Author Topic: Rides 2013 — add yours  (Read 40765 times)

jags

  • Guest
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #120 on: September 03, 2013, 03:13:09 PM »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7letrMf_nE
i'm a big neil young fan this was my party piece at the friday night session.
just restrung my guitar so maybe now that the dust is off it i'll learn a few more of neils songs. oh to be able to sing.
lots of dry stone walls here in ireland ;)

John Saxby

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2031
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #121 on: September 03, 2013, 03:51:33 PM »
Yes, Ireland was on my mind for sure, Jags. Dry stone walls in the SW of England too.  I lived in Corfe in Dorset when I was a wee kid--lovely place--and have the impression (knowing nothing about stone) that the Purbeck stone of Dorset was more workable than the granite of the Shield.  Picturesque for cycling, tough stuff to work with. 

A few years ago, a friend of mine interviewed Willie John McBride, part of making a video on the Lions' rugby tour to South Africa in 1974.  My friend asked Willie John what he did to train for that tour.  The big man took him outside, pointed to a dry stone wall and said, "I built that."

jags

  • Guest
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #122 on: September 03, 2013, 04:21:03 PM »
i seen willie john one time in a pub he sure is a giant of a man ::)
just on stone walls theres a lot of polish lads doing that work over here.
and when i was over for the benson rally going through the cotswolds we met a polish lad building a class wall outside a private house he was doing a great job.

JimK

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1652
    • Interdependent Science
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #123 on: September 18, 2013, 08:47:51 PM »

jags

  • Guest
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #124 on: September 18, 2013, 09:49:58 PM »
Class.

Danneaux

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8277
  • reisen statt rasen
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #125 on: September 19, 2013, 12:27:21 AM »
As jags, says, "Class"!  Wonderful trip out, Jim, and the distance doesn't matter -- a short tour is just as nice as a longer one, and gives yu a chance to sort the gear and technique and find what works and...doesn't.

Some really beautiful countryside in which to ride, and a corker of a camp as well. Some really steep hills, to boot!

Terrific photos of your journey, Jim, and nicely shared with the rest of us. May this be the first of many more!

All the best,

Dan.

Andre Jute

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4125
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #126 on: September 19, 2013, 12:27:44 AM »
Got in an overnight! Some photos:

http://s140.photobucket.com/user/kukulaj/library/Nomad/little%20pond%202013

Such a privilege to live in beautiful surroundings. Such beautiful photographs. If i didn't already live in West Cork...

JimK

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1652
    • Interdependent Science
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #127 on: September 19, 2013, 01:45:11 AM »
Here's the route:

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/288012183

Funny affair! I was stuck 3 hrs in Margaretville, waiting for the teenager so I could help him over the cell phone with his math. 15 minute quiz tomorrow put everyone into a panic! So lots of family stress and then it's getting late and I have to climb this hill where I have never been plus set up camp etc. Practically ten miles out of town just to where the hill starts and I have my head churning with all kinds of worry. Out in such beautiful country! Ain't life absurd!

But the wonderful thing: the climb was just beautiful, enhanced by the low light. Plus anyway I have great lighting on the bike. I did put on the flashing LED lights on the panniers to augment the main B&M taillight, just to be sure. Yeah, ha, while I was cooling my heels at the Bun 'n' Cone, some scruffy guy was on his cell phone, "Isn't your brother a lawyer? Does he handle DWI [Driving While Intoxicated]? I just had my license suspended for life! What, doesn't your brother like me, or what?" Not really the sort of thing I want to hear right before an evening ride! Very funny sort of window into the weird games that go on inside my head!

jags

  • Guest
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #128 on: September 19, 2013, 11:26:00 AM »
Jim what tent is that your using it looks great have you any issues with it as in could you improve it in any way.is there such a thing as the perfect tent..
the trangia would be to slow for me all i would be cooking is food that needs heating up like beans. tin soup.tea and coffee.thats the reason i like to have a pocket full of money resturants cafes for when i need a feed of spuds. ;D ;D
Andre's part of the world west cork  is stunning, but what spoils it is the amount of houses  dotted all over the beautifull  countryside (Celtic tiger my arse)distroyed the country in more ways than one.
just that when you guys post photos of your part of the world it looks so so different, not a house to be seen for miles  ;D ;D only joking.

