Yay bike ride!

With beautiful weather, and recent rains clearing the air, I couldn't resist a bike ride this afternoon!

I rode over to and up the bike path along the former rail tracks to Chief Peguis Trail, noticed there was a path along CPT and so rode it to Rothesay (it is just gravel, and so not as nice as the bike path), then came back home via Rothesay, Roch, and Brazier.

First flower of the season:

(Crazy early spring!)

Wacky Bikes!

Saw this on a friend's blog:

Whee!

I biked up to the park and back in about 40 minutes, I'd say. :) (I forgot to look at the time before and after, but I remember the clock saying 8:12 before I went to get my bike out, and it's now only 9:04, and I've been home for a few minutes.

I love riding my bike!

(Of course, now I could do with another shower...)

Yay Bike Ride!

Bike rides, actually. These photos were from a bike ride three trips ago.

Me, looking well padded on top of the Chief Peguis Bridge:


Manitoba parfait:

(I had a scoop of chocolate brownie in a waffle cone.)

Weeding update:

The trash people actually *did* pick up all the weeds!

Today was brutally *hot* (by Winnipeg standards, and I am a wuss). Tomorrow is supposed to be better, but, instead of bike riding or gardening, I'm going to the art club with my mom. (Yeah, I'll have all afternoon, but I'll probably have a nap then. After all, I'm getting up at 8, and it's already 2 am!) Thursday is supposed to be *hot* again, but Friday I may get out and dig in the dirt. I guess that means Saturday is bike riding day! :D

Weeding

Yesterday, the back parking pad looked like this:


Today we weeded some more, as you may be able to tell from the many piles of green stuff:

(I count six piles in this photo.)


(Two or three more piles in this photo.)

The parking pad from the same angle as the first photo:

(I kicked the weeds in the back lane into a tidier pile after taking the photo.)

I also did some weeding in the back yard under the spruce tree, and pruned some of the branches that were hanging low over the gate.

On my way back home, I remembered to drop off something at my mom's... which meant I ended up walking past their boulevard trees, which needed some pruning. I had clippers in my bag. I trimmed the water-shoots from the base of the trees, plus low hanging branches and branches over the walk and street.

While stuffing my mom's trimmings into two *full* garbage cans, the neighbour came out with his adorable puppy, so I went over to pet him. (The puppy, not the neighbour. The neighbour has a girlfriend.) I commented that he had some Manitoba maples and elm trees growing in his garden next to the house, and that he should remove them. (This is their first summer in the house... the previous owner was 96 before he passed, and wasn't quite up to the yard work the way he used to be.) Since I had my clippers (and now a pruning saw... there was a thick branch or two that needed removing at mom's) out, I offered to cut them at ground level, and he could dig up the roots later. I also hacked the several-meter-tall elm tree into three pieces for easier disposal.

I eventually did make it home, and had a nice, cool shower, followed by a nap. :)

I still have a heat-headache, though. (It started yesterday.) No matter how much I drink (and I do guzzle the water while working outdoors), I still get those. :(

Bumblebees

Sunday after family dinner, Uncle B and I went for a bike ride. (Yay bike ride! We rode to the Forks to watch the salsa dancers. Bonus: I didn't fall off!) Afterward I stopped by my dad's for some raspberries. Mmmmm! There were a bunch of bumblebees, both on the raspberries, and on the weeds.

I caught this little fellow napping:

Where are your pollen sacs, little guy? Your orange bum stripe sure is pretty!

However, most were busy working despite the late hour and cooling temperatures, like this guy:

(Anyone know what that weed is? The flower part is stiff-spikey. I haven't tried looking it up yet.)

Yay Bike Ride! .... and *ow*!

Father's day weekend I also went on two bike rides with my uncle B. On the first one, I managed to fall off my bike twice.

The first time was in a spot that I walked my bike past on the way out, and thought to myself that I should be sure to get off the bike again on the way back. On the way back, I figured I was doing pretty well, and decided to try riding past the spot. It was a lump (radius similar to my bike's wheel), followed by a gully (ditto), followed by a lump (ditto). I went up, down, and half-way up. Then rolled back. My bike is a little big for me, so I couldn't stick the landing... and ended up doing a relatively slow-motion fall backwards. Advantages to falling backwards: the bike isn't in the way, and so ingrained judo falling techniques are more useful. My uncle thinks I was in the wrong gear. I think I didn't commit sufficiently, and didn't have enough experience with rough terrain. My mom thinks my brother should give me some lessons on riding my bike. (However, since he ends up in the hospital with various broken bones when he falls off the bike, I think I prefer my way.)

