Happy Wednesday Eve

Work looms, rides end. Sadness begins. 

A note on the grammar side of things here. Despite what I say it is a one man show here. The interns and executives don't actually exist (or do they?) 

Before a post is published it is quickly skimmed over so I could head upstairs quickly to hang with the super wife. Later in the evening I will do a re-read and correct things. After that the posts go down the precariously evil blog ladder... Forgotten. I do blog skims periodically looking for errors and always find them. 

The errors will always be there. I'm human. So please don't gossip about me on Reddit (throws up in mouth.)

 

To shorten this post. I'm embarrassed when I catch some of the things I missed but they sadly will always be they're. In the end, thanks for reading. It's much appreciated. 

Paved Intentions

It was a planned paved and multi use wet weather ride. Last night with rain coming down at LB headquarters I already had my route planned out and honestly was a little excited. It was going to be an old school Mill Creek start to the farthest reaches I could go on the east side.

I started the ride clipping along quite quickly noticing the off shoots off the trail looking very dry "oh, I'm sure it gets wet just around the corner" I thought trying to make myself feel better. An incident with some old white women, myself and my bike happened where nobody was even close to being hit, they were still quite mad at my pass. They were in the middle of the trail and would not move despite relentless bell ringing so I blew by them quite quickly. 

Older white women mad is nothing new and I continued on ignoring the singletrack despite it calling my name relentlessly.  

I did think of the lack of people out and the trails possibly all being prime and realized it would be nuts to pass up a singletrack day opportunity and ducked into the fun steep goodness next to the upper pool parking lot.

Things were prime kids. 

High side Mill creek singletrack took me out of the ravine and I started heading east on the Bird House and soon was in mid Ewok. Things were flowing quite well with symmetry of the bike pairing in well with the rider. That shit does not happen on the Rocky Mountain too much. 

I crossed the beautiful Dawson and soon found myself in the Dawson Park singletrack when a very hard crash happened after my foot clipped a root. I don't remember going down, I just remember hitting the ground and letting out a very loud grunt. It took a few minutes to regain my breath and despite some bleeding here and there I was still good to go. Phew.. That would have jinxed yet another ride!

I rode up Snake Back and took Higher Education down to the bottom via Low Class. A crossing happened again and I was soon on Risky Business and Sideline with the bike coming more to life on each pedal stroke as that hardtail always does. Low crowds and prime trails pushed this one to killer ride status.

If only I had blood trickling down from my wounds earlier. I would have been an all out middle aged warrior out conquering the valley in the name of Epsom Salt baths. 

Golddigger was ridden up after rolling through Capilano park which has it's whole parking lot and sadly the bridge shut down for construction. Another river crossing down yet again. 

The porno trail was ridden and it was one of those out of body experiences  where everything just came together in an amazing way. I looped around and descended to the bottom and started to feel the fatigue a little bit so I crossed the river and rode up to the houses and took Ada boulevard for a reprieve of trails for a bit. 

Snakeback took me down and I followed my tracks for a bit. I ignored the main Mill Creek entrance and rode Old Timers and West Coast before crossing the mean street and finding Blue Man where the rest of the mill creek singletrack took me back when the rain started. 

it was light at first and the trails were still good to ride despite some root slippage in certain spots. Earthshaker ended the singletrack for me and the sky's opened up once I was back on the paved. 

An incredible day for riding. 

 

Cleanup on Aisle 9

It was three shit rides in a row that prompted some emergency meetings with the executives to try and figure out how to right the ship. From what we determined a twenty five kilometre minum ride was to go down today in was what we imagined would be a very busy valley. A twenty five km ride would only go down if I slept in so no alarms were set and I woke up fresh as a bruised cucumber (I didn't feel 100%.)

Yes it was stupid busy as I thought. I started at Strathcona High School and rode the bike lanes to the End of the World area where 7up Hit Up would be taken down and it all went to plan. Nobody was encountered on the trail and I rode along the stables happily thinking things would be terrific. 

Then I entered No Horses trail and had a head on collision within the first 15 yards. It was a minor bar end clip but 10 yards later a group of ten walkers were there, the trail was chock full of people at every corner with a generous mix of people with cyclists, walkers, runners, dog walkers, bird watchers, swimmers, sun tanners. There was even the classic douchenozzle guy with a loud radio affixed to his back for all to hear. These guys always look exactly the same, heavily tanned, goofy sunglasses, no helmet cause that might ruin the mullet (not always a mullet but today's hero had one.) An older hardtail mountain bike with bar ends pointed straight the fuck up. Yes, jeans and a bright yellow muscle shirt made the incredible completion. 

He was no douchebag, he was my hero. 

I'm not kidding, that was the wide swath of people I encountered down there and I knew I had no choice but to ride the hard trails today.  That might make the 25 km goal hard to reach. 

I get it. People need to get out.

