We got a sunny beautiful Christmas Eve morning, so we went riding bicycles. The sunlight was warm, but the air was freezing cold so much that my ears started hurting. I went back home to put a crochet hat under my helmet.
The hat covered my ears nicely for a while, then my body was getting hotter and hotter. Finally I had to take off the hat and the vest too. Too cold I can't ride, and too hot I can't ride either.
The other day when I played our bike ride recording, I noticed that my right foot pointed out strangely while I was riding. So I tried putting my right food straight, and my right knee inward which helps very well to keep my right foot straight. Then I realized that way I could ride up slope easier and straight almost.
Then I wondered maybe that bad habit was the reason I couldn't start faster, because I couldn't go ahead smoothly by waving sideways too much wasting the power.
When I tried to position my right foot inward slightly to start pedaling, I could start much faster than before.
That just a small wrongness affects so much is very amazing. A bad habit shouldn't be ignored so easily, and it's better to fix or adjust as much as possible.
Then we could ride more than 10 miles today!
Yesterday after having lunch with his sister, we tried riding on interesting trail which is called the Levee Path in Watsonville.
The center of the path is crowned, so I was nervous a little bit at beginning, but I got used to it soon after, because the trail was well maintained and smooth.
Asked him to lead, then he rode away in a moment as if he got freedom on the trail. Yes, the trail is wide and no cars to worry about.
The view is very interesting to enjoy.
U-turned and switched the camera. I was leading. We saw walkers with/without dogs, cyclists, and joggers. The temperature was very comfortable.
I turned to go down to some main streets to see the area. Drivers were courteous, so we enjoyed riding very much. The sun was already started down. Only shadows were shown two of us together.
It is always fun to try riding on a new trail.
Yesterday morning I couldn't even walk in the morning, but next morning I had to walk with my friend, so I got an idea.
Mr.WhP and I walked last night in the cold air for almost an hour. Because the air was clear, luckily, and Xmas light decorations were fun to watch the walk was quite fun.
This morning was 30F again, but I went for a walk. My friend and I were screaming a little to move our arms and upper bodies, because it was freezing at the beginning.
Then we got used it, and started enjoying the frosty scenery.
Tomorrow Mr. WhP and I made a plan for bicycling. Hope my walking exercise will bring good results.
Brrr.. Freezing!
This morning is colder than yesterday. Even plants got frost! 30F....
Yesterday after 15 minutes stretch we rode in 49F, because the sun was warm. We finished happily 8.5 miles. 3 hours later we both got muscle pain in our legs. Because we forgot exercise afterwards?! or we did over our limit???
I noticed that we are always complaining about pain and fatigue lately, and that made us more depressed.
So I got an idea to avoid that kind of bad "chi" all over our house, we will sing this song instead of whining and complaining about the pain.
Yesterday was a lucky day to have a sunny moment after Noon for a while. We started enjoying biking for a while, but our bodies were stiff everywhere in this cold season. We were NOT used to being like that. So we just enjoyed slow bicycling.
Today it's a miserable drizzle day all day. In addition Mr. WhP got strange kink in his neck and annoying pain spread out to his shoulders, it sounds familiar to me. He got it too. Only heating works well to ease the pain.
My right shoulder and right arm pain had gone, but strange tingling sensation is left on my right 3 fingers.
Anyway the temperature got up over 50 F, we went out for a walk close to Noon. The misty rain so heavily covered the air, it was so uncomfortable.
I don't know what to do for our exercise.
I did two exercises before and after breakfast. Then, we went out in windy rain for a walk with umbrella and jacket with hood. The wind was blowing horizontally from front to back, so our jacket got soaking wet, but we had a nice walk with sweat.
The creek under the road got lots of rain streaming away.
A few hours after lunch I noticed the rain had stopped, and the road dried quite a bit.
OK, Sky gave us a chance to ride!
Just in case we put helmet caps on to prepare for any rain, but we luckily came back dry.
About 10 minutes before finishing, the bottom of my toes almost started to cramp, maybe the temperature was getting cold outside, but luckily I could manage to avoid a cramp.
When we got home, we both felt very good. We had some nice aerobic exercise. I hope we will continue to regain our strength.
But I decided not to be discouraged to walk in the rain at least. We should continue our exercise.
We finally got the guts to walk on up slope community road, but we both worn out soon and had a hard time making it back. Shame, shame..... We sweat a lot which was good thing for us. But we were exhausted when we came back home.
Mr. WhP took a nap right away. I follow TV stretch for 15 minutes, then took a shower. Finally I got feeling better.
