Saturday thoughts

I started this blog in part to keep myself accountable for riding to work instead of driving most of the time. At some level, I feel I have to justify driving, simply because I prefer riding and like being able to look back on all the days I left the car at home.

A month or two ago, a friend sent out a link to mycyclinglog.com, with a request that folks creating profiles there join his Louisville commuter group. After tinkering with it on a day off work, I figured I'd continue playing along. It gives me a better record of what cycling I'm doing than this blog does.

I can (and have done so) look back on my entries here and get a pretty good idea of where I rode and how far. However, if I lack time to post each day, I have to think about it enough to give myself clues and so on. MyCyclingLog works a bit better for me in this way.

Being part of the group also gives me a gauge against which I can compare my riding to that of others in the group. I must admit that it's fun being in the top five members...

I also find that MyCyclingLog has some easy-to-use reports so I can compare my riding this month to prior months. For example, by the time I log my round trip to work and home today, I will have logged more miles for April than the entire month of February, and that even if I re-route my trip home to meet Jenn during our house-hunting. Looking at my March report, I doubt I'll exceed those commuting miles in April, although I will likely find more opportunities for club miles that will add to my April total faster than commuting does.

Of course all this commuting comes with its downside. Twice in the last two days, my trips to work have been punctuated with "ugly motorist" encounters. Friday morning, a guy in a pickup truck going the other way blew his horn a long time upon seeing me, and flipped me off as he went by. I don't know why--I certainly was not a factor in his drive at that point. I can only figure he likes being a jerk.

This morning, as I crept up the rise on Houston Lane approaching Mt Mercy Drive in Pewee Valley, a different pickup truck came up behind me. That section of Houston Lane is very narrow--probably less than twelve feet wide. There is no way in the world I am going to let a motorist try to pass me there. Of course, the guy had to run his window down and cuss at me for blocking his way, complaining that he couldn't get around me.

I didn't take the time to remind him that there is exactly no legal support for his sense that slower traffic must yield to him simply because he can climb that hill faster. Or simply because he wants to be jerk. I largely ignored him, or appeared to from his perspective. If his threats had escalated, I would have reported him for terroristic threatening at some point, but at this point it's not worth the trouble--it's enough to think in terms of "he likes being a jerk," and go on enjoying the rest of my ride.

The fantasy of having a sympathetic police officer who would be a hard-nose with such twits witness such events is still fun, though.


On the house hunt: There was a house in Middletown that we liked, but there was a house of Westport Road that appealed more for a variety of reasons. Sadly, we got beat to that house, and there was enough other interest in the house that a bidding war could have begun. While still thinking about the house in Middletown, we've opened the search a bit more.

I was reluctant to consider houses off Murphy Lane, for example, as I do NOT like Murphy Lane as a bike route. I looked at a map of the area, though, and have found some work-arounds which open that area a bit. Sadly, many of the houses in that area are reminiscent of "Vinyl View Vista Village" stuff, and I really dislike vinyl siding for a variety of reasons (some of which are even logically supportable). I'm having to resign myself to the idea that unless I can come up with an extra hundred thousand bucks for a down payment, I'll have to deal with at least some measure of vinyl exterior cladding or siding. I'm not terribly happy about it, but there it is.