Latin (tem-pu̇s-ˈfü-git): Time Flies
It’s Day 4 of the Commuter Challenge, and I wimped out on riding to work on the bike. I used the excuse that I needed to get to a client meeting at 9am as the excuse, but the truth was that it was raining pretty hard at 7:30 am and I just didn’t want to deal with it.
It may be raining tomorrow, I hope not, I need another riding day this week.
Day 3 of the Commuter Challenge and just another day of bike commuting to work but a wetter ride than usual. The forecast was for rain but it was still dry after I finished my dental appointment at 11 so I took the bike.
I knew it was likely and sure enough the ride home was in a steady downpour. I even got the big splash from a passing car. Not that it made any difference at that point because I was completely soaked! (update)
If you followed the 2006 Tour de France or Floyd ,or you weren’t living under a rock, you’ve probabley heard about the doping alligations and probably think the issue is all over, he’s guilty (according to the press) and that it’s old news.
I picked up a Cycling magazine the other day to learn it’s far from over. The challenge and hearings are just heating up. Did you know that there still has not been a tour winner declared and that no prize money has been awarded pending the outcome of the hearings? Check out the other side of the story, the one the press really has been ignoring.
FLOYD LANDIS HEARING WEB STREAMING INFORMATION May 14th, 2007 Malibu, Ca., May 14, 2007 – The American Arbitration Association – North American Court of Arbitration for Sport will convene today to hear the case of the United States Anti-Doping Agency vs. Floyd Landis. Scheduled to run from May 14-23, the proceedings will be heard each day form 9:30am-5:00pm PST. Landis, the 2006 Tour de France champion, has invoked for the first time a rule of the American Arbitration Association – the legal body that presides over athlete doping cases – that allows for athletes contesting doping charges to request that their hearing be made open to the public.
Technorati Tags: Floyd Landis, Tour de France, doping
It’s interesting how memory works.
When I was about 12 my parents took my sister and I on a fabulous road trip to New York City and Washington, D.C. It was quite a memorable experience. Lately I’ve been thinking about one of the stops we made on this epic trip.
As part of the trip we spend several days on Mackinac Island. This portion of the trip was a GWL convention location for my dad and as kids we were all over the place with pretty much unlimited access to food & fun. The strange part is that all these years I thought the island was in Canada! Well, not so. Its an island in the Great Lakes but clearly in U.S. waters close to where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron join, and the Mackinac bridge spans the water with the worlds third longest suspension bridge.
We stayed at The Grand Hotel and had a great time. After looking at some of the website and remembering the fun I had as a child, I think I’ll put this on our “must visit” destination list. I’m not sure we’ll be staying at The Grand at $330+ US/night, but somewhere on the island. And for sure we’ll being the bikes, as no cars are allowed, very cool. Just bikes, hourses & walking. That will slow you right down.
Technorati Tags: Mackinac, “Grand Hotel”
Smells can really trigger strong memories. Occasionally I’ll catch a wiff of something and it will instantly take me back 30 years to a very specific time and place. Sometime, I’ll smell the perfume my mom used to wear and a flood of memories will instantly come back to me. It’s quite an experience.
Wow, that was a little of track from how I thought this would go. A couple of days ago while riding to work in the morning I was really hit by how much closer to life you are on a bike vs. a car when moving around the city and it was the smells on the ride that gave me this thought. As I went up the street there was a freshness in the air, a smell that would be hard to describe, a spring quality. To me it was as if I could smell the “green” of the grass.
Well, at the top of the street the relaxing and refreshing scent of spring was quickly swept away by a VW TDI diesel exhaust stream. We’ve been looking at a new vehicle and the TDI has caught my attention mainly because of it’s incredible mileage, but I’d forgotten about the exhaust and diesel smell and the clanking of the engine. This car was almost out of site and I was still sucking in the fumes.
From there it was back into a brief reprieve of fresh air on a bike path and then into the fragrant mix of heavy rush hour traffic downtown. Actually, this is the most fun part of the ride as I get to pass most of the cars, weave in and out of traffic and try not to get hit or be too obnoxious, but it is a bit of a rush. I’m certainly awake when I roll into the office.
