Very minor setback...

Well, here it is, April 23rd. It's sunny in the nation's capital, warm and even the north wind isn't too cold.

But, I am not out triking; in fact, I haven't gone out in awhile. True, we have had a few less-than-ideal days but the weather hasn't been that bad. So, what gives?

Well, the problem is that my MS is acting up. Thankfully nothing too serious but it's been enough to keep me from getting in those fabulous long trips that I am wanting to do. Luckily, it's only April and the season here tends to go on until late October or even early November so I'm not too worried about missing out.

But, still, I do not like not being able to do the things I enjoy. Certainly, I can adapt (you have to when you have any chronic illness). I do have a few crocheting projects on the go and those are my back-up activities. But when it's sunny, warm and otherwise gorgeous, it's hard not to feel that pull to "shoe" up (yes, I'm using a noun as a verb but so what) ease into the seat of my Catrike Trail and zoom away.

What I can say, even from here and surrounded by skeins of black and bright purple yarn, is that the trike has been performing flawlessly. The brakes and shifters are all working perfectly and show no signs of breaking down...

...if only my legs would follow suit.

Oh, I am healing up. These sorts of "relapses" occur fairly regularly and the result is really that I need to take a week or two off from any heavy physical activity but it's the waiting that gets to me after awhile. "Patience," I remind myself as I shuffle along looking like a 3 year old child that's just woken up. "It will pay off!"

Now, back to my rows of dcx100 twice before yarn colour change!

18k on such a nice day

Okay, the poem was yukky...but the day sure wasn't.

Here it is, April 1st*, and it's been a warm and gentle month so far. I'm getting the hang of using my biking shoes, clipping into the pedals is getting easier though my left shoe continues to be a hassle when trying to disconnect. Still, that did not stop either of us from getting out and zipping along the roads on our respective catrikes.

Typical for us, we pack a picnic lunch and head out to enjoy lunch "al fresco" and, today, it would be Mooney's Bay for an early season lunch. We loaded up and left our house around 11:20. Heading west along Hunt Club Road, I couldn't help but notice just how much traffic there was. Then again, maybe it was people heading out for the long weekend. We got to McCarthy street, turned north and headed towards Southmore. A quick left turn onto Southmore and we were almost instantly immersed in the eerie silence of midday suburbia. I passed a woman doing what looked like dethatching her front yard. She looked up and regarded us as we zoomed past but otherwise did nothing. At one point, Adam commented on how he could hear quite a number of cardinals - a little early this year. True enough, when we stopped at a stop sign, we could both hear the telltale whooping chirp of cardinals.

When we got to Mooney's Bay, I noticed two things - a lot of people out in shorts and also that it was only 11:40, still too early for lunch. So, we decided to continue along the bike path around Mooney's Bay, under the Heron Road bridge at Hog's Back and then onto the Colonel By bike path. Besides the usual complement of pedestrians and other cyclists there were a few construction workers. We knew the bike path was under some repair/maintenance and actually encountered a few places where it was pretty tight to get through. We didn't know how far up the path we could go before encountering any kind of real obstacle but we had both the gorgeous weather and the time to find out.

We didn't have to go too far...

The picture above was taken along the bike path and between the Hartwell Locks and Dow's Lake and that was as far as we went before turning around to head back to Mooney's Bay. By that time, we were getting hungry for lunch. There were no picnic tables out - yet - so we were relegated to a bench only and likely the same bench we went to last autumn when a late season warm spell made heading out a pleasant venture.

During lunch, we got to watch students from a local high school come out and enjoy the day. A small hill close to us had other people out playing and otherwise taking advantage of the warm, almost summer-like weather. This is what having a catrike is about; it's about getting out, getting some exercise, getting around and enjoying the life we have. Most importantly for me, though, it's about sharing a great lunch with the man I love on a beautiful day in a beautiful city park.

I am finding that I am able to both get and maintain 1 to 2 kilometres/hour more speed with my biking shoes than with my regular running shoes. I attribute it as much to placebo effect as to my being able to (I think anyway) increase my pedallling efficiency. Personally, I don't really care how or even why - just that I am able to go out and go triking!

*no silly joke about today's date - no fooling!

adventures in cleats part wun

I buckled.

I finally decided to purchase those biking shoes with those cleats that will attach firmly to my trike pedals. Presumably, I can cycle more efficiently as I would be developing power on the backstroke (versus the upstroke on upright bicycles) as well.

So, when we went into MEC and purchased new biking shoes for me, I was really looking forward to seeing just how much more efficiently I could pedal.

