This morning's commute and other commuting stories

i'm spent! - was doing 50k round trip commutes 4 days a week pre christmas - now 4 weeks of no riding and 1 house move later to make it an 80k round trip and the FIRST time i do the new commute today i get 30mph gusty head winds...shakes fist at BBC forecast

80k 4 days a week?

Blimey, how long is that taking you?

It's been over a year since I did a 9am start, OMG, completely forgot how busy the roads are... Would this be a good enough reason to ask for flexi hours at work?

how far is work from home?

good on you - 25 mile each way. im currently doing minimum 20miles each way

Only from Camberwell to Kings X, I was doing 10am start for the whole of 2016 and got used to the quieter commute... that's all, give me another couple of days, I'll be fine. :-)

Maybe he was in a rush?

Bit of a shakey toe-overlap-trying-to-trackstand moment this morning. Saved it though.

No backpack today though, so that was nice.

nononononono i was doing 50K 4 days a week, but this 80k business is a different kettle of fish, it includes another climb, and it pushes me from 50mins for 50K to 1h30(1h45 in windy conditions) which means i'm needed food/energy on the ride that i did not have to think about before! :( i'm currently doing it once a week with 3 times on the stinky bus.
perhaps i need an ebike ;)

Saved it though.
high five

No you can defo do it. like i said i do a min 20miles each way. I only try to make sure i have a good enough breakfast - and most time will have a second brekkie at work.

so yeah you can do it. is this more than 1 route?

thanks for the encouragement
i know what your about to say about 1 route -it has to be all the same route every day - so it does get boring - its the same route i did for my 50K return, but just a long 14k hill added on at the start/end now as i moved further away.

what do you have for breakfast ??? EPO ;) ;) i cant stomach food early in the morning and before a ride it always sits heavy....

More arsehole riding through Blackfriars, middle-aged roadie in baggies ran the red with loads of pedestrians crossing and got his bike hooked on a lady's bag. Why even bother? It was literally a solid stream of pedestrians crossing and a big queue of cyclists patiently waiting, apart from that one bellend.

I was chatting to a chap a few weeks back who was doing Crawley to kings cross 5 days a week. Reckoned it killing him. He's now on an e bike and loving it

Christ, that's about 37 miles each way.

I was doing 28 miles each way 2 days a week for a bit and that was fucking knackering (and boring). Also it left me literally no time to do anything. My routine was:

Wake up
Ride to work
Work
Ride home
Eat dinner
Go to bed

Wrong word used - so no alternatives? that sucks then.

maybe 3 days commute or bit commute - train/bike or maybe a brompton and wait till spring - days are getting longer now.

breakfast - the sound of 2 kids - one 3, the other 4 motnths then porridge. depending whats in my draw - cereal or toast. but i find myself topping up with coffee or tea pre and post ride. some morning it just sits and i have to let go before i leave the house.

is there any such thing as an eBike with drop bars?
I quite like the look of those "all in one wheels" but many dont have range nor decent quality.
the "neatest" or "clean" solution are the latest ones that are just a replacement wheel + bottle battery, and you use your phone/app for configuration/control....but they are upwards of 1000quid for 25mile range....

https://www.giant-bicycles.com/gb/bikes-road-eplus

nice but pricey - to coin a phrase
"i could almost buy my own ship for that...."

Any recommendations for good gloves for the rain? Keep forgetting to ask advice after the snow/rain last week.

What a shit bit of design the bit round Tower Gateway is. I want to ride along Tower Hill and turn right to go over the bridge. I either ride across into oncoming cyclists then into traffic to get across to the junction, or I ride to the end of it then dice with death trying to get across without being cut up by a bellend on a Boris bike. It's even better going the other way and guaranteed that the light is always on red with the shortest possible area to stop in, if you can guess which lane you need to be riding down.

This morning I decided against riding down it and instead kept to the road - far safer and quicker, although far more annoying for the cabbie trying to pass me. How can they spend so much monies yet get it so wrong?

I'm doing Fenchurch St to Sevenoaks 4 to 5 times a week and have been for about a year - mainly because I hate SE Railways with a passion and refuse to use their stinking piss-boxes to get to work on.
Plus - mileage is up and I'm in better shape than I have been for years.
Cons - my food bill is nearly as much as my season ticket, I can sleep standing up and I'm wearing out bits of my bike like its going out of fashion.

This morning I decided against riding down it and instead kept to the road - far safer and quicker, although far more annoying for the cabbie trying to pass me. How can they spend so much monies yet get it so wrong

A flaw in the current segregated provision is that it is heavily route based rather than grid based. So right turns onto Tower bridge are a bit fucked.

TFL lack the expertise to design cycle infrastructure and so a lot of their output is sub par.
They could of course just copy the available dutch instructions, as long as they remember to swap left to right etc.

50mins for 50K

What?!

Only a 40 mph average speed...

Waterloo/Westminster bridges and Embankment shut because of a bomb in the Thames, apparently.