October 21st (Morning)

MY LIGHT FINALLY ARRIVED!!!!

Canada Post attempted delivery to our house twice yesterday, but Corrie was out with Levi’s speech therapy so they just left a note on the door. It said I had to wait ‘till this afternoon to get it, but I figured I’d go last night anyways and luckily they had processed it and so I was able to pick it up. It came fully charged and ready to go. It was much smaller than I had thought, so that was cool. But, boy, does it pack a good punch in terms of light!

The cockpit is getting pretty full… But still enough room for another one? As you can see, the light is not much bigger than my computer or heart rate monitor, so that’s cool. Note the battery pack attached to my head tube, that’s the biggest part of this setup yet still not too bad for size and weight.

I left the house at 6:42am this morning, 18 minutes earlier than I have been the last few days/weeks. My first observation of this light is that it is near impossible to operate with big gloves… Meaning I had to stop to turn the light on/off. I had it on low while riding through Juniper, and then cranked it up to high once I hit the trails.

Again, my cellphone takes some pretty blurry pictures and I can see a bit more than this picture shows, but this is my new riding experience now. And it’s a blast!

I can suddenly SEE again! The rocks on the trail are now something I can see coming and actually avoid, rather than just bouncing wildly along… I was hitting the same speeds as normal through Juniper, a bit slower than I used to due simply because of the colder temperatures, not because of the light. A good test came at the Rose Hill pipeline section. As I came over the first hill and pointed the bike down into the valley, the trail was well lit. I probably went a bit slower through this section than when I can see, but still got some pretty good speeds, I would probably guess around 40-45km/h? Normally this section is where I hit 50km/h when I have daylight. The rest of the valleys and climbs went good. At the end, where the trail veers off onto some single-track that bypasses the final hill and goes to Frolek’s gate, I took the corner too wide and ended up riding off the track for a few feet. I guess corners like this is where it pays to have it mounted on the helmet instead of the bars. The handlebars are pointing straight, but I would be looking off to the right, and the light would be where I needed it to be. Well, maybe I need two then? Corrie, are you reading this???

The real test of the light came at the end of that bypass trail, where I take the trail down the “cliff” just before Frolek’s gate. It’s a fun little 8-10 foot descent pretty much straight down. There’s a perfect line in the middle that is easy. Too far left, and I hit some nasty bumps that want to throw me… Too far right and I’m sliding into a bit of a ditch at the bottom… As I came up to the edge, the light did pretty well at letting me see the right line. However, I slowed too much at the top and as such, just as I let the front wheel go over I twitched the bars a bit left, meaning I was now going too far left! Well, let the bike do what it needs to do! I let go of the brakes, stuck my butt back and braced for impact. It was over in a flash, and although the rear tire was sliding sideways at the beginning and I ended up bouncing through the ditch I would much rather avoid, I did end up coming out rubber side down still, so I let out a whoop and continued on. Sweet! Another section where the handlebar mount showed it’s limitation was at the dip/corner section of single-track across Frolek’s land. As I couldn’t see around the corner as I came through the dip, I didn’t make this section at all, and ended up walking it. Again, with a helmet mounted light, I would’ve had it pointed where I was looking. Regardless, as things get darker and if I can afford it I will most like pick up another one of these for my helmet. Once I got to the bottom of Peterson’s Creek (I made the crossing!), I switched the light down to low and once I got to the top and onto Summit, I switched it to flashing (just to make motorists aware of me). Finally, as I got onto Howe, I turned it off completely as it was pretty light out by then. First ride = Success!

