Thorn Cycles Forum
Community => Non-Thorn Related => Topic started by: John Saxby on March 22, 2024, 01:54:02 AM
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By way of introduction: Years ago, I worked with an Acadian colleague, a very capable guy who was good at his job and told good stories to boot. He would lighten a staid and stuffy meeting by saying, “Laissez-moi parler un peu avant de prendre la parôle” – “Let me talk a little before I speak.” As a compliment, I’ll borrow his approach: This contribution to “Rides of 2024” is less about my brief-but-enjoyable rides in early March than it is about our winter weather – imagine that! how Canajan, eh?
That “winter weather” is really “soi-disant/so-called winter weather”: I’m writing just after the spring equinox, and there is no snow on the ground, nor has there been any for three weeks or more. The mildest winter on record has also been very dry: Ottawa’s average annual winter snowfall is 220 cms, and In ‘22/’23, we had well over that, some 330 cms. This winter, only about 100 cms, and much of that fell in December. During February, we had days when the high temps were 16 or 17ºC – as much as 6 or 8 degrees higher than the record for the day. Mixed in with that were wild swings of temperature: in one instance, from 16º in mid-afternoon, to -14 the following morning, a drop of 30º in just over 12 hours. “Jaysus, Mary an’ Joseph,” sez I to myself and the cats. “I’ve never felt anything even close to that.”
Conversations with fellow customers in grocery stores have taken on a wide-eyed and slightly apocalyptic tone: “Ah, jeez, we’re really done it now.” I’ve found myself repeating CLR James’ phrase: “We’re seeing ‘the future in the present’.” In late Feb., I saw and heard a honking great Vee of Canada geese overhead, a good four weeks early. Even the maple trees are confused. People who run a sugar bush say that their sap was finished by St. Patrick’s Day, where “normally”, they would begin on March 17. In the fields and in the woods, the soil is now dangerously dry.
But hey! ‘Tis an ill wind that blows no good…
In late Feb, with “winter” in full retreat, I got my city bike out of my basement workshop and onto the road for errands like shopping for groceries. (There are people who ride through Ottawa’s (“normal”) winters, but I’m not one of them. The combination of careless/inconsiderate motorists, roads narrowed by snowbanks, and reduced visibility is too much for my taste.) By the first week of March, we were all rendered a bit dopey by double-digit temps, sunshine, and snowless road and bike paths. So—why not??--I hoisted Freddie up the basement stairs, and he emerged blinking into the bright March sunshine.
Over the first week of March I did three rides, each about 45- 50 minutes long, each covering some 14 – 16 kms. All were on bike paths and roads within the west-central part of Ottawa where I live, and on one ride I also crossed the Ottawa River into Québec. I hadn’t been on my Mercury since late October ’23 – I used my city bike until late November – so it was a delight to again ride a responsive bike on which everything works so well.
The star of the week was, of course, the soft air and the brilliant early-March sunshine. (Yes, that sentence isn’t full of fairy tales: I have felt brilliant early-March sunshine before, but only in places like Central-Southern Africa and ‘Straya, not in the coldest capital city in the world.) (As was, at least.) The photo below shows Freddie all a-twinkle, propped against a pathside bench.
The bike paths were largely free of cyclists, except for a few haring along with daft giddy looks. One of my routes took me along the bike path through the Experimental Farm, with a hilly section climbing and descending through woods near a one-time urban ski hill. There were dog-walkers a-plenty in that section, and they smiled and waved.
Of course some things didn’t change, no matter the transformation of the weather: I rode across the westernmost road bridge into Gatineau (QC), so that I could then follow the bikepath east (downstream) along the north bank of the Ottawa and recross the river via the pedestrian/cycling Commanda Bridge, a repurposed rail bridge opened to great fanfare and intensive use last summer. NOT. I reached the right-hander onto the bridge, and saw to my irritation but no surprise at all, a big orange-and-black “Route Barrée” sign, with no explanation or signal on when (or even whether) that might be replaced by a “Pont Ouvert”.
Other things hadn’t changed much, either. When I saw & heard the magical sound of the big Vee of Canada geese, I wondered, “Are they this early?? Or did they never leave?” Whatever it was, there were dozens of geese on and near the bike path on the Québec side, munching on the dry grass, poking around for bugs, gossiping and squawking all the time, and — as they do — poo-pooing human notions of hegemony over the bike paths.
These were stress-free outings, entirely in keeping with rides done in the middle of weekdays well before “normal bike traffic” resumes. There’ll be other, more demanding rides before long, I hope. As a rule, snow persists until late April on the roads in the Gatineau Park. This year, that’s unlikely to be the case: cross-country skiers have been lamenting the radically diminished snow cover in the hills. The bizarre-but-welcome warm and sunny weather of early March has been displaced by a few days of “Saskatchewan weather” this week, sunny and cold with a fierce northwesterly, but there’s no significant snow in the forecast. With any luck, we’ll be across the river and into the trees again before long.
