WEATHER THERE: sunny, -2C, 9 km/hr tailwinds
WEATHER BACK: sunny, 9C, 9 km/hr headwinds
My breath fogged the crisp morning air and the remnants of overnight frost clung to patches of roads and sidewalks. Frozen dew still encased delicate blades of grass, who undoubtedly shivered patiently as they waited for the distant morning sun to awaken them from their icy brushes with death.
The golf course at the bottom of the river valley below 100th Avenue had lost its rich depth of colour and was now a pale green beneath a cover of frost.
Brittle yellow leaves descended from their branches, whispering their way to the road below. A delicate rainstorm of backlit brilliant yellows, a glowing golden burst of beauty and colour before everything turns white and stark.
Despite wearing new cycling gloves, my fingertips felt cold and numb. It took a few minutes of being indoors after changing into my work shoes before my toes warmed up again. A year ago today, it was 30C outside, a welcome extension of summer. Today, it's a high of 9C and our first morning of frost cover. Winter is on its way.
Fall is always too fleeting.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
26" Studded Tires
DAAAAMN!!
Check out that bad-ass with the Ice Spikers on her shoulder!!
Are you as impressed as I am?
Admiring my new purchase
Consider yourself warned, winter: not only do I have a mountain bike this year, I've got these deadly studded tires, too!
I just picked up a pair of 26" x 2.10 Schwalbe Ice Spikers, with 304 tungsten-carbide spikes and a seriously aggressive tread. These suckers will get me to work on days when even my car won't be able to handle the snow. At 1.065 kg each, they're definitely not for use in fair weather conditions because the rolling resistance and weight of these bad boys will be quite a hindrance on bare pavement or light snow. Those milder winter days are what my existing 700 cc Schwalbe Snow Studs are for. I'm feeling prepared for anything now!
Okay, so these tires are expensive and really hardcore - some say they're not necessary for your everyday winter commuter. In response to that I say: I still fell seven times last winter!! And there were days I didn't even bother biking because the ice and snow were so bad. If these tires will help me out in dangerous situations, give me more confidence on the road, and maybe even save my ass from a serious accident - well, then, I'd say they're well worth their price and more.
I'm looking forward to trying them out! Not too soon, mind you . . .
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Open Door
WEATHER THERE: partly cloudy, 6C, 6 km/hr headwinds
WEATHER BACK: overcast, 11C, 15 km/hr crosswinds
Now that I have a strong, sturdy mountain bike as my trusty steed, I've been trying to get back into the habit of hauling my daughter to daycare in the bike trailer. She doesn't mind it too much - sometimes she finds splashing through puddles and going over bumps quite fun - and I'm sure it's great for her to get into the habit of bike-commuting with Mommy. The downside is that it adds a few minutes to my trip compared to driving her there, and dealing with that big double trailer can get quite awkward (which is why I've been seriously contemplating shelling out the - shudder - $300 for a narrower, lighter single-child trailer).
I have to back-track past my house to get to work, and on my way home from work I look longingly to my home as I pedal past it to get to the daycare. Normally this isn't much of an issue, except for the occasional slight pangs of desire I feel at the end of a long workday to stop at my house and be done for the day instead of having to continue on to the daycare. Then again, my desire to take in that glorious sight of my daughter running at me with arms wide open and a big smile on her face far outweighs it and I keep trudging on to get her.
As I was riding home on Tuesday I cast a longing eye towards my house as I was pedalling past it. But something was very different - and quite amiss. The front door was wide open. Robbers!! In a panic, I pulled my bike over and clamoured up the front steps, afraid of finding my house ransacked and robbed. Or worse - finding someone in my house and willing to hurt me to get out. I darted through the front door and looked around the porch.
"Odd," I thought, stopping in my panicked tracks, "They didn't touch the road bike." Mike the Bike was parked up against the porch wall where is always was, completely unmoved from when I saw it last. That would have been so easy to steal! Why didn't they take the bike? Looking around, I noticed that, in fact, nothing looked out of place on the porch. Well, okay, maybe not here - but I have more valuables inside the house. I peered through the window into the house and saw my purse hanging off a chair back right in front of me. It was still there, untouched. Nothing was out of place inside my house, either.
