Bike Porn?

Last Friday night, members of FAB held the fabulous Starlight Ride. On the way to the meet-up, which was near the Statue of David at Fawick Park, a railroad bridge presented itself for photographic purposes.

According to the FAB website the specifics of the Starlight Ride are:

What: Night ride around the Sioux Falls bike trail of approximately 19 miles.
When: 1st and 3rd Friday of every month starting at 8:00 p.m. Start time may change during winter months.
Where: Starting and ending at Fawick Park.
Requirements: A blinking rear light is required. Headlights are HIGHLY recommended. Helmets are required.
Pace: A casual pace will be followed so the entire group stays together.

First 20 of 2009

Rolled out to the pump house on the northwest corner of bike path. No ice, virtually no moisture on the path, at least on the west side. Yesterday I noticed the southern end had some deep water (a few inches) underneath the canopy of the "Black Forrest" and some deeper snow and ice near the dog park area at Spencer? near Cliff. The buffalo were sunning themselves at the zoo. Would have liked to have snapped a photo of the bike with the buffalo but there isn't a rusty old pole to lean the bike on anywhere close by. Instead, another bridge:

Start of the season?

Put in about 80 miles so far this year. This weekend may just be the beginning of the riding season for us mortals.
If you are a bike path rider, watch out for the nasty ice slick under the north side of the 41st street bridge on the west side of town. I hopped off, walked the bike across the ice while clinging to the fence and still almost fell on my @$$.

First Ride of 2009

Went out for the first ride of the year on Thursday. Short and sweet, 5 miles, felt good!

Sharrows

Teem Drive has been sporting a sharrows lane (south side of the street, in the parking lane, serving east bound bikers) most of the summer. However, earlier this week the city painted another set of sharrows in the middle of the westbound traffic lane, not the parking lane. I am not quite sure what the new sharrows are intended to point out but it looks like Teem Drive is the most bike friendly street in town!

GPS

The bag of goodies from the MS 150 included a 20% off coupon from Spoke-n-Sport for any "bike accessory". The coupon in my bag was used on the purchase of a Garmin Edge 705 with heart rate and cadence units. Garmin has always had a wonderful product line and to that you can add the Edge 705.
Its a total no brainer to setup. The on-bike info includes at least 3 screens of onscreen data, from mapping to elevation graphs to raw cadence, HR, speed, distance, etc.. After a ride, you can connect it to your computer and upload the data to Garmin/Motion Based. This allows you to see your route and the data recorded by the unit, overlayed on anything from a street map, topo map, google map or even replay your ride via 3D Google Earth. The uploaded files are saved and reviewable from any computer allowing you to see your rides in-depth. For instance. according to the 705, the hill heading up toward the bridge and the switchbacks north of Falls Park on the bike path, consists mostly of 5-6% grades but has a small, short (a few yards) section near the top which the 705 records right at a 7% grade. How the TdF riders can do 10% grades for endless miles and hours is now more amazing to me. You can use the data from the unit to see exactly what your HR, cadence, speed, heading, elevation, grade, split time, etc. is at any given point. If you are thinking of incorporating GPS into your biking, you cannot go wrong with this product.

Saturday and Sunday were "ride around the loop" days. We have great facilities for biking here in Sioux Falls and on Tuesday at 11:30am, there is a ribbon cutting for the new Legacy Park/Skunk Creek/Dunham Park addition to the bike path. For someone partial to bridges, its nice that the city added 3 or 4 more! In addition, I saw a report on one of the local TV stations that there would be 11 more miles of east side bike path construction begining soon. On Saturday, I took a few pictures of the LeMond at some of my favorite bridges on the loop.