Selkirk Knights kicked my ass in a weird way. I rode up some of the steeps successfully and others had incredible awkward feeling spin outs and poor line choices. Oh and yes... Not much gas in the tank. 

I crossed the Fort Edmonton bridge and was wondering if  Axe body spray was holding a convention on the bridge. I have never seen so many well tanned neck tattooed people in my life. I knew Oliskew was out of the question as one guy sitting shirtless on a Santa Cruz bike shirtless, heavily tattooed and lighting a cigarette made eye contact with me at me like he wanted some sort of bike off or something. 

I rode on by with Purgatory via Clamland in sight and enjoyed the on the bike off again relationship I seemed to be having with the trail. The groove was getting good when suddenly my rear derailleur crapped the bed forcing a walk out to the paved paths. 

I was able to limp back but had to call in for a ride at the zoo. 

A shitty end to a ride but it was still pretty good prior to the Rocky Mountain doing it's thing again. 

the fort edmonton parking lot, full and fort edmonton is closed (shudder)

the end of the line sadly, a heroic pick up by mrs lonebiker went down

Common Spins

 First off, sorry for the crappy pics. Still no SLR camera and I forgot my iPhone in the Jeep which did ruin this already pathetic ride. The pics come from an old iPod so with that being said those pics are actually quite impressive *immediately pats self on back. 

The ride from the old school spot in Mill Creek where I had to park about a block up the road due to the number of people at the trailhead had me worried. I did the math and blamed myself for showing up on a Saturday at 2:30 in the afternoon and dealt with the crowds. 

Not a lot of people on the singletrack which was great but still enough to keep me annoyed. Between that and still an overwhelming sense of tiredness from work this was not a fast paced ride which ended quick as I realized I did not have my phone and was worried it was sitting outside by the Jeep. 

It was Mill Creeks Blue Man which took me to Old Timers where I took the high ridge trail and avoided the bridge and saw why it was so much easier going the other way. I climbed up into West Coast trail and probably had the slowest time going down it. 

It was really pathetic. I mean guys...

After that I realized I should high tail it home plus there was the issue with possibly an exposed phone. 

Mill Creek paved took me back after Blue Man. 

Beer Friday. Cannery Brewing, Anarchist Amber Ale

 Hello there fans of Lonebiker. Wait... fans? Wow, look at my ego. Well readers can be fans right? I know there are folks who come here regularly looking for content so what do we call them? Lonebikerettes? Confused people? Mom? 

I really don't know. We will just stick with readers for the time being, although Lonebikerettes seems to be sticking and the contents of my tiny brain are getting excited at the notion of calling readers that in the future. We will run that by Mrs Lonebiker a bit later and ask for her opinion where she will reply with "I don't care"and I will get mad and probably pout or something. 

So all of that was said to let you know there will be rides this set off even though getting out is going to be hard.  Today was supposed to be a ride day but things happened and well here we are reviewing beer. 

Penticton, British Columbia is the home of this brewery which has been around since well I don't know cause they didn't put it up on their website. A quick Google search told me that they opened up in Two thousand and One so they have been around for a while. This brewery is in a dream town in Canada's dream province, British Columbia. 

So being in a dream town it naturally has a tap room with a menu full of genius pub food from cheese and meat boards to beer nuts to pretzel bombs. The brewery has won several awards for their beers over the years. 

It poured a beautiful dark gold and was the perfect example of what a great beer looks like. A powerful three fingered head stood boldly over top of the glass yet had the decency not to slide down the outside of the glass onto my exquisite hardwood. A smell of being out in the woods in the evening on a hot summer day, a slight but pleasant musty smell in the cooling but still hot air. You know... Heaven.

With this one giving me sexy lacing sliding down the side this was the perfect thing to be drinking on this hot Alberta night. There is really nothing that comes and slaps you with distinctness. It oddly reminds me of iced tea, but done the real iced tea way which to me is actually kind of gross yet it works for this Amber ale as the weirdness is quickly washed away with a slight hoppy yet smooth flavour. This is very good although if I was at a campfire I'd rather try something else after having one. 

This beer gets 3.5 suds out of 5. 

Happy Monday

 

No Explanation Needed. I'm Just Lazy

Once again I did not want anything to do with bikes today. A hole in the afternoon opened up so I decided to take it as I thought I would be angry at myself for the lack of rides. 

I should have just stayed home yet again but you know what? We get  Lonebiker content and I did get out of the house for a wee bit. I mean I don't think I was out longer than 45 minutes but getting out is getting out right?

The plan was to ride form the Science Park to the quarry making it a 'quarry ride' as all the cool guys in local bike clubs call it although I'm sure they have much better and longer routes. Once I arrived I knew I was hardly riding anywhere. And I hardly rode anywhere, but I did make it across the bridge. 

*high fives self, puts away bikes for another week, sniff...