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I feel so sorry for you, John, misplacing the winter and all that. You can have some of our late, lingering winter. Currently sunny and apparently 11 degrees C but with a RealFeel<R>* of 7C, by 10pm sinking to 7C with a RealFeel of -1C. Yesterday I went out to check the level of the central heating oil and still in the living room patio, fully enclosed by a stone wall eight feet high, I made a mental note to wear a goretex jacket over my sweater the next time I did it -- it was nowhere near the supposed 12C, probably below even the 5C RealFeel. I know what 12C feels like on a cycle-able day: it is a pretty common spring and autumn day in the South of Ireland, a place where 16C is a heatwave. The chill was likely accounted for by the stiff wind all the way from the Urals that whipped the branches of a big old eucalyptus violently.
Really enjoyed your description of even short rides, not to mention the obstructions of bureaucrats. Also, I have a fond memory of your photo of that impressive bridge; shame to close it just when it about to come into use again.
*No idea specifically what RealFeel is. It is a registered business usage of someone, though neither claimed nor credited by Accuweather on whose climate alarm page it is used. I'm happier with the concept of a wind-chill factor, for which I suspect it is a relativistic pseudonym registered by someone trying to make a buck out of the commons of everyone's language.
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Thanks for your kind words as always, Andre.
The weather, eh? We've had a dose of Yer Typical March weather this week -- last night, it was -15 with a windchill of about -20. No cycling for this softie in such conditions!
And on the bureaucrats & the Bridge: This morning's paper had an article saying that the Bridge would soon be reopened. Sez I, "Surely some dude in one of those grey offices where men's souls drain away didn't read my post in the Thorn Forum, and react with shame and a burst of thoughtfulness?" The article also included an extended quote from a rep of Bike Ottawa, saying, in effect, "Why was it closed last fall in the first place?"
I expect this triangular tension among cyclists/cycling, city bureaucrats, and The Weather will persist ... wisht I could say it will be a creative tension, but it won't so I won't.
Cheers, mate.
J.
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Six weeks of rides from spring into early summer –
After an early end to a mild dry winter with barely 110 cms of snow – half of Ottawa’s longterm average of 220 – we waited for spring, and waited some more. After the Easter weekend at the end of March, I rode across the river and into the Gatineau Hills. Below, some notes and a few photos from several rides from early April to mid-May.
In early April the woods were desperately and dangerously dry. (See Photo 1 below) The big river, the Ottawa, was a metre or more lower than its usual level during the spring run-off – no kayakers riding the big waves midway between the Ontario and Québec shores. Up in the hills, the usual gurgling streams of spring were silent, reduced to a few semi-stagnant pools barely dripping into one another.
“Normally”, I would not ride up to Pink Lake lookout until late April, when the parkway would be free of snow and ice. Photo 2 below shows Freddie at Pink Lake under a pale early-April sun. The ride across the river on the Champlain Bridge, nearly a mile wile, is always a treat. Photo 3 below shows the Québec side of the bridge from the bikepath downstream. This photo, taken from a gap in the shrubbery at the water’s edge, gives a rider’s view of the structure. (The bridge crosses three small islands on the Ontario side.)
In the following 4-5 weeks, we have had some rainfall, easing our collective anxiety about summertime fire hazards. And, just to remind us of the source of our passports, we had some 24 hours of the worst road conditions I’ve ever encountered in Canada, a mix of wet snow and wind-driven rain. Fortunately, I made it home safely from my midweek evening shift at our bike-recycling shop 6 kms to the west of our place, exhaled, and thanked the designers of 10-year-old wee 4wd Subaru.
This “extreme weather event” was, the weather guys said, the result of a “Colorado low” – warm moist air from Mexico meeting cold sub-Arctic air from northern Canada over Colorado, and whirling northeast. My reckoning is that a Colorado Low is the evil and lesser-known twin of the “Rocky Mountain high” of pop-culture fame. And why, Mr John Denver, did you not tell the whole story?
But one of the real benefits of a bit more precip, combined with warming temps, is that all-of-a-sudden in early May, we lurched into early summer. Photo 4 below shows a roadside apple tree in bloom, a reminder that this part of the Gatineau Park was farmed from the mid-19th-century onwards. (Hardscrabble it was, too, but that’s another story.)
(cont'd in next post)
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And the story cont'd to mid-May:
And Photo 5 shows the foliage of the greening woods on either side of an uphill in the lower reaches of the park.
On May 15, I set off for a ride to the summit of the road system in the park, the Champlain Lookout at the top of the escarpment on the east side of the Ottawa River. This was a fairly significant marker: I was last there in early June 2022 (BSE – the before Surgery Era). Between early March and mid-May, I had made a few rides beyond Pink Lake (about 33 kms round trip from our house), extending the distance each time. My route to Champlain would be 56 kms round trip. The net gain of elevation is not huge, just less than 300 metres, but the ride features constant climbing, interrupted by regular descents.