The second time was completely embarrassing. My uncle called for me to hold up while he checked something out. I was on a flat street, with a curb and a boulevard to the side. I decided to pull up to the curb and stop with my foot on the curb so that I didn't have to get off. Apparently my brain had ceased to work, because I was unable to dismount properly, and ended up falling on my side on the grass. I got some grass stains, two smalls scratches, and a whopper bruise.

The scratches were relatively minor, and the grass stains on my shorts not exciting enough to upload the photo. (Not when it's two weeks old.) The bruise was spectacular, but in a location that I'm not willing to photograph. (It's around the panty-line.) So, instead, here's the crushed branches from the first place I fell off the bike spectacularly on a previous trip:

(Notice all the broken branches near the trunk on the right, plus the dead/wilted stuff farther away. The mud in the upper-left corner is where the bike path is when the river isn't flooding it.)

However, the flowers were pretty:


We biked all the way to the BDI and back. (Google maps estimates the round trip to be 25 km.) I'm not sure if my falling off the bike was stupidity, lack of sleep (my uncle wanted to go before it got too hot), too much sun, or wrong blood sugar. Or a combination of all of the above.

Sadly, I didn't get on my bike last weekend due to all the stuff I had to do, and this weekend because it was too hot... plus I had too much stuff to do. Perhaps next weekend I'll be able to go for another ride. (I will need to go to bed earlier so that I can get up earlier, when it isn't as hot.)

My uncle says he'd like a video camera, plus notice about when to turn it on. :P

Bruises

I wasn't going to post the bruises, even though the back one was impressive. (It's the size, shape, and colour of a prune plum.) However, the front one has now developed into something impressive as well. (The back one has already started to fade a bit. It started off an even, deep purple.)

I'm amused how plums and bruises ripen in opposite directions. Plums start green, and end purple, bruises start purple, and fade to green.

Interesting: I didn't notice the linear bruises until I posted this photo.

Yay Bike Ride! .... and *ow*!

Yay bike ride! This afternoon I went for a bike ride with my uncles. :) (And, apparently, an ant.) Except for one bit, it was awesome.

The rivers are still high, and will be for a while. There's a spot near us where the trail had been under water, and, while it is now above water (just barely), it's covered in gloppy mud and flotsam. There's a narrow, unofficial trail just above that spot. I made it through there fine twice the other day, but my luck ran out today. I was being careful not to let my pedals hit the high side (something I noticed happened before), but accidentally let (I think) my handlebar hit a tree, which sent me tumbling down the other side. Luckily there was a bunch of trees and shrubbery to cushion my fall. (They won't be quite so cushiony for the next victim... everything under about an inch in diameter literally *broke* my fall.) However, I only suffered some bruises, scrapes, and a temporarily jammed brake lever. (I got it unjammed once I noticed it... when I tried to use it, of course!) I suspect this is probably where I picked up the ant, although I didn't notice it on me until I was back home.

The rest of the trip was only eventful in good ways. :)

The Forks was busy with the Winnipeg International Children's Festival and a highland dancing competition.

The little ones are creepy-cute!

(How can they be so good when they're so *teeny*?! It's creepy!) I bumped into a friend from high school who was one of the volunteers/organizers.


After dallying around the Forks, we biked over the Provencher Bridge to Whittier Park. We couldn't use the path under the bridge, because the river is too high.

See that winding path with the set of stairs down the middle? well, there's a lower level under the waterline that goes under the bridge.


Looks like Fort Gibraltar isn't open for the season yet. (It's probably open for school groups, though.)

Whittier Park is lovely... you can hardly tell you're in the city.

Well, besides the nicely groomed paths, of course. ;) The occasional siren or bit of traffic noise makes it in, but not much.

The Seine River is also quite high.


(Hint: Trees don't normally grow *in* water. Not these ones, at least.)

You can tell that levels have dropped a bit, but I suspect this is another summer where the riverwalk is basically useless.

Okay, the rest of this post is just documenting the damage from the fall. Feel free to skip. ;)

Sunglasses are a bit scratched.

(They scratch easily, though. I think it's an evil plot to make me buy more sunglasses.)

Light scratches on my right arm:


More impressive (but not serious) scratches on my right leg:



Left leg got some green smears, and feels like it will develop bruises:


And finally, the obligatory bike chain grease, this time with accompanying scratch:

Yay Bike Ride!

It was a *lovely* day for a bike ride!

A friend needed something, so I decided to bike over to Wolseley Wools so that she could pick it up tomorrow.

My route took me through the Forks, where the Museum of Human Rights is making progress (above). Because of the construction on Osborne, I decided to bike down Broadway instead of the bike route. The car fumes made me decide to take the slightly longer route on the way home. :(

I was feeling a bit short of breath when I got to WW, so I petted the yarn and talked to the lady staffing the shop for a while.

