- Happy Birthday to me!
- Happy Anniversary to us!
- I just added Chapter 100 (Saint Joseph’s Path) to my Indian paths database.
That is all…
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Onion Snow Ride
I went out to Allamuchy yesterday and did the Road Scholar route. It was a beautiful day but cold, and windy, and snow squalls blew through at times. I was dressed for it though, and fairly comfortable.
While I was out there, I also did a bit of exploring on the new section of the Lehigh-Hudson rail-trail. We’ve been using the first completed section as an alternate return path for the past few Road Scholar rides, but this new section doesn’t seem to fit anywhere into our route — it connects the older part just at our access point, but goes the opposite direction for about a mile before rejoining the main road. Maybe in a few years, when they have more of the trail completed, we can incorporate more of it, but in the meantime I at least know where it goes.
New Bike: More Impressions
My first impressions of the new bike were that it’s seriously comfortable, and very stable, and though it feels fast when you sit on it, the more upright position (despite the drop bars), the extra weight of the rack and fenders, the easier gearing, and the wider tires all conspire to encourage a more sedate pace — the bike can move, but does not reward attempts at hammering the way my road bike would.
After another ride I have to say that the situation is more nuanced than that: the bike is fully capable of being cranked up to a good pace, and can hold that pace just fine, especially on flats and gently rolling terrain, and tucking into the drops is perfectly doable on the descents. Still, the bar-end shifters make rapid progressions through the gears a little difficult though, so there’s no speed-shifting through short steep rollers — most of the time you pick your gear and change it when you notice a need, and in the meantime the bike is just so comfortable anyway, that it feels great to just cruise along without pushing too hard, no race pace necessary, just enjoy the scenery…
Today is a fasting day, and it’s cold outside — blustery, more flurries — so today is also a computer-and-cello kind of day. (Last night was cello ensemble, and tomorrow is duets with Donna.) The racket continues outside as the gas company replaces all the lines in our neighborhood, but it looks like today may be their last day on our street. Lets hope so, they like to start earlier in the morning than I do.
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Seven Thousand Gypsies Gathered Together
Reading: The Dazzle of Day by Molly Glass. Emmi’s husband Kyle sent us this book, which he read recently and liked, and thought we’d like too. (He’s always spot-on in his recommendations.) I started reading it the other day.
So far we’ve been jokingly referring to the book as “Quakers in Space,” since that’s the basic premise: the Earth is dying, and a worldwide consortium of Friends manage to establish a working ecosystem on a generation ship (think the Nauvoo/Behemoth from “The Expanse”), then leave to search for a new home planet among the stars. I’m now up to Chapter 2, where the ship is approaching its target planet, after more than a century of travel, and preliminary scans show it to be disappointingly inhospitable. I suspect that the rest of the book will center on the decision they will have to make — make a go of it on this planet, or keep looking for a better one.
So far I’m finding the book to be an engrossing read, but it’s really personal, and intense, and weirdly sad… I can only read a few pages at a time.
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Staying On The Straight And Narrow
So I’m starting to get ready for the next set of Road Scholar rides. I’ve done the (now deprecated) Bethlehem-Easton towpath ride over and over again, and I think I have a good feel for trail conditions in this section. I’ve also done the section from Lehighton to Cove Road, which is the replacement for the Bethlehem-Easton section, and I did the Cherry Valley ride with Anne and Julie just the other day; that leaves the Allamuchy and the Lehigh Gorge rides to do in the next week or so, and then I should have a good idea of what to expect.
I’ve been trying to ride more and more lately, and not just recon rides — I need to bring myself up to summer fitness, and I’m also trying to lose weight (again). Anne and I have both taken up the practice of intermittent fasting, where we skip eating two days each week. We fast on Mondays and Thursdays, and we’ve been at it for maybe three weeks now. it’s both easier, especially physically, and harder (psychologically) than I expected: hunger pangs are no big deal, but that whole late-evening-check-the-fridge snacking out of boredom or nervous energy is a whole other ball game…
Anyway, here’s the weight loss saga for 2022 in graph form:
My fluctuating weight, winter 2022 Yesterday was a hike with the old Chain Gang crew (Doug & Lori, Eric & Kris, Joe & Cindy, Greg & Judy) up at the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, and today I’ll be tooling around on the new bike, dialing it in.
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Indian Paths Update
I’m still cruising along on this project: I’ve got just over 110 paths in the database (of maybe 150 total), about 130 towns or other path endpoints, and 92 motorway routes. I have added no actual paths yet, but the motor routes are starting to look like a real network.
My current plan is to parse the book three times: once (this time around) to capture the paths, path endpoints, and motor routes; once (the final, and probably most difficult, round) to try and develop the original foot paths; and in between these rounds I will go through the paths/chapters and try to capture all the cross-references between them.
I noticed early on that there were a lot of things like “this is an extension of that other path,” “so-and-so path also goes by this name,” “this path intersects with these others,” and such like throughout the text; the path descriptions are festooned with these kinds of cross-references.
