Today I biked in for the 22nd time this year, which matches my total for last year (and this time last year, I hadn’t even started riding in yet). I haven’t been riding with quite the frequency that I did last year. Most of last year’s rides were concentrated in August and September, and this year’s have been spread out over April, May, June, and July. However, most of my missed rides have been for legitimate reasons (illness, travel, family issues, rain, extreme heat, appointments/errands, days off to work on projects, etc), as opposed to laziness. I hope to pick up the pace as we enter the second half of the riding season. My goal for the year is 40 rides, which I don’t think is unreasonable.

I was only able to bike to work 8 times in May, due to a variety of reasons.. early in the month, I caught a cold, and various obligations at home made it necessary to take the car on several days I otherwise would have biked. Later in the month, I had a week where I couldn’t drag myself out of bed in time to get moving (it’s amazing how much a single late night out screws up my body clock nowadays). I also had this mysterious dry cough that came out of nowhere and persisted for about 4 days. But, now it’s the end of the month and I seem to be back in a good routine. Despite the relative infrequency of my rides, I managed to ride in at least one day each week of the month. My average speed is now consistently over 14mph. This morning I averaged 14.8mph, my high for the season so far.

This past weekend, I picked up two new pairs of biking shorts on sale at Performance. One has the standard chamois padding and the other has this gel stuff. The price was the same, so I figured I’d try ’em both. I’ve ridden once with each pair now. The chamois pair is fine, but the stitching on the gel pair bothered me a little bit. I’ll see how it goes as they break in, but so far I’m not crazy about these.

I’ve also logged almost 1000 miles on my cyclocomputer, a Cateye Astrale. Verdict so far: It’s nice, and I especially like the cadence feature. However, I wish it gave some kind of audio feedback when starting/stopping the timer. There have been a lot of times where I’ve thought I’ve started it but it wasn’t actually running, and vice-versa, and as a result I haven’t gotten any statistics for a particular ride. Forgetting to start/stop it is one thing, but it’s really annoying when I’ve actually made a point to do it, and still don’t get my stats. Otherwise, though, I really like it. Cateye has come out with a newer model since I got mine, so I wonder if they’ve addressed this problem.

June will start out with a week of no biking due to my business trip. However, I hope to get right back into it afterwards.

Well, here it is May 1 and I’ve biked to work 6 times now (well, 5-1/2 times actually, since I’m at work now and still have to ride home today). The weather has been almost perfect for biking. It’d be nice if it were ever-so-slightly warmer in the mornings, because then I could lose the jacket. But other than that, it’s been hard to complain.

This past weekend I fiddled around a bit with my front derailleur. For more than a year now, it’s had this habit of occasionally dumping the chain when I shift to the smallest chainring. Every time it did it, I swore I was going to adjust it, but I never seemed to get around to it. Anyhow, all I did was tighten the inner limit screw about 1/4 turn, and it seems to have done the trick. Today it was very consistent shifting into the granny. Only thing now, is it seems to “hunt” a bit more when I shift out of the granny into the middle chainring. However, it’s still within the limits of what I’d consider acceptable, so I’m going to leave it like this for the time being. After the season, I’ll take it to the shop for a complete tune-up, and they can worry about it at that point.

Today I did find a good article on derailleur adjustment, so if I’m feeling up to it one day, I might fiddle with it some more.

On another topic, today we found out when our health benefits open enrollment starts at work. So soon, we’ll find out how much more the state is going to spank us for benefits in FY 2007. Cue up the “Imperial Death March” theme now..

The summer ritual officially began today: I rode my bike to work for the first time. I’m admittedly a fair-weather biker; I bike when it’s warm, sunny and light outside. So, today was my first time on the bike since, oh, last October or so. Combine that with two weeks or so of relative inactivity while I was home helping care for our newborn, and well, suffice it to say that I didn’t break any speed records getting here this morning. And then there’s the ride home looming, with its dreadded mile-long grind up Lawyers Hill Road. But I’ve got 8 hours or so before I have to worry about that.

With gas pushing $3 a gallon, the financial incentive to bike in (and avoid driving) is stronger than ever. The commute to work is about 15 miles round trip, and my car gets roughly 30 miles to the gallon (actually that’s being generous, it’s probably more like 25-28), so I save about 1/2 gallon of gas every time I commute by bike. At $3 per gallon, that’s around $1.50 extra in my pocket for each ride. And the more expensive gas gets, the bigger the payoff gets.

Last year, I biked to work 22 times, but I didn’t start doing it until early August. So hopefully this year I can do it a lot more. This year I plan on keeping a log so I can track my times, average speed etc. At the end of the season we’ll see how I did.