It rained.
Last year I never rode in the rain all summer.
I was soaked but not too cold. The challenge will be to see how well my gear dries during the day and if I have to put on soggy cold clothes to ride home in. I hope not. Other that that, it was a great ride with no problems with the traffic. The Seine river was up from yesterday flooding a short section of the path which was easily circumvented by a bush trail. So far the bridge is still out of the water. If it comes up too much I’ll need to detour around that section completely.
Just came back from a solo ride along the traditional route out to Assiniboine Park and back for about 33km. I was a little tired along the second half and when you don’t have anybody riding with you it’s easy to slack off. There were a couple of challenges however. One guy pulling a trailer with a sleeping child in side gave me a run for my money. Good grief a guy with a trailer! Well, he did look a lot younger than me, but really a trailer! Then I was really slacking off when some smart guy came blasting by me. Well that was the final straw. Up put of the saddle and I was quickly riding his rear tire and he knew it!
I think I start the summer bike commute to work this Monday.
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The temperatures are on the rise and the snow is melting fast and I saw a sure sign that Spring has arrived on Friday. No, it wasn’t a robin, it was a guy on a motorcycle, and at 6C it still makes for a very “cool” ride. I can remember riding my motorcycle late in the fall to put it away at my parents for the winter in those temperatures. Definitely cool if you’re not dressed properly for it.
Saturday was a busy day with an afternoon wedding that was very nice, and then we went to see the Cannes Lions winners in the film category at the Art Gallery. The Film Lions are awarded to the best commercials of the year. A lot of the commercials were uproariously funny, some quite poignant and a few quite tasteless, but overall it’s a great show. This is one of the Gold winners.
Lots of laugh out loud stuff and quite a few “how did they do that?” moments. Perhaps a few “Why did they do that?” moments as well. Like what’s with the frog jumping out of the drain pipe on the Sony commercial?
This afternoon there was another spring time first. The boys were over for lunch and we all went for a bike ride afterwards. No motors, just leg power. It was a bit wet and generally we took it at a pretty easy pace. Well, except for when Scott went flying by me a couple of times, and then the chase was on! We went 26.4km at an average speed of 19.5km/hr, a decent pace for the first time out considering we stopped a couple of times and slowed down to look at some houses on South Drive. We discovered that my rear tire throws the most water, and I got the wettest, which was surprising since I had a fender and Eric didn’t. Later we figured out that perhaps I had it set too low. I’ll check it out on the next wet ride. I was a good time riding with Scott and Eric.
Today I raced in the ninth annual Icebike race held in Winnipeg at The Forks. It had been postponed a couple of weeks due to the brutal cold, but went ahead today with only -16C and moderate wind.
I wasn’t really sure about doing it this year but yesterday I registered and after church Shirley & I headed down to The Forks. There were some familiar faces at the race, but not as many as in previous years. Apparently there were 50 pre-registered and it’s been as high as 197.
The course was quite forgiving this year, a combination of long hardpack snow covered paths, some pavement (rare) and lots of sections of loose snow. Thankfully there was no riding on the glare ice skating paths as in previous years. The hardest part was along the river bank on the St. Boniface hospital side where the track was sloped across the direction of travel and had lots of loose snow, especially on the first lap. By the second lap the traffic had cleared the high side of the trail and if you rode straight and steady you could avoid being pulled into the deep loose snow.
I rode to work all summer 2-3 times a week, but since the snow came, I’ve only been out once prior to today, so I wasn’t exactly in top riding shape. But, I achieved my goal by completing the 20km Abominable course and not being last. Not to bad for a guy my age competing with a mostly under 30 crowd. Scott took some photos, so there should be pictures later.
Update (2007/02/19): While at the Icebike the group was introduced to Rune the Viking biker. This guy is cycling around the world and has started in Bolivia, crossed the USA, into Northern BC and was in Winnipeg last weekend. This years race results are not posted yet, so I’ll update that later. Flickr seems to be down right now, so I’ll also update with a link to more Icebike photos courtesy of s2photo
