It's a typical Dutch autumn. The trees are starting to loose their leaves, the wind is getting stronger and it rains a lot.
But until now I've been quite lucky with my commuting rides. It does get a bit colder in the mornings (<10 degrees C now), so I'm wearing gloves now.
I also ride in the dark when I leave my house, but it's lovely to see the sun come up.
These are some shots I've taken during my commuting ride two weeks ago.

The sky sometimes has some lovely colors during sunrise and the mist in the meadows make it a mysterious view.
I have to enjoy it while it lasts, because it won't be ling until I will cycle all the way in the dark. And some weeks later also back home in the dark 🤨
These are my least favorite times to ride my bicycle, but at least I have my exercise.

Saturday Ride

Friday it had been raining almost all day and night. Friday night we had a storm over The Netherlands. We usually go cycling on Saturday morning, but at 8 AM it was still raining. We checked the rain radar website which showed us the rain would stop at 8:30 AM, so we decided to go for it.

What we didn't check before we went was the windfinder website. But we soon found out that there was a lot of wind. Below is a screenshot from today where you can see wind speeds of almost 50 kilometers an hour.

We chose a route through the dunes towards the South-West against the wind, but cycling against the wind was quite tough, especially the parts where we had to climb a bit. We didn't go very fast.

We did go quite fast when we turned around to go back home. We needed to be careful since the wind had ripped off a lot of leaves which make the streets slippery. On some parts there were also a lot of acorns on the road.
It's wise to grab your handlebars tightly in these conditions.
Despite the weather conditions, we made a nice ride of just over 50 kilometers.

This ride resulted in my first Decathlon point for exercising! I had recently learned from @nozem01 that you could attach your Garmin or Strava account to your Decathlon account and earn points for exercises. You can earn 100 points in a week and 5000 points will give you a €10,- gift card. It's not that much, but I'm doing the rides anyways, so why not get some free cash for it.
You also get some points for buying things via the Decathlon website, which I sometimes do because some cycling gear they sell is good and not very expensive.
Thanks again for the tip @nozem01!

Stats

I'm doing quite well in working towards my goal of cycling 5000 kilometers this year. This week I went over the 4000 kilometer threshold and now I 'only' have 959,90 to go until the end of the year. But the weather is getting worse and we also have the holidays ahead. But I think I can finally manage to reach the 5000 kilometers this year (I failed to do so in the past two years).
I'm 194 kilometers ahead on my schedule, which means I have to ride at least 74 kilometers per week in the next twelve weeks.
I'll go for it!

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Friendlymoose

I'm an amateur photographer with a love for indoor gardening, craft beer, and cycling. As the owner of the Cycling Community and the creator of the Topcomment initiative, I focus on fostering engagement and bringing like-minded people together.
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