I biked to work every day last week, keeping my perfect April alive.  Hopefully I can keep it going.  Been feeling kind of loopy-headed, and lethargic, the past few days, although it seems better today.  Not sure if it’s seasonal allergies, my BP meds, or a combination of both.  I do remember having the same problem last April, so I suspect allergies are at least partially involved.

Got a new “bike noise” bothering me, this time with my fixed-gear bike.  When I stand up and pedal, I get this annoying ticking noise with every third pedal stroke.  It only happens when I’m out of the seat.  When I sit down, there’s no noise.  Doesn’t matter how I pedal or how fast I’m going; if I’m out of the seat, it ticks every third pedal stroke, like clockwork.  If I bounce on the pedals a little bit, sometimes I can get it to make extra ticking sounds.  It sounds kind of like something brushing the spokes, but I don’t think that’s it.  So I’m stripping stuff off the bike little by little to see if I can figure out what it is.  Took the fenders off over the weekend..  didn’t help.  I guess I’ll try my rack and panniers next, although I don’t have high hopes that’ll help either.  Hopefully I can get to the bottom of this sooner or later.

After hitting College Ave. yesterday, I rode on Landing Rd. today, which is sort of a scaled-down version.  Instead of seven steep hills, Landing Rd. has five somewhat less steep hills, and ends with a steep climb.  I figured I’d get my hill riding out of the way before I switch to the fixed-gear bike tomorrow, as neither of these two roads is much fun with only one gear.  While Landing Rd. is close to home, and provides a nice, direct route to the Ilchester Rd. entrance to Patapsco State Park, I still don’t ride it too often, because I’m usually not warmed up enough to want to tackle the hills.  For this and other reasons, I end up riding it more often in the summer than any other time of year.

This morning, I was able to ride in with summer clothes for the first time in 2010.  I’ve already taken several afternoon rides like this, but this will be the first day I can wear the same clothes for both the morning and afternoon rides.  Tomorrow looks to be a transitional weather day, with storms in the forecast as we revert back to seasonal temperatures on Friday.  Then it’ll be back to long sleeves and leg warmers.

We’re having a summer weather preview this week, complete with hot afternoons and overnight showers.  We had a line of rain come through just before dawn, which gave me an opportunity to really put my new clip-on fenders through their paces.  Except for a bit of spray on my shoes and ankles, the fenders do a good job keeping me dry.  The real test is going to be when I go to wipe down my bike later.  To really be worthwhile, the fenders need to keep the gunk off my drivetrain so that the bike is easy to clean off.  Stay tuned.

Today I rode into Ellicott City via the infamous College Ave., which runs between Bonnie Branch Rd and St. Paul St.  College Ave. is known for its seven steep hills as well as numerous ghost stories and old wives’ tales. I don’t ride College Ave. all that often because the first hill is a total killer.  Today I managed to slog up it without dropping to the granny gear, but it wasn’t fun.  Once you’re up the initial hill, though, the remaining 6 aren’t that bad.  It’s just a matter of building up enough speed on the downhill parts to carry the bike most of the way up the next hill.  I came close to 40mph on a couple stretches.  Once I was in Ellicott City, I took the same route as yesterday, doubling back to Patapsco State Park via River Rd. and then through Relay and Halethorpe.  For some reason I thought this was going to be a shorter ride than yesterday, but it’s actually about a mile longer, clocking in at just under 19 miles.

I’ll probably keep riding the road bike for one more day, then switch to the fixed gear for the end of the week.  By then the temperatures should be returning to early-April seasonal norms, which will be nice, although I’m enjoying not having to bundle up in the mornings.

This week is Spring Break for Baltimore County schools, and next week is Howard County’s Spring Break.  Spring Break always means less traffic in the morning, so I’m planning my rides accordingly.  This week I’m doing some rides through Catonsville, and next week I’ll extend my rides on the Howard County side, maybe riding out to New Cut Rd and going through Ellicott City.  It’s a nice preview of Summer Vacation and its blissful lack of morning traffic.

April is one of those awkward months, like October, where 30-degree swings in daytime temperature are not uncommon.  Today figures to be one of those days.  When I left this morning it was 45 out, and the predicted high for the day is 75.  This callls for warm clothes in the morning and cool clothes in the afternoon.  I like to wear shorts, leg warmers, a long sleeve jersey and a windbreaker early.  I pack a short sleeve jersey for later, then stash the leg warmers, long sleeve jersey and jacket for the afternoon ride.  Just need to make sure to leave enough room to stow the extra clothes on the bike.

Winds of March..  an awesome old song by Journey, and a massive annoyance on a bike.

I rode in today in a stiff 15-20mph west wind that didn’t let up for a single second.  The good news is, although I wouldn’t call myself 100%, I wasn’t nearly as draggy as yesterday, and didn’t struggle as much against the wind.  It helped that it wasn’t raining.  The weather forecast calls for the winds to diminish today, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

I wrapped up March with 15 commutes to work by bike and 1 by car.  We’ll see what April has in store.

It’s been a dreary couple of days here in B’more, though there’s hope of some improvement later today.  I’ve been taking Benadryl the past couple of nights at bedtime, to help with a lingering post-nasal drip that tends to wake me up at night if I don’t drug it into submission.  The Benadryl helps me get a good night’s sleep, but unfortunately it makes me incredibly draggy in the morning.  That, combined with drizzle and thick fog, led me to skip riding yesterday.  I regretted it later, of course, but it was probably the right call.

This morning, it was raining again, but visibility was better, so I rode.  It turned out to be one of my toughest rides of the year.  I’m not sure if it was the Benadryl after-effects, the 20mph headwind, or both, but I was really laboring to get up the hills during the second half of the ride.  Hopefully my rides will improve with the weather for the second half of the week.

The good news is, the clip-on fenders I ordered for my road bike arrived on Friday, one day after I ordered them.  I hope to try them out soon.  I’ll post a write-up on them after I’ve taken them for a few bad-weather rides.  I’m interested to see how they compare to full fenders.  I tried full fenders with the road bike for a while, but the bike just doesn’t have enough clearance for them, particularly under the brakes.  They worked, but it took an hour of fiddling to get them adjusted correctly, and even then they would still occasionally rub the tires.  The clip-ons shouldn’t have that problem.

Still battling the virus I came down with this past weekend, which has now moved into my throat.  The good news is, it hasn’t kept me off the bike, though it is detracting somewhat from the overall excellence of the riding experience.  I switched to the fixed-gear this morning because there’s a threat of rain later (NWS says “mainly after 5pm”, but I’ve heard that before) and I wanted fenders.  It’s becoming clear that I’m going to need a set of fenders for my road bike if it’s ever going to see any regular use this spring.  So, this morning I ordered a set of Planet Bike “SpeedEZ” clip-on fenders to use with the road bike.  I’ll report back on them once I’ve tried them out, probably in a week or two, depending on how fast Amazon’s “super saver” shipping gets them to me.  My hope is that they’ll be easy to put on and take off without a lot of fiddling.