#cycling
Bruce Adams - Open Road for Boys
April 1939
#BruceAdams #Kunst #art #illustration #Fahrrad #bicyle #velo #cycling
2022-08-08: Bonn -> Effelsberg -> Willerscheid by racing bike (->🇩🇪)
2022-08-08: 06:18:44 117.7 km 1371 m up, 1371 m down, 18.6 km/h
As always, I spent almost another hour riding, taking photos and taking breaks to eat and drink. Although I can do eating and drinking while riding, it's more fun this way. To avoid the heat, I set off so late that I was back home a good half hour before sunset. Consumed 2 liters of water, plus three 30 g muesli bars.
Geocoordinates with links under the photos. A 3D representation of the track created with Blender can be found at the end of the article.
The grain has been harvested everywhere
The remaining straw has been bundled. Stacking the square or round bales is quite creative!
@8.8mm 1/800s f/5 ISO 125 2022-08-08 14:25:08
GPS 🧭 50.6066,7.06142 Brouter Google Maps Sat
@8.8mm 1/640s f/5 ISO 125 2022-08-08 14:32:34
GPS 🧭 50.5824,7.06281 Brouter Google Maps Sat
Ascent to Hilberath
Alltogether very easy, but a bit more traffic than usual this time - no problem either. I neither need nor want "bicycle infrastructure", not even "god bicycle infrastructure". That's an oyxymoron.
@8.8mm 1/800s f/6.3 ISO 125 2022-08-08 14:54:01
GPS 🧭 50.5824,6.994 Brouter Google Maps Sat
Welcome to NRW, this is where the shitty mandatory cycle paths begin ...
... which are hardly any good as footpaths, too. By the way, this is a footpath and I mean "shitty" literally, not just figuratively.
@20mm 1/500s f/3.5 ISO 125 2022-08-08 16:22:34
GPS 🧭 50.5082,6.88809 Brouter Google Maps Sat
In the photo, it is hard to work out how broken these concrete slabs are. Each slab has sunk differently, many were then broken by (possibly) land vehicles, then blown up by frost and plant growth.
@26mm 1/800s f/4.5 ISO 125 2022-08-08 16:22:10
GPS 🧭 50.5082,6.88782 Brouter Google Maps Sat
For comparison, the surface of the road that I of course use. There is some damage here too, but so little that it hardly bothers you, even on an unsprung road bike. Your own strength is the limit here and not how much damage you want to risk to your bike and body, apart from the additional effort. Why do pedestrians and cyclists have to share this junk in both directions, while the road is virtually unused? Not that somewhat more motorized traffic would stop me from riding there - motorized traffic is always a nuisance for sure, but it's downright absurd to leave a good road because it is frequented by other people for paths that come with two kinds of obstacles: some you recognize early enough, some you don't.
@8.8mm 1/125s f/4 ISO 125 2022-08-08 16:24:09
GPS 🧭 50.5089,6.88511 Brouter Google Maps Sat
Another visit to the Effelsberg radio telescope
This time I drove down to the institute buildings right up to the gate and had a chat with the gatekeeper. I casually mentioned that my workplace on the other side of the Rhine was not so far away from home, but similarly structured and well guarded. :-)
When I remarked that I had come from Bonn, he looked at my racing bike from a distance and asked, somewhat uncertainly, whether it was a "real racing bike"? In response to my somewhat irritated query, he explained that he had noticed the thick frame tube and asked if the bike was motorized. I then explained to him that on bikes with an aluminum frame, the necessary bending stiffness had to be achieved by increasing the tube diameter, so you could probably hide a battery inside, but that wouldn't be the case here. I also mentioned that one of my sons was still at school when we first visited the telescope, decades ago, also on a racing bike. Afterwards we talked a bit about the technology of the telescope, but you can read more about that elsewhere.
Just looked it up, our ride there was on a Sunday about twenty years ago and went via Meckenheim, Rheinbach and Bad Münstereifel, on a fairly direct route via the L261 - we were more pain-free back then than I am today. But that's another story for another time.
@23mm 1/800s f/4 ISO 125 2022-08-08 16:35:02
GPS 🧭 50.5239,6.87896 Brouter Google Maps Sat
@8.8mm 1/800s f/4.5 ISO 125 2022-08-08 16:39:29
GPS 🧭 50.5244,6.88089 Brouter Google Maps Sat
The already mentioned beautiful route over the Liersbach
@8.8mm 1/800s f/4 ISO 125 2022-08-08 17:02:56
GPS 🧭 50.5061,6.87242 Brouter Google Maps Sat
@26mm 1/125s f/2.8 ISO 200 2022-08-08 17:07:24
GPS 🧭 50.505,6.86795 Brouter Google Maps Sat
@26mm 1/800s f/4.5 ISO 125 2022-08-08 17:22:27
GPS 🧭 50.5078,6.85905 Brouter Google Maps Sat
@26mm 1/800s f/4 ISO 125 2022-08-08 17:28:29
GPS 🧭 50.5024,6.85764 Brouter Google Maps Sat
Between Mahlberg and Michelsberg
From here it's homeward bound
@8.8mm 1/500s f/4 ISO 125 2022-08-08 18:16:11
GPS 🧭 50.5144,6.81927 Brouter Google Maps Sat
#hausrunde #bicycle #radfahren #radtour #cycling #fahrrad #musclepowered #photo
The art of winter cycling
#photography #fotografie #mywork #photograph
#foto #photo #photographie #Fotograf #Fahrrad #radfahren #myphoto #myart #cycling #cykling
#Cycling in #StormIsha was fun. To work, there was a very strong #Headwind which added about 25% to the time getting there, at least the sky was blue. By the time I’d finished, the #wind had died down to a brisk #Breeze but there was quite heavy #rain. However, I always have my #WaterproofTrousers at this time of year and so I didn’t get wet.