The change in my surroundings, signalled by the trees in the photos above, was dramatic: Photo 6 shows Pink Lake in its early summer foliage. And it wasn’t just the trees that had changed. The ferns in the woods beside the bikepath had unfurled, and the first trilliums (trillia?) of the year graced the verges of the roadway. (Photo 7.)
I was down a couple of cogs on the hills, partly by circumstance, and partly by choice, to maintain my cadence. The day was warm and humid, and I reached the top in good order. Photo 8 shows Freddie catchin’ some midday rays on a hazy summer day atop the escarpment. The big river is just visible through the haze, in the upper left of the photo. The Nameless Wee Brown Thing just above the river is not a bird: it is a black fly on the lens of my Panasonic Lumix. (Hence also the dark blotch in a similar spot above the left-side fir tree in Photo 6.)
Ahhh, the black fly. “Normally”, a rider meets lots of other cyclists at Champlain Lookout. We chat about this’n’that, admire the view, acknowledge what a treasure this place is, offer to take photos of each other & the bike, usw, usw. Not today. Even though it’s mid-May, and blackfly season doesn’t “normally” start until the beginning of June, today there are hordes of the brutes. And, there is no defence against them. A few nods and remarks about the bugs, a rapid inhalation of an energy bar or a banana, a ditto of water, and back on the bike, just a hundred metres or so to the first so-welcome downhill.
What would Keats have said, I’ve often wondered, had he known about such creatures? “Hail to thee, vile spirit…”?
Wade Hemsworth’s song-and-cartoon pretty much nails it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f389hIxZAOc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f389hIxZAOc)
I made it home in surprisingly good time – about 3 ½ hrs’ cycling, an average of 16 km/h. Once at home, my quads let me know that they were not entirely happy with the day, but some stretching eased the stiffness. And remarkably, my time was around my “usual” for a there-and-back 😊 .
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https://ridewithgps.com/trips/180810750
Downunda we are in Autumn/Fall but we had a magnificent day yesterday, 4C to 16C , clear sky.
The ride was 80% bike paths, the rest quite suburban roads.
If you can open the RidewithGPS link, the spike was to the coffee shop and back.
Mike
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Lovely ride report and photos, John. Good to hear the post op physical condition is improving.
That video is a hoot. At least, for anyone without first hand experience with the wee devils :)
As for that spot in the sky on the last photo. Are you sure it wasn't a CF-18 from CFB Trenton? The size is about right.
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Nice weather indeed, Mike. I loved the southern-hemisphere cold season when we lived in southern Africa -- ideal for hiking & cycling. (Softie that I am, I avoided the Cape in the cold season...)
Hot'n'muggy here today, around 30, with a thunderstorm in the offing. (July weather.)
Coffee's worth a spike anytime ;)
Ron, when I first saw that smudge on the photo, I thought -- "Helicopter??" But I'd heard nothing. Should've used the viewfinder rather than the screen on my camera -- the bright sun left me guessing with the framing of the photo. The blackflies should be done by early July... 🤞
Cheers, John
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Cape Town, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, could be a misery in any season, not only the cold, wet winters. In the summer there was the maddening Cape Doctor, a wind that could and did drive people beyond mere distraction into sociopathic behaviour. All the same, I'm not so sure the hot, muggy daily thunderstorms of the Transvaal Highveld were any more pleasant. Still, if you were in Big Business in South Africa, or the arts for that matter, it was Cape Town or Johannesburg (or for politics nearby Pretoria, another beautiful city). But the best cycling was that long, long descent from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.
Lovely writeup, John, and as always a superb eye for framing the photographs just right. I just loved that sweeping turn on the road in the budding spring between the tall, straight trees, with the fortunate cyclist as the only traffic.
I'm not so sure even the Nile is a mile wide except in its estuary. Mind you, the Lee, a good wide river in Cork City, with enough draft right in the middle of the city to take a major sailing ship that the Dutch use to train naval cadets, less than thirty miles away is a six inch dribble that on a hill walk I stepped across without noticing it until a geography teacher asked us to show some respect. On the other hand, the Torrens, an impressive river in downtown Adelaide down under, is a miserable little stream just outside the city, and it's impressive girth is explained by being dammed up at the other end of the city.
Keats! Laughing out Loud.
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Thank you, Andre, for your kind words - esp about my photos. ("Aw, shucks," he said, scuffling his feet & looking away ;) )
the best cycling was that long, long descent from Pietermaritzburg to Durban
For sure: In Dec 2005, I rode from Pretoria to Durban with a friend to celebrate his 70th birthday, along with 10-12 members of his family and friends. That was my first long ride/tour, and I was hooked. The trend line from the highveldt to the coast was down, obviously, but there were plenty of tough climbs as well. The final run-in from PM'burg was a delight, and I understood why the uphill variant of the Comrades' Marathon is so difficult.
