RIDES 2017 — add yours here

[Andre Jute]

Even the youngest and most energetic of us can't go everywhere. But a moment's reflection shows that it isn't a hardship. Through the photographs on this forum we can tour vicariously wherever another member has toured. Share your rides and photographs here. I'll start us off:

In Ireland the beginning of 2017 was mild enough, down in the single digits Celcius, true, but with no ice on the roads. If you've ever been to Bantry Bay in the far South of Ireland, and looked up at the cellar mast on the hill high, high above the town around the bay, and said, "No, that's too much like hard work," you will know from where I took this photo.

Andre Jute: Bantry Bay from the cell tower hill, 2017, with favorite hill walks in the distance

It's about five miles out of town and you can see the elevation. Might be dangerous getting there if the road is icy but when it is dry it is steep but passable standard Irish farm lanes, meaning narrow blacktop with considerate drivers. You get there from the main square in the town by taking the narrow lane up past the hotel and turning right; then you just take the uphill turn at every fork until you come to the phone company's big gates, and I'll be standing in the picnic-spot parking on your left, waiting for you to bring the beer.

As you can see from the quality of the light at about 3.30pm, the day is short, with sunset due in about an hour. You want to keep this is mind on rides in Ireland in the winter, as even with good dynolamps the rough little roads can slow down nighttime return journeys to near enough double the outgoing time; you don't want those left behind to send out search parties for no reason at all.

This time of the year it is too dangerous underfoot for serious hillwalking, but here's another one, which should be called "Dreams for deeper into the year." The two snowy peaks in the far distance are The Paps, relatively easy climbing, and surrounded by mountains I've been up either on foot or, if there is any kind of a road, by bicycle.

Andre Jute: The Paps across Bantry Bay 2017

Behind me, on my left, there's also the Durrus Peninsula, which features an agreeable circular short day-ride over not too high hills, good, especially in winter, when the party is large and includes many intermittent riders bravely venturing out with the hard men, lured by my promise that on my rides nobody is left behind.

Looking forward keenly to your rides and photos.

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Andre, for continuing/renewing your thread. Great photos, and I'm hugely envious that you can ride. Yesterday we had the second ice storm in 10 days--freezing rain is usually part of an Eastern Ontario winter, but I don't recall seeing it so frequently. Lots of power outages on both sides of the river.

I saw two cyclists during a morning walk today -- the cyclepaths had been ploughed and salted, so were manageable, if barely.

On New Year's Eve morning, I was X-country skiing for a couple of hours up in the hills -- it was -13, with wind-driven snow, so I made it only a short-ish outing, 10 kms or so. I did see a clutch of fatbike riders on one of the snowshoeing trails. I confess I had no urge to say, "Dang! Wisht I had one of those right now."

So far, watching others is the closest I've come to a "Ride of 2017".  I plan to make amends in Feb & March, though, as we're visiting our son & his family in SE Queensland, and I'll take a bike along on this trip.

Happy New Year, and safe and enjoyable riding around The Holy Ground.

[jags]

Great wee country we live in Andre .
i haven't been out on the bike in a month and with this new build going on i borrowing stuff from my roadbike to get the audax built ,it looks like i wont be cycling for a while yet.
i've never been to your part of the country sure look's  lovely .

anto.

[Pavel]

Weather here is only 63 Fahrenheit  ( 17 C), so a bit too cold to go out riding still.  Soon though!

I need to set up my server, something I've been putting off for over a year, so that I can upload photos. Photos sure do inspire.

[David Simpson]

Weather here is only 63 Fahrenheit  ( 17 C), so a bit too cold to go out riding still.

Yeah, you don't want to risk frostbite.   Try to avoid riding when the temperature is below 20C (risk of a slight chill) or above 22C (risk of sweat).

Joking aside, here in Vancouver, we're stuck in an unusually long cold snap. It's been at freezing or below for the past 4 weeks. Normally, the snow lasts a week or two, then is washed away in a matter of days by the rain. I haven't been on my bike since early December due to ice on the roads and bike lanes. Hopefully in a week or two we'll be back to normal.

- DaveS

[martinf]

Cold here in South Brittany too, but nowhere near as low as Canada, temperatures have generally been just below freezing in the morning, low positive later in the day.

High humidity means slippery patches some mornings.

I fitted studded tyres on my Raven Tour utility bike at the beginning of the cold spell in December, so have been using that this week. Only for short local rides - shopping runs, etc.

It was a bit drier last week (2016), so no road ice. I managed a couple of longer rides (56 km to work and back) on the Raven Sport Tour.

[Andre Jute]

Great to see you all back at the start of a new cycling year.

A cyclist's temperature scale for the South of Ireland in general and West Cork in particular.

