Super photos as always, Rual. The water of the loch looks very calm.
These past ten days, we've finally had some standard-issue summer weather -- sunny, light winds, warm days and fresh-to-cool evenings. It's been a blessed relief from the rainy days of late spring and early summer.
I'm doing a few days rides into the hills as prep for a short there-and-back to Toronto in early September. This will be about 10 days of riding, approx 1000 kms plus another 100 by train entering and leaving The Big Smoke. My route will take me W & N from Ottawa (in the direction of the photo below, taken this past Saturday) into the Madawaska Highlands and then westward through the Haliburton Highlands to the area near Georgian Bay, north of Toronto. All this is through the lake and river country of the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. I'll camp about 60% of the time, staying with friends and family for the balance.
I'll spend a few days in Toronto with our daughter, and will introduce myself and Osi the Raven to the fellow who is the Rohloff agent in Canada. After that, I'll return to Ottawa via the north shore of Lake Ontario. Near Kingston, and the eastern end of the lake, I'll angle NE to Ottawa, more or less following the 200-km route of the rideau Canal, with its 49 locks. (A paddling route for another summer.)
I've tested a few tweaks on the bike over the past few weeks:
> With encouragement from Ron Seguin in Vancouver, I've mounted a set of 26 x 1.8 Naches Pass tires from Compass Tires in Seattle. These are the standard (rather than super-light) items, but at about 340 gms they're some 30% lighter than my 26 x 1.6 Marathon Supremes (and less puncture-resistant too, I'm told.) Inflated, they measure 41 mm rather than the advertised 45.7. I inflated the front tire to just over 45 PSI, the the rear to just over 50. They were
very comfortable on a first ride of about 60 kms. I was not noticeably faster over the 3-plus hours of my hilly ride, but the Raven did seem to roll a bit faster on the steeper downgrades, and was perhaps slightly faster on the milder uphills. I'll keep them for day rides. For touring, I'll continue to use either my Marathon Supremes or my Maxxis Overdrive Elite 26 x 1.75 (actual inflated width: 40 mm.)
> Having tried both 1.6 Marathon Supremes, and 1.75 Maxxis O'drive Elites, I'm still looking for a little more volume in my touring tires. Both of the above are good tires, and have at least a couple of seasons left in them. In the future, I'll look closely at the 26 x 2.0 Supremes.
> In June and July, I tried a different shoe-and-pedal arrangement. For shoes, I tried a pair of FiveTen MTB shoes -- I wanted cycling shoes that I could wear off the bike when touring. The FiveTen shoes use SPD cleats, so I mated them to a pair of Shim T-400 Click'r pedals. The experiment didn't give me better results than the Sidi shoes with Look pedals that I have been using. The FiveTen shoes are robust (but a bit clunky), and while they are better for walking than my Sidis (with Kool Kovers on the cleats), they were less comfortable after six or seven hours on the bike than my Sidis. It came down to comparing inconveniences. I decided to keep my Sidis and Look cleats/pedals, live with an extra pair of shoes in my touring kit (lightweight Dawgs), and have supremely comfortable cycling shoes. Having comfortable feet on the bike is becoming more important as I get older--I'm having more discomfort from neuromas, and from calcification of toe joints
A secondary consideration is that the T-400 Click'r pedals and SPD cleats felt less positive and secure than the Look pedals and cleats.
> Still testing the use of dry bags on my front rack, to save weight. (My Arkel T-28 panniers are well made, durable, and have very satisfying pockets, but a pair weighs almost 2 kgs.) I had a couple of drybags in my paddling kit, which I fastened to my Arkel front rack with RokShok straps. (See photo #2 below) These gave me comparable volume and a weight saving of about 1.5 kgs. The fastening setup proved to be OK on an overnight micro-tour in W Québec, but I'm awaiting a pair of back-ordered 13-ltr bags from Alpkit, which have better fastening loops:
https://www.alpkit.com/products/airlok-xtra-13-litreMore reports to come, in due course.
