Category: Two Wheels Good

We have had a few days of sunshine and moderately warm temperatures, with deep blue skies, streaked with a few high wispy cirrus clouds. The geese are flying between waterlogged fields, rivers and creeks, retention ponds and assorted bodies of water. The leaves on many trees have turned colour and started to fall. It’s generally warm enough to ride in shorts and short-sleeved shirts or light shells although it gets cool as the sun goes down. It gets dark by 7:30 PM, and my friends and I have taken measures to get an early start for our rides during the work week.
Mike and I had good rides on Friday afternoon, Sunday morning, and yesterday (Tuesday) evening. On Friday we rode the familiar route to the Grace Hospital via Assiniboine Park and the Moray bridge. Yesterday we took the Harte trail to the Perimeter, dodging a few mud puddles on the trail, and driving through clouds of tiny midges and flies that appeared in the evening light. Sunday morning was a glorious ride across East Kildonan to Bird’s Hill, a cross Highway 59 and out into country east of Birds Hill, by gravel roads along the Floodway. He came back into the City in Transcona and across the City back to the Forks.
I am hoping for a several more weeks of clear warm weather, followed by a quick transition to winter with real snow for skiing. I can hope.

At this time of the year, the light becomes dim by 8:00 and it’s dark by 8:15 PM. The leaves have started to turn colour and fall. It has been a rainy and cold summer. So far, we have managed to keep up our rides in the evening and we have not have to resort to our cycling tights and cold weather headgear, but the MEC shells have been useful. We started our rides at 6:30 PM during the summer, and we have rolled that back to 6:15 as the days have become shorter.

Continue reading “Fall Riding”

Mike and Steve both passed 2000 kilometers this past week or weekend, counting back to March. As I write this, Mike has logged 2057 after July 17, and he rode 80 kilometers on our trip to St. Francis on Sunday July 18.
I haven’t been tracking my mileage. I am probably 150 to 200 less than Mike at this point. He put in a century ride with Steve last weekend (July 11) when I was at the folk festival, and a series if short rides to work and with his neighbour. That still means I am approaching 2000 K if I haven’t also reached it.
The weather has been cool this spring, and we have cancelled planned rides due to rain. We began to get hot summer mornings a few weeks ago. It was hot and humid on Sunday July 18 and we turned around at St. Francis. We had found a favourable wind after we reached the White Horse at the intersection of Highway 26 and the Transcanada and were tempted to push on but we knew we would then have to deal with the wind all the way back to the Transcanada, and then with a cross wind most of the way home.
We weren’t sure how we might feel if we did the extra mileage for a century in the heat.
We seem to be in better shape this year. We aren’t necessarily riding greater distances although we have started getting 100 K days when we used to regard 60 to 75 K as a long ride. Mainly we are riding harder and faster. We find that a wind or 15 to 25 K is normal for prairie riding and we try to ride into the wind on the outbound leg of the journey. We are finding that our average speeds as calculated by our cycling computers are in the twenties instead of the teens. Those averages include low speeds at intersections. On the open road we seem to sustain speeds of 24-27 kph with crosswinds and moderate adverse winds, and 30 K with light favourable winds.
It isn’t the speed that the riders on the Tour de France are getting but we don’t see too many guys our age passing us any more.

Yesterday, Sunday June 27, Mike and I tried a new route. We rode to St. Francis Xavier and along Highway 26. I have pictures but I haven’t taken the time to take them off the camera and post them. Later. Not today. It’s election day and I am working for a campaign. Check again in a couple days for blue sky and green fields shimmering in the summer sun.

