Sunday City Ride

I went for a little city ride today; the sun was occasionally peeking out and the thermometer said 27 degrees when I started.  It sure did not feel like 27 degrees, but I stuck it out for a little over an hour anyway.

I followed a route I have come up with this winter, which takes about an hour and, aside from County Farm Park, is completely different from the usual summer trails.  Usually by the end of the typical riding season I am starting to feel a little burned out on the regular city loop.  So my new route gets me out in some new areas, and on cold and/or windy winter days, one hour is about enough for me.

As usual County Farm Park was first, as that is an easy way to get in a bit of trail since my house backs up to it.  Most of the paths were lumpy ice with some packed snow.  With all the rain and warm temperatures we have had in the past couple weeks the 6-8" of snow has been reduced to an inch or so of ice in most areas.  Surprisingly, it was not very slippery and I was able to ride everywhere without a problem.  A walker even asked as I rode by how slick it was.  Maybe the fat tires at 18 psi hook up better than shoes?

I saw this Jeep a few weeks ago, but did not have my camera with me.  I have checked back a few times and it was never there, until today.  It is a Jeep FC-170, which was made from 1957 through 1965.  I have never seen one, or even heard of this vehicle before.  This one has been perfectly restored.  I like oddball vehicles, so this will give me something new to "research" on the internet.

You have seen these railroad tracks on my blog before, on my New Year's Eve ride.  This is the end of the line, behind the U of M Herbarium.  Riding down the ties would be a little more comfy on my 5" travel full suspension bike, but it does not get to come out and play on salty roads.  Plus, the ol' Karate Monkey is a lot of fun to ride in many other, more typical riding conditions.

The sun came out of winter hiding later in the ride.  I rode up the highest hill I could find in Brown Park to get a little closer to my long, lost friend.  Off in the distance is the water tower in County Farm Park, near Washtenaw and Manchester.  While I was up there a kid went skate boarding by on the pathway below.  At first I thought, "what kind of crazy kid would be out skating on a day like today?"  Then I looked at myself.  Skate on, kid!

Not too much to say here.  This is a trail in Brown Park, and the combination of sun, snow, dry grass, and bare trees struck me as a very nice view.  Enjoy.

I spend some quality time in Brown Park today.  There are some boardwalks in the woods, and after spending yesterday at Ray's I was ready to ride on some wood.  Only these had the added bonus of being snow covered.  Most of the skinnies at Ray's are nice and close to the floor, and this boardwalk was no different.  It provided a little challenge with no real consequence if I rode off.

From Brown Park it's just a quick ride home, which was fine as the cold was starting to creep in by then.  Another nice ride in the books, and my brain again feels a little refreshed.

Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park

As promised, Grace and I took a trip to Ray's yesterday and met up with our friends Nate and Jen, and a few of their other friends as well.  Nate and I went through the Orthotics and Prosthetics program at EMU together, and he is doing his orthotics residency at Cleveland Clinic.  Since Ray's is also in Cleveland, Nate and Jen have been regulars there this year.

Ray's is in an old parachute factory that Ray Petro has converted into over 100,000 square feet of heated, indoor mountain bike riding.

This is the sport section, at a rare moment when there was nobody on any of the runs.  I am standing on the starting deck and there are about twelve different routes, not all of which can be seen in this picture.  There are some box jumps, teeter-tooters, logs, rocks, skinnies, flexible bridges, and more.  On the other side of the blue fence in the background is the expert section, which contains many of the same types of features, just taller, bigger, narrower, etc.

There is also a beginner room, which is actually a lot of fun for any level of rider.  And an added bonus is that it is usually not as busy as the other sections.  The cross country loop runs through the beginner room, so you can stop in for a few stunts, then finish up the XC loop.  The yellow blur is me getting ready to do a couple little drops.


Ed at Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park from Ed Brewer on Vimeo.

Here, Grace is about to roll into one of the boardwalks in the beginner room.  She was a little nervous about going to Ray's, but ended up riding a lot of different stunts and had a lot of fun.  She is already planning our next trip!  In the video below, keep your eyes out for the dog, which can be seen from 6 seconds to 9 seconds.


Grace at Ray's Indoor MTB Park from Ed Brewer on Vimeo.

She kept moving and sometimes was hard to get a picture of her.  I am on a route that goes up in the roof trusses, and that blurry streak on the right side is Grace about to ride the log crossing.

There is also a pump track; here Nate is coming off it after a few laps.  If you're not familiar with what a pump track is, check out the video below of Nate riding.  The idea is to pump the bike up and down over the waves, and no pedaling is needed.  You can get up quite a bit of speed once you get the hang of pumping.  And it is a tough workout; everyone that rode it agreed that two or three laps was enough at one time.

Nate at Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park from Ed Brewer on Vimeo.

Jen and Graham are taking a break on the pump track start/finish deck.  I never managed to get pictures of their other friends that were there; Fritz, Aaron, and Dennis.

After riding, we finished off the day with a bite to eat before driving 2 1/2 hours home.  Surprisingly, today I am not really sore.  A little tired, but otherwise feeling pretty good.

Canoe Progress

A quick update on the canoe progress, since there has not been much else to update on lately.

A couple weeks ago I got the fore and aft decks attached.  With them in place, the bow and stern are enclosed to create buoyancy chambers.  The copper tube through the bow makes an eyelet for tying off; there is also one in the stern.

