chickenfeet

Just back from a longish bike ride. It was a bit of an experiment as I didn't want to go out and back the same way and I wanted a route with more hills than, say, going out to Port Credit. I went north up Sherbourne and continued generallynorth through Rosedale, over the Summerhill pedestrian bridge to Moore Avenue and the south side of Mount Pleasant Cemetery. From there WNW to the Beltway trail and along that to its terminus just over the Allen Expressway north of Eglinton. Very pleasant so far. Not so pleaant for the next few mile continuing the general line WNW along Castlefield and Trethewey to Weston Road. The section along Trethewey is particularly unpleasant with very fast, inconsiderate, traffic. From Weston Road I dropped down to the Humber Valley trail just south of Lawrence and so south to the Lake. This section is mostly lovely. From the mouth of the Humber to home via the Martin Goodman trail and Queen's Quay. Pleasant enough despite the usual small hassles along Queen's Quay W. There was a crowd watching police operations at Dunn and Lakeshore. I don't know what has happened but there were numerous police cars, an ambulance and a SWAT team there and the Gardner was closed in both directions.

It's warming up. Definitely time to think about taking the hydration pack rather than just a water bottle on a ride of this length.

Spring finally seems to have arrived and unfortunately my bike seems to have come pretty close to the end of its useful life, at least with someone as big as me riding it. It's fifteen years old and stuff keeps going wrong. In short, I decided it was time for a new one.

So, today, I headed up to Cycle Solutions on Parliament Street. They have a reputation for good service and not being pushy and so it proved. I explained my needs; city streets, bike trails, occasional off trail but not hardcore mountain biking. The service person produced a bike at the bottom end of my expected price range and suggested I take it for a spin. It was too upright and I found the front end hard to control on steep up grades so he suggested a bike with a less upright position. I took that for a test run too. It was much better but I could feel that something was flexing in either the crank set or the bottom bracket. This has been a longstanding problem on my current bike and I didn't want to have that all over again. Salesperson explained that a solution to that problem would definitely involve moving up a price point or two. I figured as much so wasn't shocked. I took more expensive bike for a spin and was sold almost immediately. So controllable, so smooth, so easy to handle on steep hills. All in all, lots more fun to ride.

This is what I bought. The one I test road had disk brakes which I don't need and the caliper brake model in my size was still in the box so I won't have it until tomorrow.