23miles

I made the same ride that I made on Monday. I am feeling stronger already.

10miles

I went to see if Chino Hills is open. It is not. But I did find the Olinda Trail. It is dirt. I will have to change my tires and check it out one of these days.

Yesterday 23miles

I rode down to the Santa Anna River and such. It felt good.

23 miles

I haven't ridden much lately. Actually, I haven't ridden at all in three weeks. I got lazy, I lost motivation, and I am still not quite confident on my new bike. But I'm out there now. I hope to get back into my old habits now that Christmas has passed and things are slow.

53 miles

I rode with some people who are related to some of the parishioners at church and their friend. They have been riding around here longer than I have and so they showed me a new route. It included a good hill. After that I rode down Lambert to check out the new trail in Whittier. It is ok, but there are a lot of cross streets and a lot of pedestrians. Also, that trail does not link up with the river trail. It stops just short.

10miles

After hours of research and some shenanigans with FedEx, I now have a new bike. And I even got to assemble some of it. It is a cyclocross bike. If you don't know what that is, watch this:
Cyclocross
I do not plan to become a cyclocross racer, but I like the versatility. I can use it as a road bike with skinny tires, or I can put wide, knobby tires on it and ride on trails. Right now I put some road tires on it and ride it where I usually ride. And so far, I like it. Here is a pic:

So I have been tirelessly researching bicycles for the last two weeks. I didn't realize that I knew so little. The bike I was riding before was so old and obsolete that there isn't anything equivalent to it in these modern times. So I have had to relearn bicycles.
I have been consumed by my quest for a new bike. I have been reading and reading and reading about cranks, cantilevers, cranksets, cassettes, and carbon fiber. I have been to three different bike shops; one of them I visited twice. I consider cost. I consider usage. I even consider which one is least likely to get stolen. I think about bicycles all the time. I dream about bicycles. I just can not figure out what to do.

But today I had a breakthrough. I discovered cyclocross and cyclocross bikes. I discovered that they are very versatile. I discovered that versatility is important to me. A cyclocross bike is like a roadbike but with a heftier frame and clearance for bigger tires so that it can ride off-road. I could put smaller tires on it and use it as a road bike. I could put racks on it and use it as a touring bike. It can do just about everything that I want a bicycle to do. Eureka!!!!
Now I can refine my search to cyclocross bikes and maybe that will get me closer to the day when I can ride again.

I was hit by a car on Saturday the 18th of October. That is why I have not been blogging any miles. I came through the accident with only a bump on my knee and a red mark on my shoulder. My bike however, is out of commission. The frame is bent. The rear wheel is bent. And the crank is bent. I don't know how my leg is not broken.
I was riding south on Associated. There was a driveway going into a shopping center and there was a car coming out. I was watching the car to make sure that it stopped, which it did, so I was riding past when I noticed the front end of a GMC truck on my left. My first thought was "wow, he's cutting this close," thinking that he was going to turn in right behind me. My next thought was "why is he not slowing down." Then, just as I was about to yell at him, he hit me. From the time I saw him to the time he hit me was probably 1.5 seconds.
Then I went topsy-turvy and found myself lying on my back on the ground with my bike 5 feet away. I got up slowly and got my bike out of the road. Some people stopped and called the police. I did not need to go to the hospital but I did file a full police report. Then I walked home with my rear wheel rubbing on the frame.
I'm now looking to buy a new bike. Then I can start putting on the miles again.

17.4 miles

Down through CSUF and then down Commonwealth all the way to Gilbert. I can not figure out where the bike route is through the campus. I follow the signs and end up at a place where it says End Bike Route. Supposedly, somewhere it goes all the way through the campus, but it is not marked or planned very well.

3 miles...running

It was late and dark again, so I ran. It seems that biking is making me a better runner. I wish I would have known this in high school.

27 miles
Not a lot of wind today. I got a new tire for the rear this weekend. The old one had two significant holes/tears in it. There wasn't a lot of tread left anyway. The new tire is narrower but takes a higher pressure, which seems to be good. I also moved one of the spacers on my rear axle so that I don't have to pry the frame apart to get the rear wheel in. I need to wash the bike.


October 13th
20 miles
I rode down the Santa Anna trail. As I got away from my apartment and down the street I could feel it blowing. I rode four miles into the wind. I had to use first gear and one gust even blew me off the trail. I think it was trying to kill me. There was one upside, which does not in any way improve my opinion of wind. When I turned around I was able to ride faster than I have ever ridden on flat ground. I may have been going 30mph.

20 miles

I wonder how many cyclists die near freeway on ramps. I could not find any statistics, but I found many stories. The ramps are a bad deal for a bicycle because people don't have to turn onto them, they can simply veer right, which is exactly where the bicycle will be.
I've ridden through these on ramp areas at least 10 times and I'm surprised that no one has ever honked at me. Maybe it is because they never even see me.

