The Ride of the Falling Leaves

More Ups and Downs in Gatineau Park

Yesterday I returned to Gatineau Park after a week's absence due to the rain last weekend. I expected the colours to be past their peak but in fact a lot of leaves were still on the trees. Unfortunately the weather was a bit grim: overcast, cool and an ever-present threat of rain. But my coach wanted me to do a three hour ride, so off I went. I felt surprisingly good (maybe it is because I did not have to go and lift weights as usual) and when the forecast for today was sunny sunny sunny and 21C, well, you could not hold me back with wild horses.

After doing some of the shopping necessary to sustain what passes for normal life--and I got some nice McIntosh apples for 39 cents a pound!--I rode through the Byward Market, across the Alexandra Bridge and eventually to the park entrance. The weather was excellent, although a strong wind from the southwest was not so much fun, but no matter: I was just thankful to be able to ride at the end of October in Canada.

Ian on his new Tarmac

As I was climbing I heard someone behind me and soon after another rider on a Specialized Tarmac passed me. This is the first Tarmac besides mine that I have seen in Ottawa and I caught up with him and we began talking about the bikes and cycling in general. Ian lives in Westboro so his trip to the park is a bit shorter than mine. He was a runner who has gotten into triathlons and we talked about that for a while. He has had the Tarmac, an all-carbon one, for only a few weeks and it looked great in its red and white colour scheme.

Typical Gatineau scenery, with Tarmac Guy

We rode together to Meech Lake Road and then continued on the Gatineau Parkway until we began the climb up Camp Fortune Road past the ski area. Ian was stronger than me on the climbs but I could make up time on the descents. The Camp Fortune climb is a really excellent one but all good things come to an end. We soon came to Champlain Lookout and then headed back towards Ottawa.


Although the weather was gorgeous, the auto traffic was non-stop as all the non-athletes came to look at the Fall colours. We could not ride side-by-side very much as the cars came endlessly but the descents were fun, as always. At one point I was passed by a big BMW motorcycle and had no trouble matching his speed downhill.

After we left the park, I rode eastwards and went to Orleans to drop in on some friends. The wind on the Rockcliffe Parkway was terrible but at the moment I got to the worst part, a huge guy on a Cannondale passed me and I pulled in right behind him. Working together, we were hitting speeds of 42 km/h or so into the wind. It was fun but since my coach wanted me to keep my heart rate below 75 per cent of maximum today I had to back off a bit. At St. Joseph Blvd. we stopped to chat a bit and then I continued to Orleans. The ride back was brutally hard as I ended up taking the full force of the headwind. But still, 101 kms ridden, with 1100 vertical m of climbing. I doubt if there will be many more days like this before winter comes.

Dickes B: Home on Der Spree--My Return to Berlin

Symbol of Berlin: the Brandenburg Gate

June 23-June 29, 2007

I lived in Berlin from 1998 to 2002 and have returned several times since. It is an extraordinary place: perhaps not the most beautiful in Europe, but among the most interesting. Its combination of history, architecture, cultural excitement and sheer livability makes it hard to match. Since I was paying a lot for airfare from the United States to Europe for this year’s bike trip, I decided to make the most of it and spend a week in Berlin visiting friends and enjoying the ambiance of the city before catching a train and going west to France.

My departure from home to the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington went quite smoothly; my new Performance bike case fitted quite nicely in front of the back seat of a standard taxi. But as I rolled up my pile of luggage I could see the dollar signs flash in the eyes of the Continental staff. “A bicycle case!”, they cried, and their tongues lolled out with joy and anticipation. I had read that many airlines had changed their rules about bike cases and instead of them now being counted as the second piece of luggage, they were to be measured and oversized cases would be charged accordingly. Continental deems an oversized bike case to be anything bigger than you would need for a child’s tricycle with the wheels off so I was stuck with a bill for US$ 190 for a return trip for my case. There is not much than can be done about this when you are standing at the airport ready to go on holidays, so out came the credit card...One of the staff wanted to charge me for overweight baggage as well but apparently paying for a bike case covers that. The Performance case, which cost me about US$ 175, is about the smallest I have seen for a full-sized bicycle. It needs a few additional handgrips but otherwise worked very well.

