Hey, will you look at that? I'm still #1 on my team though Doug has a zillion more miles than me. He's counting non-commute trips (as are most teams) while I'm sticking with our Captain-imposed rule of recording commute miles only. Half those commute miles are in the dark, I've come to realize, and most of them are in the wet as well. Increasingly, it's the cold, dark wet (or the wet, dark cold, if you prefer, which I don't). I've realized that biking in November isn't as much fun as biking in May, though I do love my sweet shoe lights. It takes longer for me to get out the door, whether that door is here at home or at work, and I'm a little more cautious as I ride over wet leaves in the dark. I worry a bit about whether I have quite enough lights on my bike and person. This evening when I got home I gave Bessie the wipe-down, cleaning, and re-greasing that I've been promising her for weeks. Filthy, she was too; I just hope the attention results in slightly more responsive brakes and a little less reluctance to shift when required.
But what about that wheat and chaff, you might ask. Well, I note that my team was #223 last Thursday while today we're #152. And, sure, maybe it's that other teams haven't recorded their miles recently but, while I can anyway, I assume that last Friday's windstorm kept a lot of other cyclists off their bikes while some of us just got onto our twenty-year-old steel steeds and pedaled our way to glory. Or at least to work and to the bar afterwards.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do when December rolls around, but I sort of suspect I'll add a few more blinking lights and continue to ride. While it's not the ride in the park that May is, it probably still beats the alternatives.
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