My Most Recent Ride 2012 (Part V in a series)

Awesome Jon! You show them!

Terii

 

What Ward Said (-ditto-)

And:

The faster you go, the harder it gets;
the longer you do this, the longer you can do it.

Until you can't anymore, of course.
Until then, enjoy the ride!



Seriously now, that's good news regarding your health.



-Steve

 

Jens woke at 5 am to run and catch a flight, so I took Loke out with the trike.

I tried to make it a rolling walk since Niclas (the vet) heard some noises in his lungs and Loke's taking another round of antibiotics. About time I guess. He was probably starting to get some blood in his antibiotic stream.

We did around 7 miles. Took about 1.5 hours at the slower pace. I'm convinced Loke would have set a speed record for the year for the River Loop if I'd let him. He refuses to act sick. It was gray, chill and very windy.

Terii

 

My most recent ride is going to be TODAY (10/19) at noon at the Coulter Bridge if anyone wants to join me for a pleasant 34 mile ride to Tremont and back. (Call me on cell 865.310.7151 so I know you are coming.)

Leaves are turning. I plan to take pictures and post them. Nothing better than fall in the Smokies!!! Today is supposed to be GORGEOUS!!!

 

Well, I'll have your usual gatorade/energy bar ready for when you stop in.

 

Gusty ride today!
Leaves in the breeze made the air colorful.
Leaves on the road, in the damp corners, made cornering 'interesting'.

Thanks to the headwind, I had a great workout;
thanks to a tailwind, my level top speed got boosted up to 29mph!

 

Great weather, no doubt. Don't hear many thank a headwind.
29 on the flat...nice.

 

Well I did ride on Friday and it was a VERY WINDY day. I ride on the beach in Florida and have had strong winds, but Friday set a record. I felt more like a kite than a bent rider. Through Townsend I normally ride in the road, but today I rode on the greenway because my bent was being pushed by the strong wind into the middle of my lane. NOT GOOD!!!

At one point I rode though a leaf tornado. Going up the road to Tremont follows a stream between two mountains bumped up right next to each other. The wind was funneled into the "V" and amplified which caused the multicolor tree leafs to pull off the branches and swirl around just like a tornado going down this road. When I rode through it my face got debris bouncing around it and I had to continually spit out leaf parts, sticks and dust. Very usual. Luckily it only lasted about 30 seconds.

I said I was going to take pictures but I only took a few. The sky was hazy. I found out it was dust from Oklahoma following the high winds going west to east. So we had a brown sky. Didn't look very pretty.

Here is the stream the road follows going up to Tremont. This was AFTER I went through the leaf tornado. If you look very hard you can see a silver road barrier on the left to keep cars from driving around the curve too fast and into the stream.

 

Dustbowl Air

I was in that flat-white stuff too.
Made me hack and cough for a few days.

Today's ride was almost perfect!
Aside from a few inconsiderate/selfish rush-hour
drivers, that is.

Beautiful maple trees, sunny, clear and still air; 74 degrees F.
Rode my bike for 17.6 miles at an average speed of
18.1 miles per hour!
Wow.

 

That dust storm was something else. It got really windy right before Jon got to the shop and then afterwards pretty intense. Blew leaves everywhere. The drive home was like driving through a yellow haze. I thought it was a bunch of local farmers harvesting their corn crops but it wasn't. Had to drive through a yellow like "haze" all the way home.Made the mountains look pretty dull. Yesterday though...the mountains were awesome!

 

Went for a short ride today! 3.8 miles! I'd planned for it to be longer, but there was just too much against the ride. A fog rolled in while I was at Inspired Cycle Engineering. The hills in Cornwall are INSANE. Going down them is a complete blast, but getting up is a whole different matter. The altitude graph on my Garmin looked like seismograph with a major quake.

So, it was a muggy, warm, wet, white walled ride. I could have dealt with the drizzle and the hills if I'd had more than nothingness for scenery. If the views had opened up so I could have taken pictures of the gorgeous Cornwall countryside, it would have pulled me onward.

As for my visit to the ICE office, I loved it. Those people are just incredible. Before getting to the business of the ride, Neil (one of the main owners) talked with me for over 30 minutes about the various options. He decided I absolutely MUST ride the trike I wanted with short cranks which took a lot of fiddling around. Looked at maps to suggest places to ride. Made sure I had side pod bags, rain coat.

After the ride, though I'm sure he had plenty of other things to do, Neil still spent an hour talking with me about gearing and all possible options. Someone else also brought me lunch when they went for theirs. I fiddled with the folding system to get a feel for it. I saw new prototypes for a couple of their accessories. Then Neil offered to drive me back to my B&B and took the opportunity to show off their soon-to-be new location. Very nice building and he's clearly quite excited about it. He also suggested that if the weather is better tomorrow I can come back for a longer ride since the trike will be all ready to go.

Oh, he also showed me one of their trikes that has been fitted with a very nice electric assist motor. It probably adds no more than 10 pounds of weight to the trike (unlike the other which I couldn't even lift!) and drives the front chainring rather than the rear wheel which offers a lovely range of gearing when using the motor. I thought that was quite impressive myself.

I'll babble more about the ride on my blog when I get back to Sweden!

Terii

 

No One Obeyed

No, no one obeyed the rules of the road today.
No full stops, no respecting anything or anyone.
Except for me, of course... today, everyone else on the road
was busy making me look GOOD!

Especially the ignorant fool in the white Suburban.
It passed me uphill, in the middle of a blind curve,
with the oncoming lane occupied by a car!

:


Beautiful day for a ride outside:
26 miles in rolling hills, averaging 16.2mph.

 

Wabbit season isn't over yet!!



Weather couldn't be nicer. Sunny, 70 degrees. No wind. The air is crystal clear!!! I need to enjoy it because next week gets in the 40s. Brrrr.

Rode my loop. Rounded one of the turns and there were 2 DF riders going the other way. So I had to go UPHILL, make my turn while they were putting distance on me. I shifted into a bigger gear and flew down the hill. The momentum got me up the next hill and my prey were in sight. We had a long straight stretch. I was going about 21 MPH and not gaining on them They were KILLING ME!!! (I had already ridden 15 miles so far.)

There is a long uphill portion. Both riders slowed down and they started up the long hill. I took my momentum, went down a gear for power and passed them both going UPHILL!! Who says recumbents can't go up hill!!!

By the time we got to the next turn around, I was a good 30 seconds ahead of them. So wabbit season isn't over yet!!!

 

Not MY most recent ride, but check out these recumbents.

 

Attaboy Jon!