The flight to Newark was fine but then there was quite a delay before we got going on the next leg of the flight. Newark Liberty International is not a very nice place but the charm of the place is probably no different from most big city busy airports. I wandered around for a few hours and then we finally boarded and it was off to Berlin, arriving in Tegel only about an hour late. I had a very pleasant taxi ride and was soon camped out with my friends.

On the flight across the Atlantic I had somehow become obsessed with the idea that I had left some of the parts of the bicycle in my living room in Washington. I could not remember putting components of the stem back in the case after they had popped apart when I dismantled the Tarmac so I spent a pretty restless night on the flight. However, I did know that in Berlin there were good bike shops where I could get anything that I needed. Last year I was on the flight to Europe when I realized that I had forgotten to pack my cycling shoes but we were able to get a suitable pair surprisingly easily in the middle of the Black Forest. So before I took a nap in Berlin, I very carefully took the bicycle out of the case and put it back together. To my delight, everything was indeed there and there was no damage whatever from the trip. I was always apprehensive about shipping my bicycles and with one this expensive the strain is even more apparent. I could not resist and ended up taking a forty minute ride, going past Berlin landmarks such as Alexanderplatz, Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate before returning.

That was one of only two rides I was able to do that week since the weather was wretched. For late June it was very cold and every day there was howling wind, or else pouring rain. I took a few pictures in the brief interludes of sunshine and visited friends and family for the most part.

Since this blog is about cycling, I will focus on the other bicycle-related things that I did. At the intersection of Unter den Linden and Friedrichstrasse is a beautiful showroom that belongs to Volkswagen AG and is meant to highlight their various brands of cars, from Bentley and Bugatti to Volkswagen and all the way down to Skoda. The place is enormous and there is a nice restaurant and an art gallery. An exhibition was about to open devoted to prints by Chagall, Picasso and Dali but of particular interest to me was a little exhibition opening in the Skoda area. There was one of the slightly goofy-looking Roomsters vehicles, decked out in full Team Gerolsteiner colours and festooned with a fleet of Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL bikes, while next to it was a Skoda Octavia sedan with a roof rack and some bicycles marked “Skoda RS.” The area also had a lot of photographs of pro racing, and the motto: “Skoda: Motor des Radsports” (or Skoda: the Motor of Bike Racing).

The Roomster, which I first saw at last year’s Tour de France, may look a bit odd but it appears to be very practical and you can even get it with an internal bicycle carrier that will allow you to carry two bikes in its roomy interior. It has huge windows and even a panorama glass roof and with a diesel motor would be very economical. Unfortunately these cars are not sold in North America. I guess I need another European posting so that I can buy one.

Now, here is a bike shop!

One of my other stops on my tour of my old haunts of Berlin was Stadtler, a huge bicycle shop in the western part of the city. This was once housed in a tiny ramshackle two-storey building but when I lived in Berlin the store moved to much more spacious surroundings in a former streetcar depot. The space is shared with a big grocery story and Stadtler itself is divided into bicycling and motorcycle accessory departments. It is always fun to walk around and see what is new. When the store opened in 2000, it had not only full lines of accessories–everything from tires to clothing to high-end frames–but also had extensive offerings fo excellent bicycles such as Pinarellos and Colnagos. This time the Italians were not so much in evidence and besides Treks Stadtler had a lot of Cervelos, including the very high-end P3 time trial bike. The store has an indoor test area and if I would have had my shoes with me I would have requested a spin on a P3 with full Campagnolo equipment (including a disc rear wheel), although I did notice the bicycle was chained to its stand. Lowering my sights, I got some excellent Roeckl gloves on sale.

The Thin Man on his tall Moots

I did manage to go for a more serious ride than my brief test spin when I caught up with the Thin Man, a fellow Squadra Coppi team member who is now living in Berlin and who works as a freelance journalist. He has covered a lot of interesting science stories and his stuff is definitely worth a read. When we met I was impressed that he appears to be the Talles Freestanding Moots Rider, although I understand that there are issues with this and that he must substantially dismantle his bike before it will fit into a case.



