It’s harvest time here! I rode to work Monday and by the time I rode back home many of the soybean fields had been cleared and harvested. A few of the corn fields have been cut, too. It was a perfect fall day on Monday — really nice ride, but with a KILLER headwind. I’m still on the Ross because I have had NO time to complete the RWB 5900 overhaul. Basically it’s together, but I want to test ride it to check the BB adjustment and I should probably pull the headset out and overhaul the bottom HS bearing, which after these rain rides tends to seize up and get rough. Think this was my slowest commute yet of about 50 minutes, but I don’t have stats since there’s no computer on the Ross. Thought about turning around before I got to the first crossroad — but I was all dressed and packed and moving down the road, so I kept riding.

The wind flattened a lot of the cornstalks in front of my house. It was really strong overnight, tossing and blowing everything around. Fortunately this house seems a lot better in windy conditions than my previous apartment, although only real winter winds will truly show the difference.

Tuesday morning was another beautiful day, but rain was called for in the afternoon. I deliberated over the Weather Channel’s forecast before deciding to ride in (still on the Ross, fortunately.) The afternoon commute was another good one, although there was a decent SSE 8 mph headwind. The moon was full and beautiful last night so I thought a night ride home might be pretty… alas, the rain did fall during the afternoon and during my Novel class in the evening. I had a lot packed into the class, including showing the last half of the Dangerous Liaisons movie (Glenn Close and John Malkovich) and a quiz, which I did at the end, so some students finished up around 9:30 PM. By the time I got my stuff packed it was 9:45. Realized that my clothing choice was really stupid — black pants and a navy-blue jacket… I’ll have to remember that in the future! At least I have lots of reflective stuff and lights (front & rear on the bike plus a red LED flasher on my backpack). And once I leave town there isn’t a lot of traffic to worry about.

I scudded home ahead of the strong SSE tailwind, watching the moon go in and out of the thickening grey clouds. Although the roads were damp, I was dry and comfortable (fenders!) Approximately fifteen minutes after I got home I suddenly realized that rain was POUNDING the house! Total cloudburst. Weird. But I missed it, luckily.

Wednesday morning I went for a walk up to the Wolf Creek bridge (3/4 mile up my road):

Had to go in on Wednesday for an A&S faculty meeting. I brought up the wording of the TU student-athlete missed class policy. I don’t think the director of athletics is too happy with me. I want to propose a wording change that actually allows faculty to impose some sort of attendance policy on student athletes; my suggested change is that if a student misses more than 20% or 25% of a class that they’ll be penalized or will fail the course. Amazingly, BonnieT (who is our faculty athletics liaison) presented this idea in the Business school meeting and the faculty didn’t jump on board! As it is currently written, faculty cannot penalize athletes for missing class for sports competition during the season that their sport is in competition. The way the policy is worded means that they could miss any number of class sessions and faculty cannot penalize them. The Dir of Athletics wants this to be “handled on an individual basis,” but I think it needs to be stated clearly in the policy. I have one student in the Novel class who’s borderline for this already, another who dropped 141 because he was going to miss too many class sessions, and another instructor has a student who has missed 7 classes in the first 4 weeks of the semester (not all were his fault, but still…) I think TU has grown enough and has enough athletes that we need to formalize the policy and make academic integrity a goal. So now I have to attend the October Athletics-Academics Committee meeting and present my case. Hmmm. Making lots of friends here, indeed

Since I have orchestra on Wednesday nights I just drove in with the bass in the car and stayed in Tiffin until rehearsal. We still have a month to go before our concert — I think I’d be ready in a week, but the group is still really struggling with Beethoven and Brahms. The violins have a lot of notes in the Academic Festival Overture! We need more violas. Another bass might be coming, which would be nice. I certainly hope that percussion and brass might soon be rehearsing. I am enjoying rehearsing and practicing Brahms and Beethoven (always fun and challenging music); the actual performance will be decent. I keep imagining Geoffrey Simon or Larry Rachleff livening up the group and making some pithy comment that just gets the *music* out of everyone. We’re a little pedestrian at the moment.

Thursday morning was another day of deliberation, but I decided to ride. These days I have as much interest in the weather and wind direction as any sailor. It remained clear all day until my afternoon class, when it began to drizzle. Vince offered a ride, but it wasn’t raining much and I managed to scoot pretty quickly after class was over and was on the road by 4 PM. Although it was damp and drizzling a little, it wasn’t a bad ride (after the CFC 113-mile-rainfest, my standards of wet riding have been greatly altered!) The raincover on the Trek backpack works really well and I have everything in a plastic bag inside, too.

