Category: cycling

Lots of Riding in Hot Weather

Published June 25, 2009

I’ve been riding my bike a lot lately. Not particularly far, but every day since Saturday. Here’s where I’ve been:

Saturday: River Bends Park, exploring new (to me) single track.
Sunday: Addison Oaks
Monday: Orion Oaks
Tuesday: Pontiac Lake Recreation Area
Wednesday: Stony Creek

Today’s ride at Stony Creek was one of the hardest things that I’ve done in a long time. The heat really, really got to me and I just couldn’t cool down / feel better. All the other days went rather well.

Now, bed with air conditioning. I finally turned on the AC after finding the inside of the house to be 86°F with even more warm weather on the way.

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Addison Oaks

Published June 22, 2009

Today after leaving my parents house I drove straight west on 32 Mile to Addison Oaks so that I could ride the single track bike trails there. I ended up doing two laps, and this all generally went well, except my first lap (plotted above) was much slower than the second. Perhaps it was because of all the sugary / unhealthy food I ate earlier in the day, but that first time around was considerably more draining than the second. I probably should have done a third, but by that time I was wanting to get some food and head home. So, I did.

Maybe I’ll head back out there tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how much the trails dry out overnight, as today they were a bit slippery and sloppy in places.

(If you’d like to see it, here is the KML used to generate the above image.)

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Clinton River Floodplain

Published June 20, 2009

With injuring my knee and rain through most of the week, I haven’t been able to go for a bike ride in a while. So, after washing my bike off and checking the wheels over for damage^† I headed towards Shelby Township’s River Bends Park. After stopping at the post office to ship a package I headed into the park and ended up doing two laps of the two track-type trail there. Normally I would have also continued along the paved path to Ryan Road, but the recent rains had the paved path under more than a foot of water, and I wasn’t in the mood to get wet. Both the bike and I got a bit muddy, but nothing terrible.

While on the unpaved tracks I ended up riding down anything that looked remotely like single track that went somewhere and ended up getting a much better feel for the land around there. The more I think about it, the more I think that River Bends could host a couple miles of nice single track.

The photo above was taken after I rode through some of the existing single track-like stuff, all the way to the far southeast corner of the park, where it goes down a ridge to the river’s floodplain. What is normally some trail for another 200′ was completely under actively flowing water. Looking towards the river showed what is above, with newly downed trees and a logjam. I love looking at this sort of transient river.

Also, during the whole time I was riding my knee had no problems. It’s still a bit sore at times, but all the aching seems to be coming from the outside of my kneecap in the area where the wound is still healing. This is good, I think.

^† Interestingly, I’d somehow fitted both tires backwards last time. I also found that while falling I managed to get a whole bunch of dirt between the bead of the tire and the rim’s bead seat, leading to a bit of a wobble in the tire. The wheels themselves are fine.

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Skinplug!

Published June 15, 2009

Today was a very, very fortunate day to unexpectedly acquire a bottle of veterinarian-grade cyanoacrylate adhesive meant for tissue. While out at Addison Oaks riding the single track mountain bike trails with some friends, I had a rather slow speed fall, hit my knee on a screw hole on the side of the stem, and scooped a chunk of skin out the very front of my knee. After falling I was looking at my knee, and sliding the skin on it side to side showed something very light colored beneath that did not move with the skin. That photo up above is the chunk of skin in the screw hole.

It didn’t hurt very much, so after a minute or two I was able to stand up and ride the couple miles out of the park and back to the school we had all met up at. Thankfully there were a bunch of good people there, which would have been even better had I been more hurt.

By the time I drove home there were four distinct paths of dried blood down my leg, so I set to washing them off, cleaning the wound, and getting ready to glue it shut. After washing it I found that the hole seemed to have begun closing up, so I patted it dry, applied a drop of the clear blue adhesive to the surface, then worked the skin a bit to open and close the hole and let it stick shut. This worked, as it’s now now nicely stuck shut and no longer bleeding.

