Author Archives: Andrew

A Beautiful Finish to a Freezing Start.

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This week started off miserably cold with Monday’s 6 degrees & rain giving way to Tuesday’s 3 degrees. Not the kind of weather a guy looks for heading into fall. Mother Nature had a trick up her sleeve though as today’s banner image greeted me this morning with a nice 17 degrees. I rode home (slowly) in 27 degrees and they’re calling for 30 all weekend. That’s my kind of weekend.

I rode my heart out this morning, chasing down Thomas who turned out not to be Thomas despite the matching backpack and shorts. Being as it was not Thomas I did the next logical thing – bid the gentlemen good morning and gapped him as hard as I could. I can’t lie – it felt good to be able to do that. I don’t care what his reasoning is for getting caught and gapped by a guy in runners on a mountain bike either – I’m taking it as a win. Fully in the groove I rode the rest of the way to work at full-steam, thinking about how hard I’d been dropped the day before. Converging from different paths and heading the same direction, I was only a few meters behind him – 15 at the most. We headed towards the Memorial pedestrian overpass and it was there that he looked over his shoulder – him at the top of the ramp hitting the bridge, me coming around the corner to the bottom of the ramp. By the time I’d made it to the top of the ramp, he was over the bridge and heading down the other side (which requires he go up the ramp off the bridge before going down…who designed that?). When I’d made it down the bridge, he was literally out of site. Returning the favour to someone else does a body good.

After taking this morning’s picture (which you can only see as the header by going here) , the subject of my darker and darker morning departures came up. As we head into fall, the sun sleeps in a little more each day so where before I was dealing with sun in my eyes on the horizon as I left at 6:30, it’s still dark at 7:00. Soon I’ll be riding in the dark for most of the commute and there’s no streetlights on the path. I mentioned needing a light and was promised that Santa might bring some cycling goodies. “By Christmas we start getting lighter” I complained. Your birthday is coming up I was reminded. Yes…a week before Christmas –“the shortest day of the year falls between my birthday and Christmas” I moaned. “Stupid December birthday, all the cycling stuff will be gone from the shelves” I continued “and I’m going to freeze to death if I don’t get some winter riding gear before then”.

How do you know when you’re married to the most incredible person in the world? When I came home, the three monsters greeted me with a “Surprise! – Happy Birthday dad!”. I wassurprised! Trace grinned a mischevious smile as I changed out of my sweaty cycling gear and got ready for dinner. When I (finally) sat down at the table, the monsters each came bearing a gift, itching for me to unwrap them. First was the Homeland Security approved wrapping from my the middle monster hiding my favourite flavour of Shot Bloks (Cran Razz thank you). Perfect – never have too many of those.

MEC Headlight and Taillight

Next was the headlight/taillight combo set I’d put on my wish list. They’re both LED of course and have 2 modes of operation – steady and disco-strobe flash. Supplied by MEC they’ll bolt right onto the Chinook so the next time I make a sundown departure, I won’t be (as) worried about being crushed under the wheels of some sleepy commuter on his way to Tim Horton’s.

MEC Roubaix Cold Weather pants!

Last but by no means least, wrapped in a blue and orange paper were the MEC Roubaix winter riding pants I’d been going on about for weeks. “Need those pants. Boy it’s cold out this morning, sure could use those pants. Froze my knees solid this morning, going to have to give up riding soon if I don’t get some proper pants”. No opportunity to remind anyone who was in ear-shot that I really wanted needed those pants was missed. It worked!

My awesome wife – Best Wife – took it upon herself to celebrate my birthday in September so she could get me to stop whining feed my cycling addiction! How cool is that? And. AND! She made me cinnamon buns for dessert. My life is profoundly excellent.

To Cover, or Not to Cover. That is (not) the question.

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Warning – this post contains a graphic photo of my legs.  There is also a fresh flesh wound.

I wear a helmet when I ride.  It’s one of those things that happened not out of planning but happenstance.  With three kids on the go, all of whom at least appear to enjoy playing on their bikes – and all of whom fall down – it made sense for them to wear helmets, not to mention they brand you a bad parent and take your money if you don’t.  No amount of coaching a 2 year old on a bicycle is going to instil a sense of caution that isn’t either innate already or life-long debilitating so you eliminate the hazards you can (traffic, hills) and try to protect those you can’t.  I started wearing one when I started cycling to set an example for the kids, besides it would have been odd to wear one before I was riding.  It’s now as routine for them as putting on their shoes – if they’re heading for their bike, they have their helmet on.

When Enthusiasm Overcomes Ability. A Confidence Apogee

I know some folks would shudder to expose their children to harm of any sort, but that’s not us.  Scrapes, bumps, bruises – those are lessons.  Who hasn’t had a scrapped knee or bloody palms as a kid?  Or an adult…

Your head though – that’s a different thing.   Sure, any number of maladies can result from improperly addressed wounds but by and large you grow some new skin, suffer the sheets sticking to your oozing flesh for a couple of nights and then business as usual.  Knock on the head?  That’s too risky for this cowboy rider.

