Author Topic: +++Rides of 2024+++Add yours here+++  (Read 4781 times)

John Saxby

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+++Rides of 2024+++Add yours here+++
« on: March 22, 2024, 01:54:02 AM »
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.

Andre Jute

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« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2024, 12:50:43 PM »
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.

John Saxby

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« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2024, 01:32:37 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2024, 11:12:03 PM by John Saxby »

John Saxby

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« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2024, 01:53:33 AM »
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)





John Saxby

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« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2024, 02:01:40 AM »
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

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 😊 .
« Last Edit: May 22, 2024, 02:04:11 AM by John Saxby »

Mike Ayling

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« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2024, 11:06:00 PM »
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

RonS

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« Reply #6 on: May 22, 2024, 11:11:27 PM »
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.

John Saxby

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« Reply #7 on: May 23, 2024, 12:15:18 AM »
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

Andre Jute

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« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2024, 05:04:47 AM »
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.


John Saxby

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« Reply #9 on: May 27, 2024, 01:32:18 AM »
Thank you, Andre, for your kind words - esp about my photos.  ("Aw, shucks," he said, scuffling his feet & looking away  ;) )

Quote
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

Mike Ayling

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« Reply #10 on: May 28, 2024, 08:15:20 AM »
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!

Mike Ayling

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« Reply #11 on: May 28, 2024, 08:19:35 AM »

Andre Jute

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« Reply #12 on: May 28, 2024, 09:53:40 AM »
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.


Mike Ayling

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« Reply #13 on: May 28, 2024, 10:42:29 PM »
Hi Andre

The Royal Hotel in Durban used to serve magnificent omelettes on Sunday evenings.

John Saxby

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« Reply #14 on: May 29, 2024, 02:52:13 PM »
Quote
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.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2024, 03:27:08 AM by John Saxby »