On Pictures from the July 29 Escape The Don ride

I forgot to include these before, but here they are:
No, in fact I was not stoned out of my mind when this picture was taken, I don't know what I was, but I was not stoned. (I feel I better point that out because well frankly if that's not the look of someone on some other planet... actually that's the same look Stephen Harper has most of the time... figures.)

This is one of the better photos of me. This was taken at the coffee break point, west of Highway 400, at Steels. Had I known we were about to go about a bajillion miles an hour, I doubt I'd have looked quite so happy.


You can hardly see me here, third from the far left, what you cannot see is I am ready to collapse on my handle bars any second. These Tuesday night rides are INSANE, which is probably why I love doing them.

On Reflecting, why I ride

Recently I had a conversation and I was told why what I do is not an effective training programme. To be sure the language was far more polite than that, but the message was, my training scheme is not worth it.

Good advice if I wanted to win races, except I do not. I don't care for racing, well maybe something really casual like when David from the BCC told me to crank it until we passed that car in the distance, but not an official organized race with starting lines, time clocks, crashes and all that stuff. The fact is I ride for three reasons:

1. The scenery
2. The camaraderie
3. Physical fitness

Allow me to elucidate. On the scenery I love riding through the country side, when you can take a deep breath in and not smell diesel exhaust or a sewage treatment plant, instead it is the air cleaned by the trees, free of carbon monoxide and all the other byproducts of human activity (many of which I do not even want to think about.) Besides which, the forests and the farms offer a beautiful change from the office towers of this concrete jungle.

On the camaraderie, we are talking about the Beaches Cycle Club, I suspect if you looked camaraderie in the dictionary there would have to be the BCC referenced in there somewhere.

As for physical fitness, well I have not lost much weight since I started riding, maybe 5 pounds, but I have lost three inches from my waste line and my pants are tighter in the legs and that is not from fat either. According to mapmyride.com, the last time I went to Lake Simcoe I burned nearly 6000 calories in under 6 hours. My training programme may not win me any yellow jerseys, but I think my cardio health is probably pretty good now, although I am going to get a regular checkup soon from a GP, I'll see what the numbers are then.

I could race, but I would loose, I am not a gifted athlete and here is my dirty little secret. I don't care! I don't want to win... oh wait I said that already. Sure it would be nice if I could keep up with guys like Emile, Thi and Lauri for an entire ride, but here is another dirty little secret, I almost can right now. With a little effort, time and training (that I am already doing) I am confident that I will not be the guy so near the back of the pack on Tuesday nights for much longer and even if I am stuck at the end of the pack, that is alright with me, I would rather enjoy myself and love the sport than beat myself up on rollers and end up doing with my bike what I am now doing with my skates. (That would be a colossal waste.)

On Long Rides and Good Customer Service

First I should say how impressed I am by the people at Mapmyride.com, the site is slow, but on further investigation I realise that is because there is so much data involved in a GPS track of a route. Granted its not Gene splicing or even medical records of every person in Canada, but it is still an awful lot of data, multiplied by hundreds, thousands? of users. Anyway what impresses me is not the slowness of the site, rather it is the responsiveness of their support, just check out the comment in yesterday's post.

Anyway in other news I am trying to organize a ride for the holiday Monday. The route is below, I expect to see all my friends there, or I'm gonna find you after and bitch slap you for being a chicken! No seriously, I hope to see lots of people out there, it is a really nice route. I am hoping to start at Timmy's at Lakeshore and Leslie at 5am, but if people from further away want a later start, as long as they actually are serious about coming I can put it off a little bit, but I would like to dodge the bad holiday traffic by leaving as early as possible.

Lake Ontario to Simcoe and Back

http://www.bikely.com/

An addendum: This ride will be a LSD (Long Slow Distance, not Lysergic acid diethylamide, sorry guys.) My goal is an average speed of 28~32km/h over the 185km, so expect it to take about 5 hours, plus time for a coffee stop at Timmy's just south of Simcoe.

On New Rides and Old Rides

First order of business, the pictures.

Dan and I spent much of Friday night building my carbon fibre beauty. The result, before we were even done was so gorgeous that Dan declared that my bike looked sick. Which to be honest is about the first time I have had something good enough that someone who is an expert in the field, gave such a stamp of approval. (No, not calling her sick, but saying it with admiration.)

I still need a name, Dan suggested Helga, I am vetoing that suggestion. Other ideas are welcome.

In other news, I went for a ride on Saturday with the Beaches Cycle Club, there are no pictures of me. It was the long distance steady state ride, 170km. As I had to go to the store on Saturday for some final tweaks of the new bike I turned around early, which was a good thing. I was riding Amy (the old Roubaix) when the rear tube blew out just West of Dixie. The good news, I did the entire change myself, QB did hold up my saddle for me and Dan lent his moral support (mostly of the "move faster" variety), which was helpful, but it is always a relief to know, in a crunch I can change a tube on the side of the road with nothing but the parts I carry around. (So much for walking to the nearest gas station, eh!)