As we were in the last throes of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, a couple of hotshoes on 750 or 900 Dukes came screaming around a corner towards us, fairings scraping the ground and front wheels wobbling as the tires fought for grip, and I thought, "Ah, jeez, why does it have to end like this?" Luckily for all of us (incl the hotshoes), the Dukes kept the rubber side down.
Glad you liked my riff on Keats ;)
Cheers, John
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Cape Town, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, could be a misery in any season, not only the cold, wet winters. In the summer there was the maddening Cape Doctor, a wind that could and did drive people beyond mere distraction into sociopathic behaviour. All the same, I'm not so sure the hot, muggy daily thunderstorms of the Transvaal Highveld were any more pleasant. Still, if you were in Big Business in South Africa, or the arts for that matter, it was Cape Town or Johannesburg (or for politics nearby Pretoria, another beautiful city). But the best cycling was that long, long descent from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.
Lovely writeup, John, and as always a superb eye for framing the photographs just right. I just loved that sweeping turn on the road in the budding spring between the tall, straight trees, with the fortunate cyclist as the only traffic.
I'm not so sure even the Nile is a mile wide except in its estuary. Mind you, the Lee, a good wide river in Cork City, with enough draft right in the middle of the city to take a major sailing ship that the Dutch use to train naval cadets, less than thirty miles away is a six inch dribble that on a hill walk I stepped across without noticing it until a geography teacher asked us to show some respect. On the other hand, the Torrens, an impressive river in downtown Adelaide down under, is a miserable little stream just outside the city, and it's impressive girth is explained by being dammed up at the other end of the city.
Keats! Laughing out Loud.
Andre,
Pietermaritzburg to Durban was my first cycle tour.
Raleigh Sports bike old size 26"wheels, steel rims and Sturmey Archer AW three speed hub.
As the steel rims did not provide much braking in the wet I later upgraded to Sturmey Archer drum brakes which of course required a new rear hub with the drum brake.
Anyway we camped at a Caravan Park at Umhlanga Rocks for a couple of days and rode into the Durban beachfront each day where all the action for twenty year olds could be found.
The return to PMB took considerably longer than the down hill run!
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https://i.redd.it/ngc9f7tjo2b51.jpg
Like this one
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But the best cycling was that long, long descent from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.
Andre,
Anyway we camped at a Caravan Park at Umhlanga Rocks for a couple of days and rode into the Durban beachfront each day where all the action for twenty year olds could be found.
The return to PMB took considerably longer than the down hill run!
My girlfriend was a champion ice skater, so we were often in Durban because they had the best ice rink in the country, almost on the beach, as it happens. We divided the work. I coasted downhill on the bike while she drove behind me, then she cycled uphill to PMB while I drove behind her.
You have an amazing memory, Mike. The only other place I remember in Durban is the Royal Hotel where I took long lunches to stop myself throttling several of the actors in the premiere of one of my plays, but I can't remember the name of the theatre, or even which play it was -- I want to say the Star, but that's in Johannesburg, where Spike Milligan never let me forget I fell into the orchestra pit with the Irish juvenile lead in another play that premiered there, poncing around for an encore before an opening night crowd singing along with our version of a Gilbert and Sullivan song, the only line now remaining with me is "I never thought of taking a tickey for myself at all." Well, actually, after Mr Milligan on a later occasion himself fell into the same orchestra pit, he never brought it up first. I was not so sensitive.
From a cyclist's perspective, I never thought much of South Africa's absolutely wonderful main national roads, built after the war by Italian engineers who had been prisoners of war and decided to stay. (Of course, as a sporting motorist in the habit of setting records on public roads, I loved those Italian engineers -- and their daughters too.) Too tempting for motorists to speed and endanger a cyclist. And when you went off the main roads, a lot of the lesser roads were newly graded earth, treacherous loose stuff for bi-wheelers, and generally hard work. The surfaces on the smaller Irish roads and lanes, all blacktop, I ride may be nasty in spots and at times, but they keep the speed of motorists down in best cases (for a cyclist) to a crawl.
Amazing how many people with South African experience come on this Thorn forum. I suppose it's a sign of our bicycling sophistication...
The riders in the Isle of Man TT are practising this week, in case you forgot, and presumably racing next week. In Northern Ireland motorbike road racing is a national sport, so I'm about to investigate which of the NI channels will carry the IoM racing; we live in the far south of Ireland but we get all the NI channels by satellite: it's just a matter of sorting them out from about 500 other channels.
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Hi Andre
The Royal Hotel in Durban used to serve magnificent omelettes on Sunday evenings.
