Thorn Cycles Forum

Community => Non-Thorn Related => Topic started by: RonS on January 01, 2025, 11:52:50 PM

Title: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: RonS on January 01, 2025, 11:52:50 PM: Let's get the ball rolling early this year!

I got out for a quick 32 km today to get rid of last night's cobwebs :) (One drink and in bed at 10. I'm such a party animal.)

The temperature was 4° so I put my new toe covers on and gave them a try. They passed the test.

Happy new year and happy riding!

Ron

PS I wasn't riding Nozomi today so I had to "artfully crop" my non Thorn bike from the photo :)

PPS The second pic is a photo from the iPhone. It just happens to look like one of Andre's watercolours. No idea what I did for it to come out that way.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on April 25, 2025, 08:26:31 PM: Jeez, Ron, seems like "Rides of 2025" is Just a Canajan Thing. Who knew??

I know you've been riding a lot, out there in LotusLand, 'cos My People at Komoot keep me posted on your doings.

En ce qui concerne moi-même et Freddie, well, it's been a matter of a wretched late wet'n'cold spring. Last winter ('23-'24) we had just 50% of our average snowfall, only about 110 cms; this year, we had 250 cms-plus, about 12-15% more than our average. And, some of that came in the second week of April, fer gawd''s sake, 20 cms of the stuff. In Toronto, where I was for ten days in early April, people were joking about "spring" being just a malicious rumour spread by your favourite villain goes here. Gotta get/make your humour wherever you can, these days.

But, hope springs eternal, etc., etc., and today, nearly two months after the date of my first ride in 2024, I managed a very welcome 15 kms along the bikepath system through the Experimental Farm. A few short'n'steepish hills to get my heart rate up -- more, at least, than 30 minutes' skating will do, if, like me, one's still a wee bit careful about cracks in the ice, sudden stops or backward spins to avoid careless youngsters, undsoweiter.

Freddie was smooth and unfussed about everything as you'd expect, and I was whistling back-and-forth with the Northern Cardinals. These lovely birds, bless'em, are everywhere now, recent arrivals nudged waaay northwards in the last decade by climate change.

Photos to come from the next ride -- forecast is for sunshine and 20º on Monday! :)

This time last year, I was all the way up to Pink Lake in the Gatineau, but a mountain-biking acquaintance told me that the trails are still chock-a-block with snow. So, All That will probably have to wait 'til early/mid-May. You can check in from Foggie Olde to see what's what on this, Our Very Own Thread.

Do give my best to the West Country, and say hi to Sarah and all at Thorn Cycles if you're in Bridgwater.

Cheers, mate. ;)
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: Andre Jute on April 26, 2025, 12:08:13 PM: Quote from: RonS on January 01, 2025, 11:52:50 PM
The second pic is a photo from the iPhone. It just happens to look like one of Andre's watercolours. No idea what I did for it to come out that way.

My watercolors look like that because, until recently, that was what I saw and therefore painted, to be taken in the context of me not being overly set on getting exact colours, and being perfectly happy to simplify scenes that are a bit too chaotic even for "nature". In the last couple of months I had the cataracts replaced with clear lenses in both eyes, and my wife says she's looking forward to seeing what I paint after I get my new eyeglasses in a couple of weeks.

The likelihood, if this is indeed an iPhone effect on your photograph, is that HDR was accidentally switched off. HDR is a facility that shoots three photos every time you press the button once, and averages out the image from all three, thus removing the effect of an electronic "long lens" magnifying the slightest tremble. HDR is a superb convenience and I generally recommend that people keep it switched on.

The fastest way, if you want the effect and don't get it, is to run the raw image from the camera through a Mac app called Graphic Converter, and using only two of it's many impressive facilities, the filter Unsharp Mask, which you use two or three times at low settings (start at 6 pixels and work your way down until you get the right effect), followed by one of the colour filters called Auto Levels which you need to use only once. That's the easy way. It is more difficult in Photoshop.

For a painter, the effect can be achieved with special brushes, called foliage brushes, which have the hairs arranged flat with irregular gaps rather than with an even edge, combined with thickish paint and the artistic technique of dry-brushing. See the winter drees of the trees in the middle of your photo. They'd be a pain to produce with the traditional rigger's brush. Or see the moss dripping in the centre of the painting below. The top half is of the orchard behind the house which was let go about 90 years ago and the bottom half of bristle grass shooting seed, seen beside the river, which runs through town and beside all my normal rides, one day when I had to wait out the rush hour on the main road before continuing my ride. I painted the bottom half first but its background was just a view I'd painted too many times before, so I left it blank. A bit later I was tracking my fox's path from the living room patio around the old stable wall and through the orchard to the gulley with the intention of negotiating with Mrs Fox for a female cub to train up as an inside pet, when it struck me that all these broken trees made just the sort of interesting pattern I wanted as a background.

