Author: lpaulriddle

Snowpocalypse

lpaulriddle

Unfortunately, Snowpocalypse 2010 has put the brakes on bike commuting for the time being this winter.  If I can’t do it safely, I don’t do it, and the roads are not in good shape for biking.  I’ll be back out as soon as some of it melts, and/or I can find a safe route to take.

Over the past couple days, I’ve driven along some of my favorite bike-commuting routes, and here are my observations.

  • Lawyers Hill Rd and Levering Ave: Bare pavement, both lanes, a little narrow.  Doesn’t carry much traffic, so I would have no problem biking this.
  • River Rd between Lawyers Hill and Patapsco State Park: bare pavement, 1 lane wide.
  • River Rd park entrance: blocked by a giant mountain of snow and will probably be that way for a long time.  Access road hasn’t been touched.
  • US 1 between South St and Levering Ave: pretty good shape in both directions, but a couple spots where icy slush blocks the entire shoulder, which would necessitate riding out into the right lane.
  • Montgomery Rd between US 1 and Marshalee Ave: not too bad in most spots, but missing shoulder in places.  Would not feel comfortable biking this during rush hour.
  • Montgomery Rd between Marshalee Ave and Rockburn Dr: no shoulder.  Non-starter.
  • Rockburn Dr: one lane, poorly plowed and icy.
  • Kerger Rd: bare pavement, a bit narrow.  Could bike here.
  • Ilchester Rd between Kerger and Beechwood: Similar to south Montgomery.
  • Landing Rd: glanced at it while driving by on Ilchester, and what I saw did not look good.
  • Beechwood, Bonnie Branch and River Rds: single lane clear.  Could bike in a pinch, but not ideal.
  • Hilltop and Thistle Rds were both unplowed and closed off at River Rd.
  • Frederick Rd between River Rd and Oella Ave (Ellicott City Side): best of the lot.  Shoulders fully clear.
  • Oella Ave: single lane, not plowed very well.
  • Wilkens Ave from Rolling Rd to UMBC: decent shape, shoulder clear.  Bikeable.

On the way home, I’ll check out the conditions through Relay and Halethorpe.  But it looks like any route I take is going to be non-ideal, so I will have to pick the lesser of the evils.  Currently, that appears to be Lawyers Hill to Levering to U.S. 1, to South St and through Relay and Halethorpe (depending on what shape those roads are in; I’ll find out later today).

UMBC is cleared out as well as can be expected.  The head-in parking on Hilltop Circle works in my favor in these conditions, because to allow for parking, they have to clear the “buffer zone” between the road and the parking spots, which provides room to ride out of the travel lane.  Most, but not all, of the loop is clear.  But all the same, there are enough walkways clear that I can just cut through campus on foot if I had to.  All in all, they did a pretty good job.

On a totally unrelated note..  The other day I noticed that Home Depot was selling 50lb bags of Calcium Chloride “ice melter” pellets for around $17.  Calcium Chloride is among the more expensive alternatives for ice melter, and it’s not common to find it being sold as such at retail around here.  It is common to find it at swimming pool stores, where it’s sold as “Calcium Hardness Increaser”, often at prices of over $2 a pound.  So while $17 may seem like a lot to pay for 50lbs of ice melter, it’s an amazing bargain for 50lbs of  “Calcium Hardness Increaser.”  So, I picked up a bag to use in the pool this spring.  I would have bought more, but apparently I got the last bag in the store.

This morning’s ride

lpaulriddle

Being that this may be my last ride for a week or so, considering the weather forecast, I decided I’d depart from February tradition and try to do a longer morning ride.  I took the fixed-gear and rode out to the park entrance at Ilchester Rd, but the Grist Mill Trail was still too snow-covered to attempt on road tires.  So instead, I rode up Thistle Rd. and through Catonsville via Oella Ave.  This is a hilly route and is not my favorite to do with only one gear, but I don’t have many other options for a longer ride when the park is snow-covered, and it’s still too wet to take my geared bike, which lacks fenders.  A mountain/cross bike with studded tires would really fit the bill here.  Maybe next winter..

