Well, it took 6 months, but I finally picked up a ride on 2010.  Today marks my 16th ride of June, compared with 15 last June.  Looks like I’ll finish up June with 17, as I plan to ride tomorrow, and I’m off on Wednesday the 30th.  July is relatively low-hanging fruit too; I rode 14 times in July 2010.  We shall see how it goes.

It’s so humid out these days that I feel like I’m losing 10 pounds per ride.  Pretty much par for the course for Maryland in summer, but I do find myself pining for just one pleasant day once in awhile.  The sad thing is, this week it’s been much nicer than last week, and I’m sure someone living in a saner climate would still find it horrible.  Another hallmark of Maryland summer is the constant prediction of storms that never seem to materialize.  My last 6 rides, I’ve taken my single speed bike, which has fenders, because storms have been in the forecast all 6 days, and fenders come in handy when it rains.  Of course, so far we haven’t gotten a single drop.  Tomorrow the rain chances have finally dropped out of the forecast, so I’ll switch to my road bike.  Which means we’ll get a monsoon tomorrow afternoon.

Getting close to the end of June, and the midpoint of 2011.  I’m on pace to finish June up with 75 or 76 rides, which is around 10 fewer than the same time last year.  Most of those rides were lost in February and March, for which my crash on Feb 8 is partially to blame.  But so far in 2011, I have yet to have a month where I rode as many times as the same month in 2010.  Unless something happens to keep me off the bike next week, though, June should break that streak.  I rode 15 times in June 2010, and I’m currently at 14 for June 2011.  Assuming I ride with around the same frequency the second half of 2011 as I did the second half of 2010, I’ll finish up 2011 with around 165 rides, compared to 174 in 2010 and 144 in 2009.

The past week has been classic swampy Maryland summer weather.  It hasn’t been extremely hot, but the humidity has been off the charts.  Probably for the best, because I’m getting acclimated to it now, and it’s only going to get worse in July and August.

My single speed bike is finally back in the rotation – I rode it 4 times this week – and knock on wood, all seems well now with the rear tire.  Unfortunately, the bike is still not 100% right..  something is amiss with the headset.  It’s got a slight knock, and if I try to tighten it up enough to keep it from knocking, it starts to bind.  So something is apparently wrong with either the bearings or the bearing surfaces.  Not sure if the crash damaged the headset, or if I hosed it up earlier when I adjusted my stem height and then forgot to tighten it back down.  But in any case, I’ll get the bike shop to take a look at it, but in the meantime it’s not keeping me from riding the bike.

Finally got my single speed bike back in service this morning, just in time to ride it to work in the rain.  This is the time of year where you almost hope for showers to provide relief from the humidity.  Indeed, the ran stopped about halfway through my ride, and I started sweating almost immediately.  The bike rode pretty well.  It’s got a new rear tire, and over the past couple of weeks I remounted the fenders, lubed everything up, and also adjusted the headset, which had somehow gotten too tight, to the point where it was binding.

We’ll see how these tires do.  They are Bontrager “Hard Case” 700c x 28, and they replaced a previous model of the same tire, although the old tires were skinnier (700c x 23).  The old tires were great, and lasted me over 2000 miles.  They probably would have lasted longer, but the front had a large hole in it from a piece of glass I ran over (though I put a boot on the inside and it still held air), and the rear got trashed when I wrecked this past winter.  These are wire bead tires, and the new ones were very hard to get on the rim.  My “bead jack” tool got them on painlessly though, and I’m now carrying one around in my bag in case I get a flat on the road.

Still working on the best fender-mounting scheme for this bike.  The frame and brakes leave plenty of clearance for fenders.  The front is no problem, but the back lacks frame eyelets and a brake bridge.  I used p-clamps, bolts, and nylon lock nuts to attach the struts.  Lacking a brake bridge, I’ve tried a number of different strategies to attach the front of the fender.  The current scheme features a short piece of 12 gauge solid copper electrical wire, wrapped tightly a couple of times around each chainstay.  I then attached the fender with a zip tie, and it seems relatively secure.  We’ll see how it stands up to riding.  For the top of the fenders, on the front, I used a “Sheldon Fender Nut.”  I couldn’t do the same thing on the back, because it put the mounting bracket too close to the tire.  So instead, I just used zip ties to attach the bracket to the brake bridge.  Zip ties do break periodically, but hopefully this setup will work OK otherwise.  With any luck, I’ll be able to ride the bike regularly for awhile now, and will report back after I’ve put a few hundred miles on it.