17.4 miles
I rode the same route as yesterday: down Associated to Rolling Hills, then trough the park, onto Golden and down Rose to the trail. Then I came back on Kramer. A few notes:
1) I figured out how to make my new shoes even better: wearing two pair of socks. This makes the shoes fit better and eases up the hot spots. The only downside is that it was 94 degrees out.
2) I have gotten to bed quite late the last couple of nights. I could tell that my legs were not as strong because my body was tired.
3) Sometimes it is in everybody's best interest if I take the sidewalk. I usually don't take the sidewalk because pushing the crosswalk button often makes the light stay red longer, thus slowing people down. Instead I just ride with traffic. Which is what I did today, but there was a lot of traffic around the 91 and as I navigated past the on-ramps I was just in the way. No one honked at me, but I just couldn't flow with the traffic there.

17.4miles
I bought some new shoes. The soles were almost gone on my old tennis shoes and they were starting to make my feet hurt. The new pair are a lot like the old pair except they are gray and orange instead of just gray.
So I took the new shoes for a little spin down the Santa Anna River Trail. At first they seemed clunky and stiff. Then I realized they felt clunky because I had gotten so used to the thin soles on the other shoes. And the stiffness is a good thing in cycling. They also have a deep tread on them so my feet stay in the pedals better. Overall they are turning out to be great shoes. I hope to put many miles on them.

6.9miles
Barely Bloggable.
I would like to be more consistent with my riding and spread the miles across the entire week, but it just doesn't seem to work that way.
I could have left 30 minutes earlier, but I had a flat tire. I don't know why. It had no right to be flat. While fixing it I broke one of my tire levers. But...I did finally get out there and put on a few miles.

54.2miles
I went to the top of the hill and then I rode to the end of the road.
I went up Skyline Drive again. And again, I had to push the bike up the steepest part. Even pushing the bike was difficult. I took my camera this time so that you can see the nice view of the smog.


Supposedly the ocean is out there somewhere.

I then rode down to the Santa Anna River trail and went up all the way to the end of it. I stopped at a park and ate lunch with some ducks.


Part way up, the trail passes under some high transmission power lines. They were crackling and popping quite loudly. It sounded like rain. I wonder what effect electromagnetic radiation has on law/gospel preaching. Perhaps some research should be done in this are.


Overall the ride was not fast, but I got the miles in and perhaps some day I can be Lance Armstrong.

From Harbor to the top of Skyline Drive 2.6miles

Yesterday 10miles
I was really feeling tired and unmotivated. I don't know why. It just wasn't much fun. I hope tomorrow is better.

14.9miles
I went down around CSUF, then across on commonwealth, up Harbor, Brea Boulevard, then around a little neighborhood and back home on Birch. I didn't ride very fast and didn't feel very strong.

22.9miles
All of my riding up to this point has been on relatively flat ground. The Santa Ana trail is really flat and so are most of the city streets. So today I decided to try and ride up into the hills of La Habra Heights. Some parts of the trip were quite steep, I used first gear a lot (I usually don't even use the smaller chainwheel), and I had to stop twice and push the bike. I made it though and didn't feel too bad.
The view was amazing...before they invented the automobile. What I mostly saw today was a thick blanket of brown smog.
Then I went down the hill...weeeeeee, and then down Harbor to Commonwealth and back home. Not a long ride, but a good workout.

17 miles
I rode down Associated and through CSUF. The bike path through the campus is hard to follow. There is construction and the signs are not very clear. I then continued on Commonwealth and rode through Fullerton. It is a much more interesting town than Brea. They have shops and stores and buildings that are more than 10 years old.

1.4 miles...running
It was dark and I didn't feel dangerous enough to ride (even with the blinky lights). So I ran a little. I have tried several times in my life to be a runner and I have yet to be any good at it, but tonight I felt good and strong...even if it was only for a little over a mile.

20 miles
I rode down Kramer to the Santa Ana trail and then just a few miles on the trail before I had to turn around. There are quite a few people on the trail on Sunday.

59 miles
I rode down to the beach again. (The first trip didn't make it on this blog and was probably only 40 miles.) There were quite a few surfers...of every generation. There were the usual young teenagers/twenty somethings. Then there were the middle aged guys who tried to act and talk like they were the young guys. There were even some older (60+) guys out there too. One of these guys had an old VW van with a little fridge in it and everything.
I ate some lunch there, read some, and then came back. There was quite a bit of wind on the way back. Could this be an intro to the infamous Santa Ana winds?

