Winterus Maximus!

I haven’t published anything for far too long, but it’s not like my draft bin’s empty. This weekend is the annual Flying Canoe Volant festival, which is fantastic and highly recommended to restore your sense of wonder at the world. Here’s something I started writing almost a year ago, in a much simpler time, about the 2016 festival:

Spring has come disconcertingly early this year after the warmest winter in memory and I’m pissed off. Not only is this a sign that climate change is ramping us up into a dystopian future, it also means that prime winter fatbiking conditions are already long over for the year.

Ahhh, good memories…

So tonight I’m looking back on a way too short winter. A highlight was the annual Flying Canoe festival, which takes place in Mill Creek Ravine and E-Ville’s French Quarter for two magical nights in February.

This is actually a barrier to a washed out trail. 

My favourite part of the festivities happens in Mill Creek. The familiar single and double track, shrouded in darkness, is reimagined with art and light, connecting a lively Metis camp with a colourful Indian village. The name of the festival comes from a Metis legend about lost voyageurs who make a deal with the devil to gain the ability to fly home. As you wander about the ravine of whimsy, you never know when you’ll meet a canoe clad voyageur paddling through the forest or be chased by giant wolves with red glowing eyes, pack leader growling through a megaphone. Dylan Toymaker’s enchanting lanterns transform the drab winter forest to otherworldly, punctuated by many light and art installations by him as well as Grant Mac art students.

This year, Flying Canoe included winter cycling fun. The Brite Lite Winter Nite Bike Ride attracted around 40 riders who decked out their bikes with all sorts of lights and rode through the valley and through the festival site. (I was a sweeper on the ride, and my duties superceded taking pictures, luckily someone else was. Unluckily, the link to them is now dead.) 

My bike. Not my photo. Unfortunately I can no longer find this online to give proper credit.

We arrived just in time to catch Winterus Maximus. 

A crowd gathers for strange happenings in the darkness.

“What is Winterus Maximus?” you might ask. It’s brand new this year, so you can say you heard it here first when it becomes a big thing. Winterus Maximus is a fat bike chariot race – two bikes pull one sled and “driver” over a snow covered track.

Except, plot twist, the snow had melted and refrozen into a thick crust of ice over the entire schoolyard/racetrack.

Yes, it was as slippery as it looks.

Teams put together their own chariots, and since this was the inaugural fatbike chariot race anywhere, there was no standard to follow, no model to copy. It made for some creative sleds.

On your marks…

The fastest teams modeled their rigs after, or built them with dogsleds & kicksleds.

There was also at least one creation fit for a Roman emperor, complete with elaborate lighting. Thankfully, the builders and pullers of the most creative (and heavy) sled also received a nice prize.

Looking forward to 2017’s race, I anticipate more standardized sled designs based on 2016’s faster ones, and lots more LED’s. This race occurring in the dark certainly made my, as well as other folks’ attempts at documenting the magic frustrating, so I can’t wait to see how version 2.0’s organizers and participants step up to this end, because in the 21st century if there’s no photos, it didn’t happen. And I sure hope they bring back the guy who calls the horse races back to call the next race! Dude was epic!

Sled & steeds

See y’all at the fatbike chariot races!

Ride Like a Girl

Cycling in the winter – as a practitioner and an advocate, it’s a topic I’m always interested to read other people’s takes on. The media represents winter cycling in predictable ways such as during a snow storm, “look at the tough/poor cyclist in the storm” pics, or vaguely supportive pieces including tips for winter riding, or first hand accounts of reporters doing it for the first time. The comments sections are even more rote, so I came up with this to spice up the experience:

It’s winter cycling comments BINGO!

Meanwhile, I’ve been living with the side effects of making over my fatbike with a very eyepopping and gendered colour.

Pink in the pines. (Actually they’re spruce, but pines sounds better).

I chose bright pink over equally bright green or orange – but really it could have gone any way. I’ve already got another bike with fluorescent green tires, and the only reason I didn’t go orange was because with my blue rims, it would emulate the colours of the local last place professional hockey team. This would’ve resulted in a barrage of drunken pickup truck passengers shouting “Goilers!” on any game night or in the rare event that they actually win. I don’t like getting anything shouted at me from pickup trucks, thank you very much.

Riding on water.

Colours carry so much symbolism, and no colour in western culture is as heavily weighted as pink. I honestly didn’t expect the colour to completely take over. Nobody notices anymore that the rims are shiny blue and the frame is white.

