Rousing the blog from its slumber

Apologies for the silence on this end. The combination of getting some reading done before books had to be returned, preoccupations of various sorts, and nothing especially compelling about my own commuting have kept me away from here. Todays' trip, though, provided me with a couple of things worthy of note, along with a question to ask.

The question first: Is it harder to ride in cooler weather than in warm weather? This morning the temperature was in the low 50s--by far the coolest weather I have yet ridden in--and by the time I got to McConnell, I felt physically like I did the first time I rode out there . . . which is to say, awful. Heat wasn't the problem, though; I just couldn't catch my breath. The afternoon, though, was great: temperatures in the 70s, and I had no troubles with the climbs.

I'd appreciate any insight that those of you experienced in riding in cooler weather might have.

The most momentous commuting news is that on Mt. Vernon as of last week, for a couple of blocks on either side of Broadway, the city is laying water and/or sewer lines, and so for that little stretch I have to detour with the rest of the traffic. I read somewhere that that work will be going on until this January. The detour doesn't add any distance to speak of, but now I don't have a traffic light to aid me in crossing Broadway.

Odd sight of the day: The Harry Street bridge, where it crosses the Arkansas, comes through again. Last month, it was a large turtle that had somehow made it halfway across only to be killed by a car. Today, it was a skin that looked like--in size as well as appearance--it had come from the belly of a decent-sized alligator. No alligators this far north, so what I saw today of course begs the question . . .

One of these days, I hope to post on something other than odd bits of carrion.

This afternoon, I saw a car with a front plate that read "#1 Sooner Fan." I (born and raised in Austin to love all things Longhorns) instantly thought, "Some folks, you just want to light a candle for them until they get better."

And: even though gas is now down to $3.39 a gallon for regular, each time I go out, I see more and more cyclists: folks wearing backpacks, some with panniers on their bikes, but too many without helmets, even on the streets. Still: our numbers are growing . . .

School zones; miscellaneous observations

Yesterday I rode my usual route to McConnell and back, but the afternoon trip was different for me in that yesterday was the first day of school. So, on my return I experienced the school-zone traffic around the two elementary schools on Mt. Vernon that I ride by.

What I encountered yesterday was by far the heaviest car traffic on that street I had yet encountered. Mt. Vernon is only one lane wide at both schools, and the street doubles as a pick-up/drop-off zone for parents and kids; add to all that the reduced speed for the school zones, and it should be pretty clear that no one will be zooming through there in the early mornings or mid-afternoons. But while encountering such congestion might have been frustrating for motorists who just want to pass through, for me it was actually calming. The traffic is stop-and-go, and motorists are looking out for kids anyway, so that helped my visibility for them as well. Of course, I had to look out for kids, too. So, even with the heavy, stop-and-go traffic, my ride home just took 50 minutes (usually, it's 45).

The one downside: yesterday afternoon was a bit humid, so the exhaust fumes from cars and buses just sort of sat there while I just sort of sat there, too.

Yesterday's oddity: a very large turtle that had been run over, at the midpoint of the Harry Street bridge where it crosses the river--the oddity, of course, being how it had gotten there.

I saw a fair number of cyclists out yesterday compared even to when I started riding a little over a month ago, folks who either had panniers on their bikes or were wearing packs (or, in the case of one fellow, a medium-sized duffle bag). And this is in south-central Wichita: a part of town, keep in mind, that's far from affluent. Judging from comments folks leave here and e-mails I have received, in other parts of town there's proportionately more interest in cycling-as-transportation, if not an actual increase in numbers. Though gas prices have dropped to around $3.56/gallon here (earlier this summer, they were over $4.00), I suspect people have figured that it's inevitable that gas will be going back up again before it comes back down, and they have some choices to make. In a growing number of cases, they seem already to have chosen bikes.