My right arm pain and tingling sensation came back and bothered me very much. But it seemed a little better to move around.
Raining, cold wind, and cold temperature... My body and spirit have been sinking down recently.
I accidentally found this video, that was lucky for us! We were so awed those cycling people in Netherlands.
They are amazing!
I still don't know what happened to my body. After last bicycling in November, I got a terrible pain under my right shoulder blade, and pain spread out in my whole right arm. After struggling with this annoying deep pain for 8 days, finally the pain eased down this morning. So we rode together for a while after lunch.
The air was soooo cold. I was afraid a cramp in my calf might be happening or bad arm pain might be starting, but none came. The pre-ride exercise we had must have protected us well.
We both felt we are getting older recently. So we decided to be careful especially in cold winter.
Every new movement caused pain or uncomfortable stiffness recently. Finally one nasty terrible persistent pain calmed down, so I will be careful.
I should re-start painting to finish my "Memory of Bend".
It was freezing cold this morning. The temperature didn't go up so much even in the day time.
Even though we did some exercise to warm up before riding, our energy diminished so soon because of the cold temperature.
My diet kept failing, because of stress? Anyway the fact made more stress. I'm in a bad circle.
I have to think about a new strategy.....
Luckily his new cassette was delivered earlier than we expected, so we had a comfortable ride together today. The weather was still nice and warm in the afternoon.
When he was riding the Schwinn Folder, I couldn't pedal full speed freely. Because I know very well that feeling on 20'' tires compared to 26'' and limited gears.
But yesterday he found it much easier riding on the Folder. And he seemed not to mind riding it.
After he installed the new cassette and rode his Portal, he was amazed by the easy pedaling. Yes, we older people need an easy riding bike.
When a car passed by, I chased as fast as I could. Of course I couldn't catch, but it was still fun to ride fast on the flat road.
That desiccated earth worm incident warned my bicycle technician. Mr. WhP started to check the chains on our two bicycles and he thought we needed to replace them.
He replaced the chain on my bicycle with a new one. That work went well. But when he changed his chain, the new one ran and shifted very smoothly, but when he pedaled a little hard, sometimes the chain slipped over the sprocket teeth. He concluded that the sprockets were worn out and needed to be replaced. It will take a week to receive the new sprocket cassette.
So he rode our Schwinn folder today instead of his Novara Portal, and he got small back ache afterwards. But he could ride, that was better than no ride. In addition as he rode he got to feeling better than at the beginning. So he will be OK with the Schwinn for a while, I hope so.
So far I'm very lucky with my Novara Jaunt. The ride with new chain was pretty nice today, it seemed like.
Just gave up on 2 hours driving to wherever we wanted to ride, because it's always hard to find where to park, especially in unfamiliar places, and it was already noon! So we decided to go to this well-known park. This is the 3rd time to bicycle on the paved trail.
Because the trail is surrounded by many trees, the trail has cracks and several shaped bumps besides the up and down slopes, I felt as if I were riding a new trail.
We did the round trip twice and biked to the entrance of the park and back to the parking lot which is an interesting slope.
We saw many happy dog owners walking together. I've never seen so many dogs and so few kids before.
After quite a bit of rain lately, the park was more light green colored, so beautiful, it was a pretty nice comfortable atmosphere.
The next day after the last earthworm-caused chain fall-off incident, he found another desiccated E.worm on my bicycle brake!
On my bicycle too?!! .... We need to watch out about earthworms for after rain bicycling, I thought. But it's so hard to see them on the ground soon enough. And I wonder is it better to take them off as soon as possible or to let them dry first, then take them off.
We had a nice and lazy day off yesterday for resting.
Now it's a sunny weekend morning, we'd better hit the road soon. But where we should go for a ride with warmer weather to avoid old knee injury pain.
Well, definitely we'd like to go when it's warmer in the afternoon, but the population on the trail might be crowded in the afternoon, if we go to any popular place.
So better to leave soon!
When we were bicycling together, suddenly Mr. WhP said, "Oh!?". I heard his bicycle was making noise. He was wondering what made his chain fall off. After he fixed it we finished one hour ride and came back home.
I should call him to describe what he found: After first trying to adjust the rear derailleur, and failing, I saw some kind of funny hard brown stuff stuck in a place that interfered with the derailleur! On closer examination, I found it was a desiccated earth worm! The thing was wound around and dried hard as a piece of plastic! After chipping it off, I had to readjust the derailleur once more to get it working correctly. It's the first time I've ever seen such a thing!
Has anybody had such an experience?
Since we're not working to improve speed or distance, we could ride just short distances at comfortable speed to get just right exercise.