JimK

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1652
    • Interdependent Science
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #129 on: September 19, 2013, 01:09:27 PM »
That's a Eureka Backcountry 1 that I slept it. That was the first time I'd used it - hardly enough for a proper review! It's a solo tent for sure - not cramped width-wise, but no way you could squeeze in another person! Length-wise there is good room - I had my handlebar bag at my head and my shoes at my feet and still plenty of room for my 5'11". Conditions were really pleasant though - no wind or rain or even insects - so not enough of a test to be meaningful!

I was trying to light the Trangia with one of those magnesium / steel spark makers. Started right up in the evening, but in the morning it just wouldn't go. I ended up taking a dry leaf, dipping it in alcohol, lighting that with my butane lighter, and touching that to the alcohol in the burner. Oh, it started up fine that way! Of course most of the leaf fell into the burner. I got a good bit fished out, but there is still some in there. And dirty alcohol doesn't burn so clean, so now my pots are a bit browned! Once it takes off though the Trangia burner puts out reasonable heat. I had intended to cook a bit more but getting into camp so late it didn't happen.

Yeah the USA sure had it's own housing boom but that didn't happen everywhere. I was living near Portland, Oregon at that time and new housing was going up like mushrooms. There is enough real economy there that I don't think that stuff has crashed too badly. Up around the Catskills where I am now, I don't think the housing boom really touched. The park itself is huge and its building restrictions would have put a damper on things. But somehow between no jobs and cold winters, it's pretty quiet here! Lots of tourism but that's about it. There's skiing but even the ski condos don't seem to have taken off. As long as plane tickets to Utah are affordable... I'm not a skier but I've heard it can be more like downhill ice skating! Vermont, too, is quite close and the skiers like that better, I hear!

Ha, here is a story! On Sunday I hiked up Twin Mountain with a friend. Great view at the peak. A few other hikers were lounging up there and snacking. Got to talking a bit. The older fellow was the author of a recent Catskills hiking guide:

http://www.amazon.com/Catskill-Hikers-Guide-Alan-Via/dp/193195108X

He told us that the younger guy had hiked every one of the 35 Catskills peaks over 3500 feet in every month of the year - yeah, must have been the fellow Ralph mentioned in this article:

http://www.catskillmtn.org/guide-magazine/articles/2007-09-the-great-outdoors.html

I mentioned that I do more bike riding than hiking. Ralph told a story where he did a century on a knobby-tired mountain bike, with many big climbs around here. He was keeping up just fine with the road bike crowd on the ride, until he got some nasty bit of wire in his tire that he couldn't find, so he would ride a couple miles and pump the tire up again - still wasn't the last person to finish!

The stuff people do!

Andre Jute

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4125
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #130 on: September 19, 2013, 11:22:32 PM »
Andre's part of the world west cork  is stunning, but what spoils it is the amount of houses  dotted all over the beautifull  countryside (Celtic tiger my arse)distroyed the country in more ways than one.

One day during the building boom I'm sitting in the back of someone's car between a couple of pretty ladies on the way home from a restaurant where we ate dinner after climbing Carrauntoohil (1038m) when one of them whispers in my ear about some offensively placed houses we passed. Not grasping why she whispered, I said aloud, "The planning officer who permitted that outrage should be emasculated so he can't breed more little crooks. And for authorizing those wretched hipped roofs, which belong in Hampshire suburbs, not the Irish countryside, he should have his ears cuts off as well. Read all about it later this week in the Examiner. Thanks for the idea for my column." A silence fell in the car -- and I remembered the guy in the front passenger seat was introduced as the planning officer for the region... Oops!

Danneaux

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8277
  • reisen statt rasen
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #131 on: September 19, 2013, 11:23:49 PM »
Quote
...the guy in the front passenger seat was introduced as the planning officer for the region... Oops!
;D ;D ;D

Best,

Dan.

JimK

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1652
    • Interdependent Science
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #132 on: September 20, 2013, 03:40:58 PM »
got me thinking of Monty Python's Oscar Wilde skit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXW6tfl2Y0

John Saxby

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2031
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #133 on: September 20, 2013, 10:26:53 PM »
Such brilliant stuff -- not everyone's cup of tea, or jelly doughnut, or whatever, but I think they're brilliant. Odd coincidence: tomorrow night, Marcia and I are going to a John Cleese performance. Looking forward to that! should be quite a ride (he said, returning to the thread.)  So -

Here's a report and some photos from my only cycle tour this summer, a four-day velosafari in the Madawaska Highlands northwest of Ottawa. I started this past Sunday, Sept. 15, and finished Wednesday evening, Sept. 18. I had ridden this circuit last August, and found it to be a mixture of beautiful landscapes, some very tough hills, and an easy ride in the last two days through rolling farmland closer to the Ottawa River. On this trip, I planned to stay with friends one night, camping on other nights. I took along lunches and snacks, a breakfast and two freeze-dried suppers – there are few villages with cafés along the route, especially in the back country.

