Shannondale #2 Ride Report

Good bunch out today. Working on form for the HP Spring/Summer/Fall extravaganzas. There will be no mercy, so don't look for it here.

The weather was a bit shit - windy and cooler than we thought, though it was from the NE which is, we think, best for this ride. All in all it was a gooder as predicted. Here's a few pics and the data (obviously).

On the way up. Good form here.

Still climbing. Keep your pecker up!

Heading in. Or up. Whatever. It's gonna be what it is. 

Working it from afar. The world is on a string, baby.

And here's the data. A few minutes fast than the March ride, but we're still working on getting into HP form. Damn those hills! 

Beer is good though. And the burgers at Rox! Good reviews on the Lumberjack. Not so much on the Highwayman. Money isn't everything. Sometimes the cheap things in life are free. 

Mennocross 2015

Dark Cross 2015

Summer 2015 highlights

Stone! Stone! More stone!

Over the Spring Break we installed our third granite feature in the old barn - a stone top for the kitchen island:

The other two granite features are the stone hearth and bench ...

... and a dining room table.

Each of these pieces has been crafted by Todd Braun - Elemental Stoneworks. (I did the wood work and rebuilt the cabinet for this latest piece.) We're not even tempted to say that this will be the last of it, though it may be simply for financial reasons, but it's a bit of a fetish by now. A stone fetish. Weird. And wonderful.

Here are a few more pics of the most recent stonework.

Viva la granite.

Cold. Long. Fun actually!

I rode in a winter bike race called the Actif Epica, on Saturday. It was a pretty cold day. The wind was from the North for most of the day, and the windchill was around -40'C. Here's what it looked like in the morning when we started. 

photo by Tom Kolesnik

Here's what I looked like at the first checkpoint in St. Pierre.

photo by Kim Mitchell

The race was 130-ish kms long from St. Malo to The Forks in Winnipeg. It took me 10 hours and 22 minutes and I placed 7th.

photo by Actif Epica

Good times!

Essay published in Bunyan Velo

A story I wrote about last year's Actif Epica race has been published in the latest issue of Bunyan Velo. It's a beautiful magazine about two-wheeled adventuring and I'm honoured to be included in it.

You can find the issue my piece is in, here at http://issuu.com/bunyanvelo/docs/bv05 at no cost, but please consider purchasing a hi-res pdf version of this issue and the four previous issues of the magazine. They're only $5 and it will help a small but vital publication keep working! We want these sort of "nice things" so sometimes we should be prepared to pay a little, don't you think?

Also look for a great piece by Mark Reimer about his and Graham Madden's summer Muerto ride. The cover features Mark's shot of Graham.