There are so few nice mornings this time of year in Baltimore, that I couldn’t let this one get by without writing about it.  This morning’s ride-time temperature was 62°, dewpoint 51°, sunny with a light breeze out of the northwest.  I wore a long-sleeve jersey for the second morning in a row, which is unbelievably rare in June.  You just can’t order up more perfect biking weather than this.  It felt more like late September.  Today was my 11th consecutive ride on the road bike, which has been seeing a lot of action lately due to the mostly dry conditions.  The weather is fixing to take a turn for the worse starting tomorrow though, so I’ll likely be breaking the streak soon in favor of a bike with fenders.  My single-speed bike has been out of commission for a couple of weeks now due to a faulty rear tire, but I’ve got the replacement tire mounted now and I just need to re-install the rear fender.  The plan is to do that tonight and hopefully ride the single-speed tomorrow.

Well, just like last summer, this one looks to be nothing but bad air days as far as the eye can see.  And of course, on these days we’re all supposed to stay inside or drive around in our air conditioned cars, thereby creating MORE smog and continuing the downward spiral.  And in beautiful eastern Howard County, they’re happily building countless more new sprawl developments where you need a car to get anywhere.  Gotta love progress.  Sorry, I’m feeling cynical today.

I still ride my bike through the heat waves.  Most of the time, it’s not too bad.  Mornings are the best time of day to ride, but of course, as a bike commuter, I have to pay the piper and ride home in the late afternoon.  Around here, it usually hasn’t cooled off much by 5:00pm.  The key is taking it easy and staying hydrated.  My ride home is 8 miles.  Drinking lots of water during an 8-mile ride isn’t much help.  It’s essential to keep drinking during the day, leading up to the ride, to avoid getting dehydrated on the ride.  Then just take it slowly, pedal in a low gear, and take advantage of coasting when possible.  Air movement will provide a cooling effect, which makes cycling in hot weather more tolerable than other activities such as jogging.  So while it’s important to take it easy in the heat, you still have to go fast enough to get some cooling from the air.  It takes some practice to get the pacing down.  I have to re-acclimate myself to it every year around this time.  By July and August, it’s second nature.

With all the heat and lack of rain, the road bike has been my go-to bike lately.  After today’s ride, it’s only 2 slots off the leaderboard for most-used bike of the year, behind my mountain bike.  If the current weather patterns hold up through the summer, the road bike could build up a pretty healthy lead, though it’ll likely lose ground in the fall.  And hey, as hot as it is, my average ride-time temperature is still only 53°.  That would feel pretty darned nice this time of year…

Today is “Bike to Work Day” in central Maryland, so I did what I do pretty much every other day:  I biked to work.  Unfortunately there are no BtWD “rallies” anywhere near where I commute, so I didn’t register for the event, nor did I attend a rally.  My hope is that eventually, this will get popular enough that there will be more rallies in convenient spots.

Here’s the route I took:  starting on Montgomery Rd near Elkridge Elementary School, I headed westbound, and turned right to stay on Montgomery at the intersection with Marshallee Dr.  I rode out past Rockburn Elementary and turned right onto Rockburn Dr.  At the end of Rockburn Dr., I took a right back onto Montgomery, right on Kerger, and right on Ilchester.  I passed Ilchester Elementary and OLPH Church, turned left onto Beechwood, right on Bonnie Branch, left on Ilchester, and then hung a right onto the Grist Mill Trail and into Patapsco State Park.  I followed the trail to the end where it turns into Glen Artney Rd, followed that to the end, turned right onto Gun Rd, left onto the park entrance road, exited the park, and turned left onto South St in Relay.  I followed that to South Rolling Rd, turned right on Francis Ave, left on Selford Rd, right on Sulphur Spring Rd, left on Shelbourne Rd, left on Poplar Ave, and into UMBC.  I take this route fairly often, maybe once a week or so.  I saw a grand total of zero other riders until I got into the park.  I saw two people riding through the park, and passed another going the opposite direction on Selford.  Grand total:  3 riders, 1 male, 2 female.   Of those, I knew one, and 2 were obviously commuting, and the third I couldn’t tell.  On a typical (non-Bike-to-work-day) morning, I’ll see one or 2 riders, so today was about par for the course.  Not overwhelming, but not too surprising either, given the lack of events in the area.  Too bad we’re not in Baltimore City, which sounds like it’s going to be bike central today.