Friday and Saturday I worked at the Elmore bike shop to cover for the owner, who’s on a cruise out of Barcelona. I was by myself and kept busy building bikes. It rained ALL DAY on Friday; Saturday was really nice out, but I was too tired to get up early to ride to Elmore! Morgan woke me up 20 mins. early* (by early, I mean before I planned to get up, which has little relevance compared to Morgan’s programmed breakfast time) on Saturday to play the food game. She was quite insistent. There was a claw to the face involved — a delicate, yet quite sharp, invitation to get out of bed! I was very grouchy but dutifully threw food bits around the house for ten minutes.

Today was the first day I’ve biked this week. On Monday, following CFC, I was pretty tired and not really in the mood for riding (and my RWB 5900 bike is disassembled). It was also supposed to rain all day — good enough excuses not to ride! It was also very rainy on Tuesday… ditto. I’ve been really behind due to all of the work students have submitted this week which needs to be graded — taking basically a whole weekend off means I’m behind in a big way.

Anyway, no classes or meetings on Wednesday, so I stayed at home and got some work done (not nearly enough).

Today, though, I decided it was time to bike to TU again; I rode the Ross in sneakers since it’s rigged for commuting. On the way in three vehicles passed me: two pickups and a tractor. However, six deer ran across the road in front of me (pretty much the same spot near the little wooded area where I saw five deer a couple of weeks ago.) I think this deer herd and I are on similar schedules

I went to campus Friday to meet with three students, none of whom actually appeared at my office.
Had a migraine Friday afternoon, so didn’t get a lot done. In the evening was MiriamF’s A&S potluck — by the time the migraine wore off sufficiently I had mostly missed everything, but I caught the tail end and enjoyed some yummy food, and my very first game of cornhole vs. ToddT. I contributed the sweet potato and apple dish (to go with Miriam’s pork roast).

Spent the weekend grading madly and didn’t even meet up with the gang for biking. It looked rainy on Saturday AM when I awoke at 6:30 to check the radar, so I just went back to bed. My bike is sort of thrown back together, but not really checked out. I want to take apart my wheels and dump out the water from CFC so I put on the Ultegra wheelset in case of further rain.

Sunday evening I finally needed to get out of the house so I biked over to Wolf Creek Park and hiked the little nature trail; it’s only about a mile and a half long but it was nice to be outside. The leaves are just starting to turn. Ahh, fresh air.

Sugar Grove, Ohio to Marietta, Ohio, and back, with KazH, DaveS, JanaB, and LukeV

Just got back from doing the Columbus Fall Challenge 2009: 216 ultra hilly miles around the Hocking Hills area of south-central Ohio and traveling over to Marietta, OH, right across the river from WV.

We loaded up the bikes the night before. I swapped out DaveS’s cassette for a new 12-27 (he’s done this ride before.) I went with my 12-25 from Three State Three Mountain and my Sestriere lightweight climbing wheels, on the RWB 5900.

Spent the night at Vince’s since I had to be at Kaz’s for a 6 AM rollout. Luke and I rode with Kaz in the minivan. The drive to Sugar Grove took about 2 1/2 hours, and it rained pretty much the whole way.

We checked in at the Berne Union High School in Sugar Grove, chucked our luggage into the baggage truck, and finished getting dressed (for me this meant plastic rain jacket, arm warmers to keep the plastic rain jacket from sticking to me, even though it wasn’t that cold, my 19-year-old Avia Triathlon rain shoes, old socks, old helmet, red taillight, and an attempt at a good attitude when leaving the parking lot in a heavy rainfall and rolling through inches-deep puddles). We were the last folks around and picked up our armbands just before they closed registration at 8:30 AM.

For those familiar with Bloomington hills, this ride is kind of like going up Ramp Creek. Repeatedly. From both directions. Then repeat. Then go do Bear Wallow 6 or 8 times, followed by a couple of ascents/descents of Owl Creek, Nehrt, and Boltinghouse. There was at least one North Shore (from the 45-to-Anderson direction). Throw in about 4 Solsberry hills, your favorite Boat Ramps, and … finish off with a couple of iterations of Colin’s uphill TT course. At that point, you should be enjoying creeping up any uphill in your lowest possible gear, just trying to survive.

