Special Delivery

A very soggy but satisfying 46k ride with a couple of hills thrown in today. Unfortunately I forgot to turn on my GPS so no track. I did take a picture from my favorite bridge though, the Canada Line bridge into Richmond:

As you can see, it's a typical Vancouver spring day and my ride was through almost exclusively industrial real estate. I kind of wonder how much the training benefit of this ride was offset by the soot and fumes inhaled from passing trucks.

In other news, I was delighted to receive a shipment of bike parts from Ireland.

I figure I might as well start the trip with fresh brake pads, cables, cogs and a new chain (and I'll probably want to replace the chain again before the end of the trip).

I also got a supposedly bulletproof Conti Gator Hardshell tire to go on the back. This is to replace a Bontrager tire I recently bought. The Bontrager seems to be durable enough, but I'm hoping the more expensive Conti will ride better. Either way, it's good to have a backup.

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Buntzen Lake

A hilly 94k today, through Port Moody ("city of the arts" says the sign) to Buntzen Lake. I think I am getting stronger, though I could feel the effects of yesterday's ride a bit.

My motivation today was the German documentary about the 1973 Giro D'Italia, Stars and Watercarriers. It has some really nice old footage, which you can see a sample of here. One random fact: they used to give the riders beer to drink on the bike. Although cycling is steeped in tradition, I don't think you'd see that today.

Today's track.

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Horseshoe Bay again

Another ride to Horseshoe Bay today. Here it is:

And here is my welcoming committee:

I've heard that crows, like criminals, often work in pairs. One will distract the victim while the other steals the loot. Well, no way I was falling for that. They'd have to pry that Eatmore bar out of my cold dead hands.

Today's track.

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Today's track. A bit of fatigue and boredom is starting to set in. I just couldn't face a 60 k ride today so just a quick jaunt for an errand. I don't want this to be a chore. I think it's good to be flexible and accommodate the occasional mulligan day into the training.

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Random video

This stuff is so cool. I keep forgetting what it's called...

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Technical interlude

I'm playing around with another blogging app, blogger-droid. This one allows me to rotate pictures, specify the resolution of uploaded pics and upload videos to the blog. Pretty dumb that the Google app doesn't do those things but oh well.

Here's a rotated pic:

And here's a video I recorded today on the bridge:

And here's the link to the track from My Tracks. Unfortunately, blogger-droid messes up the link, but it's not hard to fix.
Today's track.

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Delta 98k

Today's track took me down to Delta for the longest ride of the year so far at 98km. The rolling hills of the last ride took a lot out of me, so this time I wanted something flatter. Well, you don't get much flatter than Delta.

I took a few pictures today. I don't think I can give them captions through this app so I'll just describe them here. One picture shows a pet peeve of mine. On River Road in Richmond there are these little reflectors in the road. I'm sure it is really good for safety at night, but they are almost always exactly where I'd like to put my bike on the road. If you hit one on a bike, it's not the most pleasant experience, so you either have to dodge them, which is dangerous, or ride farther into the lane, which pisses off some motorists. I notice that a lot of them have been scraped off, presumably by snow plows, so hopefully another snowy winter will take care of the rest.

Another picture shows my turn around point in Delta. Nothing too picturesque but on a day like this it just feels good to be out in the fresh air.

The most exciting thing about today's ride was conquering the Alex Fraser bridge not once but twice. Last year I started to go over this bridge but had to abort because I couldn't cope with the narrow walkway. I was so tense, I felt like I was putting myself at risk by being up there. This time I was able to soldier on, aided maybe by lighter winds. The thing that irks me about this bridge walkway is that the railing is so short. Would it really have been that expensive to add another foot to the railing? On second thought, they probably didn't want to obstruct the view from the roadway. That's kind of legit, I guess, but I'd still take the added safety if it were up to me.