproof. I knew they weren’t bibs as I could see his bare skin on his back. He had huge tattoo’s up his calves and back of his thighs. Like the guy on the Moda the other day he was not keen to do any leading out so I again took the lead. We later chatted about the weather ,gloves and tyres and he seemed a nice chap. Then I realized our speed had dropped so I pushed on. I must have dragged him for a mile altogether. He was fine drafting me at 18mph but as I started to ramp it up he lost contact. I got a light phase ahead of him at the next junction but we met up again at the lights at the bottom of the hill coming out of Canning town. When the lights went green I lit the afterburners and was at the top of the hill whereas he was only half way up. My hands were sweating something terrible in my ski gloves by the time I got to work.

 

[ianrauk]

Wow, the howling gale kept me awake last night with the rain smashing against the velux. Was going to go and sleep in the room downstairs but couldn't be arsed to get out of bed. Got up at 6.45am with it still teeming down.
Watching the local news and it said the rain and wind would ease by 8am so thought bugger it. It's going to be the short, quick downhill commute to work. And blow me down with a feather, the rain did indeed near enough stop at 8. So ended up with a dry, well i say dry, the roads were near rivers in places. But a nice enough commute. Certainly not cold, but a bit of a swirly headwind.

 

[Arjimlad]

Got to the western end of a very wet Perrinpit Road only to find "road closed" signs and cones, due to flooding.

There were no signs up at t'other end.

Got through it OK riding through the flooding in the middle of the road, but the spray going through the deepest bits soaked my feet through thin DHB overshoes !

 

[summerdays]

My commute was fine, other than discovering the person I was meant to be seeing today had cried off sick without phoning to let me know, so I decided to make use of my extra free time for a bit of shopping and then meet friends that I wasn't going to see today because of work.

 

[confusedcyclist]

Legs are knackered after my track session at Manchester velodrome last night. Not looking forward to those hills on the return leg. On the bright side, it looks glorious outside right now. I miss cycling in the sunshine

 

[paul04]

The ride to work was ok nice and quiet on the roads,
But on the way home, problems, a wobble from the rear tyre, pulled over thinking I had a puncture, no, tyre still up.
On closer inspection of the rear tyre/rim, I found that the hub has more or less worn its self out, no bearing left in it. you could move the rim a inch each way.

so a 2 mile walk home
so going to put some lights on the road bike and use that for the next couple of days, then over Christmas decide what to do, as the MTB only cost me £99, and done over 5000 miles in the last 2 years, maybe time for a new one in the Christmas sales.

 

[Supersuperleeds]

That's the hardest week I've had for a long time, absolutely knackered. Lie in tomorrow me thinks.

 

[fossyant]

No tyre flats.....whooooo