Day 1 had crappy weather — 113 miles in the pouring rain. It was so wet that all climbs had to be done in the saddle — the climbs were just too steep to get out of the saddle, because the tires were slipping, and there were wet leaves plus a few stupid drivers. At a couple of points I was so wet I felt like I’d just come out of the pool — my contact lenses were almost washed out of my eyes by the rain. Visibility was nil. Lunch/food stops were every 30 miles or so, and I was grateful for hot soup and hot chocolate. The ride is advertised as 200 miles; when I’d clocked 100+ and saw a sign saying Marietta was still 12 miles I was getting pretty pissed off! And for the last part of the ride I had chain/cog problems since I just switched wheels — the chain I’ve been riding all summer was apparently just s-t-r-e-t-ch-e-d enough by halfway through the ride that some gears weren’t working under load. Fortunately the 25 tooth cog was still fine, because I needed to keep moving.

We arrived at Marietta under grey skies but at least it wasn’t raining. The hotel was about a mile and half away, and I had to walk — I was just too tired to try to bike with my big duffel bag over my arms. DaveS and most others rode from the Y to the hotel. (Originally Jana was going to ride partway and drive our car over, so I thought we’d have a SAG vehicle; I didn’t pack for bike/luggage transport, and I had my computer in the duffel since I had lots of grading to do! I did spend an hour and half grading papers at the hotel in the evening, after a big dinner at Applebee’s.)

Day 2 started off wet and rainy as we rolled out of the hotel. I’d repacked the duffel so we were able to ride back to the Y to put our bags on the truck. The ride mechanic had a 9-speed chain (yay!) which I bought and he installed while I ate breakfast, which meant that all the gears worked for Day 2. Due to the chain install I was towards the back of the pack again, but steadily moved up during the first 30 miles. After a great breakfast at the Marietta College dining hall it cleared up and got steadily nicer, finally becoming a sunny and low-70s day (finally took off the plastic jacket on a major climb out of Malta, OH, and the arm warmers came off after lunch.) Again rode with JimS and Klaus from BBC for a bit.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) at the first rest stop I made a quick stop, intending to keep going as I was feeling pretty good. When I got back to my bike, my rear tire was flat. I pulled SIX glass shards out of my tire and found a couple of gouges (but no glass) on the front tire, too. Changed the tube (and bought another tube to have as a spare from the ride mechanic.) I have NEVER had this many mechanical problems on any organized ride! I would have put on new brake pads, too, but he was out of cartridge insert pads.

Only 103 miles on Day 2 and more of the route was along the river, so there were some “flat” sections in between huge grinder climbs.I did kind of rediscover my climbing legs on Day 2, but not having trained on Bloomington hills all summer made the amount of climbing on this ride silly-hard!!

My bike is full of water and I just pulled the BB out to let it dry out some before I overhaul it AGAIN. I don’t know what it is about riding with this group — we keep ending up riding in these ^&&*)%$%$ downpours.

Here’s the route, as best I could reconstruct it from the map packet and memory:
CFC 2009

I am again reminded that our culture is based on the infernal {pun intended} combustion engine.

Today I biked to town for a doctor’s appointment. The receptionist gushed, “I could never do that!” after asking if I really had ridden my bike from home. The doctor enthused about my healthy habits and complimented me for wearing a helmet.

It was a beautiful morning. I took some pictures of my commute in both directions, which I will post here soon.

After the appointment I met Dave S, who last week quit his stress-filled, horrible job. We painted two of the Heritage Tour bike tour routes, driving Dave’s Green Honda Element. The GHE is a nifty plastic box of a car. I had thought we would ride the routes and paint them, as I did last year when I painted the White route. Dave and I evolved a pretty good system for marking with one person crossing the intersection and the other painting the two signs before the intersection. The first directional mark is placed about a telephone-pole-length back from the intersection, and then a second mark is placed at the intersection itself (normally next to the stop sign). A third confirming symbol is painted just after the intersection.

