New helmet

Two days ago I made the trip over to Kamikaze bike shop to check out some helmets. I figured one of the reasons I was sweating into my eyes so much was that my inexpensive (cheap) MEC helmet did not have very big vents and therefore not enough cooling power.
My rule of thumb in the past when buying helmets has been "$40 helmet for a $40 head" Sadly over the years helmets have increased in price due to inflation and my head value has decreased due to loss of memory, loss of hair, loss of self esteem, loss of vision, loss of looks, loss of hearing......I could go on but you get the picture I'm sure.
Holly at Kamikaze helped me pick out a new snazzy looking helmet made by Giro. It was a real nice fit but as usual I looked like a doofus wearing it as I do with all helmets. I was a bit conflicted as well wearing it because I now had a helmet that was worth far more than my head. It was $109. My head is down to about $20 but the only $20 helmet there had flowers on it and was so small I looked like a gay rabbi with a balance problem. I had to get the Giro. I then came to the realization that there was no way I could buy this helmet. Why you ask? Simple. The helmet's model name was "Savant". Let's face it, there is no way I should ever be wearing a helmet called a Savant. Talk about being conflicted. The helmet would probably be picking my ride routes. Funny thing happened as well. Someone dropped a box of toothpicks on the floor in front of me and I had them counted in 6 seconds. Weird.
In the end I bought a Bontrager helmet with big vents that should help keep my head cooler. I'm not at all conflicted wearing this helmet either. It's a Bontrager Snail.

Sweat Gutr

Yesterday I tried out my Sweat Gutr for the first time. It is worn like a headband and its sole purpose is to channel sweat that is running down your forehead to the sides and hopefully away from your eyes. It is fully adjustable for just about any size head.
After my first ride wearing it my impressions are both good and bad. The first thing I noticed was it kept on getting pushed down by my helmet so that it was resting on my brow which was slightly annoying to say the least. As I heated up and started to sweat climbing Grey road 19 the Gutr did stop most of the sweat from running in my eyes. Most. I could feel small amounts of sweat at the corner of my eyes but for the most part it didn't get in my eyes until much later in the 2 hour ride. Twice near the end of the ride I had a bit of sweat run into my left eye which seems to be the eye I always have trouble with. One other problem I had was it rested on my ears and that was a bit uncomfortable.

Overall the Sweat Gutr gets a 7 out of 10 from me for keeping the sweat out of my eyes. This doesn't mean that score might not improve in the future because I think it will take a little time and a few adjustments to improve the performance of it. I will continue to wear it and try to fine tune the fit so that hopefully one day I can complete a ride without stinging eyes.

Drink Water!

I have now been sick for 4 days and I am going to have to take antibiotics for the next 10 days. I have a kidney infection which has caused my temperature to soar, 102F last night. This meant a trip to the hospital was neccessary. It was the second time in 3 days that my temperature had gone out of whack. The first time I started popping Tylenol which brought the fever down and convinced me that I was suffering from the flu. Somehow I figured the reason I wasn't exactly peeing with force was strictly caused by the fever. After a day of Tylenol my temperature dropped from 101.5F to normal so back to work I went feeling run down but thinking the worst was over with. By the time I got home from work yesterday I again had the chills and a temperature of 102F and could hardly pass water at all so it was off to the hospital.
It turns out it wasn't the flu and fever causing the problems, it was a urinary tract infection most likely in my kidneys which was the root of my misery. Taking the Tylenol to reduce fever masked the origin of my troubles and in the long run caused things to worsen.
All this may have been avoided if I simply drank more water through the day, in particular when I am at work where I am quite active but because I don't sweat profusely there I don't drink much water. Water flushes out the system and helps prevent infections from proliferating.
I have already talked about my bad water drinking habits while riding my bike and I have improved in reminding myself to drink all the water that I bring on a ride. That is simply not enough it seems and it will now be neccessary to remind myself at work to continually be hydrating. It seems the simplest things are sometimes the most important.
I should also mention that going for hard rides now or for the next few days would be counter productive. The best thing is to just rest and not worry about losing some conditioning. I learned this the hard way many years ago when I had a bad cold a few weeks before the 24 hours of Adrenaline. Instead of resting and making sure I ridded myself of the cold I continued to ride and consequently took much longer to get better. My nose ran like a tap on every lap I did and for the first time ever I had severe leg cramps. Another lesson learned.
P.S.......I don't like to use the emergency at the hospital but I figured not being able to pee for a couple of days before I could see my own doctor meant I had to go. For a while I was waiting beside a woman and her young (roughly 6-7 years old) daughter. Mom had brought the daughter in because she had been swimming in a chlorined pool 2 hours before and now her eyes were sore and red. No problems seeing, no swelling, just irritated. How ridiculous!