I had planned to go all the way to Sargent Sundae, but decided that I was ready to head back. (There's ice cream at the Forks too, and my lungs were voting for the shorter ride.)

Since I was stopping at the Forks anyway, and it was getting close to dinner time, I decided to wander around the shops and have dinner while I was there. :) I *almost* bought a gorgeous painting, but decided that transportation by bike wasn't the best idea. I'm pretty sure I'll go back for it, though. (I know my walls are already crowded, but one day I'll have more wall space.)

After dinner and ice cream, I biked home. On the way, I rode past this truck that hadn't been there a few hours earlier:

Must have been some eedjit kids joyriding. (This is a *bike* path, not a road!) The tow truck driver arrived a few minutes later, and was not impressed with how far down the bike path it was. (At the bottom of a dip, too.)

I managed to spend enough time at the yarn shop and Forks that there wasn't really time to start on the tree stump tonight.

It's like today was a vacation! :D

Weird

I went to bed way too late last night, with a mild headache. I hoped the headache would wear off in my sleep, and so didn't take anything before bed.

Four hours later, still well before my alarm was set to go off, I woke up with a mild headache (still), and a feeling like "running would be awesome!"

I didn't test to see if I was feverish (the only reason I could think of that running with a headache after four hours of sleep would seem like a good thing). I decided I probably got too much sun yesterday, took a Tylenol, and tried to get back to sleep. The headache started feeling like a migraine (eyes sensitive to light), but I eventually got back to sleep.

My head still hurts, but the urge to run has passed. (I just took some more painkillers, so hopefully the headache will ease off again.)

Yay Bike Ride!

Bike ride #2 of the season today. :) About the same length as last time, but a headwind only one way (yay!), and I stopped for Sub Zero ice cream on the way back. :)

1. I still get chain grease on my legs.
2. I inherited my mother's/grandfather's legs.
3. Although my legs are pasty, part of the colouring in the photo is from the lighting. They're actually more of a golden/red-pasty than blue-pasty.

I also stopped at Superstore, but they still didn't have the phones in stock that I was interested in. I did pick up some more dust masks and some top-on carrots.

First Bike Ride Of The Season

Yay bike ride!

I thought I put air in the tires before I left, but it turns out the reason the pump gauge said they were full is because I forgot one of the steps in opening the valves. (The "psst" when I took the pump off was from what I had built up in the pump.) Whoops. They weren't too low.

I greased the chain and gave it a wipe.

My bike wanted to "go!" just as much as last year... until I hit a head wind. Then my body remembered that it had spent the long winter being sedentary. Whoops.

Looking at Google Maps, it looks like it was about 12 km round trip. (I should add a bike mileage thingy to my wishlist.) I biked over to a friend's, visited for about an hour, then biked back.

On the way out, I had a headwind on Concordia (1.7 km), on the way back, I had a *stiff* headwind on the bike trail (1.8 km).

I remembered on the way back what my goof had been on the valves, so when I got home, I started pumping air. After one tire, I was feeling rather dizzy, so I lay down to let it pass. It didn't really, so I pumped up the other tire. Probably low blood sugar, rather than low oxygen.

Although it was bright and sunny this morning, clouds moved in by the time I made it outside. However, it didn't start raining until after I was home. :)

Strange sight on this morning's ride:


Although a CarCycle isn't a usual sight, the thing that had me really surprised was how it was parked on an Elmwood street, and hadn't been stolen! The training wheels are cute. :)

More Miscellany

Winter is back. The brief respite we had earlier this week gives me hope that I will soon be back on my bike. :) (Although I was definitely under-dressed taking the trash out wearing shorts & a t-shirt.)

Speaking of exercise, it's too bad that running in your dreams doesn't count... the other night I think I ran for 100 years. (I can't remember the details any more, of course.)

I beat the others to the laundry room today. I won't be up until 2 am waiting for my last load tonight! :) (I heard some doors just now that makes me think someone else went to check on the status of the washer/dryer.)

From the sounds of things, all of my friends' friends and family in Japan are okay... but a lot of other people aren't. My thoughts are with them. I sure hope that nuclear reactor doesn't blow... (and that the explosion that already happened was indeed not serious.)

Yay Bike Ride!

Another awesome bike ride! I did the Wolseley route again, stopping for ice cream on the way back.

Note to the lady staffing the Neon Cone booth at the Forks: I realize you're probably paid minimum wage, and don't really care if anyone buys ice cream... but when you've gone to the next booth to chat with a friend, could you at least stand so that you can see if someone is at the outdoor window? If someone hadn't been able to watch my bike while I went in to get you, your company would have lost a sale, and I would be sad because I had no ice cream. Thank you!