Near the cemetery where we were painting a right turn, a police car rolled to a stop and asked if we were OK (since the GHE was stopped with flashers on.) Spray-paint-can in hand, I had visions of being questioned as a cemetery vandal… those monuments would look a lot more colorful with some RED PAINT on ‘em! Fortunately the sheriff just nodded and smiled. [A lot of people stopped to see if we needed help, which is nice to know should one be stranded in or around Tiffin.] At the next intersection, though, we met the Crabby Sheriff. He seemed quite suspicious of our painting activity and questioned Dave… we joked about running into Crabby Sheriff for the rest of the painting journey. We painted a 27 mile White route and a 10-mile Red route for the Family Ride. Dave and Kaz will paint the 45-mile Orange route later today or tomorrow, for Sunday’s Heritage Tour (sponsored by the Y).

After painting the routes we biked for an hour and a half, retracing part of the White route but extending it. The wind was from the NNW so the final couple of legs were hard into the wind. I got my bag at Dave’s and rode back home (still into the NNW headwind, only this time by myself — no handy drafting…). Ended up with about 45 miles and a sunburnt face.

I swear I was ready to leave the house at 7:45 AM, but somehow it was more like 8 AM by the time I was actually rolling. So Monday morning’s commute to work was akin to a time trial in earnest, and I decided to ride it like one. Perhaps I wasn’t quite at my max sustainable heartrate the whole time, but I was really trying to keep the pace high. In spite of that, though, I only averaged 17.8 mph on the way to work and a commute time of 37+ minutes. It was a good effort, though. I may be doing some sort of weird training for eleven mile flat time trials. One key is riding full-speed until very close to the stops/intersections. Wind really affects my time, too!

The corn is beginning to dry up and turn brown. It’s kind of interesting to see the changes in the fields around me from day to day. The bean fields are turning gold; in one field today there was some sort of large machine mowing down bean plants. The air was full of the scent of torn green leaves and the road littered with bits of plants. The tomato fields have been harvested once but there are still a lot of green tomatoes on the plants. The local farm market on 53 will have their corn maze up and running as of this weekend.

On the way to campus I pass a number of industrial plants, and I was interested to see a semi-trailer full of onions parked outside one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many onions in one place before.

Classes are going well so far. I spent probably too much time today going over the upcoming Critical Thinking Journal assignment on Barry Lopez’s essay “Learning to See.” We also discussed the essay within the context of going over this assignment. I hope I will get more students actually working through and trying the different steps of the process from the textbook; it’s a good way to get them to slow down and pick out key elements and think about how they are related before they come up with something to say about it. I tried to emphasize that working through the steps would give them some useful strategies that can be used in other situations and classes, even if they don’t actually use every step or break it down quite as much as in “The Method.”

As I left town on my bike, I kept smelling a familiar smell: Onion rings!! At first I thought I was imagining it. Am I just hungry? The Fry Foods company [no joke, that's what the sign outside says] was surrounded by the smell of frying onion rings. Now I know what happened to my truckload of onions.

Since I had TTd in, I decided to try to beat my time going home, and managed to make it in just over 35 minutes, averaging 19.3 mph. I was pretty proud of myself. It was another beautiful fall day, so I went for a cool-down ride, using a route I’d done once with Dave and Kaz, north and along the river and then crosses on a metal-grate bridge (Rice Rd.) to the other side and goes south all the way back to Old Fort. I ended up with 40 miles for the day — 22 TT miles (with a backpack) and 18 just cruising. The sunset was gorgeous.

I drove to campus on Monday due to predicted rain all day. However, it was dry in the morning (when I would have ridden to work) and again by the time I drove home, so I think I could’ve ridden. I did take the opportunity of having the car to transport some books and a plant to my office, though.

On Tuesday it again seemed dry (looking out the window), but looking at the radar it was apparent that we were in for some extended wetness! As I reached the edge of town, rain began to spatter my windshield (at that point you can smile and excuse yourself for driving!) It poured all day and was still raining in the late-afternoon and evening, so I was glad I had not ridden to TU.

On Wednesday I didn’t have any classes or meetings (miraculous!!) but I had a haircut appointment. It was a beautiful day — upper 70s and sunny — so I rode to my haircut. Fortunately Teresa didn’t seem to mind the appearance of a somewhat sweaty person at her salon! They’ve just paved 224, the main street, and although I normally cut through back parking lots, the midday traffic was light so I took advantage of the silky-smooth ribbon of asphalt. Took the long way home along the River Road, making my roundtrip about 28 miles. Later in the day I drove back into town with my bass for orchestra rehearsal.

