More Winter Riding

I must be reinvigorated for cycling as I realised I’ve been going out for a ride more frequently of late than I have for a while.

Sometimes it’s just a ride around Longford and other times it’s a bit further afield. The recumbent trike and the upright 2-wheeler are the cycles of choice.

Can and bottle recycle scheme

The collection of cans for the recycler continues but there seem to be fewer cans by the roadside – maybe the scheme is making people think before throwing them away. At this rate it will be a while before I take the box of cans to the Prospect bottle and can recycling depot to see if any are acceptable.

Ride of the Week

This week I charged up the E-City and put it in the back of the car before heading to Latrobe. There I met up with the NW (cycling) Group who were having a loop ride out of Latrobe. The proposed ride started off taking the NW Coastal Pathway from Bells Parade to the mouth of the River Mersey and then turning east alongside Bass Strait then Devonport Airport before turning south back to Latrobe.

I left Longford in frosty, misty almost foggy, conditions and the moisture in the air got thicker and thicker as I drove through Westbury to Deloraine. On the northern side of Deloraine the fog petered out and the sun appeared. In Latrobe at the start of the ride the sun was out but the air hadn’t warmed up much.

Before the ride and while riders converged on the meeting spot, I fiddled with the 360 camera and made sure the new SD card was formatted and ready for action. As I had left my reading glasses at home and the screen very small, it was sort of guesswork! While I was stuffing about doing that a lot more people arrived to brave the chill and, in the end, I think there were 16 people on the ride. All but 3 were e-bikes.

We set off and the first bit of the pathway has a number of short, sharp rises which you must be in the right (low) gear to climb. I should have remembered that! As we rode along I could see the camera wasn’t right but what with the gear changing and balancing to ride past bollards in the track I had to keep up or annoy our official “Sweep”. Still learning the foibles of the E-City I was also learning how to ride in a group when you need to balance gears and power levels so as to ride in a safe position in the group – or, more accurately, at the back of the group.

We finished that part of the pathway at Ambleside and continued along to a group meet point. There I re-formatted the camera card, checked more things and set it going again. This time it decided I had pressed the right buttons and it worked OK. Now I had to get along quickly and catch everyone up. That’s about where the video below starts.

The ride continued, my learning about group riding continued and the sun stayed out.

It was a good day and I learnt the nuances of switching between power levels 2, 3 and 4 in order to climb hills and not ram the person in front.

On return to Latrobe a number of us had sandwiches and coffee / tea by the river at Bells Parade. Nearby is a restaurant. Unknown to me, that lunchtime Mrs C and her friend had visited a plant nursery near the coast and they had decided to lunch in the very restaurant at Bells Parade. So, possibly at the same time as I was on the park bench eating my cheese sandwich, Mrs C was tucking into her Laksa.

The MG powered along without trouble for both legs of the journey, a fact I was very happy about. Hopefully it will keep on doing this until August when it should get it’s replacement part(s).

That’s it for now.

’til next time …………………