A contemplative pose

Pretty sure I've used the post title before.

Oh well.

And yes, I should know better than to try to photograph steal cats against a background of direct sunlight burning through the curtains.

Steeper than it looks

Bunch of pictures; this is the one that reminds of leaf-smell, and how you can tell maple from oak.

There's been some errosion

I certainly do need to start cycling on days when it's not both nice out and a weekend.  I might even be managing to get enough things organized that I can, along with my ribs finally not being much inclined to complain.

Highland Creek has been experiencing some erosion; have 50mm of rain in a day, and I suppose that's bound to happen.  (A great many sections of path have developed wee crossing rills, too.  It's almost cute, though bumpy.)

 Fortunately, there was a usable though not ridable path around to the left, there.  Be interesting to see what, if anything, gets done to fix this.  (They may give up and entirely re-route the path.)

The Hypothesis at the parking lot/rest stop at Highland Creek Park.  (Notable for a water fountain with enough water pressure to allow straightforward filling of water bottles, no messing about with collapsible silicone bowls as bottle-fillers.)

Nothing's bent yet. Seat-post creep remains an issue, but I have hopes the section of seatpost under the clamp will eventually have just enough anti-seize on it to keep it from seizing and not enough to keep the seatpost clamp from working.  ("An issue" is a way to say "if this happens, I get sudden and very bad leg cramps.  I do not like this much.")

But, still lovely day, nice ride, I finally managed to get to the long stretch of path under the power line right of way without feeling like I was sure to die due to riding on arterial roads, and it's got longer.  Were they to connect up the one missing block, one could get most of the way to the zoo that way.  Lots of people doing wedding photography in the parks; the lovely sun-dappled background, the enormous numbers of blooming wildflowers, and the sections of vast dense fern understory make this highly explicable, but dogging somebody holding a light reflector and walking backwards on to the path is a new one for me.

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.