20 miles
I rode down La Habra Blvd to see if there was anything exciting down there. There was not. It was block after block of business after business. Then I tried to ride South and take a different road home. I didn't want to ride on Imperial Hwy so the only other through road I could find was Lambert. It turned out to be a decent ride but I am finding that I dislike stoplights even more on my bike than I do in my car.

approx. 15 miles
I tried to ride on a trail that goes through Yorba Linda. It seems to be primarily a horse trail, but there is a paved lane that is marked as "Bike Lane." It is a very winding trail with many sharp turns, a lot of street crossings, pedestrians, and horses. For those reasons and because I was not very motivated, I did not ride very fast.
One point of interest: I rode past the Richard Nixon presidential library and more specifically, I rode right past his helicopter that was parked behind it.

YESTERDAY: 10miles
I used the grocery baskets for the first time. They don't make riding a bike look any cooler and they add a lot of weight, but they sure can haul the groceries. I went up to the $.99 Only store, over to Rite Aide and then down to Trader Joe's. It wasn't much for any kind of speed, but riding is riding

TODAY: 5miles
It was getting dark when I got home so I only had time for a short little run down to CSUF and back. I had to use my blinky lights on the way home. They must have worked because I didn't get run over.

33 miles

I took a little late afternoon ride on the Santa Anna River trail. Instead of going toward the beach, this time I rode northeast. The trail is not quite as smooth up that way but it is still really good.
I like to challenge myself by trying to pass people and I especially like to pass people who have nice bikes, clipless pedals, and spandex shorts. There was a a pair of such riders who went by just as I was getting on the trail and so I set out to catch up to them. I think I would have caught them, but I got off on some dead-end spur and never saw them again.
On the way back some guy on a really nice bike, wearing a Discovery Channel jersey, blew by me. (Perhaps he enjoys passing people on old Schwinn's, wearing gym shorts, tennis shoes and using toe clips.) I tried to stay with him for awhile, but without even trying much, he was able to pull away pretty well.
I don't think he was actually on the Discovery Channel team (which is now defunct), but if he was, I don't feel as bad about him passing me.

6 miles
I took a little trip down to Carbon Canyon Park. I didn't have much time because I left fairly late. I went to the bike shop first and picked up a new air pump, an inner tube, and some lights so I can ride at night if I have to. The air pump was badly needed. The threads that screw onto the schrader valve where stripped on my other one. It was not reliable.

I rode down to CSUF tonight. It was maybe eight miles round trip and I took it at a spectator speed, so there wasn't much exercise to it but I there were two incredible points of interest.
1) I rode past their glass blowing studio. I wouldn't have guessed they had one, but I saw the glory holes and people with blow pipes. I only did one semester of glass blowing in college, but oh how I miss it. I wonder if I could get any studio time there.
2) There was a young man sitting outside playing a Rochut trombone etude. I recognized the etude as one that I played in college and I saw the book on his stand. It brought back memories of the hours I spent in a practice room at Hastings College trying to become a trombone player. I should have practiced outside like that guy.

There was a comment once about this being a bicycling blog and yet it had a picture of a train.
And I blog about things other than bicycling.
I have heeded such comments and from now on I will make a great effort to only post blogs that relate to bicycling.

I usually have a decent sense of direction. I know which way is north. I know which way I came from and I know where I am in relation to landmarks. Like I said, I usually have a decent sense of direction. Not today.
I rode down to Lake Harriet to hang out with some friends. It was a cloudy and windy day, but the riding was still good. It was my first time on the Greenway and I have to say, that is a great bike path. It is like the interstate for bicycles. A large portion of it underpasses all the streets and so there is no stopping and the path is straight, so I made it most of the way just fine. But when I got around the lakes I had to find the right path to get to the right lake, and I didn't. Then I found the right lake but went the wrong way and ended up riding all the way around Lake Harriet. And I didn't realize it until I asked someone which way was North! I felt foolish.
Nonetheless, I figure I rode over twenty miles.

The bicycle is really rolling now. Nick and I took a ride over to Potbellies to meet Craig for dinner. Potbellies is in the mall and there is no good biking route to the mall. So we had to put up with all the crazy, green house gas producing, suburb loving, motorists on the road. We didn't really appreciate them all being there and some of them did not appreciate us either, so they let us know with their horn.
Besides cycling, I also, somehow, put in eight games of ping pong during two sessions.

I had the Schwinn Continental out yesterday for the first ride of the year. It has been up in the attic since last November and all it needed was a little air in the tires.
My ping pong pal, Nick, and I rode over the river and through the hoods, 6 miles, during the height of traffic to my church. I had Wednesday night band practice and choir rehearsal. Nick said he found a less trafficked route on his way back.
Pastor took the choir out for ice cream after rehearsal, which meant I was going to have to ride back in the dark, so he gave me a ride home. With the front wheel off, the Schwinn just fit into his back seat.
All-in-all a good day, a good first ride and hopefully the beginning of a serious cycling career.

This is a new post. It exists to test the comments option of this blog. Please a comment if you are NOT able to leave a comment.

Apparently someone has actually looked at this blog! They suggested that I update it a bit, so this is my attempt to do just that. Unfortunately I don't have anything to say right now. So consider this blog updated, but still boring.