Ride for Sunday, 13 August
After staying the night at my friend's place I set off this morning to burn off the calories from the food and drink from the night before. I headed down Cow Bay Road onto Dyke Road. I stopped at the intersection of Dyke Road and Cow Bay Road (which is weird... the road changes from Cow Bay Road to Dyke Road, then intersects Cow Bay Road). While I was eating a fruit leather strip a guy I passed on a cruiser bike stopped and asked me if I was OK. After I explained I just stopped to eat, we got talking, and he told me about his bike (a 25 year old CCM cruiser that he'd built up for trail riding) and how he started riding a year or two ago and prefers to ride his bike to driving - after spending 25 years driving for a living I can't blame him! Dick expressed an interest in my stem shifters as he was looking for something to replace the downtube shifters on his road bike; I recommended he go to IdealBikes to see if they had anything suitable, he was interested in the idea of a second hand bike shop to get bits to build up his old bikes with. I also told him about Critical Mass, which he sounded quite interested in, I'll be looking out for him at the end of the month.
I decided to head up through the suburbs in Dartmouth onto Montague Road, up onto Waverly Road, then finally back down Rocky Lake Road into Bedford. It's a bit of a long (35km) detour to miss Dartmouth, but it was a much nicer ride overall.
Muppet of the day was the cellphone using minivan driver who pulled out in front of me without looking, then when I overtook him honked at me for having the temerity to pass him and get in his way. Strangely, I had very little sympathy for him.
I took my GPS with me, the map of the ride for yesterday and today looked like this:
Distance logged: 56.743km
Time: 132:26
Average speed: 25.7km/hr
Max speed: 59.1 km/hr
Temperature: 15C-20C, sunny, intermittently breezy
Cumulative distance: 4809.727km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.44
Monthly distance: 311.202km
Monthly cost per km: $0.27
I decided to head up through the suburbs in Dartmouth onto Montague Road, up onto Waverly Road, then finally back down Rocky Lake Road into Bedford. It's a bit of a long (35km) detour to miss Dartmouth, but it was a much nicer ride overall.
Muppet of the day was the cellphone using minivan driver who pulled out in front of me without looking, then when I overtook him honked at me for having the temerity to pass him and get in his way. Strangely, I had very little sympathy for him.
I took my GPS with me, the map of the ride for yesterday and today looked like this:
Distance logged: 56.743km
Time: 132:26
Average speed: 25.7km/hr
Max speed: 59.1 km/hr
Temperature: 15C-20C, sunny, intermittently breezy
Cumulative distance: 4809.727km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.44
Monthly distance: 311.202km
Monthly cost per km: $0.27
posted by steve at 8/13/2006 05:51:00 pm
6 Comments:
Wow that is quite a ride. I used to do some biking but never really liked the experience in Halifax/Dartmouth.
Stupid question but the stats below say cost per Km. How is this calculated?
Thanks for the great blog and I added you in my link section at http://bryan-henry.blogspot.com
The trick is in finding backroads so most of the traffic is avoided. There's also some really nice trails that have been built lately; the Salt Marsh trail in Dartmouth, for example, and the Beechville Lakeside Timberlea trails, which lead on to the St Margaret's Bay Trails, which go on for miles - I've never yet got all the way to the end of the trail!
The cost per km is calculated by all the expenditures I make on the bike (clothing, equipment, repairs, food, etc) divided into the total distance I've ridden. The cost is done yearly, and reset at the start of the month. I do it by logging all my data into a database with a Perl script I wrote, which generates the stats listing for me - much easier than fiddling about with spreadsheets and the like!
Hi Steve,
I wonder if you can help me. I'm working on bringing something called the Aeolian Ride to Halifax... it involves 50 riders in wind-inflatable suits riding throughout the city. No, I'm not kidding. You can read about it at http://aeolian-ride.info
Right now we're looking for some expertise to put together the route, and I was wondering if you could put me in touch with some Critical Mass folks, or even give some pointers yourself. And, of course, we're looking for riders, if you're interested. The ride will take place on September 10th.
You can reach me at dahuar@yahoo.com if you have any info.
Thanks,
Erica
Hi Erica,
I saw Francesa over at Sunday night bike dinner explosion is involved in this too. I only attend Critical Mass as a rider, I'm not sure who the core organiser is. Martin, one of the mechanics at IdealBikes is probably worth talking to. It might be worth putting up a flier there too - that's how I found out about the Critical Mass.
For routes, it rather depends on what the objective is, and the skill level of riders. A ride around the Commons would be pretty impressive, but I can see a few people being a bit leery of being on busy roads. Riding along Barrington would be another good location, but then it's a matter of climbing uphill - the run up Spring Garden is a bit steep for some people.
And I see you're at the Khyber, too... I have many fond memories of Thursday nights there draining the Khybeer kegs!
I'll cut and paste this in an email too you as well.
Indeed, Martin is organizing the ride. There's an email set up for the ride, which is critical-mass-halifax@hotmail.com (sorry, I don't know if Martin would appreciate me posting his personal email all over the net, so I won't).
btw, i watched the NYC viceo on the linked site. that's crazy! what's the point?! i don't care, i love it!
seriously, count me in. i do have my own permission to post my personal email on the net, which is peterandjessica@eastlink.ca.
let me know if this is going forward!
cheers,
PTR
I just signed up at http://aeolian-ride.info as a suited rider. Should be fun!
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