Bike commuting rocks

So my best intentions of posting more regularly have been shot to hell already. Though in my defense the reason is primarily a desire to get outside and check out the neighbourghood after work, something that never happened at the last place. So far Deirdre and I have checked out a few restaurants in the area and I'm happy to report that they are all quite good.

As for the commuting by bicycle, it's been going really well. After a couple of days of riding in I learned that if I just head two blocks further north before heading east on my trip I get a much smoother road to ride on. The one I was first riding was severely cracked and bumpy, the new route is virtually all new pavement, score! The commute itself is quite good, only 10.5 km each way, though the morning ends with a 1.5 km climb which kind of bites, but is getting better through repetition. There are a couple of less than convenient sections to the ride, namely a couple of intersections where I'm at the mercy of other cars to trigger the change of lights for me (the joys of riding the less traveled roads).

The other inconvenience is a bit more dangerous. The section of road that I take to the base of the 1.5 km climb is a rather fast downhill (stupid valleys making me climb more). It's a relatively heavy traffic road and I'm sure it will get worse once the semester begins, though thankfully it has a marked bike path on the shoulder. Unfortunately the palms on the side of the road are overgrowing the bike path. I have to ride the line for a number of sections to avoid riding through a few small tropical trees. Thankfully the city has an online road maintenance reporting page and it seems as though they are now going to take care of the trees, eventually.

With all the riding carrying my clothes and laptop I've come to realize that the no-name $30 messenger bag that I picked up years ago really does suck. After the first few trips my shoulder was starting to get sore and now I find the shifting of the bag to be annoying. So I've placed an order with a local shop for a new bag, a double strap one so that I don't have to deal with all the shifting, hopefully it should be in next week.

So all in all things are good, though there really isn't much that's exciting enough to really merit a blog post on it's own. Oh, a little word of warning, take care of tooth problems right away, just because the pain goes away in a few days doesn't mean it won't lead to the need for a sucky ass root canal, with crown lengthening as a bonus, years later. So needless to say I had a few sucky days in the past weeks, but it's all better now.