On Good Long Rides

In my last post from Thursday (November 4) I noted that I planed to do core exercises. Then that annoying concept, the thing I do to pay for the house and food, and critically bike and related accessories, you know, the eight hours a day (well more like ten hours a day) five (six) days a week? Starts with a J... like Job... yes that's it my day job, it got in the way. Well as much as it could my job got in the way, but I my little diesel conspired to get me back on the saddle, the starter motor on my diesel car is dying.

Now granted in an ordinary gas car it is possible to get the engine rolling without a starter motor, just park on some flat ground and push the car until its rolling fast enough and jump behind the wheel. Diesel's are a little more difficult, because the engine has no spark plugs, ignition is achieved by knocking, so it takes a lot more torque to roll the engine over. I did take the car to my neighborhood mechanic and while replacing the starter is not the hardest job ever, sourcing a starter motor for a nine model-year-old small diesel engine quite possibly is.

So my car is at the mechanic, and the days while cold are sunny and dry. As if I needed another reason not to drive, Lesley was sent to Ottawa by her job, (yes I officially hate all day jobs!) Lesley decided to drive her truck... land yacht... big black gas guzzling behemoth.

So Saturday I rode, only 63km - but then I did only drive about 15km, Sunday I rode, 125km then Lesley wanted to get some lunch and instead of using a sesnible mode of transportation we drove to lunch, another 10km. Yesterday I rode to work and then drove the car to the mechanic (78km by bike and 2km by car). Today I expect to ride about 80km (to and from work) and, well, cannot drive at all. Of course that leaves, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which luckily, the weather is looking good. So I guess I'm stuck riding, oh the humanity!

Actually I do want to mention the 125km I did on Sunday. Now I admit, by my standards 125km is nothing special, but this ride sure was, the route is below. From around Dufferin and Teston all the way back to King Vaughan was nothing but rollers, some rather steep. At one point on Jane Street there was a nice tail wind with a fairly steep decesent and I was hammering away in the 53/11 or maybe 53/12 when some car whips past me, now I was doing 64.5km/h (by the GPS) and it is a 70km/h zone, but if that car passed me at anything less than 30km/h I ought to retake physics 121. But other than some really bad drivers, this was a wonderful route and left me with the really nice pain. I hope the weather is nice so I can ride this thing again this Sunday.

To_KettlebyRd

http://www.bikely.com/

And here is a group photo, from Keele, just south of Kettleby.