Continue reading “Highway 26 – a Metric Century”

As we reach the end of May, we have only been able to wear shorts 4 times. The temperatures have generally stayed under 10 degrees (Celsius). However, we have been riding steadily. We didn’t ride in the evenings during the week of May 10-14 due to a spring blizzard. I passed on one ride this week to make soup and pudding for Claire, who had just had her wisdom teeth out. But otherwise I have been out nearly as much as Mike whose odometer for the year is at 872 kilometers since March 28. Steve, who rides to work and rides at lunch (but can’t ride most evenings in May and June since he is a responsible dad with three kids playing soccer) is at 921 kilometers.
We rode to the gravel quarry in Bird’s Hill on Sunday May 23, and we had the rare excitement of a steady, strong tailwind on the way home. I was riding my Giant Yukon, and the ride exposed a shortcoming of this bike. I found that I did not have the top end gear combinations to keep up with Mike and Steve. I suspect that Mike and Steve have smaller top rear rings – 11 or 12 teeth. Mike clearly has a bigger front ring.

Continue reading “Chains, Gears and Pedals”

Several times last year, I told my friends that I was going to get my road bike back on the road. On Saturday morning, looking at a long ride on pavement to Lockport on Sunday, I decided to go forward with the project.
The bike is a Kuwahara Apollo. I bought it around 1979 or 1980. I rode it actively for a few years, but my cycling dropped off after 1982. It has a high quality Chrome-moly frame, and good wheels and components. The basics to get it roadworthy were new tires and tubes. 20 years of sitting in the basement had dried out the rubber and made the old ones pretty unreliable. The tires had seen some wear too. In view of the prevalence of sharp stones and other road hazards on Winnipeg roads, I went into the mid-market for tires and bought Armadillos. I bought new tubes, and a spare to carry on trips.
The next item was a seat post. The bike came with a short post and I had extended it past the safety mark to get proper leg extension. I’m not sure why I didn’t take care of this when I bought the bike. New alloy seat posts are cheap – but they tend to be pretty long to match the geometry of modern frames which call for long seat posts. A quick cut with a hacksaw and I had a post that was properly seated in the frame. I got a rear rack. I carry a rack pack or panniers with spare tubes, a few tools, lights, snacks, headband for cold weather, rain cover for helmet etc. I will not be racing this bike – I will be using it for long rides on pavement and I want to be safe. I looked at the brakes. Shimano calipers. Nothing wrong with them but the brakes pads were worn and the rubber was probably dry. However fiddling with brakes can get time consuming so I decided to leave that task for another day.
The drive train seemed fine. The gear teeth were in good shape. Twelve speeds doesn’t sound like enough in the modern era, but it is. I had wondered about changing the shifters to modern indexed shifters. The front shifter had been tricky all along – it didn’t hold in the outer position over my big front ring. As I read about it, I learned that there is a simple adjustment to a tension screw to fix this.
The pedals were built for clips and old fashioned bike shoes with a grooved cleat. They had little posts on the inner and outer edges to hold a narrow racing shoe. That made them hard to use with the bike shoes I have now, and hopeless with any kind of general purpose shoe. So new pedals were required. And while I was at it, I might as well get clipless pedals. Gooch’s bike shop has a sale so I saved a little there. I got Shimano pedals with a platform on one side and cleat locks on the other. I spent a few hours replacing the tires and tubes, repacking the wheel bearings, cleaning and lubing the chain, installing the rack and installing the new pedals.
The bike felt good on the Sunday morning ride our Sunday morning ride to Lockport. I had to shift in the saddle a bit to get comfortable and I thought of making some adjustments but by the end of the ride I was comfortable again. I realized quickly that I need to replace the brake pads. The brakes worked but wailed like pan pipes played by a goose with a sinus condition. The cloth tape on the handlebars is frayed and uncomfortable and needs to be replaced. The water bottle cage was pretty shaky. I can add a second cage to the seat tube if I carry my tire pump strapped to the top tube with velco straps. These are all small and simple repairs. I may want to get a longer front stem. The cost of parts adds up, but it is a good bike and I don’t want to buy a new one when I already own a good bike.
There is no doubt that a road bike is more efficient for a long ride. As Steve has posted, it was a windy day. The road bike allows or forces a rider into a dropped position, and the thin tires (23 mm) offer far less rolling resistance that touring (35 mm) and mountain bike cleated fatties.
Complaining about the wind, and the narrow shoulders and the ignorant drivers on Henderson Highway is part of life. I complain during the rides and I will probably complain about it in the future because I will take that ride again. Lockport is a nice ride on a sunny Sunday.