The only thing about riding in the dark is I can’t see what gear I’m in, something I’ve become used to knowing. Maybe it’s a crutch of sorts, but knowing these trails so well I know exactly what gear to use for every hill and section of the trail. Just something to get used to I guess! Also, I did have my heart rate monitor on, but in the dark I, of course, cannot see the numbers. As it’s a cheap monitor, it also doesn’t record my average or peak rates. As I rode through Juniper, it started beeping like crazy, meaning that I was running close or over my maximum rate. Seriously? I wasn’t even working yet! Maybe it was the excitement of the night riding, but I just turned the thing off so it would shut up…

Oh, this morning was also my first ride with my new Rocket Ron tire on the rear. Did I notice it? Not really, so that’s a good thing. It didn’t slip out on any of the climbs, it didn’t wander on the corners, it just dug in where it needed to and did its job rather well! I will like to see how it does on the bypass climb out of Peterson’s Creek valley, as well as the final climb at Rose Hill this afternoon. And if my average speed is any higher? So far so good!

October 20th (Afternoon)

My knee was pretty sore still from this morning, so I had a bit of a lazy ride home. I didn’t push too hard, but still tried all the hills. I did pay for it, as all evening I was limping pretty good…

I took the fire-road again around the trailer park, but then followed the single-track that drops me down into the garbage and trailer storage area of the trailer park and continued on. A little bit of fun on some quick trails anyways.

As I went through Peterson’s Creek (made the root, didn’t make the steep climb due to my knee), I heard some squealing disc brakes coming down the hill. As I started riding up and out of the valley, I did turn around and saw Phil descending the final stretch down into the creek, but never saw him again after that. I didn’t even make the bypass trail climb, as I hit a rock at the beginning which set me off line and lost momentum, and I couldn’t get started again…

The ride as a whole was just “lethargic”, that’s the best way to describe it. I had a good ride, some good downhill speeds, but overall with my knee hurting like it did, I wasn’t pushing anything too hard.

Actually, as I was riding down Summit Drive, I noticed a “thump-thump-thump” feeling in the back wheel. So, I pulled over at the entrance into Peterson’s Creek and sure enough, my rear tire was separating from the bead in THREE places! None of them were too bad yet, so I rode the whole way home with it like that, but as soon as I got home I drove down to Taboo and picked up another tire. As my budget is tight (like always), I told him I could only afford something in the $40 range. So, he found a slightly used Schwalbe Rocket Ron that he had taken on a trip with him this summer. So, for $40 I got a used $80 racing tire! Sweet! The tread is low nobbies, meaning less rolling resistance and lower weight. However, traction is still supposed to be pretty good (check out the reviews here at MTBR). Hopefully it lives up to the hype!

Again, sorry for the blurry shots… If I can afford a small, lightweight camera soon I will buy one and take better pictures!!! Anyways, here’s the new rubber, Rocket Ron!

Drivetrain Wear

So I learned something new today about drivetrain wear… It happens a lot quicker than I thought!!!

I had heard that you should replaced your drivetrain every year if you ride consistently. I would consider myself an above average rider in terms of “consistency”, so I’ve been thinking about replacing the chain and cogset this winter. As such, I decided to do some research today at lunch to find out if my chain was wearing (stretching) or not. According to Sheldon Brown, I’m waaaay overdue… If you go to Sheldon’s Chain Maintenance page and then scroll down the page to "Chain and Sprocket Wear”, it discusses what to look for in a worn drivetrain. I went further down yet to the “Measuring Chain Wear” section where he states the following:

The standard way to measure chain wear is with a ruler or steel tape measure. This can be done without removing the chain from the bicycle. The normal technique is to measure a one-foot length, placing an inch mark of the ruler exactly in the middle of one rivet, then looking at the corresponding rivet 12 complete links away. On a new, unworn chain, this rivet will also line up exactly with an inch mark. With a worn chain, the rivet will be past the inch mark.

This gives a direct measurement of the wear to the chain, and an indirect measurement of the wear to the sprockets:

• If the rivet is less than 1/16" past the mark, all is well.
• If the rivet is 1/16" past the mark, you should replace the chain, but the sprockets are probably undamaged.
• If the rivet is 1/8" past the mark, you have left it too long, and the sprockets (at least the favorite ones) will be too badly worn. If you replace a chain at the 1/8" point, without replacing the sprockets, it may run OK and not skip, but the worn sprockets will cause the new chain to wear much faster than it should, until it catches up with the wear state of the sprockets.
• If the rivet is past the 1/8" mark, a new chain will almost certainly skip on the worn sprockets, especially the smaller ones.

