This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Due to weather warnings everywhere, there was barely any traffic in Belfast. And we only had a puff of powdery snow.

A nice compensation for the crappy cold wind :)

Some parts of NI were properly snowed in though, the cyclists coming on the Lisburn towpath and Comber Greenway had to endure lots of snow, I don't think they bothered today.

Need a team car at the bottom of my street for a bike change and again 100m from my office to change back again.

The woman with the blue helmet certainly has a long commute.

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I love riding in snow, we should have a few weeks of this every year. Just remembered to relube the
chain after every ride now.

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Took an ofo in this morning so I could use the well-gritted roads without ruining my own bikes.

But no mudflaps means had to use the emergency shower to wash my shoes off when I got in.

everysilverlininghasacloud/10

Walking in today I saw one genius clearing the tiled path to his house (and a big stretch of pavement outside) with warm water in a watering can. Will avoid that side of the road on my way back.

Briefly ventured out on the bike, it was horrible, slush or compacted snow, picked some up coffee.

Now WFH for the WIN

Wimbledon to Notting Hill and back via Common and Richmond Park on the Big Dummy yesterday. What a joy especially after I found my Windbloc balaclava .

Do you have to use an app for them?

Yeah, but it's pretty simple.

Also they kind of suck for tall people because the saddle height is very limited. Need to find a compatible security bit so I can move the whole post up when I use one for longer than a brief jaunt

I don't see any Ofos out my way but there's those other ones, the orange and grey ones all over the place. I don't really want to use apps with them though. It's only Boris bikes that you can use a credit card with or do they require an account too?

I don't remember now, I think you might need an account for Borises. The thing with the dockless bikes is you need a way to communicate with them to unlock them, ofo uses Bluetooth

Seeing as snow means that spamming everywhere with photos is suddenly allowed, here's Leeds this morning

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The roads were objectively better this morning but more grey slush and that wind still being there meant I enjoyed it less than previous days.

Amazed by the choppers on road tyres riding at speed across iffy compacted snow on side streets etc. I guess they've just not come a cropper yet so have bags of misplaced confidence.

That or I'm old and boring and careful which is quite possible but I'm not risking breaking something to get to work slightly quicker!

No, for PAYG you can just put your card into the machine and off you go.

Oof, that's looks like a hoot. Deserted I take it?

cunt in a cunt car who parked like a cunt was still a cunt this AM!

Wore my snow goggles this AM.

Overdressed/10

There’s a bit on my commute where it’s bike path or nasty fast dual carriageway so I limped along the icy path this morning... I was approaching a fixed bollard on a bit of a downhill section and thought “better not slide into that”. Inevitably slid straight into it. Apart from that it was an uneventful but slushy ride in. Not looking forward to the late night icy cold headwind later though.

I was out riding yesterday! Admittedly, only up to Brudenell.

Woodhouse ridge?

cunt in a cunt car who parked like a cunt was still a cunt this AM!

I saw that, incredible. Must have been ticketed there though?

Had an experimental ride just now - the streets round here are pretty powdery and I regretting being lazy and not swapping to knobbly cross tyres. Some amazing icicles in the cycle path tunnel.

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That is terrifying. A bunch of people die each year from icicles falling on them. Especially worrying as it's slightly warmer today.

At least you have a helmet though, and it does looks awsome to be fair

Yeah, there were some fucking lethal looking things: 2 metres long and barely attached to the brick. The trick, I found, was to just try not to think about it.