This weekend I decided it was time to chisel off the winter dirt and get my bike ready for spring.
I took everything I could off the bike and scrubbed for over two hours to get everything back to an acceptable level of clean. All winter I wanted to wash my bike (and I did take it through a car wash once or twice), but for the most part I had to just add more chain lube and keep riding because it was always too cold to really clean it.
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Excuse me a moment while I chase the dust bunnies away from my keyboard and attempt to pick up the threads of my story where I last left off… almost 2 months ago.
It amazes me how quickly time has gone by, and how often I’ve told myself “I’ll write about that show tomorrow” or “man I wish I had my camera with me, again”. Truth be told I haven’t been doing anything incredibly amazing, life has just got in the way for a while. The good news is it has (mostly) been good times and good fun, so I don’t have anything horrible to relate as a reason for why I’ve been away.
Go go gadget summary mode!
First up, the review for the Watchmen concert will be posted shortly, and when it does it will be as if I didn’t put it off for the last 3 months as it will appear on the day it should have been written. Also, I’ll blab a bit about the Metric / Tokyo Police Club / Dears concert, and upcoming plans for yours truly including immediate and future travel plans. Yay travel!
Next, the cycling map and the total distance I’ve gone is horribly out of date, but I’ll have to fix that when I get to work tomorrow as I kept my records in my daytimer. Here is a picture to show my most recent milestone:
(executes a self high five)
6000km, and it looks more and more like the odometer can display another number (at least a 1) so I wonder how far I can go before the battery dies? More importantly, how much longer will my bike tolerate my abuse and lack of maintenance before the chain explodes due to excessive rust? Hang on until Thursday, I promise I’ll clean you!
Now that I’m sitting here there is a lot I’d like to say, so I’ll break it up to hit some of the “bigger” stuff in posts of their own.
Over on the “Games Night” page, Scott has been kind enough to provide the latest information. While it was needed, I’m glad to see he didn’t increase his post count while doing it. I don’t know what I’d do if he got to 5 total posts by the end of 2008, so this leaves him plenty of room to work with. 
In other news, I finally got around to updating the cycling map page. I decided to do away with the route line (for now) and just go with markers indicating where I finished up each year and where I am currently. Huzzah for being in Atlantic Canada!
I figure that if I maintain my current pace I should be done my coast to coast virtual journey by the end of the year… and then I may modify the route I have been using to include the northern coast as well.
what can I say, I need to have something to ride for. 
Tonight I went out to Canmore to do a practice run for this years installment of 24 hours of punishment, and I have to say I wasn’t totally disappointed with my efforts.
After an initial gong show to get myself on my bike and actually riding (it took 40 minutes to get out of downtown, I forgot my helmet, my camera, my large tire pump, I scratched my car when my bike fell over, I didn’t bring bug spray), I set off up what I believe the start will be for this year (I didn’t see the map until writing this post), and promptly almost bail on some rocks. Fortunately nobody was around to see that (mental note: don’t do that on race day), and I resume riding on what I have now named the highway to hell.
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I hit 5000km last night on my way home so I had to pull over and take a picture.
I wonder what will happen when it hits 9999.9?
Other things to note about the ride last night:
- I almost got run over twice while crossing with the signal in reasonably well lit intersections going north on 14th ave. to get to the river. I know the girl in the passenger seat saw me on the first one from the start because she was screaming at her boyfriend to look out as he hammered the accelerator to turn before a car came from the other direction.
…and people wonder why I avoid riding on the street as much as humanly possible.
- I’m discovering I need to ring my bell about 10 times for some people to clue in what it means… and even then so many people have their iPod cranked they can’t hear it anyway (but still get pissed at me for riding by them with “no warning”)
- blowing wind does suck. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a tailwind when the wind really decides to kick up… last night wasn’t one of them.
but… 5000km. yay!
no time like the present to start working towards completion.
Commute #1 for 2008 is away!
Odometer: 4714.7km
I really need to update the map, but for some reason it is painfully slow to modify on my computer at work…
It has been a quiet week on the ol’ posting front, and that is basically tied in to the fact that it has been a really… really slow week. I’ve done nothing I would consider “important” enough to actually write about on an individual basis, so here ya go… it’s summary time.
Flames lose (then win).. boo! (yay!) Stamps lose, Bombers win.. Yay! Oilers Win (then win then lose) yay! (yay! boo!) Canadiens win! yay! Tucker gets beat down by Avery… yay! I really miss playing hockey with my team (stupid season long suspensions)… boo!
…and that was the week in sports. Continue reading
Well, that was a ridiculously quick month…
As we march ever onwards towards the months where snow and ice dominate the landscape, the weather has definitely taken a turn for the “worse”. There is much more of a bite in the air, and I need to keep reminding myself that 7 degrees in October is nowhere near the same thing as 7 degrees in July. Snow fell (and stayed) on my path for the first time earlier this week, but by this morning it was down to isolated patches that manage to avoid the sun enough to remain a solid.
While I struggle to accept that long pants, gloves and long sleeves are now required equipment for the morning commute, I have to say that this has been a most productive and enjoyable month of riding. In fact, I’d even go so far as to call it one of the best months since I got my bike. The colors of fall were spectacular, the bike is humming along (almost time for a pre-winter tune up), I feel great physically, I only got caught in really ugly weather once, and many more miles were put on the bike.
This morning I decided to take a picture of one part of my commute that makes me happy I don’t drive to work every day:
This week I passed the halfway point to my goal for this year. Over 1600 km, so far and I feel that 2000 is easily within my reach. Will I get to 3200? Well.. perhaps that was just a bit ambitious as I failed to take in to account how incredibly lazy I would be in the heat of the summer.
As unpleasant as cramming in to the sardine can that is the the C-Train with hundreds of other people, I couldn’t convince myself to ride in +30 celsius temperatures. Oh well, I am still ahead of the pace I set last year so I can’t entirely rule this out just yet… I’ll just need some help from mother nature.
This morning was another reason to report back to you (but not to my mom, she would have a heart attack if she read this) as I set a new land speed record coming down Home Road. I hate it when people whip by me in their cars (they generally don’t leave me a lot of room) so I usually try and time it so I come down behind them.
Today I decided I would just go flat out and see if I could stay ahead of the car that was coming along just behind me. When I glanced at the spedometer it told me this:
And now, the stats:
Odometer: 4158.5
Distance this year: 1656.6km
4000km since March 28, 2005.
Excuse me while I pat myself on the back.