So now I’m the woman with the pink fatbike. So much for being inconspicuous. Part of the appeal of getting a fatbike was being able to access areas that are hard to access, and the ability to not stand out can be helpful in that regard. Every time I ride it, people stop me to compliment my bike, or ask questions, or do U-turns mid block on 4 lane streets to say “cool bike!” (or just try to make themselves feel smart with passive aggressive statements-as-questions that they clearly don’t want a response to).

Look, I’m not entering!

The main objective, though, is to bring joy, and I don’t say that lightly. With the fun, the exercise (especially in winter), the fresh air, the nourishing escapes from life’s stresses, this bike has been one of the best investments in my mental health I’ve ever made. Just looking at it makes me smile.

This bike brightens my day and coaxes me into fresh air, sunlight, and exercise.

So, may as well go fabulous all the way. After all we’re talking here about an entire season in which the landscape is regularly covered in glitter!

Perfect snowflakes on black cordura pogies on a perfect winter day.

My plain black pogies were warm, but their look ultimately utilitarian.

The black pogies reduce the visual lightness (if you can say that about a fatbike) of the bike.

I decided that custom pogies would be a nice touch, and had a little time over Xmas holidays to make it happen. The fabric I decided upon was perfect, except a certain cat became completely obsessed with it and kept running off with pieces as I was trying to sew.

Meet my sewing assistant.

The end product was a pair of bright pink, faux fur pogies, so glam that they distract from the huge pink tires. (Those same huge tires that a certain tubby cat tried to climb up to try to chew on the fur.)

Taaadaaa! Is there no limit to how fabulous a fat bike can be!?!

Now the pogies were getting all the attention and comments. My partner, out cycling with me one day, asked “is this what it’s like to be famous?” after being stopped for the umpteenth time to be complemented on my “mitts.”

One night, headed to the sketchy corner convenience store on an errand (the one-stop-shop for munchies, crack pipes, and knives in the neighbourhood), I was stopped by the local constabulary who happen to patrol the area by fatbike.

“That is the girliest fatbike I’ve ever seen!” exclaimed one of the cops.

“Uh, haha, thanks?” They stopped me all authoritarian like to comment on my bike? As I turned toward them, they recognized me from my job at a local not-for-profit, changed their tone a little, offered to come by work with some donations, and then turned their attention to creeping the patrons of the neighbouring head shop. Awkward (which I guess is the best one can ask for in a police interaction). This creates additional complications to exploring and testing limits, so to speak, and will ensure I’m on my best behavior riding this bike, at least until I unpink it. If my fattie ever gets stolen, those dudes had better be on it.

Talus balls looking pretty clean for the middle of winter.

As I mentioned in my last post, the original impetus to get a second set of tires was to add studs to grip ice. I was surprised how long this winter I didn’t need them, but when January rains ended the perfect winter riding conditions, I knew it was time to add metal.

Does this still look “girly?” Does it roll like Furiosa?

There’s something confidence inspiring about having 7 dozen steel spikes protruding from each pink balloon tire, and I’m not just talking about ice. But still, bring on the ice, because ice is awesome!

Heading up the creek without a paddle.

Depending on conditions, you don’t necessarily need studded tires to ride over frozen bodies of water, but what a game changer. It feels like my tires are velcroed to the ice.

Winter makes pathways out of rivers. And rivers are pretty flat, so woohoo!

Riding on the river has been my favourite thing this year. Splashing over the gravel beds and beaches through the summer, and navigating around ice flows and over outfalls in the winter. The river is the reason for and life blood of this city, but once you are actually on it, the city fades away.

Following a lone coyote track in the dying light through tonnes of giant chunks of ice stacked by the river’s force, I passed the point of no return. In an alien landscape I would have balked at had I been able to properly see what I was getting into, I found riding skills and confidence I never knew I had. Getting safely home came down to the river, me, and my bike – pink didn’t matter. This is what riding like a girl is about.

The Pink Rubber Effect

Given the choice between riding and writing about riding, it’s no wonder that I’ve been choosing the former for my sparse spare time lately. When I last checked into this blog, I was just beginning to explore fatbiking. In the interim, I’ve had a lot of fun on those four inch tires, and have got more spring, summer, and fall mileage than I ever expected.

This is what happens when you try to commute by fatbike.

On a fat bike, the journey between two points is never a straight line.

With winter approaching, however, I had to be honest with myself. As much as the fatbike is the best thing ever on snow, it’s the worst thing ever when it turns to ice. I needed studded tires if I didn’t want to be slip sliding falling around between snow storms.
And so it started innocently enough, searching for reasonably priced tires that I could put studs in and wouldn’t suck for winter.

