Extreme Commuting

No ride last night, just a treadle with Pete to Steve's where we hooked up with him and Andy, Robin and Wayno. We rode through ever increasing rain to Pomeroys wherein we imbibed some good beers... Heavy rain riding back to Pete's then home later.

Started snowing this morning, about 7.30 at my place. By the time i left for work it was a shallow slushy with minimal slippage. As i crossed town the snow got heavier and heavier, and i got more and more caked in the stuff. Pretty wet too, cars spraying slush.

Since then, its piled up something wicked. I'ma gettin' a lift home, the slicks will be too slick in this now.

[The following added on Friday 8th] Further to this, Snow continued into Wednesday evening, then the skies cleared and everything froze solid... I stayed home Thursday, Christchurch's coldest day on record. A Surly Pugsley would have gotten me to work, but not much else. Went up to Shirley Intermediate in the afternoon with Otis on his bike and Hugo on the top tube of the singlespeed, that was quite fun, but semi dodgy. Later i mounted a Kenda K-Rad on the front wheel of the Troll.

Friday morning, it had frozen again overnight, so all the meltwater from Thursday afternoon was black ice, but by 8am there was a mild(ish) NW breeze blowing, starting the melt. I took the Troll to work, working my way very tentatively and carefully on all the black ice and ridgy packed melted refrozen footpaths. Hagley Park seemed to have had some of the bikeways cleared, others not. Kilmarnock had about 15cm of bikelane, Riccarton Rd a bit more, and Main South less in places. Only one idiot (in a Black late model BMW) got too close to me (just before i pulled into Riccarton House) - this is the second close call i've had with a bmw fitting that description in this vicinity...

Lunchtime i rode down Blenheim Rd to Velo Ideale and T and H (and Jet) met me there and we bought T's new Linus, in red. Riding back i realised all this grit they've shoved on the roads is gonna make for some nasty dust in days to come. Riding home should be just fine.


And turns out, this is the 500th post on this blog.  Neat, churnin' 'em out like these pencils.