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The riders in the Isle of Man TT are practising this week
Saw the great Bill Ivy race at the first (and only :() Canadian GP in 1967. He had won the NI 200-miler earlier that year. At Mosport in Ontario, he had a 125 cc Yamaha, and broke the existing lap record on his first lap. (It had been set by a Toronto rider on a 500 Manx Norton.) His 12-spd Yamaha made a colossal row at 16,000 RPM on the back straight. He also raced a Yamaha V-4 against Hailwood's 250 Honda 6 in the 250cc race. The two of them could've been covered with a blanket for 8 laps, when Ivy's engine seized. (It was a cold Saturday in late September, and the Yamaha's motor probably wasn't used to such things.) The Honda at 20,000-plus and the Yamaha 4 at 16,000 made an unforgettable scream.
The 500 race featured Hailwood on Honda's 500 four, and Agostini on the MV triple. Hailwood won--Ago had only to finish in the top 3 to win the championship. I watched the race from the outside of the hairpin. Hailwood used all of the track to get through--the 85 bhp Honda was barely controllable. Ago was much tidier--he was giving away 15 bhp. The only rider to stay on the same lap, about 30 seconds behind, was the Canadian Mike Duff, a former factory rider for Yamaha but riding that day as a privateer on a Matchless G50. (The Matchy was about 30 bhp down on the Honda.) Duff was the smoothest of them all.
That race was Hailwood's last FIM race, and Duff's last as a professional rider. I met Duff in 1990: he had transitioned to Michelle Duff, and was speaking in Ottawa about that change, and his history with AJS 7Rs and G50s in the early 1960s, before he signed with Yamaha. She signed a b-&-w photo of her former self on the Matchless, which I'd taken during that race.
I watched part of the pre-race goings-on from the roof of the pits. (Imagine doing that today!) One of the 500 bikes was a single-cyclinder Vincent Grey Flash -- I never knew there was such a thing.
Grand times.
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I watched part of the pre-race goings-on from the roof of the pits. (Imagine doing that today!)
What a charmed life you led, John.
Today the Mounty sniper on the tower will shoot you on principle before you can commit a terror attack. The security services are paranoid about overlooks and other heights. We used to be a lot freer in the last century.
Hey, Mike, your omelette-scarfing at the Royal in Durban reminds me of the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne in the early 1970s. The first reporter to interview me when I settled in Melbourne introduced me to their omelettes; they were served in only one of the restaurants, so you had to know where to go. But what impressed me even more than the omelette was that the weekend chef could make an outstanding split pea soup. I was disappointed when I discovered he too was a South African, as I had hopes of split pea soup being an Australian specialty -- nothing warms you through faster after a cold winter ride. The swill that you could get when the pubs emptied on Spring Street from a man with a cart, which had a meat pie in the so-called pea soup and was called "a floater", was "a national and international disgrace" according to Bruce Cavalier (you might remember him as the cartoonist Cav); I didn't try it twice for fear of becoming a floater myself. Buzz, the resident wit of our circle said, "The floater is an Oz manhood passage: if you hurl a duke, you lose."
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Jeez, here we are 2 1/2 months after the last post: were there no "Rides of 2024" in the meantime?
A wee update, then: Ron & I finished our tour of W Qué a month ago, and I've not done a lot of cycling since then, beyond errands on my city bike. We have had a serious heatwave, with humidex values in the low 40s, and I don't do outdoor exercise in such conditions -- imagine, I dunno, Dar-es-Salaam in January without the onshore winds. Beyond that, there's been far too much busy-ness going on, mainly in the form of maintenance -- roofing repairs (unplanned and a headache, but welcome), the usual electronic/digital niggles, and sundry bodily tuneups (essential, but happily, also manageable).
And: some post-tour tweaks to Freddie. The whys and wherefores are due to appear in the last posts & photos of our tour, but briefly: in the last ten days, I've swapped out Freddie's 650B x 1.6" Marathon Supremes (now well into their third season, with no problems at all), plus their related Velo Orange fluted alloy fenders, for a pair of Panaracer 650B x 48 Gravelking slicks and matching pair of Velo Orange smooth silver alloy 58mm fenders.
I made a gentle preliminary riverside ride on Sunday: just an hour or so, but enough for a sudden short-but-heavy shower, which Freddie's enormous new fenders barely noticed.
Today, I rode across the river and "up the Gatineau" a ways -- my usual there-and-back to Pink Lake lookout. Last Friday, we had about 22 hours of on-and-off rain, but in West Qué and especially in Montréal, the precip was altogether different. Montréal set a one-day rainfall record with about 175mm. All that water overwhelmed the city's storm sewers, and more than 500,000 people were left without electricity. Closer to home, small villages just north of Ottawa declared states of emergency, and -- this was more an inconvenience than anything, it must be said -- the parkways in Gatineau Park were closed to all traffic. That was mainly to allow maintenance crews to assess and repair any damage.
In the event, this afternoon I rode only as far as my shorty "aller-retour", and covered the 33 kms in rather less than two hours.