I've summarized the route and distances, for those who might be interested to check the map of Eastern Ontario:

>   From Ottawa, head a little south of west for about 75 kms, then angle NW to Balderson, and to McDonald’s corners near Dalhousie Lake (less a lake than a reach of the Mississippi River). Campgrounds available. 100 kms +/-

>   From McDonald’s Corners, head north and west past Dalhousie Lake and through the small back-country villages of Ompah and Plevna, and then over a very hilly 30-mile stretch to Vennachar Junction, just near Denbigh. My friends Richard and Kate have an old log homestead there. Richard’s grandfather and great-uncle, just boys at the time, helped their parents build the house in 1869. They were a farm family from Silesia in eastern Germany, now part of Poland.  Distance: 90 kms more or less.

>   From Denbigh, you ride north, up and down some serious hills until you reach the Madawaska River. The Madawaska is one of the major tributaries of the Ottawa River, which at this point is about 100 kms due east as the crow flies. After an easy half-hour cycling east beside the river—very gentle here, but a famous white-water route both upstream and downstream—you meet a long uphill north to Foymount, at about 500 metres the highest village in Ontario. Not very high by the standards of most countries outside the Netherlands, I know, but the 20-km ascent includes three clusters of long, steep and stepped hills, each cluster separated by deep dips. The 500 metres feels like 1500, and the grades are 10-12-14%. So, the 20 kms takes a good 90 minutes. From the top, it’s a looong fast downhill and then an easy 25 km east to the village of Eganville on the Bonnechere River. There are campgrounds in the area.  Total distance for the day is about 100 km, 75% of it very demanding for anyone on a loaded bike.

>   From Eganville, it’s about 150 kms south to Ottawa through rolling farmland. When I made this ride in 2012, I took a day and a half, camping overnight beside a lake about 65 kms west of Ottawa. This week, I rode the distance in a long day, arriving at sunset after some ten hours on the road.

>   Total distance, then, about 450 kms over four days.

Here’s a collection of photos:    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2ml4qdlvm6vm583/4a_CXcWPG9

You’ll see from these that the landscape, especially in the highland areas, shows a family resemblance to the Catskills where Jim rides—photo #17 gives some sense of that. (I understand that both the Catskills and the Adirondacks, a big eroded massif in upstate NY, are part of the Frontenac Spur, an extension of the Canadian Shield southwards cross the St Lawrence and into New York state.) The granite of the Madawaska Highlands is some of the oldest rock on Earth, but the hills in Eastern Ontario are much lower than those in New York. The hills here were squished and bevelled under more than a mile of ice during the last Ice Age. Between the rocks, the cedar swamp, the shallow and scattered topsoil and the blackfly, it’s pretty unrewarding for farmers.

Not that people didn’t try. During the first half of the 19th century, many Scots and Irish families settled in the Ottawa Valley, and in the area between Ottawa and Kingston at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Some fled the Great Hunger, and the ships that brought them to Montreal returned to Ireland loaded with white pine from the Valley. After 1815, many veterans of Wellington’s armies, especially but not only Scottish highlanders, settled in the area. They were given 100 acres (too often little more than cedar swamp), an axe, a shovel, and a bag of flour, and were told, by the way, please be ready to form a militia to serve HMG if the ‘Murricans decide to invade again. In the 1820s, Scottish stone masons were engaged to help build the Rideau Canal traversing the 200 kms between between Ottawa and Kingston. They adapted their skills and knowledge to the local limestone, so one can find examples of one-and-a-half storey stone cottages throughout the area west and south of Ottawa. (Photo #6 is an example.) They’re beautiful to look at, but desperately cold in the winter unless well insulated with modern materials.

So the place names are rich with references to the Celtic fringe of Europe. In the latter part of the 19th century, they were joined by settlers from Poland and Germany. (First Nations didn’t have much of a say in all of this, as you may know. They remain here, however, especially Algonkian people on both sides of the Ottawa, and as elsewhere in Canada, refuse to fade quietly into the night.)