My knee is a bit swollen and still hurts a bit, but I think it just needs some time. The swollen area is the skin on top of my knee, and the pain doesn’t appear to be joint related. There’s the surface sting from the hole, and a bit of muscle-ish pain when I bend my leg into certain positions or go down stairs, but nothing that happens when I simply move my leg.

Here’s some photos from today, if you’re curious. Be forewarned, some of these might bother those who don’t like blood:

· Chunk of skin, still in a screw hole on the stem of my bike. This happened during a relatively low speed crash at Addison Oaks.
· Blood running down my leg after riding from Addison Oaks back to the nearby school.
· Greater detail of the blood coming out of my leg. The thickly scabbed, oozing part near the top is the injured part. Everything else was just dried / oozed blood.
· Chunk of skin which had been removed from my knee and then picked out of the stem.
· Detail of my knee after washing it and applying a veterinary-grade cyanoacrylate glue to close the wound.
· After a few minutes the cyanoacrylate glue did its job and closed up the wound.

(Oh, and if you’re wondering how I fell, here’s what happened: Right at an area that transitions from some wider trail to some narrow stuff, a branch was leaning down across the trail, covering everything above 5′ off the ground with leaves. I thought I could see well enough through it so I ducked and entered the leaves. However, right after getting through them I saw that the trail turned more than I’d expected, and my the very quick turn I made caused my front wheel to lose traction.

As most anyone who rides a bike regularly, a front wheel sliding in anything other than the direction it is pointing often means a rapid fall, which is what I did. The problem was that when going down I banged my knee on a screw hole on the stem, which acted as a melonballer and cut out this nice chunk.)

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My Random Day

Published June 9, 2009

Instead of a post talking about something in particular, I’ll talk about the last 28 hours or so of my day:

To start, as seen above, Danielle and I came across both Deluxe and Old Fashioned hot dog buns from Aunt Millie’s in VG’s. When comparing them, there was no substantial difference. Beyond the price (about $1/package difference) only a few things at the very bottom of the ingredient list, vitamin supplements mostly, varied.

This photo shows the large wrapped stack of boxes waiting on my front porch when I got home. These are CD-sized outside tuck corrugated mailers from Planned Packaging of Illinois Corp. which I will use to box my CDs and store them in closets in the basement. The CD rack in my office (see this fisheye photo) will then be removed and replaced with a bookshelf to hold both my and Danielle’s books.

After work I went for a ride around the mountain bike trails at Stony Creek. I hadn’t eaten properly today, polishing off a bag of trail mix before leaving the office, and this made it really difficult to ride. Despite this I pushed myself quite a bit, and thus I kept having cramps in my lower back. I think that lowering my handle bar will help with this, because most of the cramping came with trying to stand and pedal, but with the bar relatively high I could pull on it properly and likely overdid things.

Dinner tonight was two garlic chicken sausages from Trader Joe’s, along with salad, potato chips, a bunch of spicy cheese popcorn, and a bottle of Le Fin du Monde. I made a point of drinking the dregs from this bottle to experiment with the gastrointestinal results of ingesting a quantity of yeast. My next experiment will likely involve a teaspoon of bread machine yeast. Danielle says that I’m not allowed to do this when she is around, so it’ll probably happen next week.

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Strawberry Banana Gu Gel

Published June 7, 2009

Wanting a gel without caffeine for while riding, I picked up a Strawberry Banana-flavored Gu gel. While it does the job, I really don’t like the flavor. I think I’ll stick with the vanilla / chocolate Gu flavors, and maybe pick up this Hammer Nutrition gel flavor sample pack and try these out.

Today I went for a ride around Stony Creek after eating not quite enough food, so I had to eat two 100 calorie gels to keep myself going. The lack of food and my pushing myself meant that I kept feeling a bit shaky and dizzy until I ate something.