Last weekend I glued the keel in place, and "clamped" it in place while the glue was drying with whatever I had laying around the garage.  A couple gallons of paint, a couple 4" cinder blocks, the tops off my jack stands...and even one real, live clamp!  All my careful clamping paid off, as the keel came out nice and straight.

And that should be the last piece of the canoe!  The only thing left is to polyurethane the whole thing, which will be a project in itself.

Stay tuned; tomorrow Grace and I are heading to Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park!  Another one day, micro vacation.

Well, it has been over a week since I took the third part of my board exams.  That was last Saturday, and involved a trip to Dallas, Texas for the Clinical Patient Management Practical Examination, or "clinical exam" as I call it since we are on more of a first-name basis after spending five and a half hours getting to know each other.  Five and a half hours of testing, most of which included examiners that have been specifically instructed to show no emotion to your actions or answers.  I don't feel that I seriously botched anything, but I also don't feel that it was a slam-dunk.  Results can take up to ten weeks, so at this point all I can do is wait.

Moving on from testing, last Tuesday Grace and I got out skiing at Radrick Farms with John and Karen.  The snow was as near to perfect as 6" or so of snow can be.  We were out for a couple hours after dark, and the camera stayed at home.  Radrick is a rare treat of a golf course in that it has woods and trails all the way around the perimeter.  I find gold course skiing to be pretty boring, but there are enough trails there to keep me entertained.  And it it only about a ten minute drive away!

Yesterday I got out on the bike for the first time in two weeks.  Two weeks, that is, if you don't count my trip to the bank last Thursday.  The thermometer said 38 degrees, which is pretty balmy for January in Michigan.  I figured the trails might be a little slushy so I headed out for a mostly road ride on my commuter bike, complete with full fenders.

A quick trip across town got me to Barton Park, at the east end of Huron River Drive.  The Huron River has enough current at this point to keep from easily freezing.  This is one of the local stretches of the river I like to paddle in warmer times.  About a mile upstream from here is Barton Dam.

At either end of Barton Park are iron bridges, leading to a nice nature area on the side of the river opposite the road.

Huron River Drive is the Crown Jewel of road biking in the Ann Arbor area.  For ten miles is snakes along beside the river and even manages to have a little elevation change.  While the shoulders are narrow, the speed limit is only 35 mph and even rush hour traffic is pretty light.  The trip across town for me to get to HRD is 5-6 miles; so it makes a round trip of about 31 miles to ride across town, ride the ten miles of HRD, turn around and ride the route back home.  While I usually prefer to ride off road, this is a pretty nice road ride that is easy to do after work.

At the other end of Barton Park is Barton Dam, which, creatively enough, holds Barton Pond.  My friend, Kurt had commented on Facebook that there were several swans near the dam on Saturday, so I stopped in to take a look.  There were these five on the ice near the dam, and another ten or so downstream.

After checking out the sights at Barton I got down to the business of riding and let the camera rest for a bit.  I continued a few miles on HRD and turned around and started home.  There were quite a few people out riding today, I guess a little break in the weather brings everyone out even in January!

I went down through Gallup Park on the way home, and there were swans everywhere on the river.  At one point I stopped and counted twenty of them from where I stood.  There were at least fifty swans in the river in the one mile stretch I was in Gallup.  In this picture are mute swans, which are an invasive species.  They are the swans with orange bills.  I also saw a lot of trumpeter swans, which are native to Michigan and can be identified by their black bills.  Another semi-useless bit of trivia: trumpeter swans are the largest waterfowl in the world.

And just to keep things in check that I am, in fact, on a city ride, a train cam rumbling by while I was in Gallup Park.  I see Amtrak trains quite often as I ride through town, as my post-work ride schedule often coincides with the daily Amtrak train, but on the weekend I occasionally see a freight train.

From Gallup, I wound my way for a couple miles through the twisting neighborhoods and found my way back to my driveway.  In all, a nice couple hours out on the bike.

New Year's Day 2010

First day of 2010!  Grace's sister, Ruth, and her family are in from the Chicago area, renting a house near Pinckney for a few days.  Grace cooked up a big ol' Korean feast for everyone today.  Somehow I even managed to keep from stuffing myself to that terrible, uncomfortable point.  That in itself makes for a good start to 2010.

As I suggested yesterday, I think my New Year's resolution will be to ride the first day of every month.  Not much of a resolution, you say, I am likely to be out on a bike anyway.  True.  But I have never been much one for New Year's resolutions anyway, so no point in setting the bar to high!  And, this is likely likely to be one that I can keep.  Go me!

So I am 1/12 of the way to completing The Resolution.  And a fine day it was to be out.  There was a bit of snow falling early in the ride, and the sun peaked out later on.  The city treated me well again and I checked out some other lesser known and ridden trails.

I found another old European being reclaimed, though not as quickly as yesterday's Saab.  This time it is a BMW 320i, between 1975-83.  It still had a license plate, but there was so much rust along the bottom I would be a little nervous about driving it.

Next weekend is final part of my board exams, so I will probably be tucked away cramming until then.  I get a quick trip to Dallas, Texas, to strut my stuff in front of a board of examiners on January 9.  Fun will be had be all...eek!