Posts Tagged ‘e-bike’
Full House
Even though the golf weekend hosted by Steve and Ben up at Wildwood is an annual event, seeing so many vehicles parked in the driveway is an unusual sight.
Since I don’t golf, a short time after everybody wakes up in the morning, I find myself all alone for breakfast on the deck in the calm, quiet over the lake. Well, not entirely alone. The two young eagles and their parents nesting over the tennis court made an appearance, visiting the large pine tree between the house and the lake.
In the afternoon yesterday, Paul and David L. joined me for a short bike ride strategically routed to minimize our exposure to the strong wind that blew all day long. Almost 18 miles at an average pace of 14.4 mph. Reasonable exercise in the scenic northern Wisconsin forests.
I saw Paul pointing into the trees ahead of me and turned to look as I passed a large doe that was standing squarely beside the road. She looked like a statue except for a quick shake of her tail as I rolled by.
The highlight of the day has to be the feast we enjoyed for dinner. Jeff brought fresh salmon and halibut caught on a fishing trip the week before. Steve grilled the fish and some brats and burgers under the close supervision of a couple of interested parties, while others tended the corn on the cob and side dishes.
Seating was arranged for 14 on the deck, but half the crew couldn’t wait to dive into the delicacies and chose seats at the dining table closer to the center island in the kitchen, where the spread was laid out.
We lingered on the deck until later than a good night’s sleep dictates, listening to music and regaling each other with tales mildly embellished for effect. Even though a notable conflict on the golf course with strangers earlier in the day that included a fair number of F-bombs didn’t escalate to fisticuffs, the retelling started to expand to imply…
I made a futile attempt to find a spot upwind of cigar smoke, but the camaraderie was worth the unpleasantness. If it had kept the mosquitoes away, I would have found it a tiny bit more tolerable.
You know me, I am well-practiced at finding something to whine about. Don’t be misled. I am having a fabulous time with some great friends. It is an honor to be included.
The early morning thunderstorm has passed, and most of the guys are off already for their final day on the links. I will join any bikers who remain for a roll on the roads after I get up and get going myself. I intend to put the battery/motor module on my bike today to cope with a third day in a row of riding.
My legs feel a little bit like I’m getting to be an old man. Of course, that is why I decided to buy a bike with a motor option.
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Very Summery
No complaints from us with the weather pattern we have been enjoying this week. Warm and sunny during the day and cool and comfortable overnight.
Here are some scenes reflecting the bliss:
A butterfly on our lilac bush and the four horses out grazing in the hay field as the sunlight was about to disappear below the horizon.
One summer trait the horses are not enjoying is the harassment by flies. We put out a fan to provide a minor assist in blowing the pests away.
Swings tends to claim that spot as her own and the others need to ingratiate themselves with her to earn an adjacent position that she will tolerate. I saw Light squeezed in there for a little while earlier in the day.
I claimed a few hours of the warm sunshine for a bike ride through our “Driftless” terrain, which means I sped down some fast descents and struggled to climb up the other side.
I made it out to Elmwood and back, but I wasn’t successful in my quest to ride the entire distance unsupported by battery assist. Honestly, I would have needed to call Cyndie to come pick me up if I didn’t have the motor to help me deal with the last ten miles. I’d lost track of how many river valleys remained and faced an unexpected steep climb that almost broke my spirit.
However, I survived and did so under some of the best weather at the best time of year our latitude has to offer. We live in a very beautiful topography that provides wonderful vistas of rolling farm fields peppered with wooded valleys and gorgeous trout streams where whitetail deer romp and fly fishermen cast their lines.
Very summery, indeed.
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Went Biking
The weather was so fine yesterday, the only thing to tarnish the great outdoors was harassment by flying insects. I put in over 40-miles of pedaling through the gorgeous countryside of northern Wisconsin on my new e-bike and put the new technology to use precisely how I imagined it would benefit me.
I started my ride with the battery-powered assist kept off and rode comfortably for twenty miles, exploring a route of spontaneous decisions to choose my turns. Having a motor provides confidence that if I end up riding farther from home than my legs are strong enough to support, assistance awaits.
The lure of the road to Moose Lake and a gorgeous view of the Chippewa River had me riding a stretch of pavement to the east that was much farther than my vague memory recalled. At least it was mostly flat terrain, so that eased the effort, but that also makes it easier to overextend my total distance.
If I had just cut out the long section to the east, I could easily have finished the loop around our lake without electric assist.
As it was, after 25 miles I was ready for a little help. My average speed changed from 13 to 17 mph for the assisted portion of my ride, which is so interesting because my legs were tired but I was rolling along with the ease of having a strong wind at my back.
The first half of my ride through the great forests of this region was an exercise in whitetail deer dodging. I encountered at least 15 single deer spread out along the roads I’d picked. One was obscured by brush beyond the ditch and didn’t react until I was right beside it. Luckily, it darted away from the road and not right into me, but it still startled me when it reacted.
Another stood in the road from so far away that I wasn’t sure that it was even a deer. I hoped it wasn’t a dog, and then as I got closer and it got bigger, I hoped it wasn’t a bear. Then the definitive outline of the head and ears became clear and I wondered if I was going to ride smack into its side because it held that stance for so long. I was coasting in preparation to brake when it finally started walking away as I got within ten yards of it.
I wished I’d thought to pull my camera out of the pocket of my jersey because that would have been a great picture, but if I’d done that the deer probably wouldn’t have moved until I’d rolled right into it.
The only pictures I took were at a rest stop with this empty field and the newly budding trees on the far border. I quickly put the camera away because the tiny black flies made rolling along with a breeze the better option.
Much of the latter portion of my chosen route was on narrow-shoulder, high-speed traffic county roads that kept both of my hands safely on the controls.
Final opinion: I am very, VERY happy with my new e-bike.
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Words Emerge
Spring has arrived on the calendar. Maybe that explains all this spring-like evidence unfolding before our eyes. Mud, primarily. Yesterday, I opened some gates for the horses that we have historically held open using step-in posts. Without thinking, I attempted to step them in and quickly met the resistance of frozen ground an inch or two below the surface.
It’s only spring on the surface thus far.
There is still snow in the woods, but it is shrinking by the minute.
The wooden blocks of the “boardwalk” we installed on a section of trail that gets the muddiest are beginning to reappear.
Cyndie has painted words of inspiration on some of them and it looks like those messages have survived the winter just fine.
Out on the open road I didn’t find any traces of snow while spending time on my new bicycle in the afternoon. I’m pretty confident I will never regret purchasing an e-bike. Having that motor assist took much of the stress out of my first real ride of the season.
Like the emerging words say, LOVE always. I expect I will be loving this bike for the rest of my life.
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Relative Something 