Wow…two months..

This morning was great! As I discussed yesterday, it seems I’ve finally got my bike dialed in and it’s now a real comfort bike. I’m sure I’ll continue tweaking, especially as things wear out, break, fall off, or otherwise go bad, but for now things seem excellent. So excellent, in fact, that my 45 minute morning commute took me 30 minutes.
Actually it’s not really a leap from 45 to 30 minutes. Over the last month I’ve steadily been bringing the time down without even trying. For those of you worrying about whether I still qualify as a slow biker, not to worry – my speed at 30 minutes is around 13 mph, it used to be just over 9 mph. I must also admit that today I managed to get green lights at almost every intersection which doesn’t always happen. If I’m off it can add a good deal of time to my ride, so not all of the time I’ve shaved off has anything to do with me, today a lot of it was luck.
Here’s my normal route:

And if you really want slow, all you have to do is calculate my time for the actual distance I need to travel. It’s about a mile. So at 30 minutes, I’m really accomplishing about 2 mph. Slow enough?
Today I was not on my best behavior though. As I was riding down Beretania I noticed to fellows biking ahead of me. They were running red lights and not safely, if there is such a thing. While I won’t say I’ve never done it, I generally at least come to stop first, then go once I’ve determined that 1) it’s safe, and 2) that the light isn’t going to change for me. These guys were just pounding through them without looking. Admittedly there isn’t much traffic at 4:50 A.M., but what there is probably isn’t going to be happy if they have to stop short for a bike.
About my behavior? Well even though these guys were running red lights, I caught up to them. Remember, I was hitting the green lights just behind them. In addition they weren’t hitting a steady speed. They’d slow down, then jam, then slow, then jam. I just kept pedaling.
In any case, idiot that I am, when I got to the same intersection, though on the opposite side of the street, I yelled out, “Hey guys, running red lights is bad form.” Pretty harsh, huh? After all, it is bad form. I don’t want some driver deciding to take me out one day based on their experience with these two guys.
I phased them not at all. Thankfully they didn’t turn around and beat the snot out of me. 🙂 They didn’t look the type though. Frankly they looked like Mormon Missionaries, short sleeve white shirts and all. I’m not sayin they were (hair was not quite right for that), but unless thugs have started dressing in business attire, these guys were probably not a threat.
Guys, if you read this, sorry I yelled at you. Feel free to keep running red lights, the gene pool needs a little cleaning now and again.
And finally, my bike is now two months old. I bought it exactly two months ago, this afternoon. In the last five weeks I figure I’ve put about 120 miles a week on the bike for a total of 600 miles. I’m going to guess I did a lot less to begin with so a total of 750 sounds about right. It doesn’t seem like a lot, bit it is about 7 times around the island.

And about riding around the island, if I’m really going to consider riding 2000 miles down the Mississippi, I should probably consider riding around the island. I’m thinking, traffic aside, it shouldn’t be all that hard, especially if I camp overnight at the halfway point. Heck, I might not even camp and spend the night at a hotel instead. That way I have less to worry about.