Tag: umbc

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.

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..

Beep. Beep. Beep.

lpaulriddle

So.  We were without air conditioning in our building for awhile today.  Fortunately it’s a nice day out with unseasonably low humidity and a breeze, so I was able to open the window to make it tolerable.

It’s amazing how much beeping you hear in populated regions (like college campuses) nowadays.  Seems like all day long, there’s beeping somewhere from a truck backing up.  There’s so much of it that it just kind of fades into the background with other stuff like birds chirping.  After awhile you don’t even hear it.  Something about the sound makes it carry over really long distances, and it’s also very non directional, making it hard to tell where it’s coming from.  It could be right around the corner, or it could be a mile away.  You can’t tell.  It’s just sort of “there.”

Last fall I put fenders on my road bike, which I use daily for commuting.  They work great, but they make the bike really noisy.  Now that summer is here and the weather is drier, I decided to try to figure out why the fenders are so noisy.  I took the front fender off and rode to work with just the rear fender.  The bike was TONS quieter without the front fender.  I think that’s the culprit.  The fender itself doesn’t rattle, so apparently something is vibrating against the bike frame.  My front fork doesn’t have dropouts to mount fenders, so I had to use zip ties to attach the struts.  Could be the struts vibrating against the fork, or the front of the fender vibrating against the underside of the brake, or who knows what else.  If I can’t figure it out and make it stop, I may end up getting a clip-on fender to use on the front.  Or I could replace my front fork, or I could forget about fenders on the road bike and get a hybrid or cyclocross bike (with better clearance for fenders) to use in wet weather.  One can certainly never have too many bikes…

Today’s Ride

lpaulriddle

I got an early start on the commute this morning, so I decided to try an alternate, longer route to get from Elkridge to UMBC on the bike:

  • West on Montgomery Rd
  • Right on Rockburn Dr
  • Right on Montgomery Rd
  • Right on Kerger Rd
  • Right on Ilchester Rd
  • Left on Beechwood Rd
  • Left on Bonnie Branch Rd
  • Right on Montgomery Rd
  • Right on New Cut Rd
  • Left on College Ave/St Paul St
  • Right on Frederick Rd
  • Left on Oella Ave
  • Left onto Ellicott City Trolley Trail
  • Straight onto Edmondson Ave
  • Right on Melvin Ave
  • Left on Frederick Rd
  • Right on Mellor Ave
  • Bear right onto Hilltop Rd
  • Ride onto campus

Sort of a 1-hour tour of Elkridge, Ellicott City and Catonsville.  Total distance around 18 miles.

Almost all of my morning commutes take me through Patapsco State Park, so this was kind of a departure from the routine.  I’m looking for options for longer rides, and I wanted to see what the traffic was like on this route.  Turns out the traffic is not too bad, except for Ilchester Rd between Kerger and Landing, and Frederick Rd in Ellicott City.  But Ilchester is only busy on school days, and I’m only on Frederick Rd for about ¼ mile.  So all in all, I’d say this route is a winner.  Other observations:

  • The route has some challenging hills, but not until more than halfway in, when I’m fully warmed up.  Also the descent into the river valley on New Cut Rd. is much nicer than my usual white-knuckled descent down Ilchester Rd.
  • I swear I must have gone over at least 30 speed humps.  Next time I’m going to keep count just for kicks.  Maryland: Traffic Calming Capital of the World.
  • Not sure I’ll be riding on the Ellicott City Trolley Trail again.  Parts of it are pretty torn up by roots.  Not too road-bike-friendly.  The alternative is to take Westchester Rd, which shouldn’t be bad.

Back on the bike after ice storm

lpaulriddle

I rode my bike to work today for the first time since the ice storm that hit the Baltimore/Washington area this past Tuesday and Wednesday.  My usual commute takes me through Elkridge, Relay, and Arbutus, MD, including a short trip through the Patapsco State Park Avalon Area.  Today, the roads were fine for the most part, actually a little drier and less salt-strewn than I expected.  The park, however, was still a massive sheet of ice, and being that I was on a road bike with skinny non-ice-friendly tires, I skipped the park and did a short detour onto U.S. 1 instead.  Biking on U.S. 1 is never my first choice, but it was only 1/4 mile on a stretch that has adequate shoulders.  All the same, it was the first time I had ever biked this stretch, and fortunately it wasn’t too bad (aided, I’m sure, by the fact that it was 9:30am and traffic was thinning out).  Nice to know that I have this option available in the future on days when the park is impassable.

The roads weren’t too bad on the UMBC campus (my destination) either, other than maybe a little more salt than the county roads.  The sidewalks were passable.  On the roads they use what appears to be the same salt the county uses, but for the sidewalks they use this weird white foamy-pellety stuff that sticks to shoes and tires, and gets tracked all over the place inside the buildings.  Thanks to full fenders, my bike stayed pretty clean for the entire ride, until the very end when I rode on the sidewalk.  Now the tires are covered with this crap, and I’m sure there’s a long trail of it leading from the front door to my office suite.  (Update — apparently this is Calcium Chloride, and come to think of it, it looks suspiciously similar to the Calcium Chloride “Hardness Plus” pellets I put in my swimming pool.  Wonder if it’s cheaper per pound…)

The ride home should be interesting.  It’s sunny right now, but apparently it’s supposed to cloud up through the afternoon and there’s a chance of snow showers.  We’ll see how it goes.