Well, sort of “friendly-fire sick” – I had a bad reaction to the flu and pneumonia vaccinations which were poked into different sites on the same day. Vacs. Tuesday lunch time and Tony off the bike until Friday! Feverish, no sleep, aching .. lots of aching, no desire to do much at all. Proper Man-Flu syndrome. I would be awful with whatever to is that Emily has!!
By Friday I was inhabiting the body once more and thinking about the measly 30k ridden so far for the week. I decided to get out and about on all three machine (in turn, silly) and see which was the most comfortable. Basically none met the specification re comfort to aching arm and aching hands – so I rode Vivente gently along to Woolmer’s Bridge for a picture followed by a slow Anura ride around Longford (probably the most comfortable of the three bikes). At the end of the day I realised it was now the 1st of June and the bike/bridge 365cycle monthly challenge for May was over. Never mind, here are the pictures:
A little bridge across Back Creek, Longford leading to the “pick your own” berry farm. Basically the small creek doubles as a drainage “ditch” for the farmland it flows though. I have seen people fishing off the bridge and understand there are trout in here. Not sure I would eat any trout caught though as who knows what farming run-off would be involved.
With the winter light contrast is strong and the phone camera has trouble dealing with it. This can be seen in the following picture.
Woolmer’s bridge in the process of being replaced. The old wooden bridge in over to the right and the new structure is being built to this side of it. Quite a large construction job is going on with driven piles and concrete; the sound of lots of banging, scraping and shouting and diesel engines fills the air. Down by the river in the car park / boat ramp area are a number of worker facility huts. If we have a rain event they will sail off downriver nicely but I am sure the project plan has an Appendix that details how to speedily get them on trucks and to higher ground before polluting the Macquarie River.
Saturday and Sunday I tooled around Longford on the Brompton getting shopping, (weekend beer, milk for lattes, newspapers to see what Trump is doing etc) and then packed the Greenspeed into the car (both days) and went for a ride along the cycle trail Perth to Breadalbane.
On both trips I met several cyclists most of whom smiled, said Hello and generally were civil. One guy must have thought I looked hilarious as both times I met him he roared with laughter. I am pleased to have brighten up his day but sad he couldn’t even say “Hello”. Several “oldies” (i.e. retired like me) had electric bikes. One bloke stopped for a chat and in the conversation let it slip his was a 1,000 watt motor. The legal limit in Tassie is 250 watts. Anything over that and the bike has to be registered and you have to have insurance just like a “real” vehicle. He was not worried – “only cycle on paths like this, Mate.” Oh, Good.
Along the way on Saturday I stopped for a picture for the June 365cycle challenge.
The June challenge is to take a picture of your bike by a tree of interest. I thought I would start with a small but well formed gum tree. Bill commented, when setting the challenge, that sometimes it is difficult to get the whole tree in. This was the case here. I walked back until against the road embankment walking over a damp, newly seeded sticky underfoot area that will become a nice verge by this time next year. Just couldn’t get far enough back and as a phone camera’s wide angle to zoom is worked by the operator actually moving closer or further away from the subject I didn’t get the top of the tree in. I can do better – we have the whole of June to go yet.
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Riding the trike is proving interesting. Now I have fitted the pedals for cleats and am clipping onto the pedals it’s quite an improvement. With the old “rat-trap” pedals I could not use the toe clips they came with as my shoes would not go far enough forward to be comfortable. Plastic toe clips are not “bendable” or “openoutable” as the old metal ones from yesteryear were, so I could not make them fit. I took the toe clips off but then it was impossible to try any sort of way to remove the weight from the none-pushing pedal. When I tried the pedal moved as I released pressure and either the foot then returned to pedal in the wrong place or the foot fell off the pedal all together. Neither was good.
With cleats I am now able to work out how to pull back one leg while pushing with the other. Why bother? Well, when pedalling uphill looking at the birds, the clouds and enjoying the recumbent lifestyle (i.e. without thinking about the cycling process) speed drops right off. Yes, it’s possible to drop yet another gear and keep going comfortably but, when you focus and spin the pedals more effectively, the gear change is not necessary and speed goes up 2-3 kph rather than down the same! I can spin using the pull-push method for a little while at the moment but then the muscles complain. I haven’t yet completed the 500 – 1,000 miles I am told it takes to get those recumbent muscles built up.
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Other news. I phoned the Auto-electrician about the caravan only to find he is on holiday this week! We leave in 4 weeks so I hope he is re-energised by the holiday and gets started on replacing the rear lights soon.
Total for week : 114 k Total for year : 2,313 k
Vivente : 41 k Brompton : 21 k Anura : 52 k
Tony's Tasmanian Cycling Blog 