Well, I grabbed my ruler and lined it up on one rivet and I was probably more than 3/16” longer than it should be!!! Sheldon, however, states that if it is past the 1/8” mark (like mine is) that is will almost certainly skip. Well, mine does not skip. Granted, I do have difficulties getting the adjustment 100% anymore, and some shifts are slow on one ride, yet not another. So this would make sense. I also looked at the cogs and noticed that my chain is only in full contact with about 3 teeth. After those 3 teeth, the chain starts completing missing, meaning that when I’m putting force on the chain, only about 3 teeth are actually grabbing at any one time! Yikes…

So, I guess I know what my next purchase now is… A new cogset and chain. While I’m at it, I think I’ll probably put the original crankset back on (I had swapped it out from my Truvativ one way back when I first bought the bike). I wonder if a worn chain, cogset and crank would attribute to the chain hopping off of the granny gear while shifting down? Hmmm…

October 20th (Morning)

0° this morning, coldest yet that I’ve ridden in! To be honest, though, I couldn’t really tell a difference between this morning and the last two 3° mornings… The new skull cap is AWESOME, as are the pants. My fingers and toes were pretty frozen again, I think I might try some heat pack things in my shoes next week? See if that makes a difference. And probably some good, winter gloves would do the trick for any minus degree weather.

I felt a bit more “out of gas” today than the last couple of mornings. Seems like Wednesdays I feel this way more often than not. Thankfully, it is usually just one or two rides and the rest are pretty good. I didn’t feel bad, just like I didn’t quite have the extra “oomph” that I usually do. I took it slower through Juniper again, mainly just to keep warmer. I met up with a couple and their two dogs just past the Frolek’s gate. With the dim lighting, I have no idea what kind of dogs they had, hah!

The climb up to my single-track wasn’t bad, although I considered getting off and running to try and keep my feet warm. They weren’t too cold yet, so I didn’t do it, but later was thinking I maybe should have? I did have to dab at the dip/corner on the single-track again. Not enough speed, too much speed, whatever. I have no idea what I do differently here when I make it as compared to what I do when I don’t!!! Frustrating…

Near the beginning of the Billy Minor trail that takes me down into Peterson’s Creek (right near the boundary between Frolek’s land and the park), I wiped out rather awkwardly (have you ever noticed that even the word “awkward” is awkward???). There’s a large tree across the trail, and so a little path has been made to go around it. However, the path is a couple of tight corners, a steep little hill, mixed in with two trees. All this combined makes a bit of a tough little technical section. At first, I struggled to make this, but once I figured out how to do it, I’ve done it 100% ever since. The biggest key, as I learned today, is slow and easy. I typically take it very slow. Like, to the point that I’m pretty much stopped at the bottom of the bend before cornering and climbing back up to the trail. Well, this morning I decided to take it faster. Not crazy fast, just faster than normal. BIG mistake. As I got around the tree and back up onto the trail, I was going too fast to make the 90° turn to point myself back down the direction of the trail. As such, I ended up climbing up the bank on the left side of the trail. Not wanting to have to count this as a “stop”, being a section I know I can make, I mistakenly tried to power through it. As such, the front end of my bike was a foot or so higher than the back, and I was trying a rather slow turn at the same time. Gravity then took over, and I started going over. Unfortunately, I was falling towards the downslope side of the trail, meaning that I couldn’t reach the ground with my foot and I wiped out into the fallen tree. It wasn’t a big deal, I don’t think, (in fact, my first worry was that I had maybe ripped my new pants!) but somehow I managed to smack the inside of my left knee pretty hard on something (my handlebar I think). It was an instant charlie horse, and it hurt to bend it. Ouch… From then on, every climb hurt like crazy forcing me to rely on pulling the pedals and not pushing them. And from this point on the trail, it’s pretty much uphill the entire rest of the way for the next 30 minutes of riding!!!

The red line is the trail where I have to dip down and around a fallen tree. The blue arrow is where I came up and tried to turn back onto the trail.