Me at Schloss Börnicke

We met not far from where I was staying in Landsberger Allee. Of course, the first thing that happened was that my bike computer stopped working as the magnet housing came loose and I lost the part holding the magnet in place, although not the magnet itself. The weather was not so great, being grey and windy, but we headed east through the traffic in the direction of Bernau and had a very enjoyable ride that brought us to Schloss Börnicke, on the outskirts of Bernau. This is an old little castle that needs some TLC and is the scene for alfresco opera productions in summer. We stopped for some photos and then turned around and headed back to Berlin into a brutal headwind. I think I got more from drafting Andrew than he did from me, but we managed to get back before it rained on us. With those 50 kms, my cycling in Berlin was at an end and I took the bicycle apart and put it back into the case.

Another Brandenburg Gate: this one made from chocolate!

On Saturday, June 29th I took a taxi to the Ostbahnhof and settled into the high-speed ICE train heading west. Andrew came on at the new Hauptbahnhof and after nearly eight hours of travelling time and changes in Offenburg and Strasbourg we found ourselves in Alsace in Colmar. A brief taxi ride–it is amazing that you can fit two bike cases, two big bags and three people into a Renault Espace with no problem-- and we came to our gite, or holiday home, in the village of Hunawihr, in the vineyards of France, ready for a week of cycling adventures.

My New Wheels

Pretty, pretty--rolling bling
(photo by James Huang, cyclingnews.com)

You have to be some kind of gearhead to write an entry about your new wheels, but here I go. After some issues with the inexpensive wheels I had put on the Tarmac, I decided to go all out and ordered a set of top-of-the-line Shimano Dura-Ace WH-7801-SL wheels.

There was a good report on Cyclingnews.com which I only discovered after buying the wheelset. I chose it for the reasonably light weight--1600 g--although I did not realize it uses weird proprietary stainless steel spokes. Mr. Informed Shopper also did not realize that it is the only wheelset compatible with the new Hutchinson Fusion 2 tubeless tires. These would appear to be quite revolutionary. They work much like a car tire, fitting snugly against the rim and not requiring a tube. These are not to be confused with tubular tires, which are more or less just like inner tubes without an outer casing. The tubeless tire weighs the same as a traditional tire and tube, so you don't save any weight. The difference is that the tire is only inflated to 95 psi so there is excellent road contact and enhanced cornering capability as the rubber along the sides is stiffer. Rolling resistance is claimed to be no different and of course there is no way to get a pinch flat since there is no tube. Hutchinson, which is, in spite of the name, a French company explains this all in amusing English on its website.

When the wheels came I looked at the instructions and carefully inserted the valves, which fit onto the rim. Then I applied a bit of soapy water and was able to get the tire to sit against the bead of the rim fairly well, but I had to use a tire lever for the last little bit. The instructions warn that using a tire lever except the special Hutchinson one will result in damage but the Crank Brothers SpeedLever works very smoothly and I had the tire mounted in a moment. Pumping it up--you really need a floor pump for this-- takes a bit of effort and it seemed to me a lot of air was leaking out of the sides as I began to work but suddenly the tire bead popped into place and voila! air in the tires. I left them overnight to see what would happen and they were fine, so on Saturday I went to Rock Creek Park and rode 62 km as a test.

The Shimano wheels are pretty stiff and very responsive. Best of all, unlike the old wheels they made no creaking sounds and the cassette body was not binding. Hooray! The Tarmac rides now in total silence, as it was meant to. The tires are fabulous--silky smooth and with amazing cornering grip. Compared to the 140 psi I was used to in my Vredesteins they seem pretty comfortable as well. I have ordered some sealant and once that is in the tire I apparently do not need to worry about flats unless the tire is actually cut. It is then possible to put a tube in it to get home. You can even ride on the rim if you have to, but considering what these things cost I do not find that to be an appetizing prospect.

If these things work as advertised, I think we are looking at the future of cycling. Look, Ma--I'm finally an Early Adopter!