Rescued on the high ropes

Last night the Scenic Caves ecotour staff were invited by Blue Mountain to try their Timber Challenge High Ropes. At the Caves we have our treetop walk which is fun but is simply a nature walk high in the trees whereas the Timber Challenge High Ropes are more of an obstacle course walk.
It starts off with the fitting of a body harness and helmet followed by ground school where you learn how to work the safety clips and pulley. The two safety clips were very high tech. Only one clip would open at a time so when transfering from one obstacle to the other you would remove the clip that opened, clamp onto the new safety cable and then place the clip over a sensor which released the other clip allowing it to be removed from the first cable and transferred. Very cool and it meant that you could never be caught out with no clips attached to the safety cable.
There are three levels of difficulty on the high ropes and they use the same colour code as the ski runs, green for easy, blue for more difficult and black for advanced. The greens and blues have some fun obstacles but the real test is when you start the blacks. After climbing a ladder where the steps spin on a rope making it unbelievably hard to get up to the platform your first obstacle is a set of 8 ropes with 8 inch square blocks on the bottom for footing. The ropes are knotted higher up so you can get a good grip. Just getting on the first rope and trying to stand on that small block of wood was tough enough. Then you have to grab the next rope about 3 feet over and move to it while trying to stand on its block which is swinging all over the place. Very difficult. I was doing OK but I was getting caught up in the ropes I had already used which meant I had to stop and untangle myself resulting in a lot of energy expended which I would need to make it across. Suffice to say I didn't make it and ended up sitting down on a block 2 ropes from the end.
This meant I had to be rescued by the wonderful Alexa who came out on the safety cable and then used a 3 in 1 to lift me to the platform level and then pull me across. During the rescue I got very up close and personal with Alexa's crotch which at one point was about a foot away from my face as the crow flies. I bit my tongue..........and said nothing.
All in all it was a great time and I would recommend it to anyone who is adventurous and in good shape. It is completely different from the nature walk at the Caves which just about anyone can do. Both are great in their own way.

The Thunderbird

Today I rode the Thunderbird zip line at Scenic Caves for the second time. I must admit it's a pretty cool ride. It's 2600 feet long with a significant vertical drop which makes for a fast ride down the hill. Sadly it's not open to the public yet because they still have many finishing touches to complete as well as getting the green light from a government safety group.
The ride starts with ground training where we have 2 cables set up beside the zip to demonstrate how we will harness them and to allow guests to get a feel for the braking system. Once we feel they are comfortable with ground training they will have to climb the 60 foot spiral staircase to the "launching" platform. The guests are then harnessed up again, two at a time side by side about 10 feet apart. When all systems are go the two gates open simultaneously, we inform the catchers at the bottom that we are releasing and send the two zipliners on their rapid descent. A ride down will take anywhere from 40-60 seconds depending on how fast the guests want to go.
On todays zip ride I went side by side with friend and co-worker Skip who happens to weigh about 20 pounds less than me which meant that the race to the bottom was no contest with me, the fat guy, arriving much earlier than Skip.  For me I think the coolest part of the ride is when you are hanging there in the harness and the gate finally opens. You get this incredible view of the bay area and of the cable stretching down the hill to the unloading platform which looks pretty small when viewed from the top. I suspect there will be some guests who will be unable to go through with the ride when the gates open and they get a good look at what is about to happen.
All of the Ecotour staff is now training on the Thunderbird and we will be ready to go when construction is complete and the approvals are in place. We are hoping that will be in about a weeks time.
An interesting note. It's called the Thunderbird because the Rama Ojibway believed the thunderbird, which they thought controlled the weather, had its nest on the escarpment near Collingwood. That seems so silly now because we all know God controls the weather.  

