On the commute today

[Palinurus]

Felt hard today after a week off.

I saw someone struggling up Notting Hill Gate. As I passed him, I noticed he had no sprocket on the rear, well he definitely did not have a cassette there.

Can a chain move on a hub only - I didn't think so?

one of those singlespeed conversion kits for wheels intended to take cassettes perhaps- with wide spacers either side of the sprocket? If there was a rear mech fitted might have been using it as a tensioner.

Might look a bit like this from behind

[TigaSefi]

Felt hard today after a week off.

I saw someone struggling up Notting Hill Gate. As I passed him, I noticed he had no sprocket on the rear, well he definitely did not have a cassette there.

Can a chain move on a hub only - I didn't think so?

I guess we know why he was struggling then!

[andyoxon]

Good and sunny, not too cold.  Not too impressed by the chap smoking in the bike shed on arrival - rather than the 'designated smoking area' a bit further along...

[jsabine]

Absolutely. He should have been behind the shed, not in it.

[Guy]

Winter is on the way - there was ice in my beard when I got here this morning

[Si S]

Proper cold and the chutney is nicely frozen.

[andyoxon]

Sunny n cold*, but I was warm.  No ice - too dry I guess.

 VIRB0631-Towards Sutton Courtenay by ao, on Flickr

In years gone by, Didcot cloud generator would have been in action...

*-2.5C when I set off.  Was wearing overshoes/leg & arm warmers/base layer shorts & vest/medium weight jacket/buff/skull cap/toastie gloves.

[Salvatore]

From a strava contact in Mumbai (where it's a balmy 30º) this morning:

Had a wheel out n had to stop cycling nhad to take my bike for an autorickshaw ride

Not something I ever did in my however many years of commuting by bike.

[Nuncio]

I told my wife  last night that this morning's commute was looking to be so cold that I was going to wear two tube garments round my neck, and when I got up this morning that's what I ended up doing. It was a double buff.

[Palinurus]

Yesterday my colleagues were going on about how cold it was going to be so I was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty close freezing and not several below this morning. Pretty pleasant; had to take off the wooly hat to cool down.

[Guy]

Another beard-load of ice this morning.

[Si S]

Amazing the difference a few degrees makes, 5 mins faster than yesterday and a whole lot easier.

[mattc]

Are seat clamp bolts more liable to breakage in sub-zero temperatures?

Just asking, like, out of curiosity ...

[mcshroom]

I ended up in late today after having to go home and change bikes. I'm pretty certain this isn't supposed to happen: -

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Many materials have a ductile-brittle transition temperature. Often that temperature is somewhere close to zero for cheaper alloys of various materials. Cracks grow much, much faster in a brittle failure.

There are also different expansion rates for various materials e.g. aluminium shrinks more for a specific temperature drop than steel.

[Andrew Br]

I wimped out of decided against cycling in on Tuesday and I took the car instead. I can't say I regretted it, especially when the temperature was -4deg. C when I got back to base.
Since the temperatures rose significantly yesterday (Wednesday) I used the bike. It was OK; I didn't have the "get a move on" mojo so I cruised along in both directions. I'd still have preferred to drive home but I suppose that's a consequence of shifts that finish at 23.00.
Bike again tomorrow I think.

 

[Ham]

Rear light started off what appeared to be near enough full on but by the end of the ride it had faded to nothing. Apparently an insufficiency of warm voles, as it sprang back into life. Never seen that effect on  alkaline cells - one of the reasons I use them instead of rechargeables, although to be fair the "full on" wasn't really with only just over one vole present in the warm.

[Si S]

Much warmer today, although I nearly came a cropper at the bottom of dip on Church Road where the road sweeper had pushed all the leaves into a mahoosive pile

[fuzzy]

Bloody cold her this morning. I had wheel spin whilst climbing Quarry Wood Road!

[Nuncio]

First ever contact with a vehicle while on the bike last nigh. May any future contacts be as innocuous.

In a stream of traffic, parked cars to the left, but being passed.  All OK. I was approaching a LH bend in the road and a 4x4 passed a bit too close for comfort.  It happens. But then I found out it was pulling a trailer which was a bit wider and I was being squeezed as it was going round the bend. The back part of the trailer just brushed against my thigh.

I managed to keep up with it and after a mile it was pulling in and the passenger had got out to open a gate to a garage lot.  I took the opportunity to let the driver know that his driving was bad and that he'd hit me.  His answer was that he couldn't pull out too far because of the trailer. I pointed out that that meant he should not have attempted to overtake me in the first place, and that, given that we'd arrived there at pretty much the same time he hadn't even saved time.  At that point there seemed little point in debating further, and his passenger was returning so it would have been 2 against 1, so I went on my way.

[TigaSefi]

Interesting stats today about CSH in London. North-South route has a high peak of 26 riders per MINUTE! and East-West route has a high peak of 20 per MINUTE for rush hour. However we only account for 30% of space being taken up.

[Si S]

I wondered what the funny noise was on the bike recently but just put it down to drivetrain grumbles, the big ring has at least one broken tooth. It transpires that particular noise wasn't the drivetrain, this became evident when the left hand pedal spindle snapped this morning and the noise went away.

Going to be a slow ride home.

[Andrij]

I'm finding it much more enjoyable to cycle around Hyde Park Corner and up/down Park Lane than to cut across HPC and through Hyde Park.  It may be down to in increase in numpties resulting from the WinterFair, or whatever it's called.  FTR: numpties = clueless peds, event staff randomly closing entrances into Hyde Park, and POBs who think all other should flee before them.

[fuzzy]

Yesterday I was removing ice from extremities. This morning I was reaching for ice for my cooling drink on arrival.

Funny old world......

[TimO]

Yes, after three days of below zero temperatures for my commute to work, even though it felt as cold getting out of bed, it was actually about 4°C this morning.

As an additional advantage, this did mean that the aging battery in my Fly6 rear-camera, actually lasted the entire commute, rather than dying after 50 minutes, as it did earlier in the week!

I overdid the clothing a mite too, wearing the "extra cold" base layer, but arriving at work very slightly more sweaty is a minor issue.  The weather has been entirely dry for the last few days, which is also very good.