While riding around I came across this really swampy area filling in one of the paths, but thankfully there was a bit of newly worn trail going around the side of it. This is a route that I hadn’t taken before, but as it generally follows the normal route through Stony with a slightly new dimension, I think I’ll continue taking it. It exchanges two grueling back to back climbs for a quirky turn around a tree to avoid falling in the scummy swamp. (Weirdly, in the aforementioned photo it appears as if something disturbed (or started to go into) the swamp. I really hope it was a turtle and not one of the people heading out from that area as I was riding in.

Oh, and if you’re interested, here is what my legs looked like after today’s ride. No, those aren’t tan lines… That’s just dust from the trails.

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Another Nice Spring Day

Published June 4, 2009

Tonight I showed up at Mt. Clemens High School where some folks often meet up for a ride to Metro Beach and back, but this time I ended up making the ride myself. It was a really nice night for a ride, with a relatively empty path, not too strong of winds, and perfect low 70s temperatures.

Including time spent poking around in the parking lot before leaving, riding a few circles to stretch my legs afterwards, and poking around the end of the peninsula at the park I ended up riding the 17.62 mile route in just over 1:10, averaging 15 MPH. Not bad, but I’m sure I could do better if I was feeling up to it. For some reason I’ve been feeling as if I’m getting sick or having bad allergy problems, so a good part of the ride was made with a headache and runny nose. Hopefully that’ll go away soon.

All in all, this was a rather nice day. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back out to Stony Creek for some single track riding tomorrow, but we’ll see how that goes. It’ll involve changing tires^†, and if I’m not feeling too hot I won’t push it.

^† I sure could use a bike for this kind of riding… If only I wasn’t being overly cautious about spending big chunks of money I could get another bike…

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Dead Animal

Published June 2, 2009

This dead animal has been in the F parking lot at Stony Creek’s West Branch Picnic Area for a while, because I remember seeing it on Friday when caught in the storm. I’m not sure if it is a squirrel, small possum, or something else. If it’s not to your liking, enjoy this photo of a cute, fuzzy gypsy moth caterpillar instead.

Today I had a nice ride around Stony Creek, which was probably one of the easiest rides I’ve had in a while, despite doing a lap of all the single track without really stopping. I paused to throw some deadfall off the trail, and once to check that my rear tire had enough air (squeeze test), but didn’t actually take a break. It’s kinda nice.

I did fall at one point today, when doing a second lap of part of the Roller Coaster and trying to go over one of the more difficult log piles. I ran out of momentum, stopped part way up, and toppled over hitting my shin on a log. Thankfully I’ve only got a bump, few scrapes, sore shin, and what may become a bruise, though I don’t usually bruise, so it’ll likely just remain sore. Oh well.

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No More Bianchi D.I.S.S.

Published June 1, 2009

This morning, after talking with a few interested buyers for the last week or so, I was finally able to sell the Bianchi D.I.S.S. that I’d picked up at the very end of last year. While it was a great bike, I’m just not so sure single speed stuff is for me, so I decided to sell it. I’ll likely use the money towards another bike, perhaps a Salsa Fargo, a 29er something or other, or maybe a full suspension mountain bike. However, with all the recent news coming out of the Detroit area, I think I’d best sit tight for a while.

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Tube Failure Investigation

Published May 31, 2009

Last Monday at The Potawatomi Trail my front tire had started going flat, and it took a new tube to fix it. Further investigation today showed that the problem was a small split (as seen above), right along one of the seams or for-packaging fold points in the tube. Cutting open the tube (picture) showed that this was the only visible part of a rather large split forming in the tube.

I’d first thought that perhaps this was a pinch flat, but those won’t cause long slits running parallel to the wheel / bead. So, I figure that this is a lingering seam from when the tube was made, or possibly some damage from when it was folded for packing. Ah well. I’ve since replaced both tubes on that bike with brand-new Presta valves, so hopefully that will sidestep any future problems.

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