Author Topic: Rides 2015 — add yours  (Read 87781 times)

jags

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #255 on: December 14, 2015, 06:49:22 pm »
 ;D ;D ;D 8 days yeah right even longer days to endure all this feckin rain .

you know i bet there someone out there that actually enjoys this weather :o
« Last Edit: December 14, 2015, 10:27:35 pm by jags »

geocycle

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #256 on: December 14, 2015, 07:36:21 pm »
John crazy weather Ireland is under water. :o

man i hate winter.
jags

8 days until the days start getting longer, soon be spring!

Optimism is good too.

Too true, but I was told a pessimist is an optimist with life experience!
« Last Edit: December 14, 2015, 08:36:06 pm by geocycle »
 

Andre Jute

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #257 on: December 14, 2015, 10:28:34 pm »
John crazy weather Ireland is under water. :o

man i hate winter.
jags

8 days until the days start getting longer, soon be spring!

Optimism is good too.

Too true, but I was told a pessimist is an optimist with life experience!

Heh-heh. Can't sneak anything past you.

John Saxby

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #258 on: December 26, 2015, 05:39:05 pm »
A few days ago, the calendar said 'twas the solstice, but we had no evidence of the days getting any longer. The weather gods, or whoever controls such matters, gave us three days of FDR (as they say in Atlantic Canada: fog-drizzle-rain) and we settled into a greyscale half-light, altogether gloomy and damp. The--lo!--the morning of Christmas Eve turned sunny and warm, with a fierce southwesterly reaching 70 km/h. 

At midday it was 15 degrees, if you can imagine, so I took Osi for a canter along the Québec side of the river.  The wind had backed off a little bit, but I was on the lee side of the bridge--I reckoned that a gust blowing me towards the railings was better than one pushing me towards the traffic.  As it turned out, the wind wasn't bad, but the river, a kilometer wide at this point, was covered with whitecaps, the wind whipping a fine spray off their crests. The river was high as well, perhaps from rain or more likely releases from the reservoirs far upstream.

In the event, I managed a delightful warm two hours along the bikepath through the riverside forest, the trees stark and devoid of foliage.  I stopped near some fierce rapids (photo#1 below), thoroughly glad I was on terra firma. A Québecoise d'un certain âge stopped, and asked if could please take a photo of her with the river as background, I obliged, and we chatted about the weather, agreeing that it was incroyable, bien sûr, mais également un peu bizarre. Indeed, never mind the temps, weird precip and pressure systems, el Niño is messin' with our heads.

I carried on to the Aylmer Marina, where the river makes a 90-degree bend to the NW, and enters a broad reach, some 30 kms long.  There were waves on the lee shore, some of them a meter high, as the wind pushed the water up onto the lee shore (#2 below).  There were 3 or 4 wind surfers in wet suits, having a grand time. Better them than me, I thought, and headed back along the path, rolling along in 11th and 12th with the wind at my back.

By the time I reached the bridge, the wind had dropped from near-gale to just a stiff breeze, and a wooden bridge over a wind-flooded but now calm inlet made a peaceful scene on a wonderful-but-wholly-weird Dec 24th afternoon.

Last ride of 2015?  I was saying that a month ago...

Happy new year, all, and safe riding.

John
« Last Edit: December 28, 2015, 12:52:35 am by John Saxby »

Danneaux

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #259 on: December 26, 2015, 05:52:57 pm »
Lovely photos and writeup, John. Still struggling with flooding and landslides here, but riding all the same -- reroutes mean destinations are a surprise. Cold this morning at -5C, but thankfully clear.

Hoping you'll have more riding days in the remainder of this year, and many more in the next. Will you be taking your "spare bike" with you Down Under for some riding?

All the best,

Dan.

John Saxby

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #260 on: December 26, 2015, 08:53:56 pm »
Thanks, Dan, glad you liked my wee tale of such an unlikely afternoon ride. I forgot to add my borrowed-&-adapted comment from the French general watching the charge of the Light Brigade during the extreme unpleasantness in the Crimea a century and a half ago: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'hiver."

We're seeing a lot of extreme weather in North America--I hope that the flooding in the Western states is not catastrophic, as it can be, and instead helps to replenish your creeks and rivers, and perhaps snowpack when it gets colder.

I won't take the Eclipse to Oz in Feb/March, but perhaps on another trip -- have to negotiate both storage and usage...

Take care in your routefinding amidst the wet, especially if there mudslides too.