The sky in your photo is an easy hit for even new painters: float some water on the page where you want the paint to flow, wet only the tip of the brush with thinned watercolor or ink, and put the tip into the wet area, then tilt the paper to flow and graduate the colour much more progressively than you can possibly achieve by trying proactively to paint the gradation. It's so obvious that nobody ever says it, but the watercolorist's best friend is...water.

All that said, Ron, I like your photographs just as they are. If you have interesting subjects from weird and wonderful places -- and, let's face it, Canada is weird and wonderful to about 99 percent of all the people on earth, and so is Japan, and the north coast of Scotland and Hebridean Isles -- you don't need tricky post-processing, you just need to select your viewpoint intelligently and click away.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: RonS on May 26, 2025, 07:25:10 PM: Thanks for the tips, Andre. Ill check that app out.

Quote from: John Saxby on April 25, 2025, 08:26:31 PM
You can check in from Foggie Olde to see what's what on this, Our Very Own Thread.

"Foggie Olde" you say? In 23 days we had to don the Macs for a total of 5 minutes. Everyone kept telling us "It's not usually like this". I say it's a conspiracy to keep the tourists away :)

Although not a cycling vacation (that'll be September in Japan. Stay tuned!) I did manage to get in a day ride in the Cotswolds with my daughter and her partner, and my daughters and I rented Dutch bikes for a day in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam. So many bikes!

Quote from: John Saxby on April 25, 2025, 08:26:31 PM
Do give my best to the West Country, and say hi to Sarah and all at Thorn Cycles if you're in Bridgwater.

Alas, I travelled through Bridgewater on a Sunday and didn't get to visit the crew at SJS.

Here are a few pics from my day rides. The first two from the Cotswolds (an absolutely fantastic place to ride) and the last two from Amsterdam.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on May 28, 2025, 04:43:48 PM: Splendid, Ron! I get all weepy when I see that countryside -- though I was remiss in not urging you to visit the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.

Welcome back home to the mountains, in any case. And, ummmm, glad you had good weather. Maybe the UK sent their usual stuff our way: April here was wet'n'cold, occasionally even snowy. Early in May we had a false dawn (he said, mixing his metaphors but never mind), and only now, long after Vicky's day, do we have warm sunny weather.

I have managed a few rides in the past few weeks -- photos & text still awaiting posting...
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on June 11, 2025, 02:25:51 AM: Notes and photos on rides around Ottawa, Gatineau and the Ottawa River

We’ve had a late wet’n’cold spring here in Ottawa, which has at last given way to early summer. My cycling has been quite limited as a result, but here are some notes and photos of a few rides around the city and the big river from late April to late May. (There are 8 photos below, in two groups of four. Accordingly, I've broken the notes into two sections.)

The Ottawa River is a magnificent body of water, especially in the spring, with the runoff from melted snow further west and north up the Valley. This winter, we had some 275 cms of snow in the city (well over our average of 200 cms), and there was more still in the Valley and the surrounding hills. The river this spring was very full, sometimes spilling its banks over the riverside bikepaths.

Photos 1 and 2 below are closeups of rapids a short ride from home, taken in late April. #1 shows a kayaker and a paddleboarder playing in the “surf”. Both are stationary – more or less – on the upstream side of their chosen wave. This is a popular playground for paddlers – there was a dozen more awaiting their turn. #2 is a set of rapids a kilometre further downstream, about 2 kms west of downtown. These rapids spread across to the Québec side nearly a kilometre in the distance. As I write, the fierce current near the shore has ebbed considerably. The water is still cold, however, so the river is best enjoyed from dry land at the moment.

The river has a good collection of willows on the Ottawa side, where the shore often has more soil. Photos 3 and 3A show the same tree in late April and late May.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on June 11, 2025, 02:40:06 AM: (cont'd)

May is also the month for our Tulip Festival, marking the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian troops in 1945. (The Dutch government has honoured the city with a gift of tulip bulbs in perpetuity.) Photo 3B shows a splash of brilliant colour in our front garden, lovingly tended by my wife, Marcia. (‘Tis said that Marcia’s tulips are also a supplementary feeding program for the squirrels in our trees. She puts up with it all, bless her, making a virtue out of necessity by using the squirrels’ “redistribution” as an opportunity to vary her crop year by year.)

The city’s bikepath system also runs beside the Rideau Canal, which runs north-south between the Ottawa River and Kingston, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Photo 4 shows the old railway station and the Château Laurier hotel in the heart of downtown, just east of Parliament. Just past the bridge, the canal drops to the Ottawa River through eight consecutive locks. (There are 47 locks in the 202 kms between Ottawa and Kingston.) I took this photo in early May, as the scanty foliage on the trees indicates.