Yesterday, Steve, Mike, Rob and I rode from Mike’s house to Waverley Street past Wilkes, where we met Clint. Rob and Clint are younger than Mike, Steve and I. They are both students at the University of Manitoba. Clint is in the Armed forces, currently in University. He has obviously done some serious riding in the past. He hasn’t had much time on the bike since coming to Winnipeg two years ago – unfamiliarity with the City, and maintaining his studies, and a home life with a young son and a new baby.
We went to Headingley by way of the Harte Trail, which is an abandoned rail line that has been turned into a cycling and walking trail. It runs basically east and west, parallel to the CN Main line and Wilkes Avenue and extends from Charleswood to Beaudry Park past Headingley. Inside the City, the trail is fairly well used, and gravelled. Outside the Perimeter Highway, it is dirt track, and crosses ditches and farmer’s fields.
The trail inside the City had a few damp spots, and even a couple of icy patches. We hit a huge mudhole at the point the trail meets the perimeter. Steve rode through, and had to spend half an hour wiping mud off his wheels, chain and drive components.
After crossing the perimeter, we pushed ahead on the Hart Trail but our speed dropped to about 12 k as we bumped along. The track was damp by appearance but firm. I didn’t think we were sucking up new mud, but we were exerting ourselves on this stretch. The first major road crossing brought us to a ditch full of water. We detoured across a farmer’s field, sucking up more mud, to reach a culvert and cross onto the road. For the next several kilometers of gravel and payement, my cleated tires hurled mud clods.
We stopped at the edge of Headingley and turned back. We had planned to go further, but we had taken some time on the mud and the trails and still had to ride back into a southeast wind that was in our face, off our right shoulders, most of the way.
This time last year, I weighed over 170 lbs. I’m not sure how much more because I wasn’t checking. I suppose it was not over 175 or I would not have fit my clothes. For the last few weeks my weight has been showing as 142 to 144. Most of the weight came off cycling last year and a little extra came off this spring with stress and not eating around my wife’s snapping back into her demand for divorce. I have been eating a bit more now, and rebuilding muscle and fitness. I expect to lose a few more pounds – I think 130 to 135 would be a safe healthy weight.
This time last year, I did not ride until April 20. This year, I have cycled on four consecutive weekends already, and several evenings, and I have logged about 225 k.
The temperature most days has been a little above freezing, but with suitable gear, the conditions are quite tolerable. The company is good.

Steve has started to post 2004 cycling notes and photos on the Bike with Mike page. I have edited my recent posts in this blog to link to his site. Last year Steve posted his own log as Bike with Mike. This year he is giving Mike that log, published in a subdomain of Steve’s domain. I think he will continue to keep his own log and publish it on the web. He tinkers with his site. I will have to check my links to the cycling page on his site and to Mike’s cycling log periodically.

After supper, Mike, Steve and I took a bike ride of about 26 kilometers through Assiniboine Park, over the bridge on Moray, through Woodhaven, to Grant’s Mill in front of the Grace Hospital. The Assiniboine River and the creeks flowing into it are high with spring run-off. Mike took pictures. Steve has reactivated the Bike with Mike site, and he is trying to get Mike to take it over. The pictures are there. Go to the 2004 log, and click on April 6 in the date column. I have a beard and I’m wearing a a red helmet and blue fleece in these pics. In other pictures this spring I may be seen in a brown camoflage pattern fleece or an orange windbreaker. Steve tends to wear a yellow shell on colder days.
With the change to daylight savings time last weekend we can ride for more than 2 hours after dinner which gives us time for riding and some rest and photography stops.

Last year my friends Mike and Steve started to ask me to ride with them. We started to ride, almost every Sunday and one or two evenings a week through the spring, summer and fall. Steve began to log and journal his trips, alone and with Mike, Robbie and me on a web page called Bike with Mike. Steve’s log says that I rode with him on April 20 last year. I don’t clearly remember that trip. I remember joining them for evening rides in early May and then for Sunday rides.

Continue reading “Bike with Mike”