October 05, 2009 Commute to Work

I have been biking to work for some time already, but decided to take a different route this morning. If you are familiar with the Provo/Orem/Lindon/American Fork area, you know that in order to get from Provo to Lindon, you have to climb a big hill. Well, you probably have never considered it "big", since you were mostly likely driving a car. But it's big. And to get from Lindon to AF, you go DOWN a big hill. So no matter how you look at it, Bill Cosby was right: "Goin' through the snow to school, uphills both ways".
Today, I decided to ride University Parkway until the canyon, then cut up 800 N in Orem. This was a sad attempt to circumvent the hill issue. I still had to climb.
Going that route, though, the climb wasn't too bad. Normally, my hill-climb is about 1 1/2 miles of a slogging, boring hill. The new route I took reduced the hill to a 1/2 mile sharp climb. I'm still trying to decide which one is better.

Stats for the commute to work:
Ride Time: 1 hr 14 min
Total Distance: 18.34 miles
Max Speed: 30.5 mph
Average Speed: 14.8 mph (wimpy)

Now, my time actually wasn't too bad, considering I took a 5 minute break about halfway through. It was getting a little toasty after the sun finally came up, so I had to take off my fleece and beanie. I also had a headwind on the last 2 miles in AF, and I was trudging along at 10 mph. All in all, not too bad.
Traffic wasn't horrible. Potholes, however, were. Most bike commuters have intimate knowledge of every pavement seam and pothole on the road, so this comes as no surprise. You'd think that the BIKE LANE wouldn't have potholes, though, wouldn't you? And you'd be wrong.