Have I mentioned that I loathe driving?

Let me clarify that. I loathe driving on highways during rush hour. Right outside the Park on my way home, there was a gnarly wreck. It looked pretty terrifying, and had traffic blocked and backed up on Raytown Road pretty good. What a mess.

Once I managed to get past that, it was smooth sailing up highway 50 until I got to I-435. Sure, a few SUVs bullied me around and muscled for domination of the road, but considerably more than a decade of experience behind the wheel has taught me that's how stuff happens on the highway. No sooner do I merge onto I-435 and I'm greeted with a glowing orange message on the relatively new overhead signs. "TRAFFIC ACCIDENT PAST ANTIOCH LEFT 2 LANES CLOSED"

Aww, jeez.

I keep moving with the flow of traffic. Antioch is more than 5 miles up the road, so we aren't seeing the effects yet. In case you wondered, traffic flow was about 80 MPH in the center lane of a 65 zone. It appeared to be closer to 90 in the fast lane. Oh, the joys of driving. As I pass Nall, it's brakes, brakes, brakes! I-435 is a parking lot. At this point, Antioch is 2 miles away. It took me about 40 minutes to go those 2 miles. I exited ON antioch instead of trudging past it and through the wreck area.

Traffic on surface arterials wasn't much better. Fortunately I know some residential back-roads to navigate Overland Park and Olathe, thanks to my bike.

I headed to Bike America and picked up the stuff I needed to finish rebuilding my Sorrento for winter commuter duty. They were kind of busy, so Richard let me use his tools to swap a bunch of drivetrain parts around between wheels. I'm putting the hybrid's cassette back on the hybrid, and using my newly purchased wheel for my Sorrento and tossing the old wheel that came with the Sorrento since it keeps breaking spokes and needs new bearings anyways.

So, the Sorrento is almost ready to go. The Outlook finally is running with the cassette that I bought for it, and won't be limited to the lower gear ratio I was using for my mountain bike.

It's been almost 3 months since I've driven to work. As far as I'm concerned, it can be 3 more months before I have to do it again, or even longer.