My Most Recent Ride 2014 (Part VII in a series)

5.11 miles.

Woke to dazzlingly blue skies and quite warm. Fortunately, though it warmed up, clouds rolled in to spare Loke broiling in the SUN... and me as well.

A slightly brisk wind, but it felt wonderful. I headed nice and slow for downtown. Slower even than the new 'usual'. Loke was painful and very slow climbing stairs yesterday. Seemed like a random thing. He hadn't had a run that day and the one the day before was slow and short with no obvious problems. I think he was just having a bad arthritis day or something. Gave him a dose of anti-inflammatory meds and it seemed to set him right as rain.

He was a downright pest this morning.

I even decided to do an errand with the trike. I'm going to start eating a lot more fruit and veg. A couple weeks ago, for 3 days, I made up a humungous bowl of mixed fruit at around 10 am. Cherries, strawberries, melons, nectarines, clementines. I'd nibble on it for the next 4 or 5 hours and then have a light supper of veggies and a small portion of lean protein. I didn't have the painful 'gnawing and starving' sensation in my tummy and I lost weight. Oh! And I really enjoyed it!

So, off I went to the best place to get fruit during the warm months, the marvellous produce stand in a square behind the concert hall.

I didn't know it was graduation day for one, several or all of the high schools today. Downtown was an absolute mad house. People packing the streets as decorated railed flatbed trucks or trailers pulling decorated railed flatbed trailers crawled through the smaller streets of the older parts of the city, packed with screaming graduates, some probably quite drunk. It was a sort of random parade of the vehicles going in every which direction as whim took the drivers.

The screaming, whistles, horns and such irked Loke. He tried to run through the worst of it, clearly hoping for more peaceful spots.

It was a relief to get to the quieter area by the river where I bought an ice cream come and relaxed while Loke cooled down.

Terii

 

RANS Style Seat

Rode a little under 42 miles with my dad this morning. Borrowed his Bacchetta Bella for the ride. The RANS style seat may LOOK very similar to the real RANS seat, but with the slightly shorter seat pan it was definitely no where near as comfortable. A lot more pressure on the tailbone and a much quicker onset of recumbutt. Thankfully for our tour next week I will be back on my own bike!!!

 

6.4 miles.

Gorgeous looking day out. Mid 60's temps, perfectly clear skies. I actually started working on a longer ride between a town to the south-west called Enköping and home along a series of cycle routes that chiefly follow roads.

Then I heard the wind roaring and shredding the trees. 19-24 mph with gusts breaking 30 mph easy. I decided to settle for a local ride as the 24 miles between Enköping and Uppsala was mostly right into the wind. Once I would have everything settled to go and where I wanted to be dropped off, it would have been nearly noon.

I decided to go tomorrow. It's supposed to be a bit warmer, but a lot less windy.

Headed out for Gamla Uppsala. We crawled along, Loke kept his head down and eyes squinted. I kept getting pelted with things as the wind roared, hissed, growled and shrieked. I was hit by pinecones, bits of deadwood, clumps of twigs and leaves. Attack trees!

Honestly, these kinds of winds shouldn't be accompanied by bright sunny skies with not a puff or streamer of white to be seen. It should have been black-bellied clouds, whip-cracks of thunder and Lightning with tornado warnings.

The effort it took to pedal along made me so glad i'd decided against the longer ride. I was starting to perversely enjoy the ride, when Murphy's Law reared its ugly head. A gust blasted into my face just as a bee was passing by my face. Right. Up. My. Nose. Stinger first and it did the predictable thing when suddenly finding itself crammed into a such a tight space.

Fortunately, I'm on a daily dose of antihistamines so there wasn't much of a reaction, but I'm sure I made quite an image. Jumping up and down, screaming as I blew the bee out of my nose and then started trying to dig the stinger out. I'm just grateful that it was a bee and not a wasp.

Terii

 

Ouch!!!

Terii, for once I am glad my ride was more boring than yours!! Here's to a much better next ride.

 

12.31 miles.

Jens woke at 8 am and we were on the road by 9 am. I was clipping in before 10.

According to my Garmin, I only climbed about 137 feet over the 12 miles... 45 of it in the first half mile. I can believe it. So can my knees. Not a good way to start up a ride. Trying to crank up an 16% grade covered with cobble stones and knees that were already unhappy with me. It did get me up to a church that was absolutely stunning on the inside. Just CRAMMED with mural work on every inch of plastered wall. Back down the slope got me the foundation stones of a church beyond a ruin and a couple of runestones.

