Damn construction

Normally you wouldn't think rural bicycle commuters would be that irritated about construction, but there are two projects under way right now, and combined they mean another 2.2 miles, about 1.2 of it on a gravel road which, with the extra traffic it's taking due to the detour, is getting really badly washboarded in a couple of places.

I normally wouldn't mind an extra couple of miles, but the washboard, the dust, the blind corners and the extra stop signs are starting to bug me, and it's run my average commute time up to about 45 minutes.

One of the construction projects is replacing a bridge that honestly should have been replaced 20 years ago; it had gotten to be a joke. I don't even know what the heck they're doing on the other project, the road is just closed. There's a new subdivision going in there, but I thought they were just going to widen a bit and throw in a turn lane; that shouldn't need the road to be shut down for 2 weeks already.

Exhausting weekend

( Need to go to work to relax. )

MUCH better headphones

I picked up some Koss PortaPro headphones, and brought them to work today. For $33 I don't think you can find better headphones. The big thing is that they're very light, and open. I've been using a pair of $20 Sony closed headphones, which sound OK but I can't wear them for more than an hour or so before they really start to irritate me. I don't even know why; just after a while I want to tear them off my head. I've read in the past that it's important to have air circulation in the ear canals; maybe that's it.

I use earbuds when I must, like when I'm riding (I use only one, closed bud, in the right ear) or when I'm working around the house (one, usually open, in one ear or the other, so I can hear people/phone/etc). But I really can't stand the earbuds for more than about an hour at a time before I have to take them out for a while and let my ears recover.

Anyway, I've been wearing these for about 4 hours today and no problems at all. And they sound great (they're reviewed slightly better than the Sennheiser PX100s).