Here is how it turned out:

My already flashy fatbike is now predominantly shocking pink.

I’m already used to this bike getting a lot of attention, but I didn’t foresee what would happen next.

The day after changing the tires over my boyfriend and I went out for dinner where we sat beside the window to keep an eye on our locked bikes. Watching the passersby we witnessed many double and triple takes, people stopping dead in their tracks to turn around to get another look, people getting so distracted that they tripped or bumped into other folks. As the new pink rubber glowed in the darkness, I wondered what exactly I had created, while the boy wondered if its mere appearance could cause a car accident.

The next day, the snow began.

Working late across town, I had the bright idea of taking the scenic route home through 8″ of fresh snow, forgetting how much extra effort that would actually take.

Scenic route

I was less than halfway home before starting to feel the bonk, and by the time I was off the trail and back onto relatively easier car packed snow, I was struggling not to collapse. The streets otherwise deserted, a pickup pulled up to a 4-way stop sign just ahead of me, to my right. Taking a moment to catch my breath, I waited for the pickup to go, but it didn’t move. I motioned to the driver to go, as he clearly had the right of way. Stillness. Finally he rolled down his window.

“Go ahead,” I said, motioning again.

“No,” he said, “You go. I want to check out your cool bike!”

Momentarily stunned by his words, the likes of which I’d never had directed at me from a driver during a snow storm, I wobbled forward in front of his truck.

“Awesome tires!”

“Thanks,” I said, as I waved and trudged on.

The fatbike rolls beautifully over the oatmeal snow that currently infests all of the side streets while the colour scheme pops from the grey winter scenery. So I’ve been riding it a lot lately.

The other day, I was riding past a playground. A family was trying to enjoy a sunny winter day, except for a screaming, crying toddler. As I slowed and redirected to give them a wide berth, the older child caught sight of me.

“Look at the bike!”

Then the adult, “Oh, look at the bike!”

And then, silence.

I slowed my pace right down to stretch out the moment, wondering what other strange powers beyond quelling tantrums these giant pink tires bestowed.

As I said, I’m used to people commenting on or asking me about my fatbike. Though 80% of the comments amount to “that looks good for winter” and “that must be hard to pedal,” they are still overwhelmingly positive. Since the makeover, I’ve heard “nice tires,” a lot, but some of the reactions have been much less predictable.

Waiting at a red light, a random dude crosses the street in front of me.

“Nice tires!”

“Thanks.”

“They look really tastey.”

“Huh?”

“Like, I could eat them! I want to eat your tires!”

“Um…”

“Mmmmmmmm! Yum yum yum!”

At which point, the line between funny and creepy being crossed, I jumped the red light.

This One Got Fat

In the creepy half century old cycling training slash horror film, we learn that any small mistake whilst riding your bike will be rewarded with maiming or death. Fifty years later, the perception that only one in eight monkey children will return unscathed from a spontaneous ride to the park is more pervasive than ever, and the younger generation is being robbed of the freedom and independence that bikes afforded their parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods in the name of averting statistically insignificant risks. Much of North American society continues to try to box in cycling as a recreational activity that requires special equipment and a designated place to ride, rather than an activity which can be both utilitarian and fun that can occur in any public (or private) space. This has resulted in the continued preoccupation with road and mountain bikes, racing gear, gram counting, spandex, Strava, etc. For someone who’s more interested in getting from point A to B cheaply and efficiently while fully participating in her urban community, it means I am really not interested in a significant segment of cycling culture.
Enter the fat bike.
It wasn’t that long ago that winter cycling was the exclusive domain of hard core cranks, eccentrics and idealists, or down & out folks who didn’t have any other transportation options. Within a few short years, fat biking has transformed riding in the winter into a legitimized form of recreation. “Normal” people are paying big bucks to slowly trudge through the snow and cold on oversized tires because it’s plain old giddy fun. I’ve been an all weather cyclist for a decade and a half, and as much as I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been chiefly for transportation. A change in occupation no longer saw me commuting 20km a day, and this past summer, when I embarked on long rides that I used to do with ease, I had to admit I’d lost much fitness and conditioning. There’s a twisted irony in riding less because I was spending so much time getting other people on bikes, and winter brings no incentives for long joy rides…
So, I got a fat bike.

