Back in the saddle again, and it felt soooo good: first rides of 2016
‘Round about the nominal first day of spring in these parts, March 21st, we begin to feel like characters in Ursula LeGuin’s story
The Left Hand of Darkness, living forever on a cold planet. We thought we’d done a time-consuming and expensive workaround this year, visiting our son and his family on Australia’s Gold Coast for Feb and March, and returning a week ago in early April. I was looking forward to getting Osi the Raven on the road, three-plus months after my last ride on Christmas Eve afternoon, 2015.
We are to the weather gods as flies to wanton boys, however—they torment us for their sport. (Thanks, Will—you’re cool with the minor adaptation, I trust?) In the four days after our return, we had 35 cms of snow, along with rain, ice pellets, freezing rain, the whole nine yards. The weather began to break on Monday, and then yesterday the snow had melted enough to let me take a 90-minute ride in the city. Today dawned bright, sunny, and cool, but for the first time since we left Oz we heard birdsong when we woke, so we decided that yes, this is the Real Thing, and no, we won’t live on a cold planet for the rest of our days.
Over the last couple of days, then, I’ve done my first two rides of 2016. They were pretty modest affairs, to be sure, but being back in the saddle again after 3-plus months felt soooo good.
On Apr 12, I did a 90-minute loop through the city: East along the bikepath beside the big river to the north side of Parliament, a brief climb beside the locks (all seven of them) to the canal, a few kms south to the Experimental Farm, then back home through a dilapidated urban forest. No daffodils, no wildlife beyond the crows, no leaves on the trees yet; but happily, barely any traffic either. This is a route that will be awash with colour in a few weeks, when the tulips are in full bloom, but yesterday it was pretty drab, the grey sky matching the dirty remnants of last week’s snowbanks. I didn’t care – it was mild, there was no rain in the grey clouds, and I was on the bike again.
Here’s the loop:
http://tinyurl.com/z9xewwk (If you look at the satellite view, or even better, the google street view, you get a nice splash of greenery.)
Today, with a bright sun easing the effects of a brisk northwesterly, I decided to ride across the river and into the Gatineau hills, hoping to follow my usual training route for a couple of hours at least. The river is in spate, although slightly lower than it has been in recent years: Photo #1 below shows some healthy standing waves. There were a couple of river-surfers at play—brave souls—and I caught one in Photo #2, in a sweet spot on the upstream slope of a big wave. I carried on into the Gatineau Park, riding on the Parkway itself for a change. The bike paths still had several inches of granular wet snow in the northern shadow of trees, so were not really an option. The roads leading to the park, happily, were empty of cars, so I cruised along in 10-11-12, nodding to a handful of cyclists. It was too good to last, though: as soon as I got a couple of kms into the Park itself, the snow cover increased in depth as I climbed into the hills. See photo #3. No point in going any further; with any luck, in the next few days enough of the snow will melt to allow us to reach the lookouts at the summit. Still, the ride along the river to the Park was enjoyable. Lots of fat geese and ducks which had wintered here were waddling beside the paths, though there were no goslings or ducklings to be seen. The afternoon sun on the river is a marvellous sight at any time of year, and the sky was a magnificent blue.
Aside from helping my soul to regain its equilibrium, these rides, and those to come, will let me get back into training, and to test a few tweaks on my Raven. I’m planning a tour in the Western Mountains in late June and early July, and have made some adjustments which I want to check:
- First is a change in pedals and shoes. In a search for shoes which I can wear off the bike, I’ve relegated my Sidi shoes and Look pedals to my day-ride bike, my Eclipse. The Raven now has a very nice pair of MKS Light Touring flat pedals, mated to a set of Bike Attitude plastic toe clips. (The latter as nowhere near as chic as proper steel-and-leather clips, but they do not rust, and even more important, they’re wide and boxy enough for my large feet. To go with the pedals and clips, I found a pair of Pearl Izumi shoes that promise to work well on and off the bike: http://www.mec.ca/product/5045-822/pearl-izumi-x-alp-seek-vii-cycling-shoes-mens/?h=10+50002+50026&f=10+50002+50026 These have the necessary stiff sole, with just enough flex at the toes to allow some walking. The Sidis are brilliant for cycling, but they do only one thing.
- Secondly, I’ve decided to change my charging-and-lighting setup. Until now, I have had dual charging and lighting circuits on the Raven with my SON28 hub powering both a Trelock 40-lumens headlight and a Sinewave charger. The hub works one or the other quite well for my requirements, but if I am using the headlamp for most of a day’s riding, there isn’t enough extra power to charge anything more demanding than my small candy-bar cellphone. So, following a recommendation in a thread on crazyguy, I’ve decided to use a battery-powered headlight (I’ve always used battery-powered tail lights) during the day, and to use the Sinewave charger to (re)charge an Anker Astro E-1 cache battery. The Anker will then do the necessary after the day’s riding: recharging my headlight or camera, AA or AAA batteries as required for tail lights or my small Garmin e-Trex, or my small cellphone. The Anker has a healthy capacity (5200mAh), and I use my battery-powered devices intermittently, rather than continuously. I think that, between the Anker and occasional use of the mains, I should be OK. I’ll test all this in a couple of short tours in Eastern Ontario before I leave for the West in late June.
More to come as shoes, pedals, and lighting—not to mention my legs and lungs--get more prolonged and demanding use. (And more photos, too, as we move into spring and early summer.)