Next week is “Bike to Work Week” in Maryland, and the weather looks like a carbon copy of last year’s Bike to Work Week: rain as far as the eye can see.  With any luck, we’ll dry out by Friday, which is “Bike to Work Day.”  But unfortunately, it’s not the kind of weather that is going to inspire first-time bike commuters to hit the streets.

I’m not quite as enthused about “Bike to Work Day” this year as I was last, mainly due to the complete lack of rallies and events anywhere near me.  The Howard County rally is at Columbia Mall again, which is 10 miles in the opposite direction of work.  There’s one at Northrop Grumman, near BWI Airport, which could work for me if it wasn’t for employees only.  All of the Baltimore County events are north of the city, and the only AA County rally is in Annapolis.  I suppose I could organize a rally myself, but event planning is decidedly not my strong suit (although I’d be more than happy to get involved if someone were to step up to the plate).  I think an ideal location for a rally would be the BWI Airport business district (Airport Square), as there are a lot of office parks nearby, and the surrounding area is very bike friendly thanks to the trail that circles the airport.

I found myself in an uncommon situation this morning.  Normally I ride for about an hour to work each morning, taking various routes, and ultimately arriving at work between 8:30am and 9:00am.  It works out great because I typically don’t have meetings before 10am, which allows plenty of time to cool off, freshen up, change clothes, etc. after the ride.  Today, I had an 8:15am meeting at location a few miles from my office.  I had to get to my office by 7:30 to catch a shuttle bus to take me where I needed to go.  I left the house at 7:00am, took the most direct route to work possible, and went as fast as I could.  It ended up taking 27 minutes at an average of 16.6mph.  Not too bad given the hilly terrain, and the fact that I’m not race conditioned (or even anything resembling it).  It was a pretty nice ride, aided by the perfect mid-May weather.  Too bad it can’t be May or October all year long.

The ironic thing is that the site of the meeting was actually closer to my house than my office.  It’s actually right along one of my usual routes to work.  The problem is, I’m not really set up for commuting to anywhere but my office.  I don’t carry a lock regularly, and I store clean clothes and shoes in my office.  If I were to go directly to the meeting site, I’d need to carry a full change of clothes and a pair of shoes, find somewhere to change, and find somewhere safe to leave my bike, helmet, etc.  The logistics would be somewhat easier if I could commute in street clothes, but that’s kind of a non-starter for me because I just sweat too much.  So it ended up being easier to go to the office, change there, leave my bike there, and catch the shuttle bus.  It ended up working out OK, but I’m glad I don’t have to do it every day.

I changed things up a bit for my ride home yesterday.  I typically mix my routes up on my commute to work in the morning, but for the ride home, I take the same route every day.  It’s relatively fast, traffic is not too bad, and it gets me home right around dinner time, so I’ve never seen much point in messing with it.  However, part of my route home involves crossing a small bridge which is slated for replacement in the near future, which I may need to route around if it’s closed during the construction.  I have 2 options for bypassing this bridge:  the short way, which includes a brief detour on U.S. 1, and the long way, where I ride all the way through Patapsco State Park, up Bonnie Branch Rd, up Beechwood Rd, then down Landing Rd and left on Montgomery Rd.  I tried the long way yesterday, to see how it was.  Beechwood Rd. is a steeper climb than Lawyers Hill Rd., and I was on my single speed bike, which made it quite a workout.  It’s still easier than the alternative of going straight up Ilchester Rd., though.  Landing Rd. in the eastbound direction is not a very pleasant ride.  The pavement condition leaves a lot to be desired, there’s no shoulder at all, and there’s lots of traffic that time of day.  All in all, an OK ride, but wouldn’t be my first choice of routes.  An alternative would be to bypass Beechwood Rd. and take Bonnie Branch all the way up to Montgomery, and ride home on Montgomery.  That adds several left turns to the route, though, and there’s even more traffic on Montgomery than on Landing, although Montgomery likely has better pavement and shoulders in that direction.  I’ll have to try it and see, but I don’t think it’ll be too much of an improvement.