Three photos below show the highlights: #1 is Freddie leaning against the wooden railings of the lookout at Pink Lake, showing off his fancy new oversized shoes and shiny fenders. #2 is mid-August/late summer foliage -- everything green, with a fine blue mid-afternoon sky. Unfortunately, the lake is rather too green as well :( (I first went swimming in Pink Lake almost exactly 60 years ago, and it wasn't green at all -- dark, 'cos deep, but no algae. That's a more recent development, if "development" is the word I want -- a product of various chemical runoffs into the lake.) #3 is a more cheerful roadside patch of goldenrod. This is considered a "weed", the name reserved for unwanted plants. In this setting, sez this passing cyclist, I think it enhances the roadside verge. Further back in the day, growing up on a farm 300 kms southwest of here, I understood why many people considered it a weed: it ripened about the same time as the season's crop of wheat, and a farmer does not want its seeds mixed in with his or her kernels of wheat. Context is content, as always.
In the event, Freddie & his new tires handled the tarmac very well, and my lingering fitness from our July tour let me climb the hills at a BSE pace.
Longer rides to come n the weeks ahead, including a ride up the the "summit", Champlain Lookout, now that the roads are open again.
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Pink Lake looks like it is being choked off by that green blanket. The visibly watery spots under the trees however do give me hope that when the weather turns colder the algae -- or whatever has brought The Day of the Triffids to Pink Lake -- will die away.
Grand photos, as always, John. I especially liked the Goldenrod. I'm imagining some country council employee riding up on his bike with his fork over his shoulder, turning over a piece of the land, spreading the seeds out of his hand, and riding back into the dusk with his fork over his shoulder, whistling a folk tune.
No, really. When I was a boy grand figures like the town's health inspector, when my mother asked him to come deal with the bats in the lofts, and to give the builders instruction in where to block off their entry, arrived on his official bicycle. (Actually, he did none of that. He instead told my mother, "If you chop down those two loquat trees, the bats will follow their food and go bother the loquats and lofts of your neighbour down the hill.") His son was at school with me and let me ride his father's cast-off bicycle, "a real adult bike", two common marbles per ride, or two rides for one marble-shattering steel goonie of which I had arranged the exclusive supply by offering to help my dad build a monstrous camping truck over forty feet long, with a convertible BMW Isetta bubble car* on a ramp behind to go buy bread and milk, at an engineering firm -- with a very interesting scrapyard -- in which he'd bought an interest. Some years later I embarrassed the only local communist, Red Jim, in the year when it was his turn to be mayor, by exposing him in the newspaper for interfering in the perquisite of council employees when their bicycles were replaced to pass the old bike on to their sons. The town clerk, the guy with the actual power, issued an emergency declaration that the town council had no interest whatsoever in the old bicycles of their employees when they were replaced by new bicycles, and and that "all members feel strongly" that they were building bonds with sons who might one day inherit their fathers' jobs.
*This was the bubble car I later notoriously fitted up with a Jaguar 5.3 litre V12 from an E-Type I crashed, on rails out the back, replacing a 350cc BMW motorcycle engine... I also made a cycle-wheel (literally -- bicycle wheels from the scrap) electric car with a motor and batteries I found and sophisticated Ackerman steering, and used to drive it to the hardware store with shopping lists, and turned it into an electrical tricycle when the cops got bolshie. Mmm, so my current electric bike is my fourth electric bike.
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Thanks as always, Andre - glad you like the goldenrods. I reckon they must've been planted -- living with Marcia's garden has taught me that birds and squirrels aren't usually so orderly/tidy/compulsive in spreading the seeds of "weeds". But I confess I hadn't given any thought to who might have planted that splendid golden streak. The park & its roads and trails are the responsibility of the National Capital Commission (one of several levels of jurisdiction/agencies of governance in the Ottawa/Gatineau region). Much as I applaud its restrictions on motor vehicles in the park (so as to promote "active transportation"), I find it hard to imagine a mischievous minor official gathering/hoarding goldenrod seeds, and then heading out on a bike before or after work to spread them along the verge. But then, as Fats Waller would've said, "One never knows, do one?"
Isetta! Wow! That's a name rarely heard nowadays. A mate in high school had one. We would play tricks on him by lifting it from his parking spot onto a sidewalk. In Canada, they were nearly as rare as a BMW single. Then again, when I was teaching in Zambia betw 1969 and 1971, a friend had one of the original Honda Civics (was it called that?? blessed if I can remember), which had a 360cc OHC twin, lifted from the common and excellent 350cc motorcycle. (I think the 450 from the "Black Bomber" bike would've upended the wee car.) We were visiting Botswana one time, near the point in the Zambesi where Zam, Zim, Bot and Namibia come together, with elephants wandering around in Bot and a machinegun nest covering the ferry to & from Zambia. Stopped in the game park in Botswana, we were bemused and then slightly terrified to see an elephant approach the Honda head-on. I said to my friend, "Er, put it in neutral, Hilary, and switch off the motor." The elephant dipped its head and front knees, moved us a few feet backwards with its trunk, then turned away to strip some foliage off a tree. We exhaled, then e v e r s o s l o w l y started the car and backed away.