Thursday’s commute was average. On the way home, though, I saw five deer running from a copse of trees towards the road, approaching me diagonally. The lead deer saw me when the group was about a quarter-mile from the road and they veered off and stopped, looking a bit freaked out (what the $$@#$ is THAT?, you could see them thinking…) That particular stretch of road borders a nice wooded area, one of the few I pass on my daily commute, so I imagine that there are many deer in that area.

On the next block I saw someone practicing barrel-racing their horse. Cool. Crazy.

Friday: I’m a Conservatory class agent for Oberlin (classes of ‘87/’88/’89) and the Alumni Council weekend was Sept. 11-13. I planned to ride to Oberlin, which is about 60 miles east, and then get a ride back in the evening with Vince Moore ‘85. However, by the time I took care of the million and one things I had to prepare for classes and grading, as well as some food prep tasks around the house that couldn’t be put off any longer, it was much too late to spend the day cycling to Oberlin! It was quite a shame since the weather was perfect for a long ride, and since I was involved with Alumni Council events all weekend, I didn’t get any riding in at all.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Chloe Bird ‘85 at the Friday night dinner. We visited the Observatory on the top of Peters after dinner and caught up on news; I think the last time I saw Chloe was when I went to California for a friend’s wedding five+ years ago! In addition to various meetings I toured the construction site of the new LEED-Gold Litoff jazz building attached to the Con — I’m sure the doublebass storage room on the lowest level will look a LOT better when it has drywall and they get rid of the puddle on the floor! On Saturday night we went to see the Ed Helms ‘96 (formerly on The Daily Show, now stars on The Office) convocation in Finney. I have not watched The Office, but Ed’s 30-minute standup comedy routine about Oberlin and the death of his dreams to become a professional (male) baton-twirler were pretty funny. He also played some bluegrass with a pickup group and answered questions from the audience. One thing he mentioned resonated with me, since many other alumni I’ve talked to also said the same thing — he wished that he’d taken more time to have fun while at Oberlin. I guess we all worked pretty hard, although I also took advantage of concerts, plays, etc. Maybe we all just needed some more time to do “nothing!”

I couldn’t see the end of the driveway when I looked outside this morning! Dense fog had settled in overnight. Some schools even had two-hour delays. I left about ten minutes late since I was waiting for the fog to burn off when the sun came up at 7:02 AM. I turned on my red Knog Frog flasher so I’d be a little more visible, and by the time I was halfway to campus the sun was up and the fog had lifted. Sunglasses inevitably mist over when you ride fast in the fog. My Tifosi Slip glasses are well-vented (much better than other riding glasses that I’ve owned) but even they fog up in misty weather.

Since I left late I ended up doing kind of a time trial to get to work. Granted, I was loaded down with my Trek backpack containing shoes, work clothes, lunch, papers, etc. so my TT wasn’t necessarily that fast. It wasn’t a heavy load but it’s bulky. [More on that later.]

Fog usually means no wind, though, and it was dead calm this morning. I averaged 18.5 mph and arrived in 35 minutes, or thereabouts. I’ve further tweaked my route to cut off another block of SR53.

It was about 50°F when I left so I wore knee and arm warmers and my Pearl Izumi jacket with riding shorts, jersey, and socks.

Teaching went well today. We did diagnostic essay tests on Monday, and only one of the students assigned to my sections needed to be moved into the more basic class. Collectively we moved about 25 students from 141 sections into the more basic class — an entire new section! The idea is to have fewer students failing and to make sure the students are placed into the correct level of freshman English from the beginning. So my class sizes are pretty stable and almost full. I’m trying a new approach to the smaller writing exercises — instead of collecting and grading each one, we are discussing them in class, going over the details and ideas that (hopefully) they have picked up and applied to their own work, and I’m having the students work on self-evaluations. I’ll grade these small assignments in homework portfolios every few weeks, which I think will have several benefits: less grading for me (!!) and less anxiety on the students’ parts to “get it right.” I’d rather have them give an honest effort when trying something new such as these writing exercises instead of worrying about the grade they’ll receive. Obviously, I want to see that they’ve done or at least tried to do the assignment, but I think they’ll get more out of going over them and assessing their own work than when they just hand them in and get them back with a score. I was really impressed by the people who volunteered to read their Five Finger Exercises today, though; most of them really got the idea and provided lots of details.

