Longing for some sunshine

Thank goodness we are coming to the end of winter riding season.  For the first time in a long time, I’d decided to log my commuting trips throughout the year to get a better idea of how many commuting miles I keep off my car.  The Bicycle Transportation Alliance (who does a fun little bike challenge in Sept.) has a web site where riders of participating organizations can log in and keep track of their commuting miles. 

Now, I haven’t actually formally logged miles in a long time.  I ride a lot and can generally give a pretty good guesstimate of miles, but having the ride log here is actually fun.  Looking between Sept. to present, the average number of miles logged during a month has been approximately 800 commuting miles.  Throw in other riding that I do, and that number likely rounds out to close to 1100 or so miles per winter month.  The most commuting miles that I’ve logged during a month so far is was in January, when I rode close to 1000 commuting miles in the snow and the slop, with the shortest number being in February, when traveling keep me off the bike, logging only about 550 commuting miles during the month.

Anyway, it’s definitely time for the sun to come out.  In anticipation, I’ve already put away most of my winter riding thermals (and paid for it last week when morning temperatures hovered around 27), removed my fenders from my bike and am considering throwing caution to the wind and removing my winter tires (marathon plus — one flat over almost 5600+ commuting miles) for a set of light and thin trainers — though, I might wait just a few more weeks before I do anything that drastic. 🙂

–TR