Summer is here and gas prices are up - more of us are on bicycles. Remember to use lights for night. Here is some local inspiration: Night riding

What I really dig is when a company takes something that is beneficial yet boring, like safety, and makes it fun. Drivers give you room like you won't believe, kids will love you, everybody else wants to talk to you and riding around on a cloud of neon light is just plain fun.

Yesterday afternoon & this morning were a bit like bicycling through a warm sponge. In a good way, if that makes any sense. As everyone probably knows by now, we are heading into a couple of days of potentially record-breaking warm weather.

Although at the moment, all that hot sunny weather looks entirely theoretical. It's warmer, warm enough that I wore a t-shirt, no jacket, but still quite overcast. I guess the weather peeps know what they're talking about, though.

So don't forget to bike safely: dress lightly, carry (and drink!) plenty of water, and take breaks when you need to. And an extra tip: don't give blood & then expect to ride later in hot weather. I learned that the hard way last summer! I ended up begging a ride home from a co-worker.

On that note: my bikes are both a little too oddly shaped to carry on the bus (grumble grumble grumble) but I do have a couple of co-workers with larger vehicles who have standing offers to take me & my bike home in an emergency. Or if chad360 is around, he can come get me. Or, according to company policy, I think I could check out a company car, although I wouldn't want to put my bike in it! Or, worst case, I can bring my bike in the building and get myself home on the bus.

It's good to have some backup plans, because sometimes stuff happens. So far I've needed a ride 3 times: the aforementioned day, a rainy evening, and the day I almost got hit by a semi on the way in. That time, I thought I was fine, then somebody asked me about it, and I pretty much dissolved.

Anyhow, be safe out there!

(I missed a few days, I know. Didn't ride at all yesterday or Saturday; Sunday's ride was actually kinda lame. Freezing cold, blown almost sideways.)

So I'm writing this series as part of my Bike Commute Contest experience, but I don't tend to take the "Contest" part of the thing very seriously. I just don't ride anywhere near enough to be in the running for any sort of prize. The first year I rode, the guy who won was biking from Olympia to DUPONT. Yeah. Not ever ever ever going to beat that, or even get in the general neighborhood of it.

And there's always one crappy day where I just say "eh" and skip the ride, so there goes consistency. (Plus consistency award ties get broken by distance IIRC, so we're back to that.)

But...I can count all of this for two other contests! At work, we're doing this 10K steps a day challenge, which even includes a "friendly" competition with a few other credit unions in town. Bike time counts, too. So with that and some very serious gardening on the weekends, I'm averaging the equivalent of 18,800+ steps per day. I'm sure someone who hiked 10 miles is probably going to kick my ass, but I'm feeling pretty good about it anyway.

Then, I'm in this online bike challenge group as part of another website community, and this summer the founder has announced a "streak" challenge, so whoever rides the most consecutive days wins a super-cool GPS bike computer. (Drool drool drool) Again, I can't win for distance (although last month & so far this month I'm right around #10), but I can definitely be consistent, assuming I can tough out the "eh" days.

(Critter report: saw a lizard today, which I narrowly avoided rolling right over, and some squirrels. I can't believe I didn't include squirrels in yesterday's post!)

Yesterday I had a thing after work that involved biking out on Martin Way & then Carpenter Road. I had almost forgotten how squirrelly it can be riding on really busy highway-like roads. I love biking, but I'm not exactly what you'd call the most expert cyclist. (As chad360 can attest to.)

Yes, there is a bike lane on Martin Way; however, there's also quite the dip by Top Foods: a long downhill followed by a long uphill, and the traffic zips by at (I would guess) 45+ MPH. So I stuck to the right edge of the bike lane, more in the shoulder than the lane. Heading east, I got to a pretty nice clip myself on the downhill, which is fun if slightly unnerving.

(Not including dogs on leashes)

• Cats. This morning I saw a black cat & a big orange and white kitty. The most "OMG ponies!!!1!" (cute) thing I've ever seen on the trail is a guy with some sort of harness/carrier thing on his shoulders with a cat perched in it.
• Birds. Mostly, I just hear them or only see them out of the corner of my eye, but one day last week I had to dodge around a pair of ducks who just weren't going anywhere. And a few weeks ago, a pair of (???) swooped across the trail right in front of my face. I swear I saw a belly and underside of wings on one of them.
• Bunnies! Have already seen a few this spring; they dart across the trail and are gone almost by the time you realize they're there.
• Deer. Last winter (December?) a deer and I startled each other in almost-dark on the trail west of Fones Road.
• And this morning I saw raccoons for the first time, between Boulevard & Dayton.

Four of them, off in the distance, and I went through one of those mental checklists as I got closer: too big for bunnies; wrong behavior for cats; wrong shape for dogs.

As I approached, they dove off into the bushes, then 2 came back out and did a perfect imitation of old-style highwaymen. One stood up on hind legs, drawing himself very tall, while the was on all fours standing across the path. But I zipped by them, leaving them turning their heads to look at me, then scampering away.

There's one other person at my office who is a semi-regular bike commuter, and another person we work with lives close to her. So they arranged this morning to meet up and ride in together, so the newbie could see the best route & have some encouragement/company on her first bike commute. I talked to them this morning, and they were both pretty excited.

