I went out for a ride on Tuesday, heading west/north along the towpath but only going as far as the Taylor House brewpub in Catasauqua — I wanted to check out the new section of improved trail.
This was one of the few sections of trail left that had been open but unimproved (there is/was another one immediately north of this section, between Catty and Northampton, that also got fixed up recently), passable but still fun on a mountain bike. Much of the Lehigh Towpath was like this when I first started riding it, lo those many years ago. The trail is a pleasure to ride now, sure, but I miss those old days and the rougher, more “singletrack-ey” towpath. I only started riding this section north of Allentown maybe two years ago, and really enjoyed the feeling of being on “real trails” again, but hey that’s progress, and the new sections are actually pretty sweet. I believe the official ribbon cutting is today.
Meanwhile, same as it ever was: my bottom bracket developed a creak again (this is the Santa Cruz), and so I took a look and found that both the crank bolt and the right bearing housing had loosened. I cleaned and greased and tightened them down pretty hard yesterday and did another towpath ride (towards Easton this time), and I think I got it solved. For now.
Anne’s mom passed away last week. The past two weeks have been pretty rough, and feelings are a bit too raw right now to say much more about this, so I’ll just link to her obituary here and post one of my favorite pictures, Anne and her siblings with their mom:
I can’t believe I didn’t post anything about this yet — I’m a grandpa! Baby Iris came into the world just the other day, 7 lbs 4 oz and 21″ long. Emmi, Kyle and Iris are all doing great. More on this in the coming days and years…
We spent a big chunk of the last week preparing, cleaning etc, and on Saturday we had a Labor Day BBQ with Anne’s family: siblings and their kids (and their kids), Ben, Anne’s mom, and even her Uncle Joe. We fired up the oven and made pizza, had burgers and hot dogs, and corn on the cob and all kinds of summer salads. All in all a perfect way to end the summer.
Sunday was recovery day: Ben had stayed over, and he and we cleaned the yard, and the kitchen, and made a nice (huge) breakfast. We hung out until mid afternoon, when we drove him home to Philly and checked out his new apartment. (We took Kelly Drive, which meant we drove right past one of the locations I’ve been studying recently, where there was a river crossing on the Schuylkill at the end of what is now Ferry Street, part of the native path between Philly and Harrisburg.) When we got home we visited with our neighbors Matt and Diet, and Matt’s dad who was in town for a few days.
Yesterday was a CAT group ride down Cherry Valley, sort of the “second half” of our Blue Mountain ride the week before. It’s also one of the Road Scholar routes, so I invited my boss and co-ride-leader Andrea along, and some people from the D&L were there as well — one person at least, and some of her friends — it was a pretty nice crowd. We rode from outside Wind Gap to lunch at the Apple Pie Store in Delaware Water Gap, then retraced our steps back to the cars. Not a bad ride, about 26 miles in all, and we finished just before the rain started…
It’s been raining ever since, a nice mild soaking rain, something we really need right now. Today I’m just hanging out, doing some more post-party straightening and getting ready for cello duets with my friend Donna.
Just a few things that have come and gone in the past week:
I finished the final book in the “Expanse” series, Leviathian Falls. I was pretty sure I knew the ending just from the title (and I was mostly right), but I still had a great time reading it. There’s plenty that can still be written in the universe of “The Expanse,” but the writers made a real point of bringing the book series to a definitive conclusion — there is no “the end …or is it?” for this one. No spoilers!
I finished Phase One of my native paths project: all the path descriptions, all the start and end points, and all the road routes approximating the paths are in the database. (There are a few more paths listed in appendices in the Indian Paths book, but they are part of colonial history. I may expand the project to add them at some other time, but they’re not really part of what I’m doing right now.) This all happened more quickly than I was expecting, so I’ve been caught a bit flat-footed when it comes to Phase Two. I am now looking at raster storage for the map photographs, and studying the first route in the book, to start adding its foot path.
Our Alberta trip is really over now, I just posted my last post about our trip.
Our fridge is up and running, and the parts are now here to get the ice maker fixed. The kitchen is (mostly) clean and back to normal, though we’re cleaning some of our other cabinets in an excess of anti-wheat-moth caution.
Today is a cleaning day (again). I’ll probably get in a long ride tomorrow.
This is the thirteenth (and last) in a series of posts about our bicycling trip from Jasper to Canmore, via the Icefields and Bow Valley Parkways, through Jasper and Banff National Parks in Alberta, Canada. The full series can be found here.
