On Sunday, January 7, 2018 at 3:42:33 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/7/2018 5:22 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/6/2018 8:21 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 12:42:34 PM UTC-8, Radey Shouman wrote:
Sorry, Joerg, I needed a subject and "Ride Report" seemed too grandiose.

First ride of the new year: -5F and breezy, but at least the sun was
shining.Â* Went to town, about four miles, for yoga practice, after
breaking out the ski bibs and the balaclava.Â* I did wear my Adidas
sneakers, on Lou's recommendation, they worked ok but I'm almost
resolved to acquire a bicycle that can be comfortably ridden in big
rubber boots.

It was nice day here in PDX. I was in cleats and did a short-ish ride.
I then drove my son around in the car on routes that we ordinarily
ride together. He was visiting from Salt Lake and had a big accident
when we were skiing on Mt. Hood on Christmas eve. Anyway, he ended up
with a lot of hardware in both ankles (pilon fractures) and is now in
a wheelchair for 12 weeks and living at our house.
...

This is a long wind-up for my platform pedal story.Â* I used one when
I was riding in an ortho boot following my ski fractures about ten years
ago.

Yow. Skiing sounds pretty dangerous!

Then we drove around the West Hills.Â* I scraped the undercarriage
coming up Brynwood -- which I rode last weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0lUZG8pku8 Go to 3:30 to get a sense
of the grade. It's a killer.

Any idea of the percent gradient?

Hmm. Google Earth seems to give about 19% for the northward portion, and
25% for the portion that runs E-N-E.

I think I'll skip it. 18% nearly killed me earlier this year.

My uber-racing bike has a compact crank and a low of 34/28 -- which would have been ridiculously low touring gears twenty years ago. But not now. I paused a couple of times in driveways, but what failed me were my arms and not my legs. I need to work on my upper body! Riding out of the saddle, clutching the levers and pressing down on the pedals really strains my upper body -- particularly when I'm all tensed up, worried about stalling out near the top.

Yes, skiing is dangerous -- about a zillion times more dangerous than cycling, at least for me and my family. Most all my cycling friends also ski, and the injury per sport is higher with skiing. One guy I raced with practically killed himself on Mt. Bachelor. Levi Leipheimer had a break similar to my son's last year. https://twitter.com/levileipheimer/s...801536?lang=en Obstacles are a lot harder to see on slopes than roads. My son is a brilliant skier, too (former racer, years of summer race camp and four years skiing in Utah with top-notch skiers while at the University). Sh** happens.

-- Jay Beattie.