3 Stage 2012

This morning I headed over to 3 stage to go for a quick ride. It was already 25C at 8:30 AM and quite humid and it wasn't going to get any cooler so the morning was a good time to ride. I also took the smart phone along so I could map the ride with Strava just for the heck of it. I rode many of the trails up top and worked up a hell of a sweat in the 1:24.44 that I was riding. I covered 16.1 kms at an average of 11.4kph. There were some new downed trees and because I don't ride there near as often anymore some technical sections seem to have different lines, due to erosion and in some cases people removing rocks to make things easier. There are also some sections that have been deliberately bypassed which really pisses me off because some pussies are too lazy or lack the guts to try something difficult for once in their life. My favourite mountain bike saying is "ride like you've got pair". Sadly not all riders adhere to this.
I had some technical problems on the ride as well. One thing that bugged me for most of the ride was my right nut kept leaving the nest and twice got caught in a squeeze play between my seat and my leg. Ouch! I am hoping this is not the start of early onset old man nuts, a condition which all guys who have ever been in a change room with some 80 year old men walking around naked are familiar with. Scary.
The other technical problem I had was with my bike. Some days I like this Gary Fisher Hifi and sometimes I hate it. I didn't like it today. In previous rides I was lifting the front end on tough technical climbs and therefore losing my steering so I tried to move my weight forward by sliding the seat ahead 1/2 inch and rolling my bars forward a bit. This worked well for the climbs but had some other not so pleasant effects such as making it easier to go over the handlebars. The back end of the bike seemed to be bouncing me around more as well. I ride normally with my rear shock on Pro-pedal which limits travel but I eventually gave in and and switched it to use all the rear travel. Frustrating. The front end was a bit like a pogo stick again so I checked the air pressure on the fork and it was at the low end of my weight range so I pumped another 15 lbs in it and that helped a bit. This Rock Shox Recon fork is a little too pressure sensitive for my liking although if I rode more I suppose I would pay more attention to it.
I have to say once again that without a doubt the Gary Fisher Sugar is a much better bicycle than the Hifi.

Thoughts on climbing

I have always thought that momentum is a bikers best friend. It is especially true in mountain biking where being able to see ahead, read the trail and pick the right line means a smoother faster ride with less energy spent. I used to love it when I was gaining on another rider while he was pedaling and I wasn't. I often thought that if I rode well on a particular day my time spent pedaling would be less than any of the other riders. This in turn would leave me with more energy for climbs and riding the more technical sections of a trail. I have always said "speed is your friend" for technical sections which simply means if you can have good forward momentum and hit the right line you will like flow over rocks and roots instead of bogging down like a slower rider would.
After road riding for a few years now I am discovering that there is a lot to be said for momentum on the pavement as well. In particular I am learning some climbing techniques which I think work well for me on smaller climbs and now seem to apply on longer climbs as well.
In the last year I have noticed that on smaller climbs such as what you would find in an area with rolling hills if I keep my speed up starting the climb and work on keeping my cadence up, possibly shifting to a lower gear once or twice on the way up, I arrive at the top faster while at the same time spending less energy. It seems to me many riders don't attack these smaller climbs and therefore end up "hammering" up the hill with a low cadence resulting in their spending more energy to arrive at the top of the hill in a slower time. My idea is if you can keep your momentum at the bottom half of the climb the top half will be easier and faster to complete.
I am now learning that momentum is also your friend on the much longer climbs but in a much more subtle way. It seems the faster you can climb up a hill the more that momentum aids in gaining even more speed. Think about it. If you are riding up a hill doing 13 kph while Joe Biker is doing 20 kph his bike is traveling slightly farther every pedal stroke he takes because the momentum he has created. Certainly the fact that he is stronger and in better shape than me has a great deal to do with it but I don't think it is a 1:1 ratio where because he goes up the hill 50% faster he is 50% stronger and in better shape than I am. I have no doubt an equation could be created which which could explain mathematically the science of climbing regarding energy spent, power used and momentum created to achieve maximum speed.
Or it's entirely possible I am completely full of shit.