Week Twelve - Day One

BIKE: Eastwood

TIME THERE: ??
TIME BACK: ??
WEATHER: clear, 8C, 30km/hr wind there; clear, 11C, 11km/hr wind back.
WHAT I WORE: yoga pants, t-shirt, waterproof shell, scarf, double gloves (scarf and gloves in backpack on the way home)
NOTES:
I'm back in the saddle again!

Ahh, it's so nice to be back to bike-commuting, back to work, and back to having adult human contact now that my daughter is feeling better again! How sweet it is.

During my week off, I put studded winter tires on Mike:
I also bought a bike trainer - a gizmo that I've hooked up to Mike to turn him into a stationary trainer while I wait for this beautiful late fall weather to turn into horrible snowy winter. You can see the trainer in the picture below, hooked up to Mike's back tire. The musical caterpillar that stares at you from behind Mike like a dance-floor creeper is unrelated.
You can take a closer look at the trainer, an Elite Fluid A-Frame Trainer I bought from MEC for $249.00 plus tax, in the picture below. This picture also shows off the beautiful studded-tire-ness that Mike is currently sporting. And the beautiful profile of the musical caterpillar.When the horrible snow arrives, I can finally try out my fancy shmancy bad-ass studded tires. In the meantime, I will continue to revel in the incredibly warm November we've been having. As much as I really look forward to being able to try out my new tires, I also recognize that the snow routinely sticks around until May in this part of the world, so I won't dare wish to hasten its arrival.

So, until real winter hits, I will be using Eastwood to bike to work. He's slower and heavier than Mike, but also much smoother. I figured I would take advantage of this smooth ride and try videotaping my commute to work today, discreetly taping a small camera to the handlebars. I figured I would use the timecode from the video recording to tell me how long it took to get to school. I figured this experiment would be easy. I figured wrong.

Both on the way to school and on the way home, the camera kept shutting off every time I would go over a moderate bump - even despite the relatively smooth ride on this bike. Because of this bump-related failure, I managed not to record most of the ride. What I did record was far too shaky to watch. I considered posting it here, the whopping six minutes of the ride home that I managed to capture on videotape, but I decided 98% of the people who tried to watch it would likely vomit from motion sickness. In a gesture of goodwill towards humanity, I refrained from posting the video. I also failed to determine how long my ride was each way, given that I was relying on my unreliable camera to time me.

I might try again with the camera tomorrow. Instead of taping it to the handlebars I'll probably try taping it either to my arm or my helmet, something that won't provide as much vibration as the handlebars. The camera will be more obvious on me than it was on the bike, leading to more people looking at me and therefore more embarrassment, but what can you do? Good biking footage is well worth it. Besides, how can someone be embarrassed who hardly has any shame?