The day after it was delivered it snowed heavily, and I had to ride across town. Like many winter bike commuters, I have enviously scoped out the fat bike jockeys effortlessly riding through heavy snowfalls and sketchy street clearing, outpacing car and bicycle alike. To my astoundment, I got to my destination early that day, clocking a summer time in the middle of a winter storm.
The fat bike is a game changer for commuting on heavy snow days, but even in the northern outpost of E-Ville, those days number only a handful. As much as we like to complain about snow clearing, everybody is usually moving normally within 24 hours of a storm because it’s winter and we’re used to it. Most of my winter commuting is done on either packed snow or streets where the friction of car tires has sublimated the snow to the bare asphalt. When that packed snow gets icy, the fat tires that float so well over the loose stuff easily lose traction, while a narrower studded tire provides far more stability. On the bare pavement they drag as if you were riding on water balloons. When riding on the streets, I find myself seeking out the bumpy, cookie dough conditions I used to always avoid on the residential roads, alleys, between the tire ruts, on the shoulders and filling the painted bike lanes.
I didn’t buy this bike to commute on, though. I bought it to have fun on, to explore the great trails of this city’s valley and ravines, to get off the well trodden path, to rekindle the joy of cycling.

And I’m not the only one. I was floored to find that the city is even giving consideration to winter trail riders.

Winter specific trail markers

In summer, this ski trail is the bike path, with bikes not allowed on the walking trail on the right. There is also no way these paths would be used for commuting/transportation, as they only connect two river valley parks in a roundabout way. This is purely for enjoyment and exercise.

Having never owned a mountain bike, if I felt the desire to go off the beaten path, I’d usually make do on a hybrid, or take a hike. The last few years, however, between a chronic back problem that can make it difficult to walk and a growing interest in road and city bikes, I was losing touch with the wild places that nourished my soul.

This bike has opened up the extensive river valley and ravine trails and taken me places I’ve never considered riding before, especially in the winter.

The day I took a ride down Mill Creek, on Mill Creek.

Taking a ride down the creek, on the (frozen) creek? Yes please! It was one of my highlights of the season.

The eight weeks since I got this bike have flown by, and have marked a pronounced change in my attitude towards winter. Between getting excited for fresh snow and secretly wishing for a late spring, the fat bike is a game changer for this winter cyclist.
It’s too bad that most of the fat bikes currently being sold will just be loaded up into pickup trucks to be driven to an “appropriate” trail because they present an opportunity to make your own trail and reinterpret your surroundings from a completely different perspective.

Meet the Olmo

When you haven’t updated your blog for 6 months where do you start? My last post was about setting up the new BikeWorks South. Since then, the shop has been mostly finished, has opened, and has been extremely busy. More on that in a future post. I don’t want to talk about work as I’ve been working nonstop, but have had a little time to squeeze in a bike build and a ride here & there.
So, meet the Olmo.

This Italian beauty started off with a set of tubular wheels, which I haven’t exactly had luck with in the past. My lucky streak continued when one of them exploded after the test ride.

Around this time, a large, generous donation of high end road and triathlon parts came into BikeWorks, presenting me with an opportunity to upgrade this lovely old steel frame with some ridiculous modern components. This is actually my first bike with drop bars, so I felt a set of interuptor levers were in order.

Yep, that’s carbon.
I also added some swanky low spoke count wheels as well as a small purse to act as a handlebar bag.

It’s taken me zipping to the ends of the bike paths.

Meanwhile in suburbia…

Note the sky. That ain't clouds, it's smoke.

Here we have a public art installation in the extreme outer suburbs in a neighborhood that hasn’t even been built yet. In typical Edmonton fashion, instead of commissioning original art by a local artist, the developer got a Seattle artist to recreate pieces that he’d already produced for Portland. Still, I really dig the weird irreverence of it all. I live in a central neighborhood. Cycling out to see these fibreglass monoliths was nearly a 50km round trip. That’s how ridiculous this city is.
Of course I had to go back to see them at night, cuz they light up.

Not sure why, but I always feel compelled to take my road bikes off-roading. Not the best idea at 130psi.

This area has been cleared for E-Ville’s next footbridge, and you can see the corresponding clearing across the river. It won’t be long before you can ride down here on a road bike without feeling like your eyeballs are going to vibrate out.

I think I like this bike a lot. I’m working on improving the stamina of my back, arms & hands as the riding position is way more agressive than any of my other bikes. I also have a few more plans for it. The old Campy shifters and derailleurs are lovely but can’t handle a modern gear range, so I expect to be making more changes yet, and to be riding centuries on it soon.

November Rain

In E-Ville, rain in November is never a good thing. For one, somebody always posts that stupid G’n’R song on Facebook and then I get it stuck in my head until the weather changes. It was sweet riding for a couple of days, though. The rain ate away the snow on the ground and with a good jacket, high boots and waterproof gloves I was quite comfortable and enjoying riding at high speed downtown.

