Don’t worry, I’ll eventually stop kicking this dead horse. But I wanted to share a couple of other things I learned on today’s rides. The morning ride is becoming a really nice way to start the day. Blood flowing, fresh air, motion; all things I need more of in my life and now I can get them just by going to work.
Anything above 50 makes Mike a sweaty fish. It was almost 60 this afternoon and I was a sweaty mess when I got home. My shirt took the brunt of it (go smart fabric!) but I was definitely pushing out a bunch of water. I hope getting in decent shape by riding over the winter means less sweatiness when the weather breaks in the Spring and the weather gets more normally warm.

I’ll hold off on the manic “hey I rode my bike to work today” posts until I reach some milestones or until events warrant. It’s good so far.

I had never heard of Blood on the Wall before I, er, acquired their latest album ‘Liferz’. Brooklyn indie rock is the best and most brief descriptive. You like guitar jangles? It’s there. Some light speed tomtom action? They have that too. This was one of my most pleasant musical surprises in 2008.

‘Hibernation‘ gets the album kicked off at about 80 miles an hour. It’s a good one.
‘Rize‘ stacks every other sound on top of the vocals but it doesn’t matter because they sound so damn good.

I do love some Spank Rock (careful, mySpace link). This isn’t a proper studio album from these guys, it’s a live set from the Fabric Nightclub in London. It doesn’t have the B’more Bounce I wanted to hear but it’s got some neat moments.

“Do You Love me?” is billed as by The Contours, but after the first 2 seconds you know it’s a lot more than that.

This is what my normal bike commute will be once I break down and make this a new habit. 5.5 miles is completely reasonable. I would almost say it was borderline pleasant.

To answer a couple of questions:

1) I’m not sure what model I have, but my mountain bike (which I am using as my commuter for now) is a Trek. It’s a sturdy hardtail that I will need to get serious about maintaining if this commuting thing sticks.

2) Sweat management hasn’t been bad at all. I wear an UnderArmour long-sleeve shirt under a windbreaker so I stay just warm enough and I am basically dry when I get to work. I take about 10 minutes to cool down once I get here and then I get work-dressed. I change all of my clothes but my socks so I don’t have to worry about wearing sweaty clothes. I get pretty sweaty when I exercise but I haven’t suffered any post-exercise follow through sweat. I assume it’s because of the cold weather. Man, that sounds sexy. Follow through sweat. You’re welcome.

I don’t have any illusions that I will be able to stay dry once it warms up. I’m lucky in that we have a shower here at work. I’ll just need to stock it and be in and out of it before people come into work. It should be easy.

This is an amazing Sports Illustrated cover from 1967. Plus it’s hyping my beloved Knicks.

Looks like it was, um, inspired by the Zig Zag Man, no?

Jimmy Smith was the first big star of the Blue Note jazz label. Apparently he made it possible for the label to stay alive long enough to get a reputation for publishing good music. Thank goodness he did, as some of my favorite jazz records are on Blue Note. “Cool Blues” is a damn fine record and if you’re into 50’s Bop you probably already know it. But if you don’t have this one I highly recommend it.

“Once In A While” is a bonus track off of the 1990 reissue of Cool Blues.

The most recent Stephne Malkmus and the Jicks album, “Real Emotional Trash”, is solid but the song “Gardenia” is excellent. I’ll always listen to what SM has to sing.

I am a little embarrassed that it took me so long to get into Santogold. I really should have been there as soon as they linked her with Spank Rock (a massive musical crush I have) but I resisted because she was a little too “next new hotness”. I stand corrected. She’s all over the map musically and that’s a strength in this case. I rolled this hard all summer.

“Lights Out” is a radio-ready jam that should have been in the heaviest rotation all summer long. Your mom couldn’t deny how good this is.
In “You’ll Find A Way” sounds like she’s fronting a band made up of the Police and Bloc Party.
But then she goes to “Creator” which has such a nasty, bent-circuit, heavy crush beat that I can’t help but call it my favorite on the album.

MGMT just isn’t my style. I like the single, “Time To Pretend” well enough, but the rest of the album just didn’t click for me. Oh well, can’t like them all.

I finally broke down and shamed myself into riding my bike to work. 8 miles, and it took me about 40 minutes.

I think I can shave another couple of minutes off the ride with some route tinkering but I’m not trying to set any records. On a bad traffic day it could take me 40 minutes to get to work in my car and I only had to leave the house 20 minutes earlier than normal. Not too shabby.

It was cold, but I dressed right. I rocked an UnderArmor long sleeve under a $10 WalMart windbreaker and I was fine with the wind and temperature. I have some nice full-finger gloves that kept my hands in good shape, and bike shorts under some Carhatt cotton work pants were fine for my bottom half. I wore my work shoes on the ride so I wouldn’t have to pack them and the leather kept my feet snug like bugs.

I need to find something that will breathe better than that windbreaker, though. My UA layer kept me pretty dry but there was nothing to move the, um, humidity out of the windbreaker.

I’m curious to see how the ride home goes. It will be dark for almost all of it so this will be the first road test of my new headlight.