That’s right, I cycle commute to work year round and this is the 4th winter for riding in the snow & cold.
Some think I’m a little crazy, perhaps.
Some think it’s too dangerous, perhaps.
Car drivers dislike cyclists, and especially winter cyclists, perhaps.
So far this winter the riding has been going well, and I’m very impressed with the motorists that I encounter on my route. They have been very considerate, giving me lots of space as they pass and no honking or rude gestures. I can’t say the same for some pedestrians.
Actually, most pedestrians are just fine, but so far this year I’ve received the most “comments” from those on two feet. Perhaps that’s just because you typically can’t hear what the people in the vehicles are saying or thinking, which might be a good thing. Ignorance is bliss.
<rant>
About a week ago, after the 1st big snowfall, I’m cycling along on a path that parallels Fermor along side Windsor Park, near my home. A gentleman is our shoveling his sidewalk. He sees me coming down the path, and it starts.
“You’ve got to be kidding” – repeatedly in an unfriendly tone.
“Take a bus!” – louder
“Are you crazy!” – really getting agitated now
I wave to him in a friendly manner.
“Do you have no consideration for others!?!”
“Are you trying to get yourself killed? Do you have a death wish?!?” – hitting a crescendo now. I’m thinking he’s expecting me to turn around and go home.
I wave to him again, in a less friendly manner, my bad, I should have just let the whole thing slide.
A week or two goes by and we get another big snowfall. Of course this is when the riding is the most challenging for a couple of days until all the ploughing gets completed. My next encounter with a pedestrian is riding into work right after the snowfall. A lady is walking two dogs down on the Assiniboine River Walkway. As I approach from behind I slow down and wait for her to notice me. I cough a couple of times just for good measure. She is walking right up the middle. The dogs are on both sides of her at full leash extension so the 8′ path is totally blocked.
When she notices me I hear “Sorry” and she reels in one of the dogs so I can pass. No problem I think, I’m not in a rush and this is fine. Just as I pass I hear “You should get a bell”, in the kind of tone that implied I’ve done something wrong. I say nothing, and ride off.
I’ve had a bell on the bike and in my 14+ years of cycle commuting, the bell is no better that not having a bell. Here is what typically happens with “the bell”. You ring from a ways back, they don’t hear it, you ring again at a closer range and then they do hear it and things typically get worse. They get startled and either jump right in front of you, or swear at you for scaring them, or both. So, you really can’t win.
</rant>
In over 200 days of cycling a year people and cars are generally very good but you always need to be ready for the exceptions. Typically, once a year, I have a close encounter with a vehicle, thankfully never a full contact kind. I find that as long as you’re aware of your surrounding and make plans to get out of the way, things go well.
Upgraded to 4.4, seems to work well. In the process I tried the Twenty sixteen theme, and this one is not for me. Text seems too large and clunky and the way it handles the banner image and the blog identity just takes up too much space.
I’d like to see the blog identity overlay the banner image as an option, that would be a nice look IMHO.
So this week I had a problem with the rear bike rack. On Thursday the bolt attaching the rack to the lower chain stay snapped off. Now the rack is saying on.one side and the fender is rubbing the tire. An quick zip tie fix didn’t make it through the Friday commute. Time for a more serious repair.
I pick up a couple of drill bits and a couple of sizes of bolt extractors at Princess Auto. Step 1, drill out the centre of the bolt. I manage to snap one of two drill bits and I’m a lot more careful with the second bit. Step 2, use the extractor to remove the snapped off bolt. Well, the bolt is stubborn and the extractor snaps off on the drilled out hole. Now this is a real problem. The extractor is hardened steel and the drill bit can’t touch it. Time for Plan B.
After some thinking I resort to a little MacGuyver move.
A 1/2 pipe clamp with a bolt inserted into the band and we’re back in business.
The first cottage experience in my life was the Caddy Lake cottage. I don’t have a lot of memories about this place as I was only 3 at the time, but a couple of them are quite vivid. The one that stands out the most is in fact probably family legendary, and it involves a car.
Here we are, my sister Gail and myself in front of the cottage, next to the driveway, which is on moderate slope. This will become important later. I think Gail is restraining me here so that I’d hold still for the picture as my arms seem to be pinned behind me.
Gail & Garry at Caddy Lake Cottage – October 1955
Before the cottage was built and before the driveway, it looked like this when you’re standing at the cottage looking towards the lake, down the hill.
