Commute 3/3/08

Time of departure: 7:50A
Temperature: 40F

FINALLY! It's been two weeks since I've been on the bike, and finally today I made it back. Two weeks ago I was in Atlanta for a work conference, which meant a lot of time in the hotel and no biking. Last week was one of those weeks where I had meetings and rain and all sorts of things that conspired to put me in the lazy mode and keep me off the bike. No more.

Today is beautiful and is supposed to get better. The predicted high is around 60. A friend of mine, a more-or-less lifelong MD resident was describing the schizoid nature of March to me yesterday, and now it's coming to pass. Well, I'll take the sun while I have it.

I did do something different on my commute in this morning, sidewalk hopping to avoid traffic. There are a few sections in the middle of my commute that tend to have heavier traffic. Today I hit most of those blocks while they had a red light. If traffic is moving I have no problem planting myself a few feet from the parked cars and doing my thing, but I'm not quite balanced enough to slide between the parked cars and stopped traffic, especially since there is often not enough room. I usually just slow down and push along with my foot on the ground, but today there were two block (stacked with cars from end to end) that had nobody on the sidewalk, so I hopped on and cruised that way. I can say it won't be habit-forming, because getting back to the street and having to be even more aware of turning cars was a little dicey, but all in all it was nice to be able to stay at speed past the cars.