John

Andre Jute

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #261 on: December 26, 2015, 09:40:54 pm »
Nasty chop on that river, John. It's heartening to hear you got in a satisfying ride; it makes a meaty read, a good solid fist of observation and reportage, and first-class, fascinating contrasts in your photos.

Here it has been raining, with high winds, for weeks. Most depressing. At least no snow, and not cold either, most days double Celsius digits. I manged to get in one or perhaps two rides in December, just shopping trips to places less than kilometre from home -- and still managed to get the bike wet enough to have to wring the towel out halfway through the bike-drying process. Well, that's the bike's biennial wash. Actually, in consideration of this being the bike's sabbatical year, I wiped the dust off it at the beginning of the year, so that counts as a biannual cleanup... I'll yet win the Daniel Wood Bike Cleanliness Award aka the Toothbrush!

John Saxby

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #262 on: December 27, 2015, 11:10:06 pm »
Thanks for your kind words, Andre.  Look forward to posting in your "Rides of 2016" in maybe 4 months' time.

Lot of rain & flooding in the UK & Ireland, we hear.  Stay dry!

Danneaux

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #263 on: December 28, 2015, 04:20:28 am »
Quote
I wiped the dust off it at the beginning of the year, so that counts as a biannual cleanup... I'll yet win the Daniel Wood Bike Cleanliness Award aka the Toothbrush!
<nods> You may well, Andre! I managed to keep the Nomad pretty clean during my ride in the rain and around the floods, slides, and sinkholes which continue to plague the State of Oregon. It has gone on for some time now -- since October -- and is beginning to grow a bit old. We're finally getting some snow in the mountains which will help next summer...but is a mixed blessing now because it has come so heavily and so quickly, it has broken and felled many trees in my preferred Backcountry playground.

I've attached several photos showing the bike path a block from my home. I don't ride though water that is more than rim deep; it simply is not worth it to risk water entering the frame, SON28 dynohub, or Rohloff, so I've been re-routing instead, making intended 200km rides more than a bit longer. On "real" tours with stream crossings, the bags come off and the bike gets portaged across, then the bags. Tedious, but the process ensures long-lived components and avoids overhauls or failures in the middle of nowhere, to say nothing of avoiding future rust getting a toe-hold in the frame. No tin worms for Danneaux!

I'm okay and so is Eugene-Springfield, but elsewhere, the weather is making bicycle and other travel a real challenge. Right now, I wouldn't camp in the woods on a bet; too much risk of treefall. Interstate-5 (the main north-south freeway connecting Canada to Mexico through the western US was closed at Woodland, WA by a slide, as was US 101 (the main coast highway).

For those who are interested, here's some links to ODOT (Oregon's Department of Transportation) and news video showing the weather challenges of the last several months:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/oregondot/
https://www.youtube.com/user/OregonDOT/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlA7CdhE-c4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbwgtFstvis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYxDx7M1-Ys
http://www.kptv.com/video?clipId=12063282&autostart=true
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VYaMXDQJmA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14RbuAjAQEo

I feel for friends in Manchester, Lancashire, and Yorkshire!

Best,

Dan.

Andre Jute

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #264 on: December 28, 2015, 06:08:19 am »
Riding that bike path could soon get to be expensive in frames and hubs and other mechanicals, as you say, not to mention many hours of labour.

One of the great things about taking only short rides for exercise, and having spent almost all my life working at home, is that I can wait the rain out on most days, and am accustomed to doing it. So I don't go out in heavy rain unless I become stir crazy in endless rain, weeks and months of it. Thus I'm both a fair weather cyclist and a four seasons cyclist, because generally speaking, the spring and the autumn here start early and run on late, so that the summer may not be fabulous but at least the winter is short; one glorious year we rode till days before Christmas and were on the road again a couple of days into the New Year. (Bring back Global Warming. Please!) Being very fair-skinned, and burning easily, I don't even mind if the sun doesn't shine; my favourite days are overcast and cool enough to permit considerable exertion without my respiration rate rising out of bounds.

But the current deluge and accompanying high winds are beyond ridiculous. I'm starting to have dreams about my treadmill, in which I feature as that hamster Freddie Starr ate.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2015, 06:11:21 am by Andre Jute »

energyman

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #265 on: December 28, 2015, 09:55:25 pm »
The pictures of the "river" flowing past the Woodrup bike shop in Leeds were amazing.  My thoughts go out to the family who run it (and the beautiful bikes that they make !)
 :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

rualexander

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Re: Rides 2015 — add yours
« Reply #266 on: December 29, 2015, 12:21:26 am »
At last, a day of sunshine and light winds on sunday, nice ride down in the borders near Hawick.