I am on the side of personal choice with these sorts of things.  I think as an adult, I should be the individual who decides that I wear a helmet on my bicycle or my motorcycle or skiing, snowboarding, caving, climbing or any other activity where you might want to wear one.  In anything involving falling objects or movement at speed on unforgiving surfaces however I think you’re nuts if you don’t.  Borders on idiotic.  Why?  Pretty straight forward really.

Your head contains your brain – I realize this comes as a shock to any woman who knows young men but it’s true – and your brain is rather important, however nature saw fit to give you just one.  It’s like nature looked at humans and decreed “if you’re going to be so fool as to mess your brain up, perhaps it’s best you do”.  Big deal – so your brain is in your head.  What ev.  It’s only the thing that controls everything about your very existence after all.  Your personality, your memories, your decision making processes.  Then there’s the more significant stuff it controls like your heart, your lungs, all of your senses, motor control.  Why wouldn’t you want to protect that thing?  It’s the essence of you after all.  Why do you lock your bike up to protect it but not wear a helmet?

The following argument: the safer you make a given activity, the more careless become the participants thanks to the reduced risk.  Full agreement.  Thing is, brain injury takes remarkably little impact, speed or spectacle.

True story time.  When I was in my early 20s, I had a motorcycle accident that totalled my landlord’s custom Harley and put me in the hospital.  An old man with his nurse in the car (not kidding), turned left across the intersection I was riding through and clobbered me.  I still remember the moment after impact and thinking “Holy sh*t!  I’m flying through the air”!  Things got a bit fuzzy after landing however despite the damage to my wrist, my leg and my foot and the complete loss of the motorcycle now trapped firmly underneath the offending car, my helmet never hit the ground.  There wasn’t a scratch on it.  Had I not been wearing the helmet, I would have walked away without so much as a bump on my noggin.   Okay, I wouldn’t have walked as the helmet’s presence had nothing to do with the gaping flesh wounds and exposed bone but you get the idea – the helmet served no function in a rather spectacular crash (that even blew my shoes off – wear boots).

Fast forward a few years.  An employee of Harley-Davidson Canada whom I knew went to work as an instructor teaching other coneheads like myself how the ways and means of Miliwaukee’s offerings.  While fooling around one afternoon, he took one of the program’s motorcycles into the small parking lot behind the classroom, wheelied it at a rather benign speed, lost control and went over backwards - I’ve recently been correct – the front end washed out when the front wheel came back down and he went over the bars hitting his head.  No speed, no drama.  He was pronounced brain dead a few hours later.  Had he been wearing a helmet, he would – literally – have walked away.

Yes….those are motorcycle accidents but they’re true and I’m using them to illustrate that one does not require a “typical” accident to end up dead due to brain injury.

I’ve heard this argument too: “if I’m in an accident with a car, I’m a dead man anyway”.  Okay – yes, in an altercation with a car a cyclist (motor or pedal) is always on the losing end of the deal but death isn’t the inevitable outcome of those accidents (see above).  That’d be like saying I don’t need to wear my seatbelt because if I have an accident with a gravel truck, it’s going to squash me and my car anyway.  What about all the other things that might put you in a situation that involves your head contacting something not moving in the same plane and direction?  An errant dog, unexpected ice, dive-bombing hawks, me throwing my water bottle through your spokes so I can finally pass you…the possibilities are endless.

Here’s what really boggles my mind though – there’s no down-side to wearing a bicycle helmet.  It doesn’t impede your vision like a motorcycle full-face helmet, doesn’t look any different than 99% of the other cyclists (so it’s not like you’re sticking out amongst other riders), you’re already wearing Lycra pants with a diaper stuffed in them – who cares what the non-cycling populace thinks, they’re not hot, they’re not heavy (I’m sure I have toques that are heavier than my cheapo $80 helmet)… The question isn’t why should I wear a helmet, it’s why wouldn’t I.  Why wouldn’t you?

Exuberance

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Have you ever had one of those rides where everything just clicks together? The wind (for a change) is at your back, the sun is shining and the bike just wants to gooooo. That was my ride home. Rabbitless as it was, I arrived home feeling jacked instead of beat, a giant grin plastered across my face. Suffering? Not today friends, not at all.

It wasn’t an ideal ride – a pair of dawdling, wandering commuters on the path in front of me clogging the descent off the Memorial pedestrian bridge meant I couldn’t race down the ramp and cut the corner while carrying all kinds of speed. I slowed, I waited, he wandered around the ramp some more, on-coming traffic preventing me from passing him. The instant he was to the left, I mashed the pedals the remaining ramp distance, through the grass and up-n-over the corner-cutting hump, pedaling the entire way. I came out ahead of him but barked out an “on your right!” warning out of some smidgen of path etiquette. He quickly disappeared from the tiny view provided by my Fred mirror.