Now sitting on the computer at a desk is making it even worse. I tried stretching it out when I got to the office, but couldn’t do much. Hopefully it won’t get too stiff today and will be loose enough for the ride home. It’s crazy how the slow speed wrecks can sometimes be just as nasty as a higher speed one!

At the top of the Tom Moore trail, I met up with the lady and her black Lab, Rosco. She said the last couple of mornings she has been walking the trail in the same direction as me and has been just a few minutes in front of me. Both mornings, she has seen a bear near the 2nd sand pocket! A brown bear on Monday, and yesterday she saw a large black bear. Crazy, I haven’t seen anything! I’m so blind I guess… Apparently, yesterday the black bear was walking up towards the trail, so either he turned back around or continued up the hill by the time I came by… Hah!

October 19th (Afternoon)

I got a “freebie” ride today. Corrie had to take Taryn to ballet at 4:30 (ending at 5:30), so we decided it made more sense for her to go over and clean the office afterwards rather than making another trip down so we planned that I would meet them at her work instead of riding home. The cool part of that is it means I get basically a true “all downhill” type ride, hah!
As I had a bit more time than usual, I decided to do some exploring at first around the trailer park up in Pineview/Aberdeen. Instead of cutting through the trailer park like I usually do, I continued along the fire-road to explore where exactly it went. As I rode up and around the park, I noticed a couple of single-track trails going off to my left (towards the trailer park), while the road took me alongside a fence on my right. By the third single-track trail, I decided to find out where it went. It was a fun little trail that ended up taking me right down to the garbage and trailer storage area for the trailer park residents. Figuring this was a good, quick little trail but not quite what I was looking for, I turned around and climbed back up the trail and got back onto the fire-road. I continued along the road again until it went left, but a trail kept going straight. I followed the trail, but noticed it wasn’t very well travelled. I soon found out why, as it dead ended at the backyard fences of some of the rich Aberdeen residents! Oops! The large sign stating “Private Property – STAY OUT” was a clear enough message, so I turned around again and climbed back to follow the road… The road itself did wind around and took me to the end of Westerdale Dr which I followed to Glenmohr Dr. and then down to Howe. So, the fire-road indeed does bypass the trailer park entirely, although it is not faster or easier by any means. But, still a bit more riding on some dirt roads I guess?
After that, I took the usual route down to my entrance into Peterson’s Creek park off of Summit Dr. However, I followed the Tom Moore trail all the way along the west side of the valley, rather than turning onto the Billy Minor South trail to go down to the creek. I followed the west side ‘till the Billy Minor North trail where I used to descend into the valley. It was a blast to ride this old, familiar trail again. A couple of the switchbacks I actually made better than I ever had, with both more speed and more control. Along the top of the ride, I stopped to take a couple of pictures to post here.

Here’s a cool shot showing the canyon. This is one of the highest points of the trail, and for sure this is a section where you do NOT want to be sliding over the edge! It would be a long, hard hike back up…

Here’s a cool lookout (hence the bench being there). We’re facing North, looking down the canyon/valley out into downtown Kamloops, and then out towards Rayleigh.

Looking across the canyon to where my regular trails are. It’s hard to see on this poor quality picture, but you might be able to see two “lines” on the hill just in the upper, right corner (above the rock cliffs). Those are my trails. Come winter as well as the ice and snow, I don’t think I’ll be testing fate there…

The ride overall was really good. The brakes got more than a workout from the steady downhill that lasted from the old Merritt Highway (top of Summit drive) all the way to Corrie’s work. It is also fun to commute with traffic downtown every now and then, as it means a lot of sudden sprinting and then stopping, trying to keep up with traffic and not cause people any delays as they drive behind me. Fun, but not something I’d probably enjoy every day…

October 19th (Morning)

