Friday, December 18, 2009

Cycling: 10,000,000 Meters Maps

According to my GPS logs, this Tuesday I reached 10,000km of cycling since I started recording my rides -- which was when I started riding a recumbent, a Rans V-Rex, on June 25th, 2004. I hadn't been cycling for a few years at that point. A pulled muscle in my back made riding for more than a half-hour or so rather unpleasant, but the recumbent did away with that problem.

The 10,000km has been over 1239 rides taking about 727 hours total, which is a lot of time to spend on a bike. You can see why a recumbent helps.

I rode about 955km that first summer, but this last year -- starting early (February 10th) and riding late (Dec 15th) I got in well over three times that distance (3179km). 3839km of my overall total has been for 1011 rides under 10km (mostly commuting to and from work), 1811 for rides over 50km, and the rest in-between.

My longest ride so far is still the 2008 Hamilton ride, 177km, though I've put in a few centuries since then.

On May 8th, 2007, I upgraded to an HP Velotechnik Streetmachine Gte, which has been my bike every since. Overall, 2972km has been on the V-Rex, 6894 on the Streetmachine, and the rest on Lori's trikes, the Sun EZ-3 and the Catrike Speed.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been making maps and animations of my rides. Here are a couple of the latest:



Downtown Toronto


Toronto


These leave out my rides in Missisauga, Hamilton, Bruce County, and Haliburton, but those are a relatively small part of the total.

All-in-all, it's a nice milestone... Though the fact that cyclists in the Ride Across Amierca do half that distance in about nine days puts it in perspective. Read more!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Cycling: 10,000,000 Meters

Today, on the way home from work, I hit 10,000km of recumbent cycling since I started in the summer of 2004.

But I think it's time to put the bike away for the winter.

I'll post some maps tomorrow. Read more!

Denim: Happy Birthday

Two years ago yesterday, Denim looked like this:


Newborn Denim


A couple of weeks later -- almost Christmas -- she still looked like a guinea pig:

Christmas Denim (11 days old)


By New Years, she started looking more like an actual dog:


New Year's Denim (2.5 weeks old)


Then we introduced her to Cobalt:


Smug Pounce


They hit it off immediately:


Sharing


They became inseparable:


Peek


Now she's our acrobat:


Cobalt & Denim


She's a complete goofball:


Cheery Pup


But very sweet:


Flopped Denim
Read more!