Lessons learned

Getting a bike‒the same bike‒five weeks after almost-sorta-mostly breaking one's arm and going for a sixty kilometre ride because this is the n^th really nice day one has being going "no bike ride, wouldn't be prudent, probably not all healed yet" and it's just enough isn't all that rash as it turns out.

The Hypothesis does a really good job of just rolling forward without requiring me to take any notice of its functioning.  This makes me happy.

My legs hurt, but used hurt, not the horrible crampy death-by-pain hurt; I seem to have finally got the cranks-and-seat-height issue sorted out.

When clipping the cable ties holding the brake housing to the downtube, do not leave the cut ends of the cable ties pointing up; they will slice up the inside of one's left knee in a bewildering and initially inexplicable way.

This is the second set of Praxis Works rings.  They haven't, as the first set entirely have, quite gone past 100km without bending, but I'm hopeful.  Yes, this is a very low bar.  Yes, the nice new crank arms probably have something to do with it.  Still, that's where experience has put the bar.

The route to Burlington is pokey‒lots of shared use park paths‒but continues scenic, and all the work any of the various municipalities have done since I was last that way are improvements.  (It's not like I'm precisely filled with zoom at the moment anyway, so I can hardly complain about the pokey nature of the route.)

GO trains on a holiday weekend remain a really good way to avoid having to ride back.

It looks like any questions of bike fit are down to issues with hands; both palms are a bit sore, but I'm going to suppose that's just lack of practice.  I can definitely put weight on my left arm again without really unpleasant sensations, so that much healing has happened. Left handing shifting is still to be avoided if I can.

There was a peregrine falcon over Sherwood Forest Park.  The killdeer went all alarm call, everything on the playing fields lifted into the air in a big swirl, and just hanging up there, wings like a full drawn bow, was the falcon.

The splendid Dill Pickle front bag rattles a bit; the rack tubing is just a bit too narrow.  Shall have to try applying some dead inner tube wrapping.  The Dill Pickle seat bag is just purely splendid.

The Hypothesis gets the same sort of reaction from people who know their bikes the Experiment does.  Fellow used the word "Clydesdale" a lot.

Smug as a turtle in springtime

From the Hillman Marsh conservation area; no bird pictures worth mentioning, though there were a plethora of birds.

Turtles, though, turtles just sit there when you try to take pictures, they don't rise up whirling like restlessness made flesh.

Behold the galloping sensor technology

Taken, handheld, with a pocket snapshot camera at x20 zoom across a restaurant table to get as much of the rainbow across the floor from the corner of the glass door as I could.

Those clever people at Fuji are indeed clever.

There ought to be some bike pictures by and by; second ride on the Hypothesis launched me off, courtesy of some streetcar tracks, so there has been no cycling this month while various sprains and cracks knit themselves back together.

It's a start

I think that's all the parts.
(There are wheels, they're hanging on the wall behind where I was standing to take this.)

Last thing to arrive?  Chain ring bolts.  (User error, that was.)

Second to last thing to arrive?  Seat-post elastomer blocks for the Thudbuster, which were apparently under some sort of curse.

Never done STI shifters before, never done maintenance on the thudbuster seatposts, but the rest of it should be at least the second time around, so there's that.

And then I get to find out if the Dill Pickle front bag (ordered optimistically with respect to size) actually fits, or if I'm going to need a slightly smaller one.

There's some gibbering in there somewhere.

Our Lady Of The Darkness

Well, right now, she's being Our Lady of Complaining About the Closed Nature of Doors, but she's not being excessively insistent about it.  (She's already sprinted through the apartment door and dived into the apartment of the patient artists next door once already, so she's had today's Out.  Even if she was unable to Snorfle All the Things.)

2012, well, wrote a novel, remained useful at the stuff I actually get paid for, may have figured out a non-bending drivetrain solution for cycling, saw some birds, and had the number of people I know for whom my weird brain is unreservedly a feature go from one to two.

2013, well, I hope more cycling.  And some more birds.  And another novel, because the setting has momentum.

Lest we forget

Cha Till Maccruimein (Departure of the 4th Camerons) The pipes in the streets were playing bravely, The marching lads went by With merry hearts and voices singing My friends marched out to die; But I was hearing a lonely pibroch Out of an older war, Farewell, farewell, farewell, MacCrimmon, MacCrimmon comes no more.' And every lad in his heart was dreaming Of honour and wealth to come, And honour and noble pride were calling To the tune of the pipes and drum; But I was hearing a woman singing On dark Dunvegan shore, In battle or peace, with wealth or honour, MacCrimmon comes no more.' And there in front of the men were marching With feet that made no mark, The grey old ghosts of the ancient fighters Come back again from the dark; And in front of them all MacCrimmon piping A weary tune and sore, On gathering day, for ever and ever, MacCrimmon comes no more.' Ewart Alan Mackintosh (1893-1917)

No more, no more, no more forever, shall love or gold return the fallen.

Not as four-dimensional as it looks

Well, OK, it exists in time.  The angle I took this at manages to make it look like it's having trouble with the existing in space part.

Tubus Carry rack, via Peter White Cycles; Arkel GT-18 pannier, via my inestimable local bike shop, Cycle Solutions on Parliament.  And they fit!  They fit like they were made to fit!  (Even if I might want to tighten the bungie up a bit.)

This is one of those extremely cheering things, when one was guessing based on dimensioned drawings and hope.