Today was our first day of the year riding to school and work. This was also the first time we connected my daughter’s trail-a-bike to my road bike. It took a little while to get used to, after having it only connected to my mountain bike. Definitely had to brake early and keep it slow, not sure how my 20mm tires would react to trying to stop this amount of bulk at high speed.

Talking about road vs. mountain bikes, I noticed a strange phenomenon. It started near the end of last season, when I transitioned from riding my road bike to riding the mountain towing the trail-a-bike. It felt awesome! Big fat tires, cushy ride - felt like you could go anywhere. I was all comfortable with this, when a few weeks ago I finally got to ride on the mountain bike solo, without the trailer. I felt unleashed! It was awesome, I could go fast, I could accelerate, brake, turn, etc. And then this past weekend, after having my road bike cooped up on the trainer in the basement most of the winter, I took it out. It just plain flew! I didn’t even feel like I was pedaling and I was whipping around at 30mph.

So, I think that having one of each bike is great, and the key is to enjoying both is to transition between them. You forget how nice the features of each one is until you ride it again.

I’ve also started a google spreadsheet of all my biking data from my bike computer, heart rate monitor, topo software, comments, etc. You can see it here or RSS subscribe to it here.