With no bait to chase and not being the rabbit myself I started to imagine scenarios to keep me spinning away. Thomas is behind me, sure to catch me but no way I’m handing it to him. My Purple Rabbit is just around the next bend. Thomas is in front of me taking it easy and I can catch him if I stay on it. Then the real inspiration came: Lungs? Check; Legs? Check; Brain? Brain? Brain? Err…oh – Check! The ride had been exceptional already – spinning away, almost at the top of the big ring, cadence up, form up, speed up. I was having a great ride and it was a self-reinforcing circle of effort and reward.

The last handful of cars on a southbound train were yet to clear the crossing when I got there, one rider ahead of me waiting patiently. I debated the options: up the switchbacks to 16th, down the sidewalk over the train and back down the trail to the path; up the switchbacks to 16th and onto the side-streets taking me home. While I enjoy the climb up to 16th, it is my least favourite route home. I end up crossing Centre with its four lanes of angry-must-get-home-nowNowNOW drivers in an area that never seems to get a break in traffic. I made the mistake of trying to ride with traffic up Centre one afternoon commute. Not a good idea in the grand scheme of self-preservation. Drivers are all nuts. And angry.

By the time I’d made up my mind to climb up and over, the last car was passing and the arms were lifting. What? Yes, yes it did take that long to ponder it. I was too busy grinning like an idiot to think much beyond “wow – what a great ride – I feel awesome – squirrel!”. I followed the rider ahead of me and waited until it was clear that passing her wouldn’t result in my looking like a chauvinist loser when she passed me back and dropped me 6 seconds later. As I passed I repeated a comment from a rider who’d passed me in exactly the same spot a couple of weeks earlier “nice day for a ride ‘eh” but she didn’t hear, white iPhone buds protruding from her ears. I stayed in my saddle for the grind climb, dropping into the middle ring and pedaling like a man possessed. She disappeared behind me (hey – I just dropped someone on a hill…how cool is that?) not to be seen again.

I kept the heat on as I headed west along 32nd towards the bus barns and the substation path. With the substation path reno completed, it adds an extra little bit to the commute each day and I figure an extra kilometre per day certainly wouldn’t hurt. The other option is to head down the grass curb between 32nd east-bound and the barrier keeping cars and buses off the bike path below. This has been my traditional route for the summer thanks to the path reno. It’s not particularly wide, less than three feet and it’s not flat, sloping into the road. This is not an area to be distracted, particularly as the traffic to your very immediate right is travelling head-on at 70km/h just looking for an excuse to crush a soft cyclist skull.

The path is safer and has some easy bonus-distance, the shortcut has little room for error with what you’d call high exposure on the right and requires complete attention. Seems like an easy choice, so I picked the shortcut. Know why? Of course you don’t. The path transition from along 32nd to the substation area has a very tight right-left with a blind approach – you can’t see anyone coming up the other side or lollygagging in front of you. You have to slow down. I was haulin’ and had no desire to slow down so I bailed out at the last possible moment and headed for the shortcut. I once followed a newer-than-I (or at least more-chicken-than-I) rider along the shortcut – he was horribly uncomfortable and barely moving, the woman on the road bike behind us none too pleased about being slowed down. I sailed through never risking a glance at the traffic – don’t look down. I skimmed through the shortcut, around the corner and waited for the light, the remaining distance to be on the road.

This last stretch is a double-edged sword. The downhill slope along 36th street to Edmonton Trail lets me build up a good head of steam and I can usually hit 45 km/h on the approach, but never, ever have I hit a green light which wastes all that momentum. Once you’ve crossed Edmonton Trail it’s a series of up-flat-up-false flat-up-up…you get the idea. Of course it’s located close to home – great in the morning, daunting in the evening. It’s a real trick to get excited about it…I haven’t figured that trick out yet. There used to be a Dogo and Pitbull near the top of the climb – they’d come running up to the fence barking at me as I went by – my own little cheering squad getting me up that last lip – I rather miss them, though if their owner is anything like my dog’s owner, they’ve been pulled inside for barking at passing cyclists too often.

I managed a very respectable climb home if I do say so, missing a new best by 2 seconds which I’ll blame on the headwind on my brief southbound leg. Stabbing the end ride button on Strava, I couldn’t help but notice the total time – 30:08. Checking my “moving time” which generally, though not always, ignores things like stopping for trains and lights and old men in wheelchairs, I was 29 minutes flat, setting a new 3rd fastest commute time (for me – not everyone responds to commuting the same, your results may differ, there are side-effects, check with your inner-child to see if cycling is right for you).

PS My top 3 commute times are all from September rides. Perhaps there’s a benefit to spending most of your riding with a headwind afterall.