Now... if only this weekend were several days *longer*, so I had more time to get stuff done! (And go on more awesome bike rides!!!)

Yay Bike Ride!

Today I biked down Wolseley and back, via The Forks. I decided on this route for two reasons:
1. I could stop at The Forks for ice cream (triple chocolate brownie in a waffle cone, yum!), and
2. Wolseley has awesome yard sales.

I'm thinking of trying to make a bag out of old suit jackets, like I've seen on Flickr and Etsy. (I looked for the bags I remember on Etsy. I'm not sure if I've found the same shop, or a different one, but the bags aren't *quite* what I'm looking for.) Don't worry, R, I'll get approval before using it as an interview bag. ;)

Well, it appears it's a bit late in the season for yard sales, but I did find one with a *really* awesome painting by Wallace Meekis:

(It desperately needs re-framing.) I wasn't sure how much I was willing to pay (the price wasn't marked), and I also wasn't sure how I'd get it home (art doesn't bundle the same way as old suit jackets), so I biked the length of Wolseley and back while thinking.

The painting was still there when I got back, so I asked the fellow how much he wanted for it. "For you, $10." (WOW!!!) I didn't haggle. All that was left was figuring out how to get it home. The guy let me have a bunch of plastic bags, and this is what I came up with:


Note: This is not a method I'd normally recommend for fine art... especially if you want to keep the frame. (It wasn't in good condition when I bought it, but it was in considerably worse condition when I got home.) Surprisingly (especially since I hit a post navigating a tight turn) I didn't break the glass, so I will get to reuse that.

Awesome bike ride, awesome art score. Hopefully it doesn't rain tomorrow (30% POP), so that I can get another bike ride in this weekend. :)

Yay Bike Ride!

I had a lovely bike ride this morning. We've been having an unusually warm, late Indian summer. Although I have a crazy-lot of stuff to do this weekend, I decided to go bike riding each morning to enjoy this weather while it lasts. My uncle's not in town, so I biked on my own. I got to go fast! :) I went the CPT route, plus a few detours. I really enjoyed stretching my legs. :)

Well, it's time to go down and flip the laundry. *sigh*

Yay Bike Ride!

Between loads of laundry, I snuck away and went for a bike ride with mom and uncle D... 5k out, and 8k back (we took the long way through St B). Over the Provencher Bridge, we saw "Knit The Bridge":

We also saw some native dancers who were part of Culture Days. (Had my weekend not been so full with the workshop and dinners with parents, I would have tried to make it to some of the other activities.)

Yay Bike Ride!

I wanted to go bike riding this weekend, but did something with a friend instead on Saturday. Today I though I had too many things around the house to do... until my uncle called and asked if I wanted to join him. Yay! Uncle trumps "to do" list... since I have way too much to do to accomplish in one day anyway. ;)

We started off with a visit to Bikes & Beyond so that he could get some reflective leg thingies to keep his pants out of his chain. Then we went over to the North East Trail. We only did part of it so that I could get back in time to take my bread out of the bread machine. The distance ended up being just under ten clicks. Strange sight while riding:

a motorized scooter. Bizarre.

Even with the bike ride, I did accomplish a bunch:
• baked bread (granted, the bread machine did most of the work), sliced & put in freezer,
• washed all dishes, including the accumulation of plastic containers that kept not making loads,
• cut hair (I do it myself, with clippers),
• went to mom's for dinner,
• cut pineapple for lunches (before it was overripe, yay!),
• decided on colours, then painted the embroidery hoops that I had previously primed, and were taking up counter space while they waited to be painted,
• cleaned clippers, and put them & the hand mirrors away,

Now for a bit of class prep (more tomorrow, but I need to do at least some now) and then bed. (An earlier bedtime would have been much better... I'm working on it.)

I'm out Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings... it's going to be a *busy* week!

Miscellany

Yay bike ride! A shorter one today... down to Kildonan Park and back, around 13.something-or-other km.

Uncle D also came over and helped me with a project I've been meaning to get to... a sock drying rack that I can hang on my closet door:

The clamps are there because the wood split a bit... my drill bit wasn't quite large enough. I still need to add a ribbon to prevent the rack from falling down too far, and work on the over-the-door hooks. (I don't own tin snips. I wonder if dad does?)

Earlier today I decided to chart out the pattern for the Dayflower Socks... I want to make the socks mirror images, and have the pattern complete nicely on the toe. In order to do that, I needed a chart. (Well, I could mirror them without charting, but I need the chart for the toe part... at least the way my brain works.) I haven't worked out the toe charts, but I think I have something reasonable for the main chart:

(Sock in foreground, progression of charts in background.)