So - not robbers, then? What the Hell could have happened? Then it occurred to me:
"Oh CRAP! Did I leave my door open this whole freakin' time??" Maybe after fighting the bike trailer out of the front door in the morning (where every day it succeeds in ripping more chunks off my weatherstripping because it's too damn wide for the doorway), then bringing my bike out, and hooking them up, and putting my daughter in the trailer - maybe I just forgot to go back and shut the door. Maybe I just mounted my bike and took off. Could I have possibly been so careless? Me, who has had a different home broken into? Me, who is usually fairly paranoid about that sort of thing and always keeps all windows and doors locked even when I'm at home?
I thought back to the events of the morning and realized that it may have indeed been the case. My daughter was being difficult and putting up a fight about going into the trailer and going to daycare all morning. I remembered her aiming her yelling, thrashing anger at me as I was strapping her into the trailer, even as I feebly tried reasoning with her about how fun daycare was going to be and how much she always likes it once she's there. Maybe I was distracted, tired, fed up with her tantrums. Maybe I was just focused on getting her to daycare on time. So I mounted up and pedalled away, still trying to reason with her over my shoulder, while the front door to my humble abode remained wide open like an invitation. And it remained like that for the next nine hours.
The most remarkable thing is that nobody stole anything. Not my bike on the porch, not the purse just on the other side of the inner door, nothing! Kudos to everyone for leaving my stuff alone despite my incredible safety blunder. I feel a lot better about the trustworthiness of my neighbourhood now. And that sound you just heard - that was my faith in humanity jumping up a notch.
WEATHER BACK: overcast, 11C, 15 km/hr crosswinds
Now that I have a strong, sturdy mountain bike as my trusty steed, I've been trying to get back into the habit of hauling my daughter to daycare in the bike trailer. She doesn't mind it too much - sometimes she finds splashing through puddles and going over bumps quite fun - and I'm sure it's great for her to get into the habit of bike-commuting with Mommy. The downside is that it adds a few minutes to my trip compared to driving her there, and dealing with that big double trailer can get quite awkward (which is why I've been seriously contemplating shelling out the - shudder - $300 for a narrower, lighter single-child trailer).
I have to back-track past my house to get to work, and on my way home from work I look longingly to my home as I pedal past it to get to the daycare. Normally this isn't much of an issue, except for the occasional slight pangs of desire I feel at the end of a long workday to stop at my house and be done for the day instead of having to continue on to the daycare. Then again, my desire to take in that glorious sight of my daughter running at me with arms wide open and a big smile on her face far outweighs it and I keep trudging on to get her.
As I was riding home on Tuesday I cast a longing eye towards my house as I was pedalling past it. But something was very different - and quite amiss. The front door was wide open. Robbers!! In a panic, I pulled my bike over and clamoured up the front steps, afraid of finding my house ransacked and robbed. Or worse - finding someone in my house and willing to hurt me to get out. I darted through the front door and looked around the porch.
"Odd," I thought, stopping in my panicked tracks, "They didn't touch the road bike." Mike the Bike was parked up against the porch wall where is always was, completely unmoved from when I saw it last. That would have been so easy to steal! Why didn't they take the bike? Looking around, I noticed that, in fact, nothing looked out of place on the porch. Well, okay, maybe not here - but I have more valuables inside the house. I peered through the window into the house and saw my purse hanging off a chair back right in front of me. It was still there, untouched. Nothing was out of place inside my house, either.
So - not robbers, then? What the Hell could have happened? Then it occurred to me:
"Oh CRAP! Did I leave my door open this whole freakin' time??" Maybe after fighting the bike trailer out of the front door in the morning (where every day it succeeds in ripping more chunks off my weatherstripping because it's too damn wide for the doorway), then bringing my bike out, and hooking them up, and putting my daughter in the trailer - maybe I just forgot to go back and shut the door. Maybe I just mounted my bike and took off. Could I have possibly been so careless? Me, who has had a different home broken into? Me, who is usually fairly paranoid about that sort of thing and always keeps all windows and doors locked even when I'm at home?
