I took my first road bike commute in over a month this morning. It has been a very slow month for biking in general, and when I’ve gotten out, it’s been on one of my mountain bikes. With the dry weather we’ve been having, the trails have been in good shape, and with all things being equal, during rush hour, I’ll always choose riding in the woods over riding on roads. It has also been a good while since I’ve taken a weekend caching ride — I’ve either had a scheduling conflict (e.g. Ravens game), or the weather has been bad, or I’ve chosen to do something else (e.g. paddling) instead. My hope is to get out for some bike caching this coming Sunday morning. We are getting to the time of year where I start taking hikes on Sundays instead of riding my bike, so I’d like to get out for one more Sunday ride to kind of mark the end of the season. The same goes for paddling this time of year, at least until I get around to buying a drysuit to extend the season.

Today’s commute felt almost nostalgic. I went through the park, as I’ve done thousands of times before, and up through Relay/Halethorpe to UMBC. As I was riding, I was thinking about my heyday of bike commuting, which ran from 2008 through most of the 2010s. Life has changed a lot since then. This weekend, we set the clocks back, meaning early mornings will be lighter and evenings will be darker. For the past several years, I’ve shifted my work schedule in November/December so that I leave the office at around 4:00 to 4:15, which gets me home before it is completely dark. My ability to work remotely helps with this, as I can finish up any remaining hours of work at home, vs. trying to leave the house super early in the morning (which never seems to happen). In spite of that, there have been one or two days each of the past few years where I’ve ended up riding home in darkness. It always seems like a novelty the first couple of times, but I don’t miss doing it regularly.