Another chillier ride of 3° again this morning. My skull cap from MEC came in yesterday, though, so I got to try it out this morning. It was pretty good, as it stretches over my head and covers my ears with a fleece material. It only comes in one size, and as such I feel that it’s just a tad small on my big noggin, so I have to stretch it as far as it will go to fully cover my ears. As such, I noticed it tended to creep up leaving the bottoms of my ears exposed. However, all in all, I was very impressed. It did a great job of wicking away the sweat and at the end of the ride on Copperhead I didn’t feel the “brain freeze” I’ve become accustomed to there, so that was great! I also wore two pairs of socks, but my toes were still pretty cold at the end so I’m not sure what to do differently there. I also only wore a short sleeve shirt today (I only have one long sleeved shirt that I like), and it was pretty chilly for the first 20 minutes or so, but then it was perfect for the remainder of the ride.

I did manage yet another 0 stop ride this morning! I shifted early to granny gear this morning so that I could make sure I didn’t have to walk the 2nd to last hill at Rose Hill, and then I made the dip/corner section of single-track. I crossed the creek nicely, and the climb up the other side was great. So chalk up another victory for me!

As I rode across Frolek’s land, the sun started to come up behind me and literally seemed to set the hills and land on fire. The land all around me glowed an orange/red colour, and when I looked behind me that hills and clouds were red, beautiful! I stopped for a few seconds to just watch it actually.

Oh, and as I rode along the beginning of the Juniper trail, I passed three deer. They sort of moved around, a bit skittish, yet they didn’t take off but just hung out within 20 feet of me riding past. It’s kind of neat how they don’t just bolt.

Anyways, I felt really good today and I managed a lot of standing/sprinting sections on the street portion of the ride. I can’t wait ‘till my light comes so I can start leaving earlier rather than getting to work late, though! Maybe this week yet? The light has made it through Customs as of Friday night, but I haven’t seen any updates since then. Maybe the US postal service doesn’t track the package once Canada Post takes over? Hmmmm….

October 18th (Afternoon)

13° today, but sunny… Not that I would know by experience, as I now ride at sunset. Bah humbug! I leave work, and the sun is already behind Cole mountain at my back. My entire ride, the edge of the sunshine stays a few miles ahead of me, and I ride in the shadow of the hills. Today, I did try to ride out on Frolek’s road as well as the main trail into Juniper and the look out trail but still could not catch the darn sun!

This is the most I see of the sun now on my ride… Won’t be much longer now before I’ll be using my light on the way home too! That is if the light ever gets here…

The ride was pretty good. I had some good speeds coming down into Peterson’s Creek. At the bottom, as I was going through the fence, I noticed another biker coming down behind me (a ways up the trail yet), but I never did see him again. He was going slower than I think Phil does on this trail, so I’m not sure who he was? Also passed a biker as he was climbing up the trail just as I came off of the boardwalk. I guess there’s a few guys getting that “last ride” in before it’s too cold. The creek crossing was good, and I made the root easily. The climb up the east bank, however, eluded me once again. I did make it pretty far but couldn’t keep the front wheel planted and as such lost my momentum and my line. I decided to then attempt the long, straight and steep climb out of the valley again and I did make a pretty good distance (on par with my longest climbs here yet). At the top, I cleared the rock wall again, but this time I tried a bit slower so I didn’t run myself out of trail once I did make it over, so this section is just about getting perfect! On the gulley trail down to my single-track I had a blast going a bit faster than I probably should, but I was able to carve nicely up the berms and banks. I’ve noticed the tires are gripping pretty well still, even though they are fast losing their available tread. I’m sure I will be able to wait ‘till Spring for new ones, so that is great!

I decided to take the final gulley trail down to Frolek’s lower road as I’m still not comfortable with the trailhead at the middle gulley trail (too steep, narrow with rocks and trees), so I tend to either blow right past it or walk the first 15 feet. Maybe I need to just stop and lower my seat for the first few times ‘till I get the hang of it? I used to use the excuse that my brakes sucked, but now they rock so I can’t say that anymore!

I still have not made the climb on the final hill at Rose Hill, but I did make it as far as I ever have yesterday. Inch by inch, I will conquer this hill yet and it will be a day of celebration! Hah!