Commuting

Since I got back from Poland I've started commuting by bicycle again. I had had quite a long break from cycling to work, due to a knee injury, but that seems to have fixed itself now, so I'm back at it again. It's about 16 miles each way, so that means during the week I put over 150 miles on the clock.

My bike's a 2002 model Orbit Ventura, which I picked up brand new at a knock-down price in the spring of 2003. According to my highly advanced back-of-an-envelope approximations, I've done between three and four thousand miles on it since then. That's a long way! I seem to get fairly regular punctures (I've got one at the moment), and I think it might be because there's quite a lot of debris on the cycle paths from car crashes: broken glass, random bits of metal, etc. In general, though, the bike's hardwares holding up pretty well: I need a new bottom bracket, but apart from that, everything seems to be okay.

While I was injured (I think I overstrained my knee tendons during my skiing trip in January) I travelled to work by bus. I'd leave the house at quarter to seven to catch the bus into Oxford, and then change to another bus out to the Science Park. Of course, sometimes the bus into Oxford would be late, and I'd have to hang around in Oxford for half an hour. Normally, though, I'd leave the house at 0645 and arrive at work at 0755. On my bike, it's ten minutes faster, and if I'm a couple of minutes late leaving home it's no problem.

All this cycling's going to be good practise for battling up and down Huntingdon Road and Castle Hill in the Cambridge rush hour for the next four years!