Sunday I rode my new bike for the first time. She was not exactly a dream to ride, everything felt sluggish, I thought maybe I needed some rest, or perhaps I was just short of red blood from the last donation. After about 65km of struggling, well on the way home actually, I realised my problem. My brakes were tightened down so much that they were rubbing even when not engaged, I disengaged the calipers and I went from struggling to keep up with the pack to being a lead rider the rest of the way.

That is good exercise actually, donate blood then tighten your brakes or skate axles, now go as fast as you can!

In other news Lesley and I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, which I have decided is such a pretty place that I would like to organize some sort of ride from the Beach to NotL for the Holiday (Civic Day) coming up on Monday. It is only 135km one way from my home to NotL, whats 270km among friends?

Finally mapmyride.com is starting to really piss me off, I cannot load my GPS data onto their site anymore, it keeps saying there are no routes or waypoints on my Garmin which is not at all correct and their site is agonizingly slow. However it turns out I can display what I did on Sunday, I loaded it directly into Google Maps, just click here to see. Or you can see the group photo below, notice how my back was turned... oops!

On Religion

Okay, before I get to my rant on one Religious belief structure, let me start by pointing out there is a new survey, which is religious in a way too. Now come on people, what is your favourite bike/skate boot? The answer to one is pretty obvious for me, the other, well I am not so sure.

In other news, Cor (see my readings) was asking how to train in the winter. He said, "I hate cycling with a passion", I want to stress, Cor hates cycling, I on the other hand think Cor is deranged! Sorry Cor, but you really must be to have such a bizare attitude about the greatest way to get around ever since the invention of the human foot! Anyway I would just like to point out Cor works for the Governement... of Canada no less! And he finds riding boring! Maybe in Ottawa the word boring means exciting to us normal people and exciting means boring? Sort of like Bill Clinton's line "it depends on what your definition of is, is."

I tried to work for the Government of Ontario once, it was so dull I quit the job within six months. Looking busy without actually having anything to do is really teadious work.

Anyway here is a rant I wrote last night that is sure to offend, but hey when has that ever stopped me from publishing something?

My sister-in-law's grandfather passed away recently. I hardly knew him but in the 1990s he seemed like a decent guy. I went to the shiva last night, not because I knew the man - I hardly did, but because you do these things for the living, except neither my brother nor sister-in-law were there. Question, why the hell did I go to the shiva then? Clearly my presence, or lack thereof would not have hurt anyone - sometimes family obligations go too far and this was one of those times.

Anyway I mention all this because it was a Jewish funeral, now understand I am - a born but non practicing - Jew. I have a lot of trouble rationalizing this god person with the horrors that we humans inflict on each other and on "god's" little planet. But what is relevant is at the prayers I did something I was never mature enough to do before, I deconstructed the language and discovered - to my way of thinking - an agonizingly rightist mentality. All that Israel does is good, all that we believe is good and dear god please put an end to our enemies. Now let's see Jesus was a Jew who had followers who started a new nearly identical belief system, except they believe god should put an end to their enemies, Muhammad was an Arab inspired by Jews and Christians who started his own religion in a manner nearly identical to the Christians. Little wonder everyone in the Middle East seems to be at each other's throat all the time.

I would not dare to pretend to know right from wrong in these matters but it does seem to me that a good place to start is by kicking this god person out of our long term planning process and accept the fact that we need to come to terms with our enemies because short of nuking them they won't be smited any time soon.

Here is another random thought on religion. Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Well god smote the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and changed the flow of the red sea. We humans have smote Hiroshima and Nagasaki (have the ability to wipe out pretty much all human life on Earth) and have changed the geography of rivers, lakes even major seas - does that destructive potential give me any divine powers?

In the BBC radio comedy "A Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy" Douglas Adams describes a set of books, a theological blockbuster, "A Few of God's Mistakes", "Some more of God's Greatest Mistakes" and "Who Is This God Person Anyway?" I wonder if those books would be any good?

On New Survey's

As you can see (unless you are reading an archived copy of this post). I have put up a new survey, it blows my mind how many companines out there make road bikes. But anyway I am pretty sure I missed a few, so please post a reply here if you can think of any to add to the list. As for myself I have yet to make up my mind, I'd like to try out a Cervelo before I vote having only been on a... damnit, I forgot about Coppi! and my Specialized.

Second thought, I am not going to add Coppi, they are actually made by someone else and I have heard that they aren't very good anymore. (If someone else asks for it though, I'll put it up.)

On Easy Rides

Since I gave blood I have been taking it easy, here is Tuesday (July 22) and Wednesday (July 23'rd) rides.