We stayed at the hostel again for our last night in Canmore. By this time I felt like an old hand, a hostel regular… In the morning we packed up and, since the driveway was under construction (thus inaccessible to taxis), we got a lift down the hill in the little hostel vehicle, or at least our bags did.
Our Luggage Goes Down The Hill
At the bottom of the hill we found that no taxis were available anyway, but we got a lift from yet another kind stranger with a pickup truck. Our benefactor dropped us off at the bike shop, where our bikes had been boxed and where they let us stash our bags for a few hours while we waited for the shuttle. We got one last walk around town before we left.
Three Sisters And AnneThe Ice Cream BusCanmore DowntownNon-Glacial Stream
The bike store owner got us to the shuttle stop, the shuttle got us to the Calgary Airport, and the hotel shuttle (barely) got us to the hotel — barely, because their big vehicle was in for service, and we could hardly fit with all our stuff into the minivan they showed up with.
The hotel was busy, because everything was busy with the Calgary Stampede in town (it’s the biggest rodeo in North America), but even so, it was an airport hotel in the middle of nowhere, and there wasn’t much going on. A short walk to a nearby brewpub, and an early night, and an early morning flight for me (Anne’s flight would be the following day). Once again, the flight had some difficulties and delays, but the bike and I both made it to JFK in one piece.
Bike Back On The Ground
Julie picked me up from the airport, and let me know about the cell phone lot where she’d waited for my flight to arrive. This came in handy the next day, when I drove to JFK and picked Anne up…
…and then we were home. We took a few days to rebuild the bikes, clean and stow our gear, and get rid of those bike boxes, but now it’s in the past. All in all, this was one of the best trips we’ve ever done, “ten out of ten, would do again,” in a heartbeat. I really enjoyed reminiscing, I hope you all enjoyed following along!
This is the twelfth in a series of posts about our bicycling trip from Jasper to Canmore, via the Icefields and Bow Valley Parkways, through Jasper and Banff National Parks in Alberta, Canada. The full series can be found here.
Friday: A Goodbye To Julie
Canmore was the end of the line for our bike tour. Anne and I had plans to stay a few days in town, but Julie would be heading home. We all stayed that first/last night at the Alpine Club hostel, which was beautiful, and which we (Anne and I) would return to later in the week. Some photos I took while I was drinking my morning coffee:
The Three SistersThe View From The Porch
That first photo is a shot of the iconic Three Sisters, and I’m pretty sure that’s Mount Rundle on the right in the second shot.
Unfortunately, this was the end of our travel fellowship — Julie would be taking the shuttle from Canmore to Calgary, where she would catch her flight back home. Here she is with her bike boxed up and her bag packed, waiting for her ride to the shuttle pickup:
Goodbye Julie
Julie had to make her way (with all her stuff) from the bike shop to the shuttle pickup a mile away, but luckily Lyle (our Warm Showers host) had a pickup truck and offered to give her a lift, even though they weren’t expecting to have to host us until around 5:00. This was our first contact with Lyle, and the first but not the last time we got to experience his decency and hospitality.
We would be staying for the next several days in Lyle and Kirsten’s home. Our plan was to arrive sometime early evening so we wouldn’t be in their hair all day, and so Anne and I did some more shopping and explored the town.
Mountains From TownBow River Looking NorthBow River Looking SouthPedestrian Bridge
We arrived at their home just around dinnertime, and found that they gave us their entire upstairs to use — it was almost a suite, complete with an incredible shower in the bathroom, almost like a cross between a rainforest and a steam bath. They made an incredible dinner, and we all hung out and got acquainted, chatting and comparing notes about biking and other sports, family, and former jobs (we were all retired). They were a very interesting couple. Lyle had been an engineer, but I think he played the game at a higher level than I did, and he’d had postings all over the world. They’d lived in Scotland, Germany, and Vietnam as well as Calgary. He was also a car enthusiast, and something of a gadgeteer, especially when it came to cooking: espresso machine, grill and smoker, sous vide cooker…
Saturday: The Hike
We woke up on Saturday, looking for something to do for the day, and our hosts suggested a hike. They had one particular hike in mind, one they liked but the trailhead was not nearby, so they offered use of their car to get there — their Porsche SUV. (They really did treat us like royalty.) Driving a Porsche sounds like fun, but I was terrified of damaging it, and the road to the trailhead turned out to be a twisty, unpaved mountain road, complete with mountain goats wandering around and licking up salt from the road…
Well we made it to the trailhead without incident and started up the hill, though we weren’t 100% sure we were on the trail a lot of the time. I didn’t have my GPS and we had no topo map; all we had to show is the way was a guidebook page on my phone that I’d photographed earlier. The trail, or what we supposed was the trail, was more rugged than we expected, so we turned around before reaching the top. Oh well, but what we did of the hike was well worth it.