Maybe it was the brutal climb right away or left overs from the nasty wind yesterday, but I did not feel strong on this ride. A few times I felt so overheated, I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd spontaneously combusted. It wasn't entirely because of the weather. It's warm, but not hot and we had cloud cover every now and again.

Coughed my way along thanks to a major motocross competition. The bikes had to zip along the roads from course to course. Those bikes do NOT burn clean. Dunno if the mix is purposely over rich to spew out half their gas as exhaust or what, but it makes it a nightmare to be at tailpipe level with a constant stream of the cursed things.

A lot of the ground was older stuff I've ridden before. I was just attempting to ride from a town called Enköping back home. The place has always felt pretty far away as far as the bike goes. About a 35-40 minute drive. Turns out, it's maybe 30 miles at the most along the smaller roads.

After 8 miles, I was fed up though. It had taken me more than 2 hours to get that far thanks to hills and my knees. Then Loke managed to find SOMETHING to gulp down in the middle of nowhere. Who knows what it was. Knees hurt, flies were driving me bonkers. They didn't bite, but kept bouncing off my face, trying to get up my nose or buzzing behind my glasses. I made a turn toward the next village about 5 miles away and that's when I snapped.

The gears, which have been wonky on the 2nd chain ring with the three largest cogs, decided to go bad on the largest cog on my small chain ring. My granny gear was jumping, lurching and slipping. Even when it wasn't, it felt weirdly hard to get up the hill. I felt like my parking brake was stuck... or I was dragging a car behind me. The slope was only about 4% - 5% grade. I even stopped to check the parking brake or that my back tire wasn't flat.

Nope. All looked fine. I flailed my hands around at the files and looked west. I could see Långtora church in the distance. About 1 mile or a little more as a crow flies, but 2 miles via roads. Good a place as any for Jens to find me, half the distance than Orsundsbro AND downhill for the most part.

It was breezy out among the fields, no flies. I pedalled leisurely along with the umbrella up and tilted to shade Loke. No sense in him suffering because I was calling it quits. Sat in the shade of an apple tree until Jens arrived.

Good thing the trike's gears are getting tended to on Wednesday. I even told them I want the cables replaced so hopefully they'll actually work for more than 5 miles after the shop's done with them.

Terii

 

Rode the Tammany Trace from between Abita Springs and Slidell, Louisiana with my wife. We rode a little over 40 miles and this was her very first ride on her recumbent. I kept asking was she ready to turn around and she just kept on going. Amazing. I really enjoyed it though it was a much slower pace that I normally ride.

 

Riding 40 miles with your wife.... priceless!!!

 

Yeah, couple time is to be enjoyed no matter what. Awesome, now you need to start planning for picnics etc.

 

Another ride with the wife, I rode 25 miles, and she did 18. We rode around the River Trail here and stopped to watch the crit races. She is still getting the hang of her recumbent (only her second ride on it) but loves the less stress on her body parts.

 

We are finally experiencing SUMMER in East Tennessee. I.e. hot sunny weather with only periodic rains.

So my miles are starting to pile up. In the last two weeks I've ridden about 150 miles and as long as the weather holds out, I should be able to keep up that pace until vacation time or winter. (Remember I normally only ride from work at lunch time so this is really good for me!) I'm out here sweating like a pig and grinning like a hyena!

Have my Silver Comet / Chief Ladiga trail trip coming up in in 2 weeks. So I'm ready to hit the trail. This will be the first time I will NOT be riding my V Rex on a Rails-To-Trails. Because this trail is all paved, I am taking my Bacchetta Strada which I am currently riding the most. Rides like a dream! I plan to write up my ride when I get done and I will post it on the Epic rides thread.

Would like to see more miles on Bike Journal from others and some write ups here as well!

 

Another good ride, this time alone. I rode 35.38 miles along the River Trail here in Little Rock. Early in my ride I had a fellow buzz me on his carbon fiber Diamond Frame bike (nothing against the bike, use to love riding mine) like I should not be there and he was a real cyclist and I wasn't. I thought he was going to take my mirror off as he went by. Problem is that you should be a better cyclist if you blatantly buzz me like that or I will run you down and pass you. So I let my testosterone get the best of me, caught him, did not buzz him but passed and left him. Had to loosen up my helmet because of the swelling. Other than that, hot, breezy, lovely day riding the trail. Darn I love to ride!

 

isn't that typical of guys though? Can't pass up the Challenge (haha) Still, that is always awesome...

 

Actually is wasn't me it was all because of Kadiddle. I was just along for the ride.

 

Yeah..uh huh...sure, helpless you

 

Just came across this picture on my changing computer background.



This was a picture I took 3 years ago riding the Erie Canal. This is why I love riding recumbents so much. Where else would you get a picture and memories like this?