A gorgeous moment between precipitations

Since the first snow this season, I’ve been riding the fixte because I haven’t had time to put winter tires on my other bikes, but mostly because it’s fun. Skiddly-skiddly. Those who’ve known me for a while have pointed to the influence of a certain ridiculously speedy courier, but I’ve recently realized that the influence has gone both ways.

Fixies with fenders and baskets and green wheels, oh my!

Check out the full fenders and front baskets on these bikes.
Of course, November rain turns to slush and freezes, creating the dreaded bumpy ice. It didn’t take long for me to have my first wipeout, and despite momentarily forgetting I was strapped into the pedals, I didn’t suffer so much as a bruise.
Eventually the rain in this late season turns to snow and we got eight inches of the wheel sucking white stuff over the weekend.

There’s even enough snow for the ol’ Canadian kickstand.

Looks like I can put off installing a kickstand for a while.

I still need to make some more changes to the fixte. Installing that pretty white crank increased the gear ratio a little too much and put my chain line a little too off and I’ve had a larger cog and shorter bottom bracket on order for what seems like forever. Ironically, it was only this past week before the snow flew that I was feeling like I was fully managing the gear ratio. In the mire of oatmeal snow that now encompasses most of the roadways however, I won’t be getting very far without that bigger cog. Hopefully the wait will end soon.

Autumn Critical Lass and Bridge Musings

I’m sure I’ve said it before that fall is the best time of year in these parts, what better time for a ride?

While it’s true that there was snow on the ground by this date last year, this fall has been comparatively kind with many sunny days and minimal wind but still not too warm. On a late day Critical Lass ride we could bask in the golden glow of the last of the leaves and the setting sun.

Looking over the river valley, enjoying the last light.

Crossing the High Level Bridge was the highlight of this ride.

The High Level Bridge is part of my regular stomping grounds, so I somewhat take for granted what a monumentally huge, vertigo inducing piece of century old engineering it is. On this ride, however, there was a young rider making her first trip over the bridge who reacted much the same as I did on my first time crossing the bridge outside of a car at approximately twice her age..

First bridge crossing.

Which is to say, she got a little freaked out. Enough that riding down the hill to the LRT Bridge and up the killer switchbacks to the University was looking like a reasonable alternative for returning to the south side.

Another lass crosses the bridge.

I remembered the time when I was a teenager that I was with a freind and we were walking downtown from Whyte Ave. When we got to the bridge, she expressed her fear, and me and the other folks we were with convinced her that she could cross. She ended up having a panic attack after we’d barely started over the span, and it took three of us to get her back up the hill and onto a northbound bus.

I was really glad our young companion wasn’t as freaked out as that. She and her mom ended up taking the train back across the river while the rest of us cycled back across the bridge in the crisp fall evening air.

For more on Critical Lass, check out Loop Frame Love.

Midnight Ride (with lasers)

What better way to spend the few fleeting hours of darkness of the shortest night of the year, than to ride the night away with a big group of fellow cyclists, with a portable sound system and laser light show.

It’s like a bicycle disco.

Before the ride, participants pimped out their steeds with all sorts of lights.

Rollin’ down the Ave.

Smiles all around.

Phantom wheels in the late night twilight.

Riding on, into the night.

Taking the streets, groovin’ to the tunes.

It’s actually quite hard to get a photo of this big a group at night.

Retro futurism (with bikes and rowdy riders).

Zoomin’ through the ‘hoods.

Instructions: 1) Weave sparkler through spokes. 2) Light with torch or other sparkler. 3) Ride away before you set something on fire.

Future-bike disco.

Invade a parkade.

Lovers in auto-centric times.

Photos with friends.

It’s a DIY disco!

Bicycles Are For Lovers

I can’t remember who recently said “cycling is romantic.” It really resonated with me as what cycle advocacy is missing, and in my last post, I echoed this sentiment. But do I really need to pontificate?

Too cute 🙂

Riding With the Boy

When bicycle advocates are espousing all the reasons you should ride a bike, there’s something often forgotten. Fun, play, romance.

Here’s to late night rides with loved ones.

A quick turnaround.

When he wants to fly, he goes so much faster than me. In fact, he rides faster than anyone I’ve ever met.

Flying down empty streets on the fixies.

Skinny tires seek out fresh pavement.

Faster, into the night.

Exploring twisty corridors.

This ride brought to you by… these two bike geeks.

Here’s to looking forward to a summer of passionate nights.