Commuter Prizes and a small update

Ok so I got a little over excited about being able to reliably sustain two blogs at once so the whole "family blog thing" is on hold for now. So back to everything randomly being posted here. With he weather being bitter cold or wet this month I haven't had quite the commuter mileage I would want to get, but things seem to be trending towards a slight warming...

Speaking of commuting here's some super sweet and mildly hilarious "commuter primes" I have gotten recently.

By far the coolest and heaviest primes I've gotten in a while. A nice mag light to see my way with and beat rude motorists off with and a fiberglass "unbreakable" (says it on the handle) hammer. While I'm skeptical about the unbreakable part, I can't think of a better reason to advocate engraving all of you tools now. Anyways what someone was doing with these on the greenway I guess I'll never know.

Ok so let me explain first off I have a general "no clothing" rule. Clothing is in direct contact with people, which are prone to have things that are communicable growing on them. However the home made (with different colors of duct tape) addition to this already politically charged hoody made it irresistible, so I carefully secured it to my rack with a mini bungee and rode home with it concealed so as not to attract the ire of a west Knoxville Bush supporter in a "Cadillac Escalate'". While I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it (Goodwill maybe) this was definitely picture worthy.

A close up of the back.

And the front.

I know some fellow commuter bikes that occasionally hang around campus that might need a little school spirit so I picked this one up too.

One reason I haven't been commuting as much is Ice. The second is salt. I could feel my bike rusting under me when salt was everywhere and dry. When it started to rain last week the pile of salt slush in front of my house made using the KAT transit buses and letting them rust out an increasingly attractive option. Sometimes I question the purpose of a steel steed in winter. As for the ice I got a few pics of some residual snow/ice spots on the greenway when I rode in the other day and I was thinking of ways to stay warm. In one west knox neighborhood there was a water main that had ruptured (from the previous day when it was 8 deg) and a river of ice covered the entire street making riding both challenging and fun. I was also so amused at TDOT's new method for cleaning up ice spots frozen to the road I had to get a picture of that as well...

Two strips of salvation surrounded by a white salty death for metal components.

The ice on the gutter was visible but the stuff on the blacktop was deadly.


At least you can see snow.



How TDOT clears ice when fuel oil prices are low?