Great times.
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John, I had a Honda Civic 45 years ago in Dubai. Called a rabbit, I think.
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John, I had a Honda Civic 45 years ago in Dubai. Called a rabbit, I think.
A Honda by the name of Rabbit? Doubtful, Matt, if only because the vW Golf was called a Rabbit in the States about that time; the booted version was called a Fox. Car companies don't like sharing even numbers (by common agreement, Peugeot has all the -0- numbers like 504, Porsche has all the 9-- numbers like 928, examples abound), never mind names.
John, BMW licensed the Isetta from the Italian Iso company; the BMW version was extremely well built (I don't remember ever seeing an Iso version before it presumably rusted away); ours was a little holiday car to go buy camping necessities and therefore a convertible, but there was no body shake and of course no rattles.
The first time I saw a Honda Civic it was a rather small hatchback c1970 but the engine IIRC was 1200cc, a proper small car. (I imagine it was sold in the Japanese home market with an 800cc or even a 600cc engine for tax reasons.) I agreed to test it for an Australian paper because it had what was then a huge novelty, an optional automatic gearbox in a small car the requirements of which explain the bigger-than-then-normal engine. I invited one of those guys who're always going on about how we should consume less (I didn't have a bike but he'd bring an extra to the door to induce me to cycle with him) to give an opinion. We tried for nearly an hour to get a common medium size road bike into the back and it wouldn't fit though the cardboard we used to protect the paintwork got pretty mangled. For comparison, the majority of small cars today will take a road bike when the rear seats are down, and you'll be able to close the hatch.
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I think there was a Nissan Cedric and also a Toyota(?) Fanny. Some names transit continents so well. Group think at its finest. Unofficially my Nomad is named Henry. There’s no implied reference to my relative corpulence or regard for monarchs. Rather it’s a reminder of my late labrador.
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I think there was a Nissan Cedric and also a Toyota(?) Fanny. Some names transit continents so well. Group think at its finest.
Another small Japanese car was a Jiminy. And a famous car that never was, the Toyo Motor Company's entry into America, with the ultimate group-think name: the Toyolet.
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Toyolet ! 🤣 🤣 Brilliant although you’ve unleashed my muse. I’ve heard there is now a Kia Starmer for the UK market. Apparently it’s got a very quick reverse gear and a turning circle the size of a sixpence!
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“You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.” — Francis Urquhart
Every time I see a photograph of Sir Keir, I fear he will dance into song, misquoting Gilbert and Sullivan as “I never thought of taking a tickey for myself at all.“ I doubt we will ever discover he is cyclist. I miss Boris’s elegant 1896 Pedersen already.
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A full two months since the last post...
But we're past Thanksgiving now, and yesterday, the temps were in the mid-'20s, with a forecast pointing to a dramatic drop before the end of the week. So, out of the shed and across the river and into the trees, in search of autumn foliage. I rather knew what to expect -- a month back, I had made a similar ride, and the foliage had barely changed, so weird-and-wonderfully warm were the temps. (With apologies The Usual Busyness pre-empted any post and photos.)
I'd hoped to do a longer ride than the usual up-and-down to Pink Lake, but The Usual Busyness allowed just a nice'n'sweaty two hours. Since we had some serious deluges in the first half of August, we've had very little rain at all, and the woods in the Gatineau were sooooo dry. No gurgling streams as I climbed the bikepath to the park, just stagnant pools amid rocks.
Dryness combined with rocky hills and shallow soil, and there was no spectacular foliage -- just muted browns, gold-and-bronze, and copper.
We'll have to rework Bliss Carman's ode to autumn in Eastern Canada:
Along the line of smoky hills, the crimson forest stands.
Along the line of dusty hills, the withered forest stands,
And all day long the blue jay calls, throughout the autumn lands.
And all day long the blue jay squawks,
"Alright you humans, now you've bloody gone and done it!"
But I managed a couple of photos from the park that show the state of play -- see #s 1 and 2 below. A splendid cobalt sky, but a bleached-out view due east from Pink Lake lookout. #3 shows Freddie leaning against his shed in our back yard. The bright golden foliage shows what some rich clay/loam soil (the ancient river- and lake-bed, post-Ice-Age) and better watering will do -- all the rain off the northern half of our roof is channelled to the maple and locust in the photo.
All for this season, I should think. The cold and frosts of November will soon be upon us, and with those, the dreaded black ice on the roads in the Gatineau. And then, if the drought breaks, to be followed by snow enough for cross-country skiing.🤞
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That blue sky is indeed spectacular, but the trees behind Pink Lake seem some way from a consensus on whether autumn has actually arrived.
From habit we put the central heating on at the beginning of October, and I've thought several times about switching it off again because the daytime temps here have been 17 degrees C and over, totally out of order -- too high -- for this time of the year.
Looks like the autumn has arrived more firmly in your yard than at the lake.
