Junk Miles

Well, it wasn’t quite new year’s. The winter up til then was cold, but not doing anything else interesting enough to draw me outside during my period of circumsolstitial sloth until we finally got a bit of snow here in the city. So on Sunday the 3rd I ventured forth and rode out to the lighthouse at the enterance to Toronto Harbour.

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A roundup of  bike things I tried and liked in 2009 – an annual new year’s tradition on the iBOB bike list:

Cyclocross brake levers – they’re great for using drop bars offroad, since I want to keep my bars set up for road riding, not high and close for ‘cross. They’re great for riding on the bar tops in city traffic too.

Jandd Mountain Wedge III: A really big seat bag. It holds what I need for all-day autumn rides (lunch, rain shell, gloves, extra warm layer, digicam, tools & tube) and it expands to hold even more. It fits any saddle, which is good since I gave up on Brookses after having the second one stolen off the bike a couple of years ago.

Planet Bike Blaze 2W: I gather from recent discussions on the BOB list  that there are other, possibly better LED lights around, but this is the one I tried, and I like it. It’s plenty bright (my previous LEDs were just adequate) and it was easy to find and fairly cheap at Mountain Equipment Co-op.

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Thursday was the Rockwood Farmers’ Parade, way out west in Rockwood, Ontario. It’s the best parade around – you park in a cornfield, there’s a tent selling hot chocolate, and you watch the tractors go by covered with lights.

It was even colder than it looks.

Seen outside Canadian Tire when I was there yesterday. I wonder if it’s functional. Nicely done with the sight and muzzle brake.

I finally got my country road bike out on some real country roads, and picked up a bit of real country mud. Ride report to follow, eventually, maybe.

Happy Halloween! Only about 20 of the lazy ass local kids bothered to climb my front stairs this year… well those 20 weren’t the lazy ones but I’m still saddled with a surplus of junk food. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in costumes over the last couple of years of fewer girl pirates and way too many princesses, and this year I didn’t see any pirates at all. Kids today…

You can feel November in the air tonight. I better buy me some ice tires soon before it snows and they sell out, and I need to find all my wool socks…

Last sunday at the cormorant beach (it used to be the heron beach before the pesky cormorants invaded it and killed all the trees). I don’t usually ride on sand on any bike I care about, but I reckoned it was OK just this once.

Things were still fairly green last week, at least by Lake Ontario, but now they’re oranger.

Cyclomaniacs:  an addictive Flash cycling game.  Don’t click on that unless it’s a rainy day.

As I’ve already noted, the thing with this bike blog thing is that when I have things to write about I’m usually not inside to write it. Well today it’s raining so I’ll write up a ride I did back in July.

One of the projects I gave myself this summer and only half completed was to explore the Toronto waterfront more thoroughly. I know the city lakeshore really well, but not the suburbs, and this part of the Scarborough lakeshore I’d only seen from the train. I accidentally found something else I’ve been searching for: the elusive pleasant bike route out of town to the east, through the dark and dragon-haunted concrete forest of suburban Scarborough. You can see the route on a map here if you want.
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