It’s been a cold week. I check the temperature before leaving the house, and today it said it was in the 20′s. So of course, I dressed pretty warm. The commute started off pretty comfortable, and only my ankles were cold, taking a bit of draft from lack of wind protection.
The bicycle commute has become pretty normal feeling now, and I feel pretty relaxed. I even found a new short cut this week, a steep little dirt trail that gets me directly to the intersection at HWY 50. The UHaul station on HWY 50 still hasn’t turned off its sprinklers, so they have a nice little ice skating rink on the sidewalk every morning. The trip through the park is also pleasant, since there are tons of Canadian Geese hanging out on the lawn.
In the final few blocks before I get to work, I work up a lot of body heat. It’s still below freezing out, but I start to get pretty warm. Once I get to work, I carry my bike down the basement stairs and enter the heated building. I can barely make it to my cubicle before I start stripping off all my cold weather gear. I feel like I’M ON FIRE!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFHR9O3tQ54]
Another thing I’d like to get for commuting soon is a nice backpack. I was over at my friend Brent’s house, and he was showing me his Oakley Tool Box, a cycling specific backpack. I have a couple of backpacks, but both have a few problems. My old JanSport is falling apart. It has one big chamber that must be opened all the way because the zipper is broken. When I was changing in the bathroom stall on Monday, I pulled the zipper on the backpack, and the contents spilled out onto the bathroom floor…including my lunch! Thank goodness for plastic wrap! My other backpack was a freebie I got for donating to an environmental group. It doesn’t have as much volume, but has more compartments. It’s handy for keeping things separated, but because of the small volume, the thing sticks way off my back like a huge mutant hump. If I want to encourage others to commute by bike to work, it’s important to not look like a freak. I think an Oakley is in my near future lest I become the cycling bete noire of Carson City!