After class I had some administrative stuff to do, such as reporting no-shows to the registrar. I also talked to my dept. chair Sherry about an idea I have for a new course, to be aimed at non-majors who need an upper-level Lit credit to graduate. My entire Novel class is filled with students who need the course to fulfill a requirement but who are obviously uninterested in the subject (or reading, for that matter). I’m thinking of putting together a proposal for a Contemporary Fiction course, which would be a 200-level course aimed at non-majors; Sherry pointed out that it would have to be distinguishable from our Modern Lit course, and I then had the idea of centering the new course on genre fiction — mystery/detective, crime, horror, adolescent, etc., which would make it a course we could all teach in different ways. It would add a much-needed Lit elective at the 200-level and ease the pressure on courses like The Novel (a 300-level course). Sherry and I are both enthusiastic about the idea, so we’ll work on putting together a course proposal.

Stover called to see if I was riding at 6:30, so I hung around and got some more work done at the office. Rolled over to his place (complete with loaded Trek backpack) to ride with him and the Kaz-man. We decided to ride by my place first, although we took the long way out there along the river road (nice, curvy, a few hills and rollers). Except on the climbs I had no trouble sitting in, but getting out of the saddle and climbing at 19 or 20 was a challenge with the pack. Stover shot out of the wind-shadow Kaz and I provided at the bottom of one hill and attacked; he said it was the best hole-shot he’d had all summer! (I blame the backpack — I was providing way too much cover.)

Dumped the bag at my place on the way past — the river route added about 4 miles, but it’s really the best cycling road around here, so I’ll try to make that an option for the way home on some days. It will be very pretty in the fall since there are trees along the river, whereas my standard route has few trees but lots of corn, bean, and tomato fields.

Dave and Kaz and I continued north along the Sandusky River Road heading towards Fremont, then crossed via a steel-deck bridge and returned along the far bank. When we got back to Old Fort they turned left to return to Tiffin and I turned right and rode home. Dave and Kaz are awesome since they worked around my stuff so I could ride with them.

The sunset was lovely. I grabbed my hybrid bike from the garage and my camera and went out for another mile or so and took some pictures of the sunset over the northwest Ohio flatlands.

Morgan was vocally happy to see me (twice, since I ran out with the camera and disappeared for another twenty minutes!) She was waiting to finish her dinner so we could play some Food Game. Then she begged for some wet fishy food. purrrr.

Total mileage today was 40.86; total riding time 2:17. Commuter mileage so far: 66 miles.

I didn’t ride today, but I finally got over to Fremont Cycle and Fitness and got the headset cups pressed into my black-and-silver 5900 frameset. We also cut the new fork to size and put on the crown race. Trek installed an insert into my frame so the 1 1/8″ fork will work. No charge for the frame insert and they threw in a Cane Creek S-8 headset to replace the old one. Go Trek, although it is annoying that they no longer make the fork to fit the 5900.

So I should have my main ride back in working order someday soon. The red-white-and-blue 5900 has enjoyed getting ridden exclusively this summer, albeit with the Dura Ace wheelset instead of its Rolf Sestrieres.

I also took advantage of the parts washer and cleaned my chain, crank, and derailleurs. They’re nice and sparkling-clean now, ready to be re-installed.

And I caught up on all the news at the shop, where I’ve been moonlighting this summer at the second location in Elmore, Ohio, right on a bike path.

I was supposed to go to TU for a faculty meeting but by the time I was done at the bike shop I would have missed most of the meeting, so I didn’t go. I hope I don’t get in trouble for missing! It seemed stupid to drive down there for a half hour. I’d planned to bike in and then maybe hook up with Kazman for a ride after work — guess that didn’t happen!

Drove to Tiffin later in the evening and went to the first rehearsal of the Heidelberg College-Community Symphony Orchestra. I was the only bass player. We read through Beethoven Symphony No. 8 and the Brahms Academic Festival Overture. I have really missed playing classical music; I hope that I’ll have time to keep up with this orchestra.

Dad is doing better (he’s been in the hospital and is currently in a nursing home) — he hopes to go home soon, but will still have to have antibiotics for another 3-5 weeks. I talked to him tonight and plan to go to Fairport to see him this weekend.

It was another beautiful day in NW Ohio, with the prevailing NNW wind still blowing gently and the same mild temperatures. I can’t NOT ride on days like this.

On Tuesdays I have late-afternoon office hours and then an evening class. It meets once a week from 6:30-9:15 PM. (It’s a course on “The Novel.” For next week, we’re reading The Great Gatsby. Almost every student is taking the course because it fulfills their upper-level lit requirement and fits their schedule. Few actually enjoy reading.)