19ºC Heatstroke territory. Open the freezer door and sit in front of it.
17ºC Which idiot joked, "Bring back global warming. We'll sweat right through our clothes if we ride in this heat!"
16ºC If only we could have a little sunshine with the warmth. Those clouds are so gloomy.
14ºC If only there were some clouds to keep the heat in, it would be warmer.
13ºC Normal summer temperature. We'll soon find something else to complain about.
12ºC The year's turned already, and it is only August. Did you blink and miss the summer?
11ºC Maybe it ain't the South of France, but the lorry drivers aren't crazy Frenchmen either.
10ºC SNAFU.
8ºC Most of the year. No comment, unless it is a "soft day", which is tourist bureau-speak for "pissing down".
7ºC Soon it will be too dangerous to go hillwalking. It'll be cycling or nothing.
6ºC Deceptively inviting, especially from November through February. Hedgerows and trees cast shadows on narrow country lanes. Black ice forms. And stays. Results: predictable. But the knowledgeable and experienced can ride intermittently throughout the winter.
5ºC Breakpoint. You can still ride if you choose your roads and times very carefully. All rides are heroic.
4ºC Usually accompanied by bad winds. If you fall you could break a hip. Better stay in bed.
3ºC Nothing, as predicted. Grim wind chill factor. Too cold to cycle.
2ºC Main roads may be salted, but in these high winds do you really want to mix it with traffic at 120kph?
1ºC Don't even think of it. Turn over in bed, pull up the duvet, and dream of cycling next spring.
0ºC and under Are you crazy? I'm not taking a custom steel bike out into the salt and slush.

[rualexander]

A few pics from the first few rides of 2017.

[Danneaux]

Outstanding as usual, Rual, and such a treat to see. Thanks so much for sharing these.

All the best,

Dan.

[jags]

A few pics from the first few rides of 2017.

great eye for taking photos.

anto.

[John Saxby]

Brilliant as always, Rual, and the last of the three is outstanding - that arc of cloud is a magnet for the eye.

So here we are on Jan 22, and today I took my Raven for a short canter through the neighbourhood and around the Experimental Farm.  We have had, I dunno, what seems like a weeklong chinook -- soft wet winds from the SW, our blanket of snow receding under a steady drizzle, à la Vancouver or Foggie Olde, and the sun is nowhere to be seen. 4 degrees today, and in the Arctic, the temps are 20 - 30 warmer than "normal".

I had stopped riding in late November, and in November and the first part of December, we had a lot of snow and cold, and that was followed by a stretch of freezing rain. I figured I'd not be riding again in Ottawa until April or so, but today was decent cycling weather, so I took advantage of it.

There was a lot of water on the roads from the melting snowbanks, and a brisk wind from -- of all directions -- the SE.  I did an hour-long loop, fairly light traffic, at least a dozen cyclists out and about, and I even managed 14th on a long gentle downhill :-)

No photographs--it's just a bunch of shades of dirty grey snow and wet brown tree trunks--but I did test a tweak I've just made on the Raven:  I lowered my alloy fenders so that they now have the recommended 20mm of clearance above the tires. They're 650B in size, mated to 26 x 1.6 Marathon Supremes, so the clearance had been close 30 mm, something of the "motocross" effect. Some spacers solved the problem, along with an adjustment of the stays.  I also replaced my front leather mudflap with this item from Dutch Bike Bits: http://www.dutchbikebits.com/mudguards-chainguards-fenders-coatprotectors/mud-flaps/bibia-touring-mudflap

Everything worked well--very little spray of grit and water onto the drive train.  (I had deliberately left the Hebie Chainglider at home, to see how the fender-and-mudflap tweak worked.)

Next post I make on this thread will come (I hope!) from Australia's Gold Coast, complete with some photos (Insh'allah). We set sail for there (so to speak) two weeks from today.

[geocycle]

This weekend's ride took me to the Neolithic, Castlerigg stone circle Cumbria:

[geocycle]

Great pictures Rual, love the clouds and mists!

[Matt2matt2002]

Fantastic picture.
So many of those stones up here in Scotland.
Always makes me wonder what life was like all those years ago.

[Andre Jute]

Superb photos, Rual. That mist progresses like a steamroller!

Now that's a mudflap, John.

Looking over the photographs of the first rides this year, I wonder which of these two really is the steepest hill in West Cork:



My pedalpal, Dr Philip Michael (he's the fellow in orange in the third photo), thinks this is the steepest hill in West Cork. It certainly has several short but crucial sections that are suddenly steeper, where if you're caught in the wrong gear, you're pushing for the rest of the couple of kilometers up the hill, because you will never get started again.



Personally, I'd rather go down this one than up.

Both of these, incidentally are only a handful of miles from my house. Bandon is known, not always fondly to cyclists, as the "Rome of West Cork" because it is built on seven hills, and the surrounding countryside consists of, you guessed it, more hills. There's an upside, though: you can get plenty of exercise slogging up the hills and still only be an hour from home if persistent heavy rain starts to fall. We rate loops from my door to my door not as so many kilometers but as so many hills...



When Nelson Mandela unveiled my statue in front of the town hall on my fiftieth birthday, I declined to attend because they promised me a life-size statue and the one they made was barely nine feet tall.