The newbie just got a new(-to-her) bike with clip pedals, and new shoes, so I guess last night she did some riding around in her neighborhood to get used to it. Get all the falling down out of the way, is how she put it. She was also very proudly (!) showing off the bruises on her leg from that particular little adventure. But no falling today, apparently.

I had wanted to ride in with them, as their route meets up with mine, but I forgot to ask yesterday what time they'd be leaving. Another time, perhaps. I've never ridden with anybody on my commute, and would like to try it at least once.

In any case, I'm tickled pink about the whole thing. I think it's incredibly important to provide support & encouragement to new bike commuters, to make it as easy physically and mentally as possible. It can't be a standoffish culture, with an elite attitude; biking to work has to become as ordinary as possible. If there's several people who bike, and they're not weird dorky bike people ;) then that makes it open to anybody.

That's the idea, anyway.

So today is way out beyond gorgeous. Supposed to get up close to 70, and looking out the window right now...not a cloud to be seen. It's a joy to ride in nice weather, which I suppose is why they run the Commute Contest in May, rather than, say February or August. :)

The last couple of years, I've hung up my bike (for commuting anyway) in November and not picked it up again until late February - early March. And then I'm really erratic with the spring rain. I rode one really clear day in January, which was exhilarating, but whoa! cold. Got to work with ice in my hair, on my knuckles, my knees, my forearms.

I think about riding in the rain, because it's not like it usually pours around here as it does some places. Right now, I just haven't gotten around to getting new rain paints, but I've also had the experience of getting my glasses entirely fogged over.

Which leaves me in the lousy situation of either not being able to see because my glasses are covered in mist or not being able to see because I can't see without my glasses.

I've heard that a longer helmet visor or a cap with a long brim could help. Does anybody have any suggestions for riding on days that are, well, the opposite of today?

On weekday afternoons, the Chehalis Western Trail can get quite crowded, especially when the weather is nice. And since there are quite a few residential neighborhoods up against the trails, there's plenty of pedestrians.

It's tricky, because some of the most popular walking spots are the same flat straight stretches where I can easily get going to 15 mph, and happily so. But of course I want to be both polite & safe.

People walking in the right lane, one or two abreast, steadily & evenly -- that's easy. A brief ring of the bell and then pass on the left. Depending on the speed, I may even say "good afternoon!" as I zip past.

People with dogs are a little trickier; how the dog seems to be walking influences how I alert, or whether I alert. Sometimes, ringing the bell or calling out freaks dogs out more than just getting by as fast as possible. And I am entirely not a dog person. Some people stop when I call/ring and hold their dogs close until I'm well past.

Little kids (with adults) require the same sort of caution, although a verbal warning is almost always for the best. Same with larger, more meandering groups of people.

Yesterday was entertaining, though. Just south of 37th, I encountered a huge group of kids from Komachin Middle School, either track or soccer as far as I could tell. The signal of the bell didn't mean anything to them, as it does to regular walkers, and of course there's that special obliviousness of middle-school kids.

I'm planning on making this bike thing a series for May (bike commute month) -- and writing something every day or almost every day about biking and/or alternative commuting.

Yesterday, as I hit a lovely downhill stretch coming home, I made a connection between the visceral feeling of biking -- those moments when you hit a perfect cadence and it's just you and the air, zipping along -- and something from my childhood.

I didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was almost 30 years old, which I've probably written about before here, and if not here, then on my personal site. Sometimes I've felt sad and almost jealous about it, because I didn't have that experience of freedom through biking when I was a kid or a teenager.

But as I said, yesterday it clicked with something that was very special to me when I was younger: the swings. I have always loved swings, even up into my adulthood. One of the more (few!) lovely memories of my teen years is sneaking into an elementary school playground late at night with a group of friends and sitting on the swings for hours. It's the same exhilarating/dizzying feeling of just you, hurtling through space, and the rush of the air, and everything is just a little bit precarious but for the moment, perfectly balanced.

::sigh::

This is my 3rd year participating in the Thurston County Bike Commute Contest, and my 2nd organizing a team at work. This year I doubled the size of the group (14 people); I'm extra-jazzed that everyone in my department except one signed up.

And today was such a lovely day to start, too. About 40 degrees, cold enough to be nippy on the ears but warm enough to wear fingerless gloves. (My fingerless gloves have better padding, so I prefer them.) Mostly sunny, with enough overcast in the east that I wasn't squinting into the sunrise.

I love my commute. It's about 5 miles, 95% of it on trails. (Olympia Woodland to Chehalis Western) That new trail is fantastic, although I'm really curious what's up with the repair work being done west of Fones Road. Some sort of culvert work, I think, although I'm a little disappointed that it's needed so soon. The trail itself only opened, what, last December? (Note for original reporting idea: contact city & ask?)

In any case, it's very peaceful -- trees, birds, other cyclists. People walking dogs; there's definitely more walkers out & about in the afternoons. I'm in NO way a morning person, but getting moving, seeing Chambers Lake in the early light, cruising along: that wakes me up.

Today I'm turning in my team list; still trying to decide whether to get a t-shirt. (I need another t-shirt like I need a hole in my head, OTOH, this means enough to me that I kinda want one anyway. Plus I like this year's design. If they had baby-doll style shirts, I'd get one in a heartbeat.)