A fall bike ride

If I look back in the blog I find another post about cycling in the fall. I wrote that one 16 years ago when I was newly retired. The bike is different but I think the route is similar to the one I took last Friday. I debated about whether to go for a ride or not and then I checked the forecast for the next day. Rain. That settled it. Much better to get out when the temperature was just about right and the sun was shining. I think it was 13C when I left. I had on a light fleece, a wind vest and gloves.

The bike is the e-bike R gave me for Christmas last year, although we didn’t get around to actually buying it until May. Last Wednesday, we stuffed both e-bikes in the van and headed to Canmore where we parked and rode the Legacy Trail to Banff. On that ride my saddle slipped down about an inch even though I tightened up the clamp as hard as I could.

When I set out Friday I had no particular plan except to drop in to the bike shop to see if they could rectify the problem. The guy took the bike right away and, while I waited, he cleaned off the seatpost and regreased it. That was entirely counter intuitive to me. If the thing was slipping, why would you want to grease it? But it seemed to work. I thought of just riding around the neighbourhood and then decided to ride down the Edworthy Park hill.

The road down to the river has improved a lot over the years. When I first rode there it was mostly gravel and now it is mostly paved. That makes the riding nicer both up and down the hill. At the bottom of the hill is a parking lot and a playground as well as a few picnic spots and one picnic shelter. At the north end of the parking lot is a concrete barrier with an opening in it that leads across the train tracks. I decided to carry on across the tracks and the bridge to the north side of the river. As I approached the tracks I saw a young woman with a camera and a tripod taking photos. If you look either way along the tracks it’s easy to forget you are in the middle of a city of 1.3 million people. You might be looking along any treed section of track in the foothills.

I crossed the bridge and turned to the east along the divided pathway, one path for cyclists and a separate one for pedestrians. From there I could make a shorter loop on the pedestrian bridge under Crowchild Trail and come up the hill by a golf course, or I could carry on, turn around at some farther point and go back up the hill the way I came. Thinking of the photographer I opted to carry on and get some photos with my phone on the way back through the park.

When I decided I had gone far enough I turned around and retraced my route, stopping this time for a few photos along the way.There were a number of people out on bikes and walking along the river pathway. As I toodled along a few guys on road bikes and mountain bikes passed me. I’m happy to have fit individuals on light bikes blow by me. The point of having an e-bike is not to go as fast as I can but to enjoy cycling again with a little less effort.

Don’t get me wrong, the kind of e-bike I have is still work. If I don’t pedal it doesn’t help. You can get e-bikes with throttles but mine doesn’t have one and the info from my fitbit tells me that I’m working hard enough on these rides. Today I was in my vigorous heart rate zone for 50% of the time, the moderate zone for 40% of the time and the peak zone for 9% of the time. I don’t know where the other 1% got to. Perhaps it was for the photo stops.

I set out to ride for 40 minutes and by the time I got back home I had ridden for an hour and 59 minutes. It was a very satisfying and enjoyable ride. I certainly used the highest level of assist to make it back up the Edworthy Park hill and that probably accounts for the 9% of time at the peak. It’s the difference between struggling with each pedal stroke in the lowest gear on a normal bike and feeling that going up the hill is hard sustainable work.

I hope to go on as many rides as I can before it snows and the paths get icy. Next summer I’ll test how far I can go on a battery charge. So far I haven’t even drained the battery half way.

Sewing, cycling, and a game

In the last blog I talked about screwing my courage to the sticking place and attempting to shorten the sleeves on two wool shirts. The first shirt is done. The workmanship won’t win any prizes and you don’t get a closeup of the stitching but the sleeves are now a good length. I have worn it for a day and it’s comfortable. I took a day off from sewing yesterday. I can only stand to do it in small doses. This morning I measured the other shirt and I’ve marked where to cut the sleeve and have taken off the cuff.

I’m adhering to finishing one sleeve before I cut off the other one. It would be just like me to try to put a cuff on the wrong sleeve if I had two to choose from. Once I have this shirt done I have a few pairs of pants to turn up. That should be easier than the shirt sleeves. One thing at a time and take it slowly.

