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August 12, 2005
My Commute: Jeff Lennan
My Commute: 7th and NE Graham St to SW 12th and Morrison St
About 75% of the time, when I go into the office, I ride my bike.
When I do, my route is NE 7th St South to Broadway. I turn West and ride down to the Broadway Bridge. At around 11th, I turn South and go across the Pearl and Burnside into SW. On Morrison I turn west and go about a block to my office, right above the grand Bicycle Transportation Alliance.
Recent tragedies involving cars hitting people on foot and bike, particularly more than one along my exact commute in the last two months, have prompted me to consider better routes including MLK to Russell, and across Williams to the bike lane that then heads south to meet up with Broadway safely west of the I-5 North onramp that is so dangerous on Broadway and Interstate.
When I do not ride in, I usually telecommute. Challenges here include a good solid connection to the servers at the office so that I can efficiently run MS Exchange and share files. A VPN connection with my Mac is not as seamless for me as for other employees with Windows but I hope to get a previously-established-now-mysteriously-not-working VPN tunnel going again soon.
We are out of our offices for the next TWO WEEKS for some remodeling so there’s no time like the present...
I absolutely love commuting to work by bike.
Guest Column at 7:46 AM
Comments
August 17, 2005 12:12 PM
jeff Says:
update to jeff lennan's commute (i crashed on the commute this am)
today was the first rain after a couple of weeks of outright HOT weather - like hotter than blazes. Yes, like over 90 degrees many days in a row, right here in the town where 'it rains all the time'.
anyway...
the first rain after such as dry spell will often make for slick roads. for weeks the oil and other grime that builds up on streets has been building up, without a clean wash by rain (into the storm drains, and out into the river unfortunately). when it finally does rain, just lightly, for even a few minutes, you've got a recipe for disaster.
a small disaster happened to me this morning, when i went to take a turn i take every morning and suddenly found myself 'sliding into home plate' flat out on my chest, out into the street.
i didnt even sense the bike tweaking out from under me before i was sliding on my chest on the wet street.
thankfully, the car that was right behind me in traffic was already aware of me bc we had made eye contact at the last corner, where she backed off to allow me to turn left onto that block.
anyway - just a reminder to everyone that the roads get slick extra bad after a new rain, and a reminder to eveyone that a cyclist riding along in front of you could suddenly be flat out in the street in the blink of an eye.