(I also finally picked up on the fact that paths without a path/chapter number are not actually part of the previous chapter, but are basically “chapterless,” just the next path name in alphabetical order. They act sort of as placeholders, the alternate names of other, more fully fleshed-out paths — that is, more cross-references.)
I want to hold on to all this cross-reference information in my database, so I set up a bridge table to work something like a resource description framework, with the referring path as the subject, the referenced path as the object, and for the predicate I would use a description of the relationship type, such as “[subject path] is a continuation of [object path],” “[object path’s name] is an alternate name for [subject path],” “for more info see [object],” and so on. I now have all of this set up and ready to go, but before filling it in with information I want to have all the paths already in the database. Soon…
Meanwhile, the details, of each path or town I add, have all been real eye-openers. I often do a little internet research on each town, or village, or Native name I come across, and each bit of info, each piece of the puzzle is another portal into that era.
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New Bike!
My writer’s block continues, but I thought I’d pop in to announce that I finally got my new bike, a Kona Sutra SE. This is a bike seriously designed for touring: fenders, a triple ring, (mechanical) disk brakes, bullet-proof tires, bar-end shifters, a Brooks saddle, and a rear rack, with frame attachments for a front rack as well — and oh yeah, steel is real, baby!
My New Kona Sutra SE I picked it up Thursday night from Cutters Bike Shop, where it had just arrived; they knew I wanted one, and they called a week or so ago to say one was on the way, and then it was there at the shop, and so was I… I gave it a test ride with panniers, then rode it home — it doesn’t fit on the roof rack. Yesterday was its real maiden voyage, a bakery ride up to Nazareth.
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My That Was Quick
Wow, so much for one of my resolutions: I’d hoped and expected to be blogging multiple times a week, maybe daily, but definitely a lot more frequently than I have. I guess February was a pretty short month after all, eh?
So today was a cello duets make-up day: I was down visiting my parents on Tuesday, and Donna was busy with something as well, so our usual date wouldn’t work; we would usually just let it roll over to the next week, but since they’re going on vacation for the next few weeks, we thought we’d better get some playing in…
Meantime, my cello/bassoon ensemble met on Sunday, for the first time in probably two years. There were a few people missing, and a few new faces as well — I’m no longer the greenest cellist in the room. A milestone: our bassoonist Milt just celebrated his 93rd birthday! Anyway, it was a fun evening, and I felt I played well — all of us did, really.
Mud season looks like it’s coming to an end — we never really had a “snow season” this year — and Doug and I got in a pretty decent towpath ride yesterday. Spring isn’t here, but it’s just around the corner.
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Snowblind!
That was us, Anne and me after our long-postponed eye exams. It was last Thursday, and the day was snowy and overcast when we walked over to the eye doctor. On the way home, with our pupils dilated after the exam, the sun came out and the brilliance was overwhelming…
Yesterday was a hike with Doug & Lori. Our planned hike was basically Bake Oven Knob, but the final section of mountain road to the trailhead — straight up, “not maintained in winter” — was too icy and treacherous to drive. We conferred a bit, and went instead to the Lehigh Gap Nature Center and walked some of the trails there. None of us remembered to bring our Yak-Trax or any other winter hiking gear except warm clothes, and the trails — surprise! — were pretty icy. We had an interesting climb up, and an even more interesting hike down at the the end, but it was a good day out, and good to hang out with those guys.
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Native Paths Update
I kept at it, and am now about a quarter of the way through the trails — the motorway parts, at least — in my Indian Paths of Pennsylvania project. I have a pretty good idea of how the book is organized now, and came up with a pretty decent workflow that gets me through a single path in just under an hour. I do one or two a day. It’s pretty easy to get absorbed, trying to find the tiny old roads and landmarks based on their descriptions in the book, and I’ve been totally sucked into the history of that Colonial-Revolutionary era. (I picked up Mason & Dixon again, since it goes right through the middle of that time and place.)
I also think there will be some epic rides this summer, based on these routes — I’ve been drooling over some of the scenes I see in Google Street View.
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N+1
I knew it would come to this sooner or later — I’m in the market for a new bike. There’s nothing wrong with any of my other bikes, but none of them are really touring bikes, and I’ll be joining Anne on a trip this summer. Fully self-supported, front and rear panniers, camping in the Rockies — the works. (I hated “touring” every time I’ve ever done it, but I suspect that that’s really an equipment issue — I do enjoy our towpath “bikepacking” trips.)
Anyway, I’ve been doing some research, and what I think I need is:
- a bike with a “touring” frame — low bottom bracket, longer wheelbase and chainstays,
- a triple chainring,
- mechanical disk brakes, and
- a few add-ons that would be nice if they came stock, like racks and fenders.
There are a few bikes that I think might fit the bill, ones I found in several “best touring bike” listicles, namely the Trek 520, the Kona Sutra SE, and the Surly Disk Trucker. The Trek looks to be impossible to find anywhere right now, and the Surly only seems available (sight unseen) via the Internet, but I found a Sutra SE at a local bike shop, and it looks like my size. I need to do a bit more search and research — I’m also looking among the world’s used bikes — but I think I can already see how this will shake out.