Down the hill to Caddy Lake – May 1955
By dad and Grandpa built the cottage by hand. And “by hand” I mean no power tools, in fact there was no electricity at the cottage. Every board cut with a hand saw, something that is almost unheard of today. Lighting was by candles and kerosene lamps. A wood cook stove was the main source of heat in addition to cooking. No microwave, no blender, no dishwasher, no washer, no dryer, no indoor plumbing!
One story I’ve been told was that my mom and some of her friends were there with us kids and I guess it was cold so they loaded up the cookstove with coal (or coke, not sure which) but apparently they over did it as the story goes. The coal expanded, lifting all the round cast iron covers off the top of the stove and it is said that the whole stove was glowing red. I’m not sure how they resolved that but there was quite a bit of panic as they thought the wood stove might set the whole cottage on fire.
My big memory of Caddy is waiting in the back seat of the car at the top of the driveway as our parents were packing up to go back to Winnipeg on a Sunday night at the end of the weekend. We were given strict instructions to stay in the back seat and don’t touch anything!
“The Car”, and our family cottage at Caddy Lake – October 1955
We’ll, I’m almost 3, and a guy and this is boring so before long I’m hanging over the seat playing with the steering wheel. The car is a manual transmission “3 on the tree” an apparently the parking brake is not set. I manage to shift into neutral and the car starts rolling down the driveway towards the cottage in front of ours, and the lake. This is not good.
Just then my dad and Grandpa come out of the cottage with their arms full of stuff only to and see the car picking up speed going down the driveway with Gail and I in the back seat. They literally drop everything, run down and get behind the car and manage to stop the runaway vehicle before we can cross the road and hit the neighbours cottage.
I’m not exactly sure what happened after that but I’m sure I was in a bit of trouble that probably ended with a spanking. I’ve blotted that part from my memory.
While it was -1°C this morning and 3 dedicated FOG brothers made the traditional Saturday ride, I opted for the warmth of the basement and Kickr trainer with Trainerroad. I’ve selected the Trainer Road Sweet Spot Base – Low Volume II to kick off the winter indoor training regime.
First up on the plan is the 8 Minute test to determine my current FTP.
After a pretty laid back summer of riding I knew that my FTP was going to drop from the last test and sure enough all the way from 308 down to 284. Due to an injury there was no bike riding for over a month and many weekends at the lake had company or family so it just didn’t seem appropriate to bail on a Saturday morning for 4 hour of Underground Gran Fondo Kenora.
Hoping to stick with the plan and get in shape for the Tour of Sufferlandria (23 January to 1 February) and the 8 Days in California (May 15-22) which sadly I was unable to ride in 2015. the 8 Days event corresponds with the pros riding the Tour of California, outside, with much nicer scenery.
So I have a new favorite music source. Our TV package has a steaming music service, Stingray music. It also has a mobile app to allow streaming to my iPhone. Couple that with Bluetooth streaming to the car stereo and it’s pretty sweet.
Yesterday I’m listening to my favorite channel Classic 80s Rock while running some errands. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven comes on, great song. Then, the very next song was AC/DC’s Highway to Hell.
Coincidence?
The path is narrow, a stairway vs a highway . (Mt 7:13)
A 27 hour power outage follows a violent 5 minute storm where severe winds cut a swath just down the road from us and take the tops of two hydro poles. Where are those candles again?
We’re just getting ready to start dinner and this storm blows through and takes out the power. Nothing too unusual for lake life, but little did we know at the time that this would be one of the bigger outages in our experience of 30+ years. Dinner was to be salmon with hollandaise so we switched to something simpler, mainly because the hollandaise sauce requires the blender, which requires electricity.
We call Hydro One which has a fantastic phone service for tracking power outages and providing updates. 400+ customers in our area without power and an estimated restoration of 8:30pm, then 11:30, then 2:30 am then… we went to bed.
The next morning, still no power. Off to town for some coffee and breakfast. On the way back, there are multiple crews of 6-8 guys each working in our area, yay!
Time for some investigation, I’ve never seen power line repairs up close. It’s 12:45 and the truck below is working on Thunder Ridge Road a short distance from the cottage.
Working the line
This is one of the trees that went down. Being on the Canadian shield these big trees have very shallow roots due to the rocks, and are quite susceptible to being knocked down in a storm.