For those following along at home, the trail we attempted was the Three Sisters Pass Trail. Some photos:
TrailheadAnne On The TrailWhere We Came FromLooking DownhillThe TrailRose Of SharonPlant LifeLooking UpMaybe The Trail
Two Rides (Sunday and Monday)
Anne and I had rented high end, full suspension mountain bikes in town, and once again our hosts hooked us up, this time showing us around the excellent riding near Canmore. The first day we rode from town, and did some trails called Horseshoe and G8, if I heard Lyle correctly.
Anne had mechanical difficulties with her seatpost and went back to the rental place, and Kirsten was dealing with some wrist issues and had to bail, so for a good chunk it was just me and Lyle. We had a lot of fun, but it was all I could do to hold on to the pace — he was fast.
Canmore SingletrackCanmore TrailsBlasting ZoneLyleThe Sound Of MusicAlpine Meadow
Eventually we looped around, and Anne caught up with us, and we rode a bit more before her cursed rental bike had more troubles. At that point we just rode down the hill to a microbrewery where we met Kirsten. We hung out there for quite a while, and it was cool to see the place fill up with mountain bikers as time went on.
Our second ride took us back out to where we hiked, and we did a point-to-point ride, complete with shuttles, on a section of the High Rocky Trail. We were joined by Lyle’s friend Dave, another strong rider, who also loaned Anne his wife’s bike.
This was a great ride on some twisty, rolling singletrack, very different terrain and soil from back home but still reminiscent of places like Raystown. (Lyle told me that the trails had been made by machine, which would be a lot like Raystown). Dave was, if anything, even faster, and we all had a merry chase up and down the trail, occasionally yodeling and shouting to warn the bears off. This trail sort of paralleled the dirt road, which was next to a long thin lake, and every so often we came to a clearing with incredible views.
Spray LakeKirsten and AnneLyle On TrailSprat Lake And ScreeLake And MountainHigh Rocky SceneDaveKirsten, Me and AnneAnne and MeKirsten, Me, Anne and LyleMount Assiniboine In The DistanceTrailside VegetationTrailside FlowerCanmore Nordic Center
On the way back to town we stopped at the Canmore Nordic Centre, where Lyle and Kirsten showed us around. The Nordic Centre is a provincial park in its own right, with mountain bike trails all through the woods, but it’s also their Olympic-level winter sports arena, the one that was built for Calgary ’88. (Lyle and Kirsten, and their kids, are all very athletic, and Lyle is an official in the Canadian national governing body for biathlon, a sort of mix of XC-skiing and shooting.) You could tell they really loved their town, with its bike trails and all its awesome facilities and amenities, and it was a pleasure to have them show it all to us.
We came back to town and cleaned up, and then we all went out for pizza. This was our goodbye dinner with our hosts: we would be relocating back to the hostel for our last night in town. Moving on was a little sad, and they even offered to let us stay that one last night but we’d taken up enough of their time and hospitality, and we knew they had to get back to living their own lives.
Our vacation wasn’t quite over, but it was starting to wind down.
Our refrigerator’s ice maker started acting up the other day. No biggie, the ice cubes were not formed right, just throw them in the sink and start over… Well, it must have failed for real Saturday night, because we woke up to the freezer door completely frozen in place. We had a ride to do so we left everything as it was until we got back.
We still couldn’t open it Sunday afternoon, so we unplugged the fridge in hopes that it would thaw out — nothing. Yesterday morning we woke up early and with our loins girded to deal with the ice problem (it was still frozen shut), only to discover we also had a wheat moth infestation in one of our kitchen cabinets — worms everywhere. Aargh!
So, we spent all day yesterday cleaning: we ran to the store and got cleaning supplies and new cabinet liners (and also flashlights and a new cooler because ours all seem to be missing), then we dealt with the fridge by freezing some food in the big basement freezer, saving what what we could in the cooler, and throwing out a whole lot of old food. We got the fridge mostly empty, and left it open to help thaw the freezer door.