Today I experimented and rode my “commuter” road bike to campus. My commuter bike is the black CroMo steel Ross Gran Tour my parents bought me back in high school (not that there are too many original parts still left on the bike — it’s been upgraded multiple times with higher-end parts moved off other bikes. It’s now 9-speed 105, with one Ultegra 600 brake, and one original, plus the original SunTour crank.) The great thing about the Ross is that it has nifty little Planet Bike “Fast Freddy” fenders and lights. Credit Adam Rodkey, chief mech at Bikesmiths, for the fender suggestion — I had always resisted putting on fenders, but these are light, small, and easily removed.

I haven’t used my good bike light for awhile (since spring) so I suspected that the battery wasn’t going to have much of a charge, and had to hunt around to find the charger (post move). It’s a Vista Light Code 15 halogen light system. It’s really bright — I can ride at normal speed without outriding the illuminated area ahead. I took the charger to campus with me and plugged the battery in while I was at the office and teaching, and hoped that it would have a 40-minute run time.

I also decided to see what riding in street clothes would be like. I used to ride in street clothes around Bloomington, Indiana, all the time, and never got that sweaty just commuting. I packed a nice clean shirt to wear to teach in and biked in a pair of nice-looking nylon “hiking” pants — the quick-dry material seemed to work well. After 9 miles I did miss having bike shorts with a chamois, but it wasn’t too bad.

The Ross also has old-fashioned pedals with toe clips, which is another reason I wanted to try riding in street clothes. One of the main problems with bike commuting is carrying an extra pair of shoes. They’re heavy and bulky, so riding in the shoes you actually plan to wear makes a certain amount of sense. On days when I want more stylin’ footwear, that won’t work, but a lot of the time I wear flat / sneaker-type shoes — I have to stand up and walk around on campus and I am *not* into having sore/tired feet!!

It took me just a couple of additional minutes to ride in today, using a heavier and accessory-rigged bike, and using soft shoes instead of my carbon-soled Sidis. It definitely wasn’t as comfortable, but it didn’t seem to make a huge difference.

After teaching came the even more experimental part of the commuter journey: I left campus at about 9:20 PM, arriving home on my bike about 10 PM. I did make a couple of discoveries: next time I’ll make sure that I have the clear lenses for my sunglasses (to keep the bugs out of my face), and I’ll bring both the low-watt and high-watt headlight. The lower-watt light will enable longer battery life, and once I got out of town I really didn’t need the full beam except when cars approached. Indeed, since it was a beautiful, clear night, I used my small white-LED light for about half the ride, and enjoyed the stars and full moon!

In addition to beautiful stars, I saw a couple of critters (cats? groundhogs? ‘coons?) and was chased by one dog just a couple of doors down — but although I could hear the dog running along beside me I couldn’t really see it, and fortunately it didn’t come out into the road. I think he just wanted to run. I’ve never seen a dog at that house during the day, so they probably had just let it out. That house also has chickens and goats

Two for two.

I should mention, though, that I did drive to town this morning, because Morgan had a vet appointment. She is deeply suspicious of the whole bike thing as an acceptable mode of feline transport. (Not that she was all that happy about being in the car and going to the VET!) Clean bill of health, though, and since I had the car I picked up a few items at the grocery.

Today I rode my bike to campus for the first day of a new semester. I’ve set up my schedule to allow bicycle commuting. It takes me about 23 minutes if I drive and today it took me 39.33 to ride to school, door-to-door, and about 41 minutes on the way home.

The hard part is packing. If I forget something, it’ll be very hard to go back home to get it.

Today I brought work clothes, shoes, lunch, and some books and papers for class. My Trek bicyclist backpack wasn’t too heavy and it works really well for transporting stuff.

I’ve uploaded most of my required teaching files from my MacBook Pro at home so that I can access them on campus. I have 2.5 office hours before my first class at 11 AM.

It is an unusually cool and beautiful week for the end of August — low 70s Fahrenheit and not too humid. Superb biking weather. I would feel angry if I wasted such a beautiful day and didn’t get out on my bike.

The wind was from the NNW at 5-9 mph. So I had a little bit of a tailwind on the way to school and had to fight it a little bit on the way home.

I rode in my usual bike gear and changed into my work clothes in the bathroom at the office.