Downed Giant – The tree on our road that took out a power pole further up the road.
Trees get snapped like match sticks but surprisingly the phone lines stayed intact in spite of being dragged all over the place and phone service was never interrupted.
Wood and Wires – One of the snapped trees and the telephone line, 3 feet off the ground.
Here one of the bucket trucks is working to get things straightened out before replacing some poles further down the road.
Line Work from the Bucket
Here is the culprit for our roads outage. Lines are down to the right (our cottages direction) and straight back to another pole up behind Smith Camps.
Snapped – the pole on our road and in the distance the 2nd snapped pole.
A closer shot. The poles are almost 40 years old. First installed when the road was put in and 6 years before we started to build our cottage.
Snapped Close-Up – line down in two directions from this “T” intersection
I continue down the road and over to Smiths Camps and up a steep hill to where the 2nd crew is working to set a new pole.
Pole Placement – lifting the new pole into place alongside the old.
They have a very cool machine or tracks that can drill hole as well as lift and position the pole. Here its getting the new pole into position to drop into a hole that the backhoe has prepped. But there is a catch, literally. The arm on the machine is at its limit and it’s not quite clearing the old pole. To avoid the delay and hassle of repositioning the machine, the crew boss is up the pole and pushes it over the top.
Up and Over – The machine was at it’s limit and the pole needed a helping hand to get over the top to save having to reposition the machine.
It’s in the hole and they are jockeying it around to get it nice and straight.
Positioning the pole with the very cool machine.
With the pole in place he’s moving on.
Pole #1 is done and the Terrex is getting ready to go. Fallen tree in background.
Moving to the Next Pole – driving by the pole that has just been placed while the lines are finished up.
It’s down a steel hill but no problem for this beast.
Like a tank this thing just motors down a very steep incline back to the road.
From this pole, looking back towards our Thunder Ridge Road you can see the phone line in the air but the hot & neutral power lines are on the ground as well as caught up in the trees across the span to the other pole.
Phone but no Power – That line is the phone line but the two power cables are down on the ground. 300+ yard span to the other snapped pole.
A little zoom shot back to the other pole shows the lines clearer. The black one is the phone line and the two low hanging silver ones are the power.
Looking Back – From the pole behind Smiths back to the pole on our Thunder Ridge Road.
The backhoe is finished his work and is carefully going down the steep hill to drive over to pole #2.
Driver Skill – To get down a steep section the driver is using the bucket as a skid to prevent a forward rollover
Mean while “the boss” is hooking up the wires. All the hardware on the pole is setup and attached on the ground prior to lifting it into place.
Line Boss – This guy was running the show and he kept the guys on the ground hopping with passing up stuff and positioning the gear etc.
Splicing the wires together is quite in interesting procedure. There is a connector device that is a tube into which the wires are inserted by hand. No crimping, no nothing and once inserted into these tube connectors the line is capable of being pulled tight to get the proper sag between poles.
Making Connections – Doing the top “hot” wire 1st
Over at the other site on thunder Ridge Road, a pole is waiting.
Bringing in the new lumber.
Once again the pole is lifted into place and the backhoe fills in the hole and guy wires are attached and tensioned. This time they have the luxury of a bucket touch and the guys working up to don’t have to put on the spurs and climb the pole.
Working the Wire. Two boom trucks required to free the 300+ yard span from some trees
Equipment at work. The track vehicle on the left holding the new pole in place while the backhoe on the right continues to fill in the base around the pole.
The “hot” wire is attached and they are just removing the clamp device that allowed them to winch the cable up. To lift this very long span they attached a bully to the top of the pole and then ran it down to another pull on the back of the boom touch, hooking it onto the trailer hitch. Then they ran the rope over to another truck on the road and used the truck to tension the cable.
Lots of messing around here as when they were lifting the cable, it was caught in some trees down by Smiths parking lot. They sent the other boom truck and had to work quite hard at pulling the cable free before they could finalize the tensioning.
Removing the cable clamp used to pull the wire into place
With everything reattached a decision was made to cut off the part of the broken pole that was now being suspended soley by the telephone cable. Interestingly enough, these guys were only concerned about the power. It was clearly someone else job to come along afterwards and transfer the telephone cables to the new poles. Bell did that the following day.
