MikeG's blog

Here is a link to a local bike shop's peeve with our city....

Okay,
We've Had It! City Needs Parking and Ticketing Reform. Please Help Us.
[A Public Policy Statement by Kurt Gwisdek, President, Liberty!
Bicycles]

http://www.libertybicycles.com/newspecial/

Squeezer 2007 was awesome.

This was my second try at it. My first one was much more eventful, and difficult:
see http://www.yourmtb.com/story/my_first_race_squeezer_06

One section I will quote from las't years squeezer blog is this:

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I'm ready to go to a nice, warm sunny destination: Florida. My wife and kids and I have been looking forward to this vacation for a long time. It will be an adventure for all of us, since we have never been there, and it is about a 20 hour drive to get there.

I've been trying to carve a little time into our family vacation in Florida to do some mountain biking. I've got it all set now. User mattgeo has offered to show me around Alafia River State Park (Single tracks link). on Sunday the 11th. Turns out that him and a few others are camping there that weekend, so it has worked out well. This will be the first time my new bike (Giant XTC) will have seen warm weather, as I just picked it up in December.

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Today was a good day to ride. The forecast was for -4 C (25 F). I decided to take my regular winter route, starting with the lakefront trail that is near my house. I continued along the Welland Canal, crossed town down Glendale Avenue and headed to Brock University. Part of the ride was the dreaded 'hydro hill' or aka 'heartbreak hill'.

Today was also my first real ride with the Giant XTC that I just bought. It was a sweet ride that allowed me to confirm that spending my hard earned coin on a bike was well worth it.

You have to appreciate that currently I have only been riding an upgraded 'department store' bike. I already love the SRAM thumb-thumb shifters, and have a feeling I will get rid of the Grip-Shifters on the old mud/winter beater, as I like to call it now.

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Yesterday (Thursday) I went for a ride after supper. I wasn't sure where I was going, but before I knew it, I was on my way for an epic ride. Work had been getting to me lately, and the restructuring at our company has not been kind to me and my psyche.

I have been itching to go for a great, long ride to clear my head. I can feel it in my gut when I need to get out and ride. It is especially apparent when I haven't gone for a while, or the last ride or two sucked. This was the case. I started out going on the (Lake Ontario) Waterfront Trail, a simple, multi-use gravel path, just to get the feel for what lay ahead, in terms of how wet the real trails would be.

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This week, since some of us were on holidays, we went riding on both Thursday and Saturday. Thursday with 3 of us, and Saturday with 4 of us.

Thursday got off to a bad start and got worse. The trails turned out to be really muddy, and we had to struggle just to get back to the road. We were slogging it out, and had taken a break to clean out the mud out of our brakes and such, when Dan and I realized that Jimmy was taking a long time to catch up. We found out that he had picked up a big stick and ripped his back derailleur off.

We proceeded to go to the road, and that's when I remembered a trick I saw on a video on YourMTB.com about a guy towing another using two inner tubes . At the time I posted a comment that included the phrase "Gotta remember that one, if that ever happens to one of our group". Guess what we did? We got Jimmy back to the parking lot, out meeting place, and that was it for Thursday. He had to replace the hanger, and got back into proper order by Saturday.

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Today I picked up the bike I've been wanting to get for a while. My wife didn't want that debt hanging over our heads, so she suggested I just pay it off and pick it up. Welll...OK! I wasn't planning on picking it up until spring, just so would't be tempted to ride it in less than gentle,dry conditions. I have to baby it for a little while!

It's an '05 Giant XTC. Holy Crap is it ever light! I had forgotten how light it was until I picked it up again. I took it home, put on a new computer, adjusted the pedals (clip-less) for my shoes to click in just right, and went for a ride around my house. I also weighed it, and found it to be only 26.8 pounds.

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Today I went solo, since I'm off for the holidays. My regular Saturday ride is not going to happen (busy+rain=no ride).

I thought I would do something different today, so today I'll post a photo blog. I took a more leisurely ride and snapped more than 50 shots, and some of them I posted as images. The rest aren't the greatest, but some of them still give a good idea of where I go...

I will post a second blog for the rest of the pictures...

Saturday's ride included four of us. I rode with Jimmy, Dan and Jurgen. We were a bit slower on the trails today, since it was about 4C, and the trails were a bit wet.

Today I tried taking a few pictures with my new phone, an LG 8100, which has a 1.3 MP camera, takes vids, and is an MP3 phone. So this time, instead of waiting for the other guys, I took pictures while I was waiting, and I also lagged behind when taking other shots. I have yet to figure out how to get the pictures off of my phone, but I'll figure that out soon (update: See photo above of "the Mill").

At the beginning of the ride, I was having problems with the contacts on the battery for my lights. The clips were getting loose and had to stop a few time to fix the situation. Jurgen stopped and waited, to make sure that I was coming, and we then continued.

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I forgot to mention in Saturday's ride that I did not feel great in when I got up. But I promised that I would pick up Dan, Jimmy's nephew, so I was obligated to go. I was also in the mood to ride, and I thought I was just tired. I felt great during and after the ride. The adrenaline helped me forget I was tired.

Turns out I was getting sick. I started feeling feverish on Sunday afternoon, and I ended up staying home on Monday and Tuesday. Tonight I would have gone biking, since a LBS has a weekly ride every Wednesday, weather/trails permitting.

I keep trying to break out of that only once a week ride, but something always comes up. Isn't it goofy that this is what bothers me? I didn't miss my job a lick, until I started getting bored at home.

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