It continues to be the winter that wasn’t. It’s spring-like weather so far. The one 22 degree day was the sole sign of winter in Atlanta. A little sprinkling on the way into work yesterday was my only riding in the rain (so far). I’m still yet to really prepare for that eventuality.

I’ve only driven to work one day this year. That was Wednesday of last week, which was sort of a hell day, with a deliverable, two meetings, and it rained non-stop. It was a fine day to drive.

Yesterday, I finally got my task list lined up such that I got my parking pass to work on a day that (1) I didn’t drive, (2) I wasn’t slammed with meetings and teleconferences all day long. And so, I traded in my yearly fixed-rate parking pass ($647/year) for a per-park parking pass ($25/year + $5 each time I park). Just like I said I was going to do. So, now I have built in an incentive to bike. It’ll cost me $5 every day that I don’t, and it’s a cost that will be much more visible than insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc., that gets amortized over time & trips.

Friday was a lovely day to ride. I had a beautiful morning ride, a long day at work, and was on my way home when…

I had recently been experimenting with shifting a little less. Rather than shift up and down, up and down, I was spinning a bit more, and more frequently standing up on the pedals in what would normally be, to me, too high a gear. I was standing up on the pedals when my chain slipped.

My chain is probably worn. It was Dad’s, and I don’t know when he last had it replaced. The chain is likely shot, as is the cassette. So, I’m standing on the pedals, with all my weight on the right pedal, at the top of the stroke, when the chain slipped. My right foot suddenly shot down. It threw my weight down and to the right. My body went to the right, and my hands stayed on the handlebars, pushing them to the left. The wheels shot to the left, and the bike went out from under me, sending me to the pavement.

I felt my helmet smack against the pavement, along with my elbow. I was shocked, but largely unhurt. A passerby stopped with offers of help, for which I was grateful. I was also grateful that I wasn’t badly hurt. My panniers had come off but bent back into place easily. My eye mirror had come off, but I found that after a couple of passes over the accident scene, and it looked as good as new. My adrenaline was up, but I got home OK, wondering if I was going to feel it later.

I spend the weekend sore, but not too badly beat-up. I’m not standing up on the pedals until I can get my bike looked at. My helmet was cracked, and I disposed of it and am using Dad’s old helmet, which he bought after he gave me my last one to wear on the last half of my 2002 bike tour.

On Monday, my wife and daughter and I hopped on the bikes and rode down to the MLK center for the parade. The weather forecasters predicted sunny and warm, and instead we got cold and light rain. No problem. A little Mexican food and a parade was just what the doctor ordered.

The weather Wednesday morning was clear and cold, 22 degrees Fahrenheit. My first real winter weather commute in recent memory. Truthfully, I wasn’t worried about the cold, since I rode enough when I lived in Boston to learn that cold is not the enemy. A very thin layer of warm clothing goes a very long way.

My cold-weather gear:

• My regular (street clothes) coat, which has a waterproof rain shell exterior and a zip-out fleece liner.
• A thin balaclava, covering my head and face.
• Thin fleece gloves with rubber grippers.
• Glasses.

After a few blocks, I was already overheating. I took off my gloves to vent some heat, but the backs of my hands began freezing, painfully (lesson learned). So, the gloves went back on (maybe I should get thinner ones?), and I vented other ways, opening up the coat, unzipping the pit zips, and taking the balaclava off of my head. So, that is just too much winter coat when biking to work (lesson learned). I’m not sure how cold it’d have to be for me to need that much coverage, but it’d have to be cold.

On the afternoon ride, the coat retained just too much heat. Otherwise, a lovely afternoon ride.

Thursday morning was a balmy 34°F, and I wore instead my usual yellow REI rain shell jacket. No problems with cold. No problems with heat. Perfect perfect morning ride.

Thursday was a beautiful day, with clear blue skies and warm weather. I suppose winter will come at some point, but this day showed little sign of its progress.

We got out in the afternoon and headed to the Poncey-Highlands playground, a fairly new playground located on the Freedom Park bike path at its intersection with North Ave. Its about as far as I can get my daughter to ride in a day, and a trip there makes a nice goal for her to put a couple of miles on.