We did ride 7 days in a row, and we both got strange fatigue all of a sudden on the night of the 7th day. I got worse than him, with headache, dizziness, and a little fever which continued all day yesterday.
Is that from aging? Or just a simply stupid riding plan without resting between no matter slow we rode?
I searched on the Internet. Unfortunately there were not many articles for ordinary, old cyclists.
But some article said, older age cyclists have reduced capacity but only a little (about 1.8% per decade). Older cyclists still do well at endurance riding, but they take longer to recover after riding.
And I read somebody said we older people can't depend on bicycling only for healthy exercise, because we need to shake our bones by touching the ground with running or walking to avoid losing bone density.
So I'm going to make our weekly schedule which is a combination of bicycling, walking, and resting. I thought 2 days a week for complete resting should be right. I need to check the weather information too.
I hope it will help us in the future.
Accidents always make me wonder/think even just a puncture of my bicycle tire might cause one. Since I can't fix it by myself, I felt sorry and felt frustrated on the last trip. There must be more advanced tires or convenient stuff to fix punctures. Unfortunately I can't understand any mechanical ideas, so my job is just pounding to ask Mr.Wh to find out.
And he did it for me! Thank you, honey!! The other day these new tires and tubes came.
Yesterday he worked to replace our old tires with new tires. So I was excited trying out my bicycle today!
New tires made the whole bicycle look new.
After riding, I said:
New tire is grippy, rolled very well. Changing tires made this difference, now I know. I'm spoiled completely.
What he said: These tires have a puncture resistant belt built in, and the new tubes have special sticky stuff with fine fibers to quickly seal punctures by oozing out and congealing. Time will tell how well this works...
After I heard that another rain would come next weekend, I planned this ride last night. Luckily it was a perfect fine day today.
The freeway was a little crowded in the morning so it took almost an hour to get Hauke park. There is a restroom near the parking lot for which we were thankful.
As I studied on the map, I easily found the way to the Bay trail, then to the Mill Valley - Sausalito Path.
There are 3 bridges on the route, so I was scared before to try out bicycling here. But we rode it together today, and that was fun. On the way back, we noticed the tide came in and almost touched the bottom of the bridge.
I planned to try a fish restaurant, "Fish," on Harbor Drive in Sausalito, we enjoyed the view of the harbor from the window,
and enjoyed eating the huge sized fried oysters and yummy halibut. I couldn't eat up the fried potato and left most of them.
We took the same route back simply, so I sped up a little bit to burn the calories.
The trail was shorter than we expected, but the first ride always makes us tired. Our bodies were really heavy and stiff when we got back home.
Yesterday we saw a lot of rain falling in the morning which we all expected. We pulled out Morning glory's and Scarlet runner's vine from the lattice and pergola a day before. All the trees and plants were happy in our garden. But is there any chance we can ride? I checked the hourly weather information.
The weather forecast predicted the rain would stop at 3pm. It stopped before, so the road got dry enough around 3 pm. We started enjoying our ride with quite cool temperature.
In spite of good slow warm up speed at beginning of our ride, we got exhausted after 45 minutes. I wonder why. Guess that our old bodies need to take a couple of days to adjust to the chilly temperature.
Today according to the weather information we will have rain again from 2 pm to night. We'd better ride a little bit soon, I thought this morning and we did.
I waited until the outside temperature got over 60F. When blue sky started showing up a little bit from the clouds which were covering up the sky, we started riding.
While we were riding, the temperature was going down, and we got exhausted soon again.
Now it's almost noon. The temperature is 68F, there are gray clouds in the lower part of the sky. But the sky is changing second by second. We should be happy that we still could ride.
My weight is going up, so I need more severe control. But if I feel tired, I can't ride happily. Too heavy weight made it hard for me to pedal smoothly. I got into this dilemma again.
The last trip brought up many subjects of concern to me.
The hardest thing was to guess my own physical strength and condition in certain conditions. Usually I got too excited or determined to do things. In addition the big change of temperature affected my old scar pain too.
Anyway I went through a flu like fatigue and cramping muscle pain from neck/shoulder to back for a week after my return to our house.
But during the fighting with nasty pain, I was anxious to think about next bicycle trip in the future. That's positive.
Now I realized that core muscle exercise and other muscle training is very necessary for me. I rode a lot, but forgot and skipped exercises a lot before the trip.
When I was in pain, my bad eating habit came back. I had to go back to my dieting plan too.
The weather here is chillier than before, but still we have sunshine and warm air. I have to be smart and continue our cycling life.
The climax of this trip was riding on trails in Corvallis. Because my sister-in law and her husband are experienced cyclists and living there.