Up goes the chain saw…
Chain saw hand up
… and off comes most of the old pole.
Off with the old pole
It’s now 6:30pm and the crews are cleaning up and moving on. They were remarkably tidy as no leftover bits of wire snips were left behind. They had to check a few things, remove some grounding wires and do something a short distance away that apparently would not take too long. At around 8:30 the power is on! Yahoo! Good job Hydro One!
I’m spending some time quiet time at the lake catching up on some old emails, checking out some web sites and just in general goofing off. I took Friday & Monday off from work so we’ve made our own “long weekend”. The weather today (Friday) is warm, but overcast and drizzling on and off. There are no big projects on the horizon for the rest of the cottage season, except for the never-ending opportunity to paint or stain some part of the buildings, but none of that today as everything is wet.
For some time I’ve neglected my Flickr account but I recently noticed that my membership was automatically renewed so I guess I should really make better use of it.
One thing that came to my attention was that the newest Grandkids, Dane & Clark don’t have their own albums like the older guys Easton & Parker do. Time to fix that.
I’ve got a system within Lightroom with “smart” collection publishing from Lightroom to Flickr where the collection watches for photos that are flagged, and have the keywords containing “flickr” and one or more of the grandkids names. Now it’s just a mater of reviewing all my photos since about October 2014 (490 so far) and tagging the best of the best with the appropriate keywords. This is a bit of a work in progress and I can feel the couch calling my name for an afternoon nap right now. But, it’s started.
As a result of the boat show, and a few conversations in the family, we’re now the proud owners of a Sea-Doo Spark. On May 10th, our 1st weekend at the lake we’re getting ready to take it out for its maiden voyage. The weather is not the best. It’s cool/cold, overcast and a little windy. Everyone wants to take it for a spin, but nobody is too keen about how cold and wet it might be. On the Sunday, it’s decided, we’re going no matter how cold it might be.
Getting ready to take the Sea-Doo to the launch site
We hook it up to Scott’s truck, load up the family and head over to Smith’s Camps to put it in the water.
At Smith’s we re-connect with Allen, the owner, and catch up on a bit of the neighbourhood news. Some discussion about launch logistics and Eric and Scott are ready to do it.
Rider Up, ready to launchGetting Closer
Down the ramp we go and the trailer and Sea-Doo are christened with their first dip into the frigid water. After all the ice just went off the lake on May 3rd!
We’re not super prepared for this, just super confident. We have no ropes on the Sea-Doo so once it’s set free from the trailer, Eric is on his own.
Well, this is when things get a little interesting. The Spark is not starting and Eric is adrift in the lake!
Fortunately, we’re in an enclosed area at Smith’s and eventually Eric and the Spark will drift over to a dock. But, there is a small chance he’ll drift out the opening you see in the background and out into the lake. Our boat is not in the water yet. If this happens we’ll need Allen to launch a rescue mission for some serious $$$s.
But that doesn’t happen and Eric drifts over to one of the docks and after several tense / frustrating minutes and quite a few tries, it starts! Let the fun begin!.
Underway for the 1st time.
After zooming around the bay for a few minutes Eric returns to take Parker out for a ride. Everybody is pretty pumped and excited.
Eric and Parker set to ride.
I’m next to ride and I must admit it’s very nice, like a motorcycle on the water.
Garry returning to the dock after the first ride.
Scott is next to go.
Scott’s 1st ride
After lots of discussion on how it handles, the speed and acceleration, and how much fun it will be this summer, especially when it warms up, we load the Spark back up on the trailer and head back to the cottage where we had an awesome hot lunch.
Perhaps we’ll need to give this toy an official name, something more than “The Spark”?
Part 3 and hopefully the final chapter for another 30+ years.
After detecting the problem in 2013 and doing the first half in 2014, it’s time to finish of the job.
Pipes 3 & 4 get dug up and replaced. Scott & Eric were a huge help and made the job go so much faster and it’s always fun working alongside the guys on a project.
Scott & Eric hard at work on a Lake Project
After the dig & dispose, we made a trip into town for a few pipe parts, and a stop at the Chip Truck. Once back on the job site the new pipes were assembled, connected up to the system and then covered over. Repair complete. Well, almost. The next weekend I re-assembled the walkway to the stairs and sometime this summer we should consider some topsoil and grass seed to put the lawn back in place.