A snack and water for her, and a book and a camera for me, and we were ready to go.

She had a good time playing at the playground, and I spent my time sitting on the bench, reading The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally. Its a great read, where he talks about his equipment and methods for shooting a bunch of photos with speedlights, gels, and reflectors. I’m trying to learn better how to shoot a decent photo, to understand how the parts work together. When I wasn’t reading, I was chasing my daughter around on the playground with my Canon S95, trying to balance a fill flash against the direct light of the setting sun. Very fun.

On the ride back home, my daughter took a turn too fast and down she went, skinning her knee a bit. That added to the drama, but wasn’t a major crisis, fortunately.

All in all, a lovely afternoon on the bike.

I’m finding it a little tedious to edit blog posts on the iPad. I have two posting methods: (1) the web interface via Safari, and (2) the WordPress iPad app. Both are difficult.

The web interface isn’t designed with the iPad in mind. It’s difficult to insert references to photos. I uploaded a bunch of photos to the blog, and am trying to insert those photos into a blog post. The media dialog, however, is unnavigable on the iPad, using some javascript dialog, and it does not scroll, so,you can only see the top few photos, and can’t insert any of them. It looks like I’ll be inserting HTML by hand until I can figure out some other approach.

The WordPress app is a real trainwreck. It’s OK only for editing raw text, with the major caveat that it eats apostrophes and HTML tags. “I’ve” gets converted to “Ive”, and “<b>hi</b>” “bhi/b”. Lovely. And it has no support for references to images in the media library.

I’m looking for solutions. Forgive me if posts go up without images and I add the images later.

After finally getting healthy again and getting some biking in, I ran smack into the face of Christmas break.

Monday 12/19 and Tuesday 12/20 were my daughter’s last two days of school for 2011. These were nice biking days. I dropped her off at school and rode on to work both days.

Since there was no school on Wednesday and Thursday, my daughter was instead registered for camp. Camp is run by my employer, and is very close to my place of work. When I take my daughter to school, she rides on the bike rack and hangs on to the seat post. Its fine for a short distance, but I wouldnt want to try it for a six mile trip with traffic.

One of my goals this year is to resolve the porting the child issue, especially in time for spring break and summer camps. Id hate to be leashed to the car just because I couldnt find a way to transport my child.

But for now, it was driving. Wednesday and Thursday I dropped her off at camp via the car. It was probably a good thing, since it poured rain the whole time, and would have made for miserable riding.

On weekends and days off, though, I’ve managed to bike to the grocery store and bike with my daughter to the playground. I’m taking any excuse I can find to get on the bike, and only climbing into the car when I absolutely must.

One fault of my employer is that I get charged for parking. $647, once per year. This gives me convenient parking, in a deck right next to my building.

There’s an alternate plan, wherein I can pay $25 per year, and pay $5 each time I park a vehicle. It’s not as convenient, but is pretty close to my work.

So the pay-per-park plan has a break-even point at 126 days: if I park 126 days, it saves me money, and it I park 127 days, it costs me money. Last year, I had 227 complete work days. Using 2011 as a baseline, I would have to bike 101 days in the next year to not lose money on this scheme. Any more days than that, and I’m putting money back in my pocket. I would need to bike 44% of the time, 2.2 days per week.

Maximum possible savings: $632 (yay!). Maximum possible loss: $503 (boo!).

Beautiful day for a ride this morning. Weather said 60 degrees, 80% humidity, 50% chance of rain. Radar looked safe, and the rain didn’t show.

My daughter's commute

My daughter rode to school on her usual seat, sitting on my Jandd Expedition Rack and hanging on to the seat post for stability.

Last week, I tried to get an Xtracycle stoker bar for her, but it didn’t fit my 30mm seat post. Idiot tax for not measuring before purchase: I’ve got to return that. The Xtracycle customer service seems top notch, though, so I don’t think that it will be a problem.

Racing the sunrise

It ended up being a beautiful ride. I shed my jacket as soon as I got moving. It’s insanely warm today.