In mid-May, I rode upriver (westward) a few kilometres, and on a bright sunny day took a photo of Freddie beside a broad sweep of the river – see photo 5.

Ten days later, I rode across the river and into the trees of the Gatineau Park. In the spring of 2024, after we had had very little snow over the winter, the streams in the woods were really just a collection of dispirited semi-stagnant pools. This year, there was an audible and reassuring light gurgle. The late-spring foliage beside the bikepath was full, the bright light green of the hardwoods making a pleasing contrast with the conifer's dark green. (Photo 6)

And...
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on June 11, 2025, 02:41:46 AM: Sunshine and the river have the last say: As I rode down out of the hills and along the bikepath on the Gatineau side of the river, a magnificent cloudscape filled the western sky – see Photo 7.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: Danneaux on June 13, 2025, 03:52:35 AM: Absolutely stunning and very compelling, John, wow I love those photos!

Best, Dan.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: Matt2matt2002 on June 13, 2025, 12:34:31 PM: On track today for my morning spin around town
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: Jags on June 13, 2025, 04:01:56 PM: great photos john big country. 8)
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on July 02, 2025, 07:55:10 PM: Thanks, Anto. A few more below.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: John Saxby on July 02, 2025, 08:03:07 PM: Better late than never – first time to Pink Lake in 2025

On June 30, for the first time this year, I made my regular quick’n’dirty there’n’back ride to Pink Lake lookout in the Gatineau Hills across the river. In 2024, I made this ride in late April, following a low-snow winter and a warm spring. This year was at the other end of the weather spectrum – a snowy winter and a wet-and-cold spring, further complicated by eye surgery in April. So, following the advice from my eye doctors, I’ve gradually extended the length and effort of my rides over the past 6-8 weeks.
June 30 was effectively a public holiday, as the Monday before Canada Day. Happily, motor traffic was radically reduced for the 30 minutes’ ride to the bikepath leading to the southern boundary of the Gatineau Park, and the park itself was closed to motor vehicles other than the shuttle bus for visitors.

We’ve had a fair amount of rain over the past month or so, and in the week before my June 30 ride, a record-setting “heat dome”, with temperatures in the kid=30’s, and humidex (=”feels like”) levels in the mid-40s. The woods were in full mid-summer mode, with the canopy offering welcome shade, and the hardwoods offering a splendid range of greenery. (photo #1.) Pink Lake’s lovely natural setting is one thing, its green tone quite another: As both photos 1 & 2 show, the lake itself is green. This unnatural hue is the product of chemical runoff, first noticed in the 1960s. (The park authorities have an explanatory/apologetic plaque by the lookout railing titled, “Why call a green lake Pink?”) I first visited the lake as a teenager in the mid-‘60s, when it was still considered safe for swimming. That was then and this is now.

Still, it’s a splendid ride, 33 kms round trip, about an hour up and 50 minutes down. The final hill is a bit of a slog, about 1.5 kms which took me 10 minutes, in 3rd for the final few hundred metres. “Sod it, John,“ I said to myself, “Nothing left to prove, just listen to the birds and the gurgling streams.” So, I did. There were other noises in the air, as well, of course: as I entered the bikepath system in Québec beside the river, I rode through swarms of dragonflies – not at all common in semi-urban settings. Then, I realized – Of course! These guys are eating blackflies! Like everything else, the latter are a bit late this year – usually, they’re gone by the end of June.

And, as I rode down the hill from the lake, I heard the rumble of a Lancaster overhead. It was heading west (as a friend later told me) to its home in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, around the bay from Toronto. This one was built in 1946. It’s one of two remaining airworthy Lancs, the other being in the UK.

Forecast for this coming Friday is clement, so I’ll stretch the distance and workout a bit further.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: RonS on July 03, 2025, 12:19:56 AM: Great that you've finally got some weather that's conducive to a nice bike ride. And almost a year to the day that we commenced our tour of west Québec!

Here's hoping for many more enjoyable outings.
Title: Re: +++Rides of 2025+++Add yours here+++
Post by: Andre Jute on July 03, 2025, 01:15:05 AM: So many fascinating reports and stunning photographs!

I keep meaning to catch up, but the shortcut in my Favourites Menu starts at RonS's amazing photograph--
(https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15230.0;attach=21117;image)
Vincent Van Gogh is alive and well, riding on the cycle path beside the canal.
--and after appreciating it for a bit, I find I'm running out of time for the rest of the delights.

When I started these annual compilations of rides and tours back in the mists of memory, it never occurred to me that the format may be so agreeable to others that it would last this long, and be taken up so enthusiastically by those coming after.

Thank you one and all for armchair travel delights in words and images.

PS For the contributor whose wife is a painter, John Saxby's photo of the cloudscape illustrates a professional landscape painter's trick: give 80 percent of the height of the picture to the sky, and you can't go wrong tugging on the viewer's heartstrings.