Category Archives: MTB

around home, bikes, Canada, friends, MTB, snow

Back on the bike

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After really starting to wish I was back riding sweet singletrack on my bike as winter drags on, I was quite surprised to get the opportunity to go for a ride yesterday.  I enjoyed a little sleep-in, lounging around reading my book (I’ve started another epic – “London” by the same guy that wrote the last book & epic I read.  The narrative is not quite as compelling, but the history of the city is fascinating.) & then having a nap before Alex texted with the idea for a ride.  It was a nice clear day & almost up to freezing point, so conditions were perfect.

I dragged my bike out, rugged up a bit & cautiously took my first ride on the snowy streets.  Thankfully it wasn’t too icy.  Riding on the hard packed snow was straight forward, although I was quickly reminded of the fact that my entire drivetrain needs replacing before the summer & that my rear tyre is particularly bald.  The riverside paths & Engine Bridge were easy pedalling.

Ice floating down the Bow River, from the Engine Bridge, the Three Sisters in the background

We took a detour around the small island that is in the river between town & the power station runout on Mineside.  There hadn’t been nearly as much traffic down this trail & it was a lot narrower & bumpier.  Alex progressed easier than I did as he had fitted studded tyres; progress was slow, it was hard to keep much balance & as soon as you dabbed your foot just sank in to the unpacked snow.

Mt Rundle behind me

Looking across the Bow & town to Grotto

I made a snow-bike angel

Ready-made bike stand

Back on the packed trail we ambled up to Quarry Lake – I was pleased to find I still had some climbing legs left.  We rode along under the power line to Peaks of Grassi before winding our way down various paths & stairs (some of which Alex could ride) to the Riverside Trail.  I was grinning most of the time with the pleasure of being back on my bike.

around home, bikes, Canada, Europe, family, friends, MTB, snow, travel, UK

Twenty-ten summary

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I’ve spent a lot of time this week sending out a rather brief attempt at a Christmas letter (about my only concession so far that Christmas is quite soon; actually, I did send some gifts home but they may be a bit late, oops).  It really is just my take on my year & trying to remind people back home I still exist & if I’m lucky I might get some NZ (or whereever) news back.  Without further ado & my being distracted by many classic Brit comedy moments, here it is.

This Christmas finds me well away from any family (immediate or extended) for the first time – I’m still not sure exactly how I came to be living in Canada.  Never mind, it was a great rushed decision – I thoroughly enjoyed a summer chocked full of mountain-biking (& a little hiking).  Now winter is slowly rolling around – well, it’s cold but there’s not all that much snow yet; so the next few months of skiing promise to be almost as good.  For those that haven’t been keeping up with my ramblings here are a few of the many highlights of 2010 for me.

  • Ten days in Madrid & further south exploring & conversing with Spaniards trying to overcome their Spanglish.
  • Many many days spent exploring London & spending time with friends & family.

Here in Canmore I supported myself for a few months with all manner of temporary jobs before starting at a cement plant (pretty much the only industry around here) – where I still am enjoying it & I hope to be there until my visa expires in May.  I’m trying to contain my excitement with respect to next summer’s three-month mountain-bike oriented road-trip around the western USA & British Columbia.  I’ll be back in London in August next year – after that, I don’t know.

Still being distracted, damn it.

bikes, MTB, roadtrip, travel

Roadtrip Planning!

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Here is the long promised Summer 2011 West USA Roadtrip outline.  Ever since I realised that I would be ending a year in Canada with a car (probably), my long held pipe-dream of a classic USA roadtrip with my mountain-bike in the trunk (or on the back or on the roof – you get the idea) took many steps closer to reality.  My visa here expires mid-May, so the plan is to leave sometime just before that & travel down from the Alberta-Montana border to San Diego (with much time spent in Utah & Colorado) trying to do as much riding as possible.  As I’m also a bit of a sucker for famous sites & sights, plenty of National Parks & other such things will also be included – maybe even some hiking &, dare I say it climbing, could be in order too.  After spending time with good friends again in San Diego it’ll be up the west coast to British Columbia & then back across to Canmore to sell the car & leave for London again.

I’ve done a bit of research on the mtbr.com forums & other useful websites, but I’m keen to hear the ideas of others.  Here is a loose plan (in vague chronological order & which I haven’t really looked at for a while) of the places I intend to visit so far.  I fully realise that by the time I get to ride in some places, it will be stinking hot – but that’s just the way the visa timing works out; I think I’ll be doing quite a lot of early morning riding.  If anyone has any suggestions of great places to visit or ride that I might be able to work in to such a plan – please, please let me know.  Perhaps more importantly, if riding in such places appeals & you’re keen & possibly able to join me (for whatever part) – let me know, it’d be fantastic to share some sublime riding with friends.

Now I know why I was putting this off – there’s still six months to go & just writing about it makes that seem so far away.  If the taste of riding I had in the South West last year is anything to go by – it’s going to be a ripper.

bikes, Canada, MTB, vehicles

Riding Diary

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With a nice snowy & cool forecast up now (thanks Alex), there is some hope that it will start snowing properly soon & I’ll be able to kick the relative laziness of the last few weekends by getting out skiing.  Sunshine hasn’t opened yet – they have delayed it for lack of snow.  Somehow I ended up buying a pair of secondhand  XC skis & boots yesterday – so I should be able to keep my cardio fitness up over the winter with a night or two a week on the XC trails at the Nordic Center.

Thursday, being the eleventh of November was Remembrance Day here in Canada.  The annual parade is at a bit more of a reasonable hour than the ANZAC Day dawn parades back home – but having worked my final double-shift the previous night, I appreciated the sleep-in so only saw the tail end of the parade from Alex & Megan’s balcony – did hear the pipes & the Last Post, so that was cool.   The local rags were full of tributes to Canada’s fallen & serving troops – nicely, it’s all a much bigger deal over here than back home.  I don’t think I’ve ever remarked here that many provinces & states have special registration plates for veterans – that’s kind of nice.  Also, the plates in this part of the world are so much more interesting than NZ’s bland black on white plates.  It seems I don’t have too many pictures of NZ cars, but here’s one of the only car I ever owned in NZ – I definitely got my money’s worth out of that.  The second picture shows an old-school white on black (non-reflective) NZ plate on a friend’s Capri restoration.

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Also on Remembrance Day, our big package of bike parts turned up from Jenson.  I’ve just now got to get around to installing a new drive train, nice new grippy (can you say grippy? – that’s for you Gareth) tires, grips (they had better be grippy too) & and a brand spanking new bottom bracket.  I’ll leave going tubeless for next year when my bike isn’t just sitting around in the garage.  I’ve been messing around very briefly with trying to share the odd document on Google Docs.  As this riding season comes to an end, here is my Riding Diary.  This goes back four years to when I started training for my first Karapoti Classic – since then I’ve just kept it going detailing every single ride I’ve been on.  Unfortunately, my bike computer died so some of the distance & time fields aren’t completed.  But you get the idea – I think I’ve done just a tad over sixty rides this summer/fall.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of good memories, friends & places visited detailed there.  Not all the functionality made the transfer from .odt to .xls to GoogleDocs format, but that’s not all that important.  My poor bike has done well over five-thousand kilometres off road now (ranging from NZ & Australia to Nepal to North America to Britain & Europe to Kenya), but at least it’s not as neglected as the singlespeed left in Rotorua – only about four hundred kilometres on that.  When I sort out what OpenOffice did to all the hyperlinks I had in my roadtrip worksheet, I’ll get around to posting that too.