Ride for Sunday, 11 September

Went for a ride to Aspotogan again, but decided to do it the easy (counterclockwise) direction this time. Sunny day, but very windy in the morning - a headwind, of course. I saw a few roadies out who were quite definitely underdressed and not happy about it. I was in a long sleeve jersey with a sleeveless wicking top over it, and cycling shorts with a pair of cycling pants on top, which I wore until around 1pm. No GPS map as the batteries gave out, unfortunately.

I also had a mechanical problem; I heard a strange scraping noise coming from the bottom bracket, and I was concerned it was the bottombracket acting up again. I eventually found out it was the cable end rubbing against the fender. I cleaned off the fender and put a tyre boot on, and noticed the tyre was loose. Closer investigation showed the nut had come off the bolt holding the bottom of the fender to the frame, and the bolt was bouncing against the tyre. Obviously I had to fix this before it wrecked the tyre. so I dropped the wheel out, took out the bolt (which was pretty seriously corroded) and bodged a fix with a cable tie to get me home.

I rode on the road pretty much the whole way, as I think the trails were to blame for my rear wheel coming loose. Interestingly enough, it looks like the trail adds an extra 10km or so to the ride; I wouldn't mind if the trail were smooth, but it's the section that's covered with drifts of rocks and pebbles, so I think I may well give it a miss in the future...

The headwind in the morning switched around to become a headwind in the afternoon. I started suspecting there was something magnetic in the bike attracting the vegetation to bend towards me after a while...

I took some pictures as I went around, including some stereotypical "picture of boat in harbour" Nova Scotia type pictures.

Distance logged: 147.21km
Time: 6:06:21
Average speed: 24.1km/hr
Max speed: 56.9km/hr
Temperature: 12C-19C, sunny, windy in the morning, breezy in the afternoon
Cumulative distance: 5138.346km