Did You Ride Today?



El Nino has been quite strong this year and parts of the USA & UK are feeling the effects of it quite a bit. Very mild temperatures for December. It should be around the 10 degree mark and lower but it's up around the 15 to 17 range here in the UK at the moment.

I just want some snow again :(
 
Just a short 21-1/2 mile ride this morning before all the Fa-La-La-La-La-La stuff started. It was 45° when I set off and 55° 1 hour and fifteen minutes later! Awesome!

No rain today...the weathermen got it way wrong. The sun came out for some of the ride and the roads were nearly deserted.

I hope you all had a great Christmas ride!
 
This season is the best for riding because the mornings are cool and no rains, hopefully. During weekends, there are lots of cyclists in the main road passing by our village on their way to Antipolo for a hilly climb. And since the weather is cooperating, cyclists of all kinds are there on the road. It's just sad that I cannot join them now with my hectic schedule at home because of the holiday season.
 
Jingle bells, jingle bells , jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in shorts on Boxing Day.
 
42 miles with The Boy Wonder. 50° warm with a very overcast sky and just a little mist at the end of the ride. Somewhere around 2000' of climbing so relatively flat terrain. The wind was manageable and we had a lot of fun alternatively flying fast and putting in short attacks and then cruising easy for a few miles of shooting the breeze and figuring out what was going to be the next gizmo we needed to buy.
 
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41 miles today at 16 MPH average. Very stiff headwinds today with the highwinds. But I enjoy these days knowing most of the riders are at home hiding from the wind. Usually there are a ton of riders out but today it was a ghost town, bunch of babies ha ha ha!

A little sample of today's wind.

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First 30 miles, no volunteers to take the front, Gina and I pulling the troops!

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Nice, Mr. B! Your weather is, once again, superior to ours! It is now 37° here in Ohio and JH's rain has moved North and been falling here in a steady drizzle to pouring, pounding rain for the last 24 hours. More heavy rain is predicted for tomorrow.

At least we have three more days of kind of warm weather in the forecast.
 
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Roads still damp here today but the temps were perfect, unfortunately I was not. Turned back at the 10 mile mark and got in 20 total. Just not feeling that well today. Grateful to have the opportunity to be on the road.
 
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It finally snowed on Christmas night and I was able to put in 3 and a half hours of fat biking the next day. My Fat biking singletrack skills are lacking about as poorly as my mountain biking skills. I spent a lot of the time hiking up the hills and on the brakes. I guess my next investment will be a snow specific set of fat biking tires and a larger set of cojones.

The bike worked well overall. My previous ride had been in heavy wet slush for 20 miles and the chain was showing rust so I cleaned it up, relubed and coated it in vaseline to see if that would keep the water out. I also coated some of the deraileur pivots with valseline to keep the brine out. I had a few nagging little mechanical issues. Snow packed in around my right cleat so tightly that it would not stay fully clipped. The chain slipped a few times with heavy pedaling, I am not sure why but I think a few adjustements are in order.

It was still fun and very tiring. My average speed was about 6mph. Plowing through the snow takes a lot of watts. Temps were in the mid 20's with a stiff north wind, the hills and woods provided very good shelter. I wore 3 long sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of tights, 2x wool socks, balaclava, ski goggles, liner gloves under big gloves and felt comfortable for most of the ride.

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Here are the missing vids of a ride I did serveral days earlier. Nothing too interesting here.

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Ah...flooded and frozen fields! Wind that drowns out all other sound! Dirt roads like the one I live on! Busted up and patch-over-patch paved roads with no berm! It's just like home...er...wait! Where's the hills? Someone stole your hills!

Nice videos! Nice gloves! Beautiful snow rides!

Quote by Maydog:
"I wore 3 long sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of tights, 2x wool socks, balaclava, ski goggles, liner gloves under big gloves and felt comfortable for most of the ride."

That's almost identical to my mid-20's layering.
 
I went for a 4 hour pedal along the great ocean road on christmas day :cool: In the morning there was no sign of a pretty bad bush fire that burnt down about 120 homes. It was close to 40 degree's C in the afternoon with very strong wind gusts.


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No sign of the fire at 8am


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At about 2:30pm lots of smoke :mad:

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Lovely pictures :) For some reason I especially like that last one.

I went for a very short ride during the night just down the road to the town centre. In all honesty I did not plan to go out at all, but things turned out different. I had a little cycle down the high street and admired all the lovely Christmas lights and decorations that are there. It's a shame they will all be taken down within the next two weeks or so.
 
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Nice pics, Steve! We heard about your huge fire here in Ohio. I hope no one was injured in that mess.

We've got to work on you guys...still driving on the wrong side of the road!

Just 20 miles this afternoon. The roads were still wet in spots, but the air was warm enough that it was enjoyable to work on the drops into the 15 MPH headwind for a few miles and then sit up and cruise with the wind at my back.

I found a hound doggie dragging his leash at an intersection and stopped to snag him. Read his dog tag and tugged him up the road for a 1/2-mile or so and returned him to his owner...who was out fixing his pasture fence.
 
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12 point something with 2247 ft of gain on the MTB today.


I Set 19 new "climbing" PR's on Strava today. :cool: Last time I did the ride was in April of 2013


The profile and a still from the video. :D

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Good work, Mr. B! That's a lot of climbing for only 13 miles and quite an improvement over your 2013 ride.

12.5 miles just before the darkness. It was 39° and a steady drizzle was falling as I unloaded the bike. By the time I had the front wheel on and my gear ready to go my glasses were misted over. As I swung a leg over and shoved off into the rapidly fading gray Ohio overcast, I allowed a wry smile to cross my face.
 
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Nothing spectacular but I made a video of my ride today. I ride a fire road that is very popular with hikers now. 10 years ago I could ride up this trail and see 5 maybe 10 people. Now there are hundreds so it's not safe to go down fast. But my purpose for riding MTB in the dirt is for the climbing and fitness.

12.9 miles with 2,247 ft of elevation gain. I used a couple different mounts on my Go Pro's to get different shots.

The hiker were very cool. 4 of them today shouted, "Good job!" to me. One kid and 3 women. I only caught one on video.

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I had a little cycle down the high street and admired all the lovely Christmas lights and decorations that are there. It's a shame they will all be taken down within the next two weeks or so.


You are lucky to have Christmas lights!

In Belgium you can see the Christmas lights only with Infared and the Santa is CIA! :p
 
ELO! I saw them, live, on the 4th of July back in 1975 along with Heart, Todd Rundgren, The Hello People (with Todd), J. Geils Band, Steve Miller Band, Pure Prairie League, Buzzy Linhart and a bunch of other acts.

ELO had a hot air balloon ascend behind the outdoor crowd. The balloon had the largest infinity ball I had seen hanging from a cable maybe 100' below the basket. They bounced lasers from behind the band off the mirrors on the infinity ball and reflected them into the crowd. Good for the retinas, I'm sure...but, we were too far gone to give a ****!

Whadda show! Rode my 1947 Harley to that one and camped under the stars.
 
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