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Winter is coming to the west coast of Canada. Last night it was raining and 1 degree in the valley, which means snow on the mountains. I got out today for a 30km spin before the "bomb cyclone' arrives tonight. A "bomb cyclone' is a rapidly deepening low pressure system where the pressure drops at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. That means wind, and lots of it. Fortunately, I live far enough from the expected path that the wind should only peak at 70 km/h. The west and north coasts of Vancouver Island will get hammered with 90 km/h sustained wind and 120 km/h gusts. No cycling there!
Here are some photos from the ride. Depending on how cold the air is tonight, and how windy it is tomorrow, I may have some snowier pics.
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All good wishes on surviving the Bomb Cyclone, Ron. We're getting it here in Oregon as well, with similar windspeeds on the Coast and here in the Valley with expected aerial flooding overnight and deep snow in the Cascades.
As I write this my lights are flickering, I can hear the wind moan outside my office window, and the crash I just heard is likely my "ThunderCan" (wheeled recycling bin) tipped over by the last gust. I had planned a bike ride today, but decided the better course was to trim the ornamental crabapple branches away from the powerline to the house, "just in case". Far better to be ready and not need it than otherwise, for electricity is capable of wondrous things, both good and bad.
Loved your photos as usual. Batten down the hatches!
Stay safe and best wishes, Dan.
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Spectacular scenery in your backyard, Ron. I trust that house in the path of the glacier isn't yours...
Hope y'all are snug inside when the bomb cyclone hits.
Yesterday was the first day of the winter here in West Cork, taken by the temperature rather than the calendar. Four Celsius shading into 3 degrees. I used to know some people, a whole family of artists, who first settled on the Wild Atlantic Way north of Galway. When the winter struck, someone told them it is generally 2C warmer in West Cork, so they upped sticks and moved across the country.
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Dramatic scenery Ron. Thanks for sharing.
Since late October much of the UK weather has been influenced by a blocking anticyclone. So we’ve had relatively dry conditions and light winds, mostly sub 10 miles/hour, great for cycling providing it’s not drizzling. However, a downside is a persistent oppressive blanket of cloud or ‘anticyclonic gloom’. Some places recorded zero minutes of sunshine for the whole of the first week of November. Not great for solar or wind power generation. I note the Germans have a one word for this situation, ‘Dunkelflaute’.
A dramatic change in the weather is forecast for Saturday with a cyclone hurtling in from the west.
Here in S Gloucestershire north of Bristol we caught an icy Arctic blast yesterday with snow showers and this morning a frost but cleared to a gorgeous sunny day, light WNW wind, 5 degrees feeling like 2 moderated by the sunshine.. An exercise ride delayed start until 11am to reduce risk of encountering slippery patches and headed north for a short 16mile round trip via Berkeley in the Severn Vale.
1. Looking North West coming in to the hamlet of Hill. The East bank of the R Severn is about 2.5 miles away. The low line of dark high ground in the far distance is the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire on the other side of the River. Some of yesterday’s dusting of snow still lying in a forest clearing on the far left.
2. Library and cottages in Hill, and behind the cottages the hill in Hill.
3. Looking South East the midday sun over the Water Meadows below Berkeley Castle (they were designed to be flooded as another means of defence) and in the centre far distance the Cotswold edge around Nibley and Wotton under Edge.
4. Between Lower Stone and Rockhampton heading south, homeward bound.
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Batten down the hatches!
The bomb cyclone appears to have made a hard left just in time to spare my area. The forecast winds were for 90 km/h overnight but we barely had a hint of wind. A mere 30 km west of us there are many power outages due to downed trees, and on Vancouver Island the highest recorded gust was 160 km/h. I hope you fared well down there
I trust that house in the path of the glacier isn't yours...
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No it's not, but, it could have been! 30 years ago (this week) when we were looking for a new home, we actually put a bid on that very property. Our offer was not accepted. The house you see is not the one from 30 years ago. The property has since been sold, the house bulldozed, and McMansion put up in its place.
Here in S Gloucestershire north of Bristol we caught an icy Arctic blast yesterday
Tony, your arctic blast even rated a story in the Vancouver Sun newspaper (yes, I still read a printed paper) this morning.
It looks like you're in a lovely area for riding. After having had taste of Scotland in September, I'd love to check out other areas of the UK and Ireland
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Wonderful photos, Tony, especially the last one of the tree-trunk-tunnel over the lane on your way home.
Your photo of the repurposed phone box reminds me that I too have a relic of Doctor Who's travels in my landscape here in southwest Ireland, albeit customised by its present owner, alas no longer in the fire-engine red of yours:
(http://coolmainpress.com/BICYCLE%20Kilmacsimon%20return%20288pix%20high/IMG_4906.JPG)
And it looks like I included my doppelgänger in the next photo:
(http://coolmainpress.com/BICYCLE%20Kilmacsimon%20return%20288pix%20high/IMG_4895.JPG)