It was pretty cold today although living in the east of England the weather for me isn’t half as bad as it seems for a lot of the rest of the country. Just before leaving the house I had a look at the phone weather app which said the temperature was minus 2C but with wind chill the app said it would feel like minus 5C.
I started my commute with a SMIDSY within about 2 minutes of leaving home which was a good start to todays commute.
I was cycling along a main road and a driver pulled out of a side road into my lane and drove straight at me coming within a whisker of taking me straight off. As usual the fact that I was wearing high viz and had two lights on my bike both front & rear as well as a helmet light made no difference whatsoever because if they don’t see you the fact that you’re lit up like the star ship enterprise doesn’t make any difference.
To be fair for once instead of driving straight off the driver did stop when I shouted at them. They stopped and wound down their passenger side window and then apologised saying that they hadn’t seen me at all. To be fair the frustrating thing is I’m not surprised that they didn’t see me because despite clearing their windscreen of ice they’d not cleared any of their side windows so their visibility will have been severely impaired.
Despite todays SMIDSY if I can make it through tonights commute home as well as tomorrow I’ll consider it a fairly successful 2014 commuting on my bike. Having cycled for over 25 years as a leisure cyclist, unless you count commuting to & from school which I did on my bike, this year is the first time that I’ve been a regular commuter by bike. Prior to that it was cycling purely for pleasure with mountain biking in my younger days followed by road cycling later on but it’s just been on my mountain bike which was then replaced by a Trek 7.1FX hybrid that I bought from a friend when they emigrated. It’s the Trek that I use on my 20 mile round trip commute.
Up until the middle of July I lived over 60 miles away from work and so I did that by train followed by a walk. However having moved to about ten miles away from work I’m now commuting by bike 3 days a week because on the other 2 days I take my son to nursery on the bus. Having not really thought about mileage I’ve now realised that by the time I complete tomorrows commute I will have clocked up just over a 1,000 miles in 2014 which I’m happy with having only started commuting at the end of July.
Having started commuting I have noticed quite a difference when compared to my previous cycling for pleasure only. When on my own leisure rides I pick what I think are pretty nice routes and they generally stay away from major & busy roads.
Now that I’m commuting due to necessities of getting to work I have to use busy commuter roads with a mix of rural & urban including some A roads. I find that at the busy commuting times when roads are heavily congested there are a significant number of drivers whether it’s cars, lorries, buses, taxis etc. who have no patience whatsoever for cyclists being on the road. On an almost daily basis there are drivers who cut me up, try to squeeze past me & push me onto the curb, honk horns at me when I’ve done nothing wrong and generally perform aggressive & dangerous manoeuvers. This isn’t something that I’d generally experienced before but seems to be part of my average commute now that I’m using the main roads used by commuting traffic at busy times of the day. This has had an impact of my enjoyment on the bike during the commute when compared to a leisure ride however as not dampened my enthusiasm to continue commuting by bike in 2015.
Having been using the Trek 7.1FX that I’d bought from a friend who is a lot taller than me I’m going to look at buying a new bike in 2015 for my year round commute and I’ve narrowed it down to one of the following two.
Cube Travel SL RF
http://www.cube.eu/uk/bikes/tour/travel/cube-travel-sl-rf-anthrazit-green-2015/
VSF Fahrradmanufaktur T-500 (not the step through version in the photo)
http://www.fahrradmanufaktur.de/katalog/trekking?product_id=673
However in the meantime despite not being the ideal fit the Trek is still serving me pretty well given that it had had a hard life before I got it.
Thanks to everyone on this forum because the things that I’ve read whether it’s just general posts about peoples daily commutes or more specific tips and advice they’ve all been invaluable info for me now that I’m commuting.
Happy New Year to everyone and hope that everyone has a good 2015 on the bike.
John
p.s. now that I’ve looked back sorry for the long post!
I need to get a life
but the firm was local so a lady went to the depot half a mile down the road to report the incident. Then another witness came back to say the driver was coming back. As I wasn't a witness and he didn't need an ambulance I wished him well and cycled the last five miles in the rain which had started. 
Top job on a big year for you. Well done chap!