She led us kindly and carefully so that I enjoyed riding very much without worrying about anything! Big thanks to my Sis!!
We rode through on a trail in Willamette park, Crystal Lake Sports Area, on bike lanes, and sidewalks to Avery Park. When my Sis asked if we want to ride more or return, we had already ridden 5 miles, so we U-turned.
The air was clean and moist, which was very comfortable for me. Along the freeway bike path was great. Even bike lane riding was comfortable.
During the short visit to Corvallis we had quite a bit of rain, but luckily we could ride some. We hope to go back in the future and ride more in Corvallis.
Because without researching enough I made a plan for this trip, we needed to ask somebody about any trail for beginners to ride. So we came to the visitor center first in Bend. The guys in the office were friendly and kind. After I told him where we will stay, and my interest was Old Mill District, he recommend the trail along the Deschutes river. He gave us a very nice map "your adventure planner, Bend parks & urban trails Map". That was very helpful.
The first day in Bend, we just drove over to the Old Mill District, and walked a little on the trail along the river. Checked the restroom, ate lunch and dinner.
At Cascade lodge, we made a plan to park at Miller's landing the next day.
There are many parking lots around the river. We thought we chose the best.
The Deschutes river is very long. The view along the river was very interesting.
We enjoyed riding very relaxed.
After we came back home and I started knowing the trails in Bend, I really want to go back to ride. There are many interesting trails.
The city roads seemed very busy for us though.
I can't remember where I saw this, maybe near the parking lot??
Anyway nice looking share bikes were lined up. It seemed just for the students of Oregon State University. But still pretty neat.
It was a beautiful morning, temperature was perfect.
We were heading East on the trail. Because it was a weekday, only a high school student on foot and a woman who looked like she was biking to work were passing by at the beginning.
The trail is running through residential areas, across main roads and bridges, and agricultural areas to the small town, Olene.
Even through residential areas, houses are not too close to the trail, it made me so comfortable riding in the open space.
Agricultural area was so beautiful with fall colors, we could see the mountain range farther out.
When I started to worry about where I can find a restroom , we reached the trail head which has only a parking lot but also an outhouse.
We took a picture and enjoyed the view, and rode back on the trail.
Then.. !? My bicycle got strange noise, oh my God! Unbelievable, flat tire!! on my back.
Mr. WhP started finding the spot, but this time he couldn't find just by checking on the tire. Then, a nice looking mature male cyclist came by to offer us any help. He told us this is the season for flat tires, because these very nasty seed pods are on the ground everywhere. It is called "goat's head".
After the guy left, Mr. WhP took out the tube and found the spot to patch. The agricultural area continued quite a bit, so I stopped to let him check ahead.
We rode more and finally reached the end of the paved trail at Olene.
If I had a confident about my strength and endurance, we might have tried riding a little bit on the dirt trail continues from Olene.
On the way returning on the trail, I saw Mt.Shasta peeking out from the clouds.
We enjoyed riding very much with clear air and comfortable sunshine.
When we came back to the bridge, I had to check the map to make sure it was a right turn to take another trail, the A Canal.
Because when I was passing the bridge, I was fully occupied by telling myself "I can do it, I'm not scared". I still have some fear of crossing bridges.
The canal trail is running along the canal's right side, the residential area is on the left side.
Because I researched to find a good sounding sandwich shop in town which we can reach by taking city roads out from the canal trail. I took an adventurous ride for me.
Luckily the city road was still calm, we had no problem getting into the left turn lane at the signal from bike lane, and also getting into Shopping center from the road.
I waited outside of the shop, Triple J Deli,
he got our sandwiches. I was so surprised, she or he made the sandwiches so quickly. And the sandwich was so good as I read before.
We rode back on the trail smoothly and tried finding a nice bench to sit and eat. But we couldn't around the Inn where we stayed.
Luckily people who were just walking on the trail told us about the park along the trail. Yes, I saw it, but I couldn't remember it by myself. So we happily rode back to Wiard Park, and found a picnic table and bench to have our lunch.
We haven't ridden over 15 miles recently, but we rode over 20 miles on that day!! We were exhausted when we back to the Inn.
This is a very nice beginning for our riding tour in Oregon, we thought!!
Along the trail grass was neatly trimmed, and maintained very clean so that I saw short snakes coiled two times while I was riding.
Along the trail, I even saw my favorite animals, happy me.
In addition I'd like to say that all the drivers on the city roads which cross the trail were so cautious/courteous and expected to stop and wait to let cyclists to cross. That was very impressive for us. What a great town Klamath Falls is!
