Ghosted

My legs did not want anything to do with this ride today which was highly touted to be very incredible given the conditions. Cold fall weather and easy to see sight lines in the singletrack was the order of the day and sadly, my legs were done on the bike lane towards the End of the World area after parking at Strathcona High School. I knew that early into it. 

That in itself was incredibly annoying as hordes of hockey parents and their respective mini vans and suvs were clogging up the usually barren parking lot. I did find a spot but was quickly crowded in by suvs on each side of the car. The weird looks they were giving me when they saw the bike and me were priceless. 

Like I said the bike lane was cause for turning around and saying to hell with it but I pressed on and decided to just do easy river valley from End of the World to the connector up to Saskatchewan drive. A bit of singletrack was ridden and my power and confidence was abysmal. I was rolling slower than a Dodge Caravan going through a school zone. 

Aside from the lack of power I was intimidated by lots of the trail. I didn't trust my lines. It was quite sad. 

This is one of those 'in the end at least I rode' kinda rides.

Well it's true. At least I rode. 

yay bikes.

i once would have scoffed at this cause i am a giant douchebag but this is a great upgrade

Township road 550

A cold October day off and a trip to Elk Island was in order and I paid my dues and parked at the Astotin, Elk Island Mega Centre where I counted about five other vehicles and high fived myself. 

The last time I was here the parking lot was almost full complete with litter and garbage everywhere because people are pure garbage. It was so nice and clean today, hats off to Elk Island for being Elk Island.

I rode along the Astotin lake trail to the other side to the administrative buildings and turned back to the car in July thinking I should turn this into a loop someday. Today my destination was township Road 550 and that planned loop but I first thought it was a long ways away.

In my head I figured the 550 loop would be a ton of kilometres but quickly realized how quickly it was coming up rather quickly than what I was expecting. An expected 45km trip was 21 or so... hold on. 22 and some change. I could and should have just pushed it down the road southward for a bit and returned.

I did get chased by a dog on 550 which was a bit nerve wracking and my biggest fear of riding a gravel bike on gravel. I could tell he was friendly and maybe wanted to say hi but I stepped it up and he turned around. 

I pictured in my head the owner watching through binoculars outside his kitchen window giggling as his dog chased me down the road and it made me quite angry. 

I could have kept going as I was nowhere near in distance as I thought I would be, but nope. I declared myself done once in the presence of the car.

Well shit... still a pretty good ride though. 

Two - Five

Pretty big day round here for me and Mrs Lonebiker as we hit a milestone anniversary today. 

So I went for a ride.. 

Plans were for later so I was good to go with the rest of the week booked off from work in honour of the twenty third of October. Now wasn't it the Lonebiker fifteen anniversary around now? Sheeeit I should do something for that one shouldn't I? Or has it passed? 

I guess I am not too concerned and I will look into it tomorrow maybe. The ride from the wonderful old school Millcreek parking spot into the heart of the valley with Birdhouse trail taking me to the lower river singletrack avoiding the climb clingy areas of Ewok. 

The legs didn't feel like they had the power but they had the power, it was weird and I have felt that way for a little while now. They feel like sugar sacks but can still do the work, it's very odd. 

The ride took me to Capilano after avoiding Andre's and all the great stuff up in the hills. It was fine and I didn't really care and crossed the river and rode up Low Class and Higher Education. and looped around to Miners Shaft with intentions of riding Kinniard Killer but missed the entrance. 

Doh. 

The strength got a bit better near the end thankfully making the ride memorable... well ain't they all?

Happy Monday

I felt the fat bike God's stirring today..  

Avoiding those Pesky E-Bike Millennial Bike Gangs

I am a proud Gen X'er and I think I am close to the cutoff but boy howdy do I have some classic Boomer thoughts as I wanted to ride the mountain bike but all I could think of was there might be hordes of Millenials on e-bikes completely taking over the trails. 

Now we all know that is not true and I myself am surprisingly not that stupid and know better. I think I honestly was just trying to gross myself out and use that as an excuse to avoid the valley at the peak afternoon time. Which yes... chances are it could have been busy.

So it was decided an airport run was in order. Is this my third trip now? It does feel like four but I did have a failed attempt cause of the heat not too long ago.

The ride out and back was quite good and thankfully uneventful in vehicle land. It was pretty much road the entire time with a little gravel thrown in. Very little wind was nice and it was cool but not too bad for mid October. 

It's mostly backroads and through Nisku what I ordered up for the day as the less cars the better. 

Most of the people passing from behind were very courteous and gave a wide berth and some were complete assholes. I do really hug the sides of the road to limit my exposure. 

The ride was pretty top notch and wonder how much better the Moots and trails would have been. 

Oh it would have killed this ride. ha ha ha.. 

this bridge crossing is the sketchiest part of the ride 
what a shithole 

Majestic SouthWest Edmonton

It was a weird one after work as I wanted to take it easy after another dark and dirty day after little sleep for some dumb fuckin reason. I started at Heritage Valley LRT station as I assumed there were lots of wide sidewalk trails parallel to the road and I was right.

That's what one thing that is nice about new neighbourhoods other than being surrounded by ugly congested houses. There was no shortage of overbuilding everywhere I went and in some new neighbourhoods there are houses that are mini front garage houses. It's weird, they look like doll houses and are quite tall with no surprises by how close they were to each other. These developers are criminals. 

I did remember ironically there was a big fire in the area and I hunted it down and the damage was quite incredible. An entire condominium block or two with natural heavy damage to everything around it was quite the site. Houses across the street had there siding melted so the heat would have been insane. I think they were under construction but some in area took a heavy hit looked occupied. 

Bummer. 

The ride was kinda crappy. I was overtired and it gave the ride a gross eerie like feel to it. I could tell you what streets I went down on this journey but really... who cares. 

The ride sounded like a bummer but when I put my bike in the back of the car I said "Hellz yea bikes." So it wasn't that bad of a ride anyways despite the traffic and lack of scenery. 

Golden Thanksgiving

A pretty decent Fall mountain bike roll through glorious golden Fort Saskatchewan singletrack. Temperatures were pretty much perfect and a somewhat busy start with riders right after the Turner park drop in. I usually never see people on this part of the trail so I thought it was a bad sign that the trails would be busy which wasn't the case. 

There was a cool older couple not on e-bikes in front of me for a bit and they rode all the skinny features. It was pretty cool to see and a shout big out to that cool couple. 

The trails were tacky and a tad over tacky in some sections of climbs and my weak ass rear tire struggled but we made it up. That being said the power wasn't quite there in the legs on the whole ride. I got sloppy in the end and the roots owned me. 

It was kind of a pathetic way to end the day. Still a top notch ride though.