Coffee Break [17/10/22]

Your mid morning pick me up

17/10/22 Hannibal 28

I know we have at least a couple of cyclists here. And, as we are not a completely uncultured group, I assume we have a few fans of dance as well. So to brighten your Monday morning, I bring you Bicycle Ballet. The UK troupe recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary.

And German Artistic Cycling competitor, Lea Schaepe, practicing her sport.

I like to imagine that our @farscythe rides to work this way. Have a great day, Deadsplinters.

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28 Comments

      • I never trained for races but I used to cover a couple hundred miles a week. Moved to South Florida where an old woman in a Buick brushed my arm with her rear-view mirror while driving onto the shoulder and forcing me to dive and roll into the grass, which severely reduced my desire to be in traffic (she never saw me or knew I was there). Moving to Atlanta clinched the deal. I rode a little bit when I moved back to Florida but my ruptured disks are really easy to screw up if I have to do any emergency maneuvering or diving for cover.

        I have a good stationary bike that I use fairly regularly. That way I can read or watch TV. It’s not the same as being out on the road, but it’s a lot less uncertain.

        • When I lived in PA there were lots of old railways that had been converted to bike paths and I ride all the time. Traffic makes me nervous and I don’t like mountain biking. I just want a smooth trail and pretty scenery. I never found the same set up anywhere else and haven’t ridden for a long time.

          • @Hannibal, I started writing a comment about the Rails-to-Trails stuff, then got completely distracted and forgot to post…

            I also live in a state where R-t-T is huge, and I’ve loved it, since I was a kid, and *our* local railroad line was ripped out & tarred over, back in the 1980’s😉😁💖

            I suspect it was because Jim Oberstar was a giant biking fan? All I know for sure, though, is that *because* we had that bike trail–which meant we kids could ride our bikes off the road, along the lakeshore out to the public swimming beach & past that, to the fishing culvert,** there were many fewer accidents when my generation was growing up, than in previous ones, on the narrow 2-lane County Highway “Lake Road” between two of the three lakes near my hometown.

            That road is dangerous, for walkers & bikers, because there are 3 nearly 90° bends, within the distance of about .75 miles–and two of those curves are steeply banked, so that drivers can *make* the turn (think race-track-steep grading!), because there are houses on *both* sides of the curves…

            The banking is steep enough–and there’s just a 2-foot wide shoulder on each edge of the road–that it’s 100% unsafe to walk or bike on the road, since the houses *also* mean there’s zero long-range visibility before you’d be on top of a biker or pedestrian.

            Back in the early 80’s, the railroad closed the line, and a couple years after, the town & county got funding to rip out the rails & ties, and lay down a layer of asphalt.

            In the late 90’s, the trail got widened, ripped up, and re-laid, with a sturdier layer of asphalt, and it’s used ALL the time, by kids, older folks, families, bikers, hikers, walkers, and even a few hearty commuters, who follow the newer extension all the way to the next town over.

            It’s awesome, and it’s surely saved more than a couple lives, thanks to taking people *off* the road. (I remember every couple years, as I was growing up, *someone* or other getting hit & the fire crew & first responders getting called out for a pedestrian/vehicle accident on the road, when I was growing up!🙃).

            Here were a couple good links I found about Jim & how much he pushed for bike trails, and about Rails-to-Trails, too!

            https://www.americantrails.org/resources/james-l-oberstar-congressman-and-advocate-for-trails-and-bicycling

            http://www.railstotrails.org/trailblog/2014/june/06/rtc-s-marianne-wesley-fowler-named-2014-rail-trail-champion/

             

            • Forgot the **-

              “The Culvert” is actually a waterway underpass/ highway(roadway?) bridge, not the tiny “culvert” you’d think.

              The three lakes near town are connected by creeks, and the two bigger ones had both a railway bridge *and* a road bridge over them.

              Around the time the bike path was first established (and the curves i mentioned got banked so high), the county *also* redid the old culvert, to make the road wider, and the waterway wider, too.

              Nowadays, “the culvert” is a curved concrete tunnel under the road, wide enough for two full-sized fishing boats to pass by each other at once. You can only get *one* pontoon through at a time, in high-water years, because the roadway is level, not raised…

              And we all considered it “the fishing spot” as kids, because thanks to the width of the road, the water under the road stays nice & cool–so there are almost always pan fish (sunnies, perch, crappies, & large- and small-mouth bass) to be found there😉

              Once in a great while you *might* even snag a walleye or northern–although usually they like the deeper waters in the lakes themselves.

  3. Our bikes are made for city travel and are not at all suited for living in the hills with dirt roads and such.  I think we’re going to donate them to a bike exchange in town and get some mountain bikes.  I used to travel everywhere on bicycles, but I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy mountain biking the same way.

  6. lol whilst i do have some tricks….im nowhere near that level

    i do need to get the mountainbikes fixed tho……i hate that i have to take the ramps with the townbike…. much more fun jumping the stairs

    (theres also a reason my mountainbikes are frequently broken)

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