Another thing besides sewing that I didn’t think I’d ever do is playing a game on my phone. I’ve never been much on games for the same reason I’m not much on sewing: I never had the patience and couldn’t see the point. Enter a silly little game called Words of Wonder. It’s initially free on phones if you can put up with the ads. After I had played it for a day and found myself enjoying it I shelled out the eight bucks to buy it and get rid of the ads. They still try to get you to watch ads by promising you a bunch of sapphires if you look at certain ads on YouTube. Since I haven’t bothered to find out what the sapphires are for it doesn’t bother me to ignore them. They also offer various collections of postcards for a limited time. Again, who cares? It’s something to do with playing the game competitively and, by now, you can guess my reaction to that.

The game is a bit like Scrabble or a crossword puzzle. The difference in this game is that they give you a series of letters and a blank crossword shape. You have to fill in all the words in the crossword from the letters supplied, no written hints, just the letters. The game does allow you to rearrange the order in which the letters appear in a circle below the crossword.

I’m finding the whole thing surprisingly engaging. I don’t remember when I got the game but I think it’s under a week. I’ve now solved 200 of the puzzles. It’s strange how sometimes I look at the jumble of letters and wonder how I could ever make a word out of those. Then I see one word which leads to another word and another. At some point I get stumped and rearrange the letters to see other words. Sometimes I have to resort to pencil and paper and plugging letters in at random until I recognize something. Of course, the makers of the game want you to pay for hints when you get stuck and I’m not doing that. Now if the sapphires gave you free hints I'd be more interested. Richard has helped me on occasion and sometimes, you are actually given the chance to get a hint letter for free. I've yet to figure out how that works.

I suppose it isn't a lot different from Wordle, and I don’t know why this game appeals and Wordle doesn’t. It’s an engaging way to spend a few moments during the day when I’m between tasks or in the evening when I don’t feel like doing much else. Puzzles and games tend to lose their appeal for me fairly quickly when I do find one I like so I’ll see how long this lasts. One disadvantage is that you can’t play it offline.

Just as I’ve finally gotten around to sewing, I’ve finally gotten around to riding my bike for the season. I’ve been undecided about whether or not I like the conversion to an e-bike. Haven’t quite sorted through the ins and outs of charging the battery, hooking it up, resetting the computer, and how to work with the gearing and the various levels of assist.

I’ve not been too pleased with the performance on hills. It seems the bike wants to help all it can on the flats where I don’t need it and it’s sluggish on the hills where I could use the help. Yesterday I decided to go out and ride around and around the neighbourhood for half an hour to see if I couldn’t figure it out. I found that the language the makers of e-bikes use is confusing. In everything I have looked at they say the harder you pedal the more the bike assists you. To me that means the more pressure you put on the pedals the more assistance you get. Nope! Turns out the faster you pedal the more assistance you get, and that is a totally different animal.

The riding strategy has to change. I’ve always known that it’s better to keep a higher cadence but sometimes I just get tired and bash my way through by pedalling more slowly and putting more weight on the pedals. The e-bike is not friendly when I do that. So, gear down and speed up the revolutions when you approach a hill and then keep the cadence high and increase the amount of assistance as you go up the hill. I suppose it’s not all that different from gearing down as you go up a hill but the final step, before getting off to walk, has always been the slow-revolution slog and that seems to be more difficult on the e-bike. With the motor and batteries the bike is heavier and, if you’re in slog mode the bike really doesn’t seem to help much regardless of the level of assistance. Of course, I could be totally out to lunch on this and as I ride I’ll probably find other ways to be more efficient. At least, yesterday, I had a totally enjoyable ride and came back thoroughly winded. It’s been a while since I’ve worked that hard. It’s humbling to think that I used to be able to ride like that for hours and hours at a time. The good news is that I can regain some of that fitness a little at a time. I don’t think I’ll ever go on long tours again but I’d like to work up taking and enjoying day rides in the mountains. The first step is to get out on the bike and now that I’m beginning to figure out how the e-conversion works, that will be easier. Stay tuned.