The chain on the fixie was getting a little floppy, so last night I tightened it up.  I also remounted my back fender so that the front of it extends all the way down to the chainstays.  The bike doesn’t have a chainstay bridge, so I wrapped a zip tie around the stays and attached the fender with a second zip tie.  It actually stays in place better than I expected.  The back of the fender also fits better this way..  previously it extended down a little too far, and the tire was too close to the mud flap even with the struts adjusted out as far as they could go.  As a result, mud and other crud was always getting stuck there.  Tightening the chain (by pulling the wheel back) would have made the problem worse.  Now there’s lots of tire clearance all the way around the fender, so rubbing shouldn’t be a problem.

Riding while the riding’s good

lpaulriddle

Trying to get my rides in while I can this week..  more snow forecast for overnight into tomorrow and then again this weekend.  Conditions this morning almost identical to yesterday, maybe a couple degrees warmer.  We may have rain/snow for the afternoon ride home, so I packed some rain gear.

I rode into the park today to see what it was like.  The conditions were reversed from the last time it snowed.  Today, River Rd was in good shape (relatively speaking of course) and the Grist Mill Trail was still snow covered.  Rather than try to ride it, I just doubled back on River Rd.  Still made for a pretty good ride, all things considered.  In these conditions, I tend to stick to shorter, more direct rides.  Today’s total was 11.3 miles, which qualifies as a long ride in February.

I rode into UMBC via Wilkens Ave and Hilltop Rd, steering clear of the campus loop and all of its road salt.  The funny thing is, if I had done that yesterday, I would have been complaining about the salt on Rolling and Selford Rds, not realizing that UMBC’s roads were 10 times worse.  Everything is relative, I guess.

Repair Stand

lpaulriddle

On the ride home today, I cut through the middle of the UMBC campus and stayed off the roads as much as possible, sticking to sidewalks and watching for pedestrians.  Never my first choice, but it kept most of the salt off my bike.  The rest of the trip home was uneventful.  It’s much lighter out during the ride home now..  if I leave at 5, it’s still twilight when I get home around 40 minutes later.  The darkness is a cool novelty in November, but it starts to get a little old after a while.  So, no complaints.

I received a Park PCS-9 repair stand as a birthday gift last month, and already can’t figure out how I got along without it.  It’s great to be able to just toss the bike up on the stand after a ride, clean off all the road grime and oil the chain.  It seems to take half the time it used to, the stand puts the bike at a convenient height, and there’s no need to flip the bike upside down on its handlebars.

Happy February

lpaulriddle

We got around 5 inches of snow on Saturday, so I kicked February off with a ride very typical of February.. snowy and salty.  The roads were actually in really good shape until I got to UMBC.  Mostly clear of snow and ice, and not too much salt.  In the park, the access road was unplowed as expected.  Before the ride, I switched to toe clips and regular shoes (same high-top suede shoes I used last time I rode with clips) so I could hike this stretch.  The roads inside the park had a bit of snow and ice on them, but were rideable.  All in all, not too bad, except for UMBC.

I made the mistake of riding into UMBC via Shelbourne Rd and Poplar Ave, which requires me to ride about half of the campus loop to get to my building.  UMBC’s roads were so oversalted that they were almost completely white.  It was the worst I had ever seen them.  I eventually moved over to the sidewalk, which was in considerably better shape (at least the stretch I rode on), but not before my rear fender got completely caked up with salt and crud.  I cleaned the bike up the best I could when I got to the office, but it’s going to need a hose-down when I get home.  Is it summer yet?

I think I’m going to be avoiding UMBC’s roads, and cutting through campus dodging pedestrians, until we get some rain or something to wash all the salty crap into the Patapsco River.  I’ll know it’s happened when all the fish die.  Only half kidding here..

Road Bike

lpaulriddle

Took the road bike this morning.  Since I took the fenders off this bike, I’ve been trying to only take it out on dry, sunny days, which are hard to come by around here this time of year.  With cloudy skies and a “chance of sprinkles,” today’s weather isn’t what I’d call ideal for taking the road bike out.  But after several consecutive days on the fixie, mashing up hills and spinning at 160rpm downhill, my legs needed a breather.

I used to ride this bike with a rack trunk and a single side pannier, but lately I’ve taken a liking to riding with 2 side panniers and no trunk.  That way I can mount two blinkers on the back, one on the seat post and another on the left pannier.  The trunk made it impossible to use a seat post blinker, and my rack doesn’t have a reflector mount that I can use.  Getting rid of the trunk was the easiest solution short of buying a new rack.