I thought back to the events of the morning and realized that it may have indeed been the case. My daughter was being difficult and putting up a fight about going into the trailer and going to daycare all morning. I remembered her aiming her yelling, thrashing anger at me as I was strapping her into the trailer, even as I feebly tried reasoning with her about how fun daycare was going to be and how much she always likes it once she's there. Maybe I was distracted, tired, fed up with her tantrums. Maybe I was just focused on getting her to daycare on time. So I mounted up and pedalled away, still trying to reason with her over my shoulder, while the front door to my humble abode remained wide open like an invitation. And it remained like that for the next nine hours.
The most remarkable thing is that nobody stole anything. Not my bike on the porch, not the purse just on the other side of the inner door, nothing! Kudos to everyone for leaving my stuff alone despite my incredible safety blunder. I feel a lot better about the trustworthiness of my neighbourhood now. And that sound you just heard - that was my faith in humanity jumping up a notch.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Bike Computer
WEATHER THERE: overcast, 6C, 11 km/hr headwind
WEATHER BACK: overcast, 11C, 11 km/hr tailwind
If you've been reading my blog since last year, you may have noticed that the format has changed a little bit. I no longer keep my faithful readers abreast of how long my ride to and from work takes me, or what I wore, or even what bike I rode. I figured that a lot of that information was either unnecessary or redundant, given that if the information was pertinent it would come up in my blog entry anyway. As for the timing, I've made a very conscious decision not to time myself this year. Inspired by the casual pleasure-riding a former colleague at my internship did, and finding that I was getting too competitive with myself about how fast I could make the journey, I decided it might be best to relax and treat my commutes like less of a chore or a competition and more of a casual pleasure ride.
So, no more timing! I have a computer on my bike that is tracking how many kilometres I traverse, how much time I log on the bike, top speed, average speed, things like that. I'll be curious to see how many kilometres and how much time I've logged at the end of the year! I think my total time is already somewhere around 3 hours, between a couple bike-commutes and a weekend ride with my daughter in the trailer. Sometimes I reference the computer as I'm riding to see how fast I'm going up a hill (so far, it's usually around 13-15 km/hr), or what speed I'm at when I'm cruising along a flat stretch of road (usually between 19-22 km/hr), but I'm trying not to focus on it too much. As long as I get to work on time and I'm enjoying myself, that's all that really matters. Or, well, at least that's what I'm trying to tell myself . . .
WEATHER BACK: overcast, 11C, 11 km/hr tailwind
If you've been reading my blog since last year, you may have noticed that the format has changed a little bit. I no longer keep my faithful readers abreast of how long my ride to and from work takes me, or what I wore, or even what bike I rode. I figured that a lot of that information was either unnecessary or redundant, given that if the information was pertinent it would come up in my blog entry anyway. As for the timing, I've made a very conscious decision not to time myself this year. Inspired by the casual pleasure-riding a former colleague at my internship did, and finding that I was getting too competitive with myself about how fast I could make the journey, I decided it might be best to relax and treat my commutes like less of a chore or a competition and more of a casual pleasure ride.
So, no more timing! I have a computer on my bike that is tracking how many kilometres I traverse, how much time I log on the bike, top speed, average speed, things like that. I'll be curious to see how many kilometres and how much time I've logged at the end of the year! I think my total time is already somewhere around 3 hours, between a couple bike-commutes and a weekend ride with my daughter in the trailer. Sometimes I reference the computer as I'm riding to see how fast I'm going up a hill (so far, it's usually around 13-15 km/hr), or what speed I'm at when I'm cruising along a flat stretch of road (usually between 19-22 km/hr), but I'm trying not to focus on it too much. As long as I get to work on time and I'm enjoying myself, that's all that really matters. Or, well, at least that's what I'm trying to tell myself . . .
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