Well...I haven't quite got that far yet.

Long stupid story short, the cleat on my left shoe tore off when I was trying to slide it out of the slot on the pedal exactly the way the instructions said. It turned out the bolts on the cleats themselves were about 1/8" too short and so were not physically holding the cleat itself in place.

Now came our trek to find slightly longer bolts and, well, we did find a pair that would fit and grip the cleat. The tops of the bolts were not flush but we didn't think that would make too huge a difference...

...it did make a difference! So, the shoes were repaired here; with bolts that fit properly and would grip correctly. However, the cleats would not seat correctly on the pedal. That meant Adam having to file down the rounded tops of the bolts. Now, they fit properly, can be seated in the pedals correctly and all that is left for me to do is to practice clicking them into place properly and removing them without tearing the cleats out, destroying the shoes or otherwise making it nearly impossible to engage and disengage the shoes.

Adam doesn't like the shoes but I like them. You can't walk around on them. The bottoms are hard plastic with no tread and walking on the shoes will wear out the bolts...the same ones that we had problems with.

As I become accustomed to engaging and disengaging the shoes, I will feel a lot more comfortable wearing them on longer trike trips.

btw, the weather forecast for this upcoming weekend is calling for +24C...

Solo

Since the weather is supposed to turn cloudier, much cooler and damper, I thought I would head out for a quick trip today while it was still nice outside. At this time of year, you gotta take what good days there are 'cause you never know when some rogue blizzard or vicious drenching might take place. It's the last day of winter today and so the stormier spring weather is coming.

Long story short, I did a quick 6.9 kilometre trip this morning in bright, hazy sunshine. As I have no problems whatsoever in riding my trike on main roads (they're for my use too, ya know), I decided to head east on Hunt Club road. As it was around 10:00 am, I didn't expect to find much traffic and there wasn't too much though that's not to say there was none. Oh sure, I got to share the road with taxis, cars, trucks and the odd motorcycle (it's their road, too) but, for the most part, we all got along well enough. There was a problem with one motorcyclist who seemed to think it was perfectly reasonable to weave in and out of traffic, cutting off several other cars and cutting in front of someone who was trying to turn left onto a road. I hung back in the bike lane, hugging the curb, actually, and merely played the role of witness to all this. The words emanating from some of the other drivers were - uh - colourful to say the least and made all the worse by the evident indifference of both the motorcyclist and his passenger. Still, we all seemed to be able to get where we needed to go without any bloodshed (as far as I knew).

The one other type of driver that I felt worth mentioning is the transport truck driver. This morning and universally, I found each one I encountered (about three in total) acted in the most careful and courteous manner. I felt safe sharing the road with these rumbling behemoths and had no problem whatsoever when I needed to merge across two lanes of traffic and into a left turn lane. While I have no problems driving my trike in traffic, am keenly aware of the fact that I am a very low sitting small object and that most other drivers may not see me despite the tall and very orange attention getting flag that flaps about. I tend to pull over or slow down until it is absolutely safe to change lanes. However, given just how few cars there were on the road, I didn't have to do much of that.

It was chilly when I went out but at least there wasn't much of a wind to make things even chillier. However, if the latest weather forecast pans out, it'll be a little while before I head out again. Still, out three times before the, technical, end of winter isn't bad.

Make hay while the sun shines...

The weather continues to be unseasonably warm with the crusty, dirty snow sublimating as I write this at 6:07 pm (18:07 to we 24 hour clock types). So, naturally, we headed out after a late lunch and did a 12.8 kilometre trip through the suburbs here.

At this time of year, the weather can get a little unpredictable. In fact, according to The Weather Network, we can expect 5-10 centimetres of snow on Wednesday, the 24th of March. This isn't out of the ordinary; spring snows are a common feature here in Ottawa but any such snow doesn't last very long. Things tend to unfold like this: it gets cloudy, much colder, then it snows for a good day turning everything white after which the sun comes out the next day and melts all the snow. There, just like a visit to the dentist - you're in, you're glued to the chair while the dentist does something to your teeth, then you're out again and can forget the whole thing.

Of course, the real trick here will be to see if the city can actually forego its nauseating habit of dumping yet more road salt on every flat surface the truck drivers can find. We're all getting just a little tired of being treated like a huge plate of french fries.

Yet, as we all know, the weather is not required to conform to the forecast so if the predictions change between now and then, I won't worry. In the interim, I'm out triking on the streets while the sun shines.

First day out!