But it’s a region not heavily populated these days, and where a century and more ago the economy of the area rested on marginal farms, lumbering in the winter, and some mines, today the farms in the hills are largely gone. A reduced lumber trade remains, and tourism offers some income, as do niche products like alpaca wool. The Ottawa Valley closer to the river has fertile lowlands and its agricultural products can be of very high quality: the tiny village of Balderson, for example, produces the best cheddar cheese I’ve ever found. The five- and six-year-old varieties are to die for.  The closest challenger I’ve ever found was (Andre will be pleased to hear) a five-year-old cheddar sold by a farmer from South Africa’s Eastern Cape, and bought in a Johannesburg market, of all places.

The first brush of autumn came on Monday night, when the temperature dropped to -1. Happily, I spent that night with my friends in their splendid log cabin. Now nearing 145 years old, it’s equipped with mod cons like broadband satellite internet, not to mention H & C running—things their forebears couldn’t have imagined. After a cool and cloudy first day, I had sunny cool weather for the remaining three days, and the nights were clear and very cool.  We had a brilliant full moon on Tuesday, bright enough to read by. The area is being considered for a night-time observatory: it is the most southerly spot in Canada for an observatory, as the absence of towns means very little light pollution.  Certainly I’d never seen such a moon in Ottawa, 200 kms away.

As often happens on a tour, I had a couple of delightful conversations with strangers in cafés. I had stopped for an early supper on Tuesday, after 100 kms across some very hard hills, and struck up a conversation with a genial guy in his late ‘50’s who was intrigued by the bike. I asked him for advice on the campgrounds nearby, and he said, “Don’t bother – come and pitch your tent in my backyard.” So I did, and we had an enjoyable conversation, solving most of the world’s problems, if anyone was paying attention. Turned out his family were second cousins of my friends in Denbigh.

The only wrinkles I encountered were mechanical.  On the 2nd & 3rd days especially—i.e., in the hills—my rear derailleur started giving me problems, becoming very reluctant to shift into the 2nd-lowest cog on my cassette, especially when I was using my smallest chainring. This was never a disabling problem, but it was a serious distraction, especially on the hills—I never could be certain that I’d make the downshift cleanly. Eventually, I did a workaround by shifting down from the 3rd to the 1st cog, skipping the 2nd altogether. Will try to sort it out over the weekend, after giving it enough time to reflect on and repent for its sins.

This is not a new problem for me, and it’s why I now have a New Raven frame and forks in my basement, awaiting a shipment of front and rear hubs from Germany.  In January, these will be mated with bars, wheels and tires, mudguards, brakes, BB and cranks, etc., and built into a complete New Raven. Then, I’ll retire my Eclipse from loaded touring and keep it for day rides.

The Madawaska tour is also a good test of gear ratios and my 66-year-old legs.  My Eclipse has a 12-36 cogset, mated to 24-36-48 chainrings. This gives me a low of 18.3 gear-inches. I managed all right on the couple of dozen “Grade 1” hills in the ride (for me, “Grade 1” means the lowest cog on the small ‘ring.) But, there were several times when I would have welcomed a lower gear.  Or two. A Raven with a 38 x 17 would give me two gears below 18.3.

So, I’m thinking that next spring, post-snow and pre-bugs—May, sometime?—I’ll take my New Raven to the Madawaska Hills. It’ll be a good test for German mythology technology!
« Last Edit: September 20, 2013, 10:31:47 PM by John Saxby »

Danneaux

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8277
  • reisen statt rasen
Re: Rides 2013 — add yours
« Reply #134 on: September 20, 2013, 10:46:33 PM »
John!

My, what a fabulous ride through gorgeous scenery, and well-captured by you and the camera. Very nice to finish with the sunset, and you couldn't have done a more tidy job of packing; looks great!

As in much of Ireland, it appears the farmers had to first harvest rocks (and make fences out of them!) before they could properly raise a single crop. What incredible work that represents, and such a struggle over the years of effort for so little yield. Hard country from the first farmer's perspective, and not much easier now, methinks.

The bike looks good, but I'm so sorry the derailleur gearing problems returned to plague you once again. I'd love to get my hands on it for repair, but happy to advise from afar if you wish. One of the great values in taking this trip will be the chance to compare the same ride from atop the Raven next Spring. I think the Rohloff gearing will prove most welcome for your needs, and I can't wait for that ride report as well.

So glad the trip went well and you had the chance to get Away for awhile. Thanks for sharing your journey with us John, a real treat to read about and see in photos.

Best,

Dan.