At the same time, we took out all the containers in the cabinet — mostly jars of grains and dried beans, in supposedly moth-proof jars — emptied and cleaned them, and scrubbed/disinfected the cabinets before putting the few non-infested things back. That’s basically all we did yesterday.
The freezer door was still stuck this morning, but the repair guy came and was able to open it, and sure enough, the entire bottom was a solid block of ice. We cleaned out the freezer, and the tech determined that we need a new ice-maker valve, which is now on order; as soon as the ice has melted enough to be removed we can plug the fridge back in and use it (we can live without the ice maker for a while). I’ve been removing chunks of of ice and mopping the kitchen floor all day.
When we’re done we will have at least cleaned out one cabinet, and seriously cleaned the fridge and the kitchen floor. Good thing we’re getting this behind us — we are having a picnic this weekend, and it’s not like we have nothing else to do to get ready…
I woke up this morning with a hankering for some bagels, so I went downtown to Johnny’s for breakfast — I just got back. Anne’s out of town visiting Emmi, and I’ve been living the bachelor life again…
Yesterday I rode with Doug & Lori at Nockamixon, which was bone dry but a lot of fun. They were on the tandem, and we got in a really pleasant ride, brisk but not too brisk, if you know what I mean.
Friday night I walked through Musikfest and over to Southside, and got myself a burger and a beer at F&A Grog House. Like most non-Musikfest places right now, it was a bit quiet. (Anne and I got dinner at Brick last weekend, just yards from the festivities, and it was dead — the owner/bartender said it’s like that every year, and they’ve taken to closing for vacation for at least part of the Musikfest week. Go figure, it was ten times more pleasant in there than the scene just outside.)
Thursday I got up at 2:00 AM and drove Anne & Lorraine to the airport, so when I came home I went back to bed, and slept in a bit. I got in some yard work, housework, yadda yadda…
Today is probably more yard work and house work, and I’ll probably get in a shopping run. I just finished the 8th (of 9) in the Expanse series, and I think I’ll go get the final one while I’m out.
This is the eleventh in a series of posts about our bicycling trip from Jasper to Canmore, via the Icefields and Bow Valley Parkways, through Jasper and Banff National Parks in Alberta, Canada. The full series can be found here.
This was the day we left the parks and the parkways behind, and our final ride day together. We traveled down the Banff Heritage Trail, a bike path alongside the Trans-Canada Highway between the towns of Banff and Canmore…
The bike path was pretty mellow, just a roll down the hill to the next town, and the vibe was a lot like any local rail-trail, with plenty of people doing what looked like their regular exercise and recreational, out-and-back rides. We were back in the real world, except that we were still surrounded by mountains and beautiful scenery, and wildlife was still a thing — Anne even saw a gray wolf at one point. Luckily it was on the other side of the Trans-Canada Highway’s wildlife protection fence, until we went a bit further and passed through a gate, back into the hungry wilderness… But it was a short ride for all that, and before we knew it we reached our final destination.
Canmore
Canmore had been a coal mining town until 1979 when the mines closed, and reconfigured itself for outdoor sports just in time to be a part of the 1982 Winter Olympics in Calgary — and that’s what put it on the map. It’s a beautiful town, just outside the national park and a tourist destination in its own right — mountain biking in summer, XC skiing in winter — but more charming and less crowded than the towns of Banff and Lake Louise. There was a considerable residential area, and a “real town” shopping district with supermarkets, hardware stores and so on, besides the more touristy “restaurant row,” which was closed to auto traffic and full of outdoor dining, souvenir stands and bike shops. Julie had an appointment at one of them (Outside Bikes) to drop her bike off for packing, and while we were there we got a recommendation for lunch/dinner at their go-to, a brewpub just around the corner. House-smoked brisket sandwiches and cold brews — delicious! After lunch we made our way to the Alpine Club Hostel, our lodging for the night. That was pretty much all she wrote for me, though I think Anne and Julie stayed up a bit later.
Anyway, here are some shots from the day’s ride, and one photo I took from the porch of our hostel:
Leaving BanffSouthboundPhoto OpJulieAnne Rides OnEnd Of The LineWelcome To Canmore!Julie At The Finish LineHostel Porch View
