New Job - New Commute.

I found out tonight, on June 1, I will be starting a new job in the Company. I will be assume the role of Senior Instructor at my Company's training facility as a subject matter expert on environment, health, and safety topics. Career-wise it is a great opportunity. Commute-wise, well..... no more leisurely bike rides to work.

The new job is in the Long Island City section of Queens. From my home it is about a 1-hour commute using mass transit, or a 45 minute car ride (over a $8.00 round-trip toll bridge). Likely, I'll be using mass transit. The actual "transit" time is 35 minutes, I will have to walk about 25 minutes to get to the train and then from the train to the office.

My plan is to take my old Canondale and use it as a station bike - the train station is about 1 mile from my house. Seeing I will have to catch a 5:32 AM train daily (oooooo..... that sounds way too early) and the bike ride to the station is about 5 minutes (downhill - way cool), I can shave 10 minutes off the trip to work by riding the bike to the station. On the work-end of things I am stuck with a 3/4 mile walk. The upside is, I will have exercise built into my daily commute.

Financially, walking/riding and taking mass transit is more than $3,000 a year less than driving. I am sure if I could find a way to account for the excercise, social, and environmental benefits of using mass transit, the dollars not spent (saved) would be much higher.

I am looking forward to the change, but I will miss the 15 mile round-trip bike commute. I have only 28 work days left where I can ride the 15 mile commute. I hope I can ride them all.

Ouch!!!!!!!

2 months makes a big difference...... Today (+40 degree Farenheight), I bike commuted on the urethane-tire Speed 8. This is my first ride to work in 2 months, and boy do I feel out of shape.

With my schedule, 2 months is actually 1, 6-week work cycle (23 work days). For the most part of late-January and February the cold and slick weather was more than I chose to tolerate, so I drove the mini-van.

As for today's commute, the 7.5 mile ride took 1 hour 15 minutes. I stopped halfway to answer a telephone call (I don't ride and talk) which lead to me making anther phone call. A little closer to work I stopped at a local beverage center for a bottle of water. Then just before work I stopped and picked up my dinner order.

The urethane tires seemed to make no difference in ride time or comfort. After not riding any distance for more than two months I am not in any shape to be setting time records. Now, almost 2 hours post-ride, I feel my quads tightening up, but my legs feel less like rubber bands than they did when I got off the bike (thankfully there is an elevator in my building - the stairs would have been rough).

I have ridden thousands of miles on 26 inch and 700C wheels. I sometimes surprise myself with the hyper-responsiveness with the 20 inch wheels on the dahon. I must ride more to get better use to the feel of a 20 inch wheel ride.

The roads I ride are still pretty crummy from the winter. There are still remnants of snow banks and undisolved clumps of rock salt/sand. Plows have gouged new holes in the road and the local municipalities have yet to start patching the roads or running the street sweepers. I found it odd at first to be aiming at broken beer bottles along the side of the roads, this I have a deeply set instinct to avoid, but not now with urethane tires. Puncture potential materials are now more of a skid hazard than tire shredding source. I have found most of my commuting punctures occur (1) during the early spring when the roads are still dirty, (2) when tires get old and thin, and (3) in the fall after landscapers trim bushes with thorns and leave them for curb-side pick up - I hope these are hazards of the past.


Some modifications to the bike include removing the Wald folding baskets. They were too heavy and too small. I have replaced the baskets with a milk crate zip-tied to the rack. I have also installed bar ends that add a welcome new choice of hand positions. Soon, I will be adding fenders - they have been sitting on my work bench for too long and since I removed the Big Apples, the fenders now fit the bike.