Cycle the Sunshine Coast, BC

Its a pretty simple goal and a bit of cop-out.  Everyone needs goals to strive or reach for.  They make us better riders in skills or in fitness.  Over the last couple of years, I've chosen Granfondo's, races and other self imposed events to help me keep motivated to do better.  At the end of season, I get burnt out and it takes all winter to get back the motivation to ride.  This year will be different for me.  Cycling is passion for me and to fuel that passion is to ride - ride with friends, ride different areas and trails and ride for life.  This goal keeps me motivated like you cannot imagine and I feel that it will help me enjoy cycling. Over the last couple of months, I've in touch with old friends and met new ones.  I've been to areas like Squamish and thoroughly enjoyed those trails giving me a whole new set of skills and knowledge.  For me, this year is to ride smart (not dumb and get hurt) and to ride for me.  Plus I have oth...

So I'm in the middle of winter with no motivation to ride, getting fat, tired and...unmotivated. The weather in winter typically gets me down - too much rain to ride, too cold to ride, too snowy to ride, too dark to ride, feeling sick,  blah blah blah.... Is this a mild form of depression like Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Some can say that. I think that weather affects me more than most and its easy for me to blame the weather to not go out.  When I force myself to ride, afterwards I think why was it such a struggle to get going in the first place.    During the winter, motivation is fairly elusive for me, and is such a frame of mind for me to overcome.  I understand it may be easy for some people to ride - suns out, lets ride.  For me, thoughts like - you should ride cause your fat; if you don't ride you'll get dropped by your friends; if you don't train, those Strava goals will remain elusive; and you're not getting any younger.  But als...

Last year in January 2013, I reviewed a Lynskey Pro29 FS- 120 with 650B wheels -  At the time, Cove Bikes evaluating a new design for a 650B bike and a full suspension frame from Lynskey was sent out for review.  The bike - a FS Pro 29 frameset was built up.  The issue Cove had was that with the new thinking of low bottom bracket heights and slack geometry, the FS was modified to fit this thinking.  The bottom bracket height of the FS was close to 15" unweighted.  and Cove decided to put on a 140mm fork and 650B wheels - lowering the bike's overall center of gravity and slacking the angles.  The ride that was produced was a stable but require more steering input into the steering either by leaning or steering into the corners.  I didn't mind the ride but felt uncomfortable when speed started to pick up.  Check out my first review of the bike Testing out cove lynskey 650b-ti Cove ended up sticking with their tried and true hardtail model ( Cove H...

Clarity -  noun 1. clearness   or   lucidity   as   to   perception   or   understanding;   freedom   from   indistinctness   or   ambiguity. 2. the   state   or   quality   of   being   clear   or   transparent   to   the   eye;   pellucidity:   the   clarity   of   pure   water. This state of mind as been my mantra for years now. As I work hard in my career in growing my skills and knowledge, I've also encounter alot of stress in my life.  Cycling seemed to be my stress reliever in my life and if done right, provides that clarity state of mind that I can think freely and enjoy the "moment" of just....riding a bike and enjoying the simpleness of it all. By throwing out the next Strava segment search and being not concerned whether my SRAM RED, Carbon fiber bike is the lightest and best tuned machine in the bike group, C...

I guess it was enviable that I became a Video Blogger or "vlogger" when the thought occurred to me that I should be videoing the trails that I'm trying to showcase.  Actually, I just wanted a camera to document my rides as part of a diary so to speak.  I looked online for cameras to do the stuff that I wanted it to do.  Time lapse, 1080p recording, waterproof, solid construction and the only camera that came to the top of the heap was the GoPro Black Edition. This is a really neat little camera and I mount it on a Chesty for that full "your riding with me" feeling.  I'll post a review of the camera soon I'm sure. Here's a couple of samples of some video taken to date.  One is a time lapse every 5 secs of a ride from Spin Cycles Bike Shop in Gibsons to Roberts Creek and back.  The other is a trail in West Sechelt called Cheap and Easy. Hard to find but worth the search. Want to watch more video?  Go to my blog page here

A couple of blog posts ago, I wrote about that not doing a trail feature doesn't define your ride.  Well last night I did the drop and crashed hard.  Words to myself like "dumb-ass" came to mind as I was trying to catch my breath and getting up to walk it off.  Sore knee (yes no knee pads), bruised ribs and a left arm that I can barely raised above my shoulder.  Afterward, the crashed mellowed me out and decided to take it easy on the ride home.  I started laughing after the pain subsided that the feature that defined my ride previously because cause I didn't do it; definitively defined my ride when I attempted it for the first time and crashed.  There's irony  in there somewhere.   My friend Gail wrote a poem of my experience: Bicycle week is an endurance test So man can prove he is at his best! He mounts his bike with a polished flair His bright yellow rain coat flapping in air Shifting a gear he starts on his way Picking up speed...

What is it?  Why should I bother? Strava.com  is one of those brilliant web applications that brings GPS and the cycling training diary into harmony! That's its basic use.  Log your rides and monitor your progress. Whats this?  People want to follow me?- that's too weird to show people where I ride...  but it would be nice to see where they ride so I might try that ride too. Okay, follow me and I'll follow you. Kudos?  Thanks but it was nothing and I felt like crap. Hey, I just got a King of the Mountain on a hill segment!  Umm, maybe I can start to create segment and try to beat myself?  There's this guy I know that is pretty fast up one of my favorite hills and has the KOM.  Maybe if I ride more like train and lose weight, I can beat his time? And just like that I was hooked!  To date, I've put 314 rides  and 7400km into Strava and follow 43 people.  I've created 30 plus segments and have 70 KOM's.   It provid...