Still got the annoying rear derailleur squeak.  I am really hoping that new pulleys will get rid of this.  Stay tuned.

Back to normal

lpaulriddle

After Monday’s wild weather, I’ve had a couple days of uneventful, almost boring rides to and from work.  The weather has been in the 30s and 40s for the most part during my rides, although today it was a bit chillier at 27.  I’ve stuck with the fixed-gear all week because the roads are still a little wet in spots, but if things stay dry today and overnight, I may switch to the road bike for tomorrow and Friday.  Friday’s ride depends on the timing of an approaching nor’easter.  Right now it looks like the storm is going to hold off until Friday night, which means I’ll be riding Friday.  But as is always the case with these coastal storms, anything could change between now and then.

Weird weather

lpaulriddle

OK, so I wimped out Friday and took the car to work on a day when the weather ended up pretty good.  History has shown that when I wimp out on a ride, 9 times out of 10 I end up regretting it, and that knowledge helped get me on the bike this morning, on a day when I came perilously close to wimping out again.  The weather this morning was weird.  No better word for it.  Almost 60°, with winds from the south gusting to 40mph.  Lots of rain, especially to our north and south.  Baltimore area got plenty too, but it wasn’t raining during my ride, just overcast and damp.  Lawyers Hill was blocked by a downed tree which had also taken out some power lines.  This would have been a problem had I been driving, but I was able to lift the bike over it.  I took a loop through the park, which was debris-strewn, but otherwise passable.  The drainage area on Glen Artney Rd (near the Grist Mill trailhead) was a raging torrent.  No way I could cross on the bike.  Fortunately, there’s a foot bridge nearby that provides a detour over it, so I didn’t have to double back.  Beyond the park, the ride was uneventful.  I wore full rain gear, but probably could have gotten by without the rain jacket (of course, the rain picked up shortly after I arrived at work).

This was my messiest ride yet on the fixed-gear.  I’m still not completely happy with how the rear fender is attached.  There’s nowhere to attach it at the bottom bracket, so I have it attached higher up on the seat tube, and it doesn’t extend down quite far enough in the front.  As a result, the bottom bracket area gets a lot of spray.  On the bright side, at least the bike is easier to clean than the road bike.  Single chainring, single cog, no derailleurs to worry about.

River bank repair

lpaulriddle

With bad weather threatening for tomorrow, I decided to do a longer ride this morning.  I rode out to New Cut Rd, then River Rd, then through the park.  Today, part of River Rd was down to one lane for construction work.  It looks like they’re doing some sort of restoration/shoring up of the river bank along the road, to try to alleviate future flooding.  Hopefully it’ll help.

Assuming the weather forecast holds up, I’ll either be not riding tomorrow, or taking the shortest ride in possible.  I packed rain gear along today, just in case the weather sours earlier than forecasted (not that that ever happens around here in winter).

Never a dull day..

lpaulriddle

You never know what kind of weather you’re going to get in winter, and this morning was a perfect example.  We got a “surprise” light frosting of snow/sleet/rain overnight.  No mention of it whatsoever in yesterday’s forecast.  By the time I had to leave, the system had moved out, but the roads were still wet, so I switched to the fixed-gear bike (with fenders) for today’s ride.

I rode through the park today, and River Rd was almost completely coated with a light, slightly crunchy glaze.  No traction problems though.  There were bike tire tracks on the Grist Mill Trail, but none on River Rd until I came through.

The second half of my ride was through Oella and Catonsville.  I exited the park at Ilchester Rd and took River Rd to Frederick Rd.  This was the first time I had ridden River Rd for a while, and there were obvious signs of past flooding (lots of mud on the sides), but no problems getting through on the bike.  In Catonsville, instead of taking Edmondson to Melvin Ave as I’ve always done in the past, I turned right on Smithwood, then left on Summit, then right on Beaumont.  This brought me to Frederick Rd at a stop sign instead of a light, and I didn’t have to wait as long to make my left onto Frederick.  The pavement on Summit and Beaumont is in bad shape in spots, but all in all I think this is a better route.