It was absolutely gorgeous today, just as the weather dudes had promised. Actually, the weather has been really grand lately, with sunny skies, warm temperatures and no precip to speak of...until this past Sunday when it poured like mad.

But, unlike the past two summers when it did nothing but rain - so it seemed - this was a wanted rain. The showers, drumming steadily against the roof of the house and swirled about the skies by the brisk easterly winds, washed all that blasted road salt away! By this morning, the skies had stopped pouring with rain and, when the sun came out, the roads dried. To be sure, we still have lots of fine gravel spread fairly evenly across the road - but at least it won't dissolve the catrikes.

It was still pretty windy today, which is typical for this time of year as weather patterns shift from the stability of winter to the stormier spring, but the winds didn't sting. They were still coming from the east (predominantly) but the day was warm for this time of year and the sun was shining brightly. It looked like the perfect day to get our catrikes out and go for the first run of the season.

We waited until lunch had settled before heading out but some dusting off of things came first, starting with checking the tires. My trike has three Schwalbe Marathon Racers and they are rated for 85psi. Adam's trike, the 2006 Catrike Speed, has two Schwalbe Kojak tires, inflated to 100 psi, on the front with a Schwalbe Stelvio, also inflated to 100, for the rear tire. Adam pumped up the tires and, after ensuring no air was leaking for any reason, we were off to the races.

Well, actually, I was off first. Anxious to get out on the road, I plunked myself in the seat and did a quick run just up and down the road. MAN, it felt SO GOOD just being out on the trike. While I was zipping up and down the road, doing speeds ranging from 13 to about 25 km/hr, I did a quick check on the shifters, the brakes and the steering. I am very happy to report that three months spent in the garage with nothing more than an old shower curtain draped across to keep it clean did nothing bad to it.

When I got back to the house, grinning as I was, I saw that Adam was ready to go. We snapped a couple of pictures (Adam takes much better ones) and, before long, we were both out on the road. We only went for a 6 kilometre run, half of that spent beating into the still gusty easterly winds, but not only did we have a ton o'fun but we did some sprint runs downwind on, basically, empty roads. With Adam being much taller and more muscular than me, naturally he clocked higher speeds. At one point, he reached 39 km/hr on the same run that I touched 34 km/hr.

My Catrike Trail shifts very smoothly and, just like last year, the brakes were both responsive and even - no pulling from either side. I'm debating on whether or not I want to buy a pair of clipless shoes. I am told that I can increase my speed by up to 20% as I would be producing power throughout the entire cycle and not just when pushing down. It's a nice idea but not necessary.

Tomorrow promises to be a carbon copy of today so perhaps we will head out once again to add to the 6 kilometres we already did so far this season.

What to wear...what to wear...

I saw a cyclist earlier this afternoon. He was dressed in a long sleeved t-shirt and long, spandex style shorts. That got me thinking about appropriate cycling clothing.

Typically, we see the cyclist pedalling along the road or pathway wearing things like shorts and t-shirts. After all, whether you ride a bike, a trike, a quadracycle or a unicycle (yes, I've seen a few of them in use), it's pretty hot work. Energy use invariably results in the production of waste heat so it's really important to find ways of adequately dissipating said waste heat. In the case of cyclists, dressing properly for conditions will go a long way towards making any trip enjoyable and, yes, safe. Overheating can be quite dangerous and, for someone like me who has MS, it doesn't always take much heating to turn what should be a fun trip into a not-fun problem.

Yet, this early in the season it generally isn't a problem of overheating that I get concerned about but the opposite...not wearing enough proper cycling clothing.

Sure, the days are getting pleasantly warm. We did a 12 kilometre walk yesterday and actually had to remove our jackets, gloves and tube scarves. At this time of year, it becomes necessary to dress for two seasons. Mornings and evenings are very chilly (there is still some snow on the ground and it is still, technically, winter) but the afternoons are quite warm so the snow won't last much longer.

However, even in the warm afternoons, and even with cycling generating all that heat which our bodies must dissipate, it's still going to be $*#*($%&#$% cold on our faces, hands, arms and legs.

Thus, we may be in shorts and short sleeved t-shirts in a couple of months but, for now, we will still need to wear gloves, jackets, long sweats or cycling pants and a scarf. The relative airflow as we cycle will generate a windchill. Heat is removed from our bodies and we wind up getting quite cold. True, our bodies are still working hard, pumping oxygenated blood to our legs as we pedal our little hearts out, but we cannot generate enough heat to offset the windchill. However, I do not worry too much about such matters; in short order, I'll be having to stop often enough to cool off with the bottle of ice water I bring with me.