I used the anonymous interface to #ChatGPT to write a #Haiku for the occasion (https://anonchatgpt.com/). Here it is:
Storm Isha roars strong,
Cyclists brave the wind and rain,
Pedals spin through pain.
17 Truly Beautiful Ways to Decorate Your Bicycle
https://discerningcyclist.com/bicycle-decoration-ideas/
I'm disappointed. Apparently "cover your whole bike with political stickers" is not trendy.
2010-05-31: A trip from Cascastel to Bages
We did almost all those long and short trips during our vacations on our two road bikes. This was one of the rare exceptions. We drove our car from our quartier in Cascatel to Bages near Narbonne, for visiting a restaurant that was recommended to us.
A view from Bages, France
Years ago, in 2019, I published a report of three of our bike tours in the long defuct disapora node #Pluspora, in German language. Diasp.org doesn't have it cached, there still is no way to restore a from a backup to another node using the original timeline and metadata and most probable never will come to be. So I just republish part of the original markdown from 2019-06-25 asis in German, further down below. Just for context, this is the first paragraph of that old text, translated to English:
I spent most of my time on my bike on the way to and from work, which was good for my health, but there's not much to tell or show. It's a different story when I've been on vacation over the past few decades, where I've taken lots of photos and, since the advent of navigation systems, also recorded GPX tracks. I would now like to prepare these accordingly so that I can show them to my family as a photo book and also publicly on the web as a rendered scene.
Some of the links in the original text are defunct, too, #Gpsies for example doesn't exists anymore, not even as a partial backup via archive.org, because archive.org unfortunately wasn't able to backup dynamic content from that source at that time - and because I was naive enough to believe that such a nice service would live for a a long time. :-/
2019-06-25 - GPX-Tracks von Radtouren mit Höheninformationen darstellen
Die meiste Zeit auf dem Fahrrad habe ich auf dem Weg zur und von der Arbeit verbracht, das war zwar gut für die Gesundheit, aber es gibt davon nicht viel zu erzählen oder zu zeigen. Anders die Radtouren in Urlauben der vergangenen Jahrzehnte, da habe ich viel fotografiert und, seit es dafür geeignete Navis gab, auch GPX-Tracks aufgezeichnet. Die möchte ich nun entsprechend aufbereiten, um sie dann im Familenumfeld als Fotobuch und z.T. auch öffentlich im Web herumzuzeigen, als gerenderte Szene.
Etwa folgendermaßen:
Wie gesagt, vieles landete einfach unsortiert im Archiv, ein paar Bilder und Tracks hatte ich aber auf eigenen Webseiten oder bei Onlineservices veröffentlicht, z.B. auch die oben gezeigte Tour Cascastel/Tuchan bei GPSIES.
Mein aktuelles Projekt besteht darin, vorhandene Tracks thematisch bzw. regional zusammenzufassen und Landkarte, Höheninformationen, Tracks und ein paar Bilder in einer 3D-Ansicht zusammenzufassen. Ein paar der hier gezeigten vorläufigen Zwischenergebnisse basieren auf der oben verlinkten Track aus Mitte 2010, die mir gewissermaßen als Übungsbeispiel und zur Demonstration dient.
Der nachfolgende Blick von der D14
in die Landschaft (Koordinate via OSM: (https://www.openstreetbrowser.org/#map=17/42.86180/2.68217)
sieht bei Google so aus.
...
Gesamtübersicht, 3000px x 3000px : https://www.mystrobl.de/ws/geo/cascastel1uebersicht.jpg
So weit, so unspektakulär.
[Div. Animationen, weggelassen]
#Cascastel #Bages #radfahren #fotografieren #cycling #blender #Navigation #technikfürdenurlaub
2023 was most a really nice year, personally. Obviously being extremely privileged, living in a country which isn't at war, isn't really suffering from #climatechange (yet) and isn't a total police state (yet, we're going that way). I made new social connections, kept old ones alive and dug deeper into the wonderful world of #polyamory (😘's to my darlings). I had many wonderful moments with my kids, who all stayed healthy and are growing up to be fantastic, if not sometimes annoying, little human beings. I traveled, visiting Brussels for FOSDEM + friends and then Prague, all by train, and then a family trip to the UK by plane. I went to awesome #gigs, the highlights being Jinjer, Gojira (twice!), Trivium, Ignea, Huora, Vimma, Infected Rain, 22-Pistepirkko, Soilwork and many others. I almost broke my leg in a moshpit 🤘. I went on more dates than I can remember. I attended many marches, against the populist right wing government Finns decided to vote in, but also to demand more climate action. I also attended various XR actions, though not as many as I would have liked. I survived three rounds of layoffs.
But most of all, the year was about #cycling. I managed to log 182 activities into Strava for a total of 3227km, which is more than 2022 and 2021 combined (1503km and 1280km, respectively). I made my first 100km+ day ride by visiting Porvoo and tested out some bikepacking gear during rides in Tallinn and Tampere. I also started planning my first proper multi-week #bikepacking trip in central Europe for May 2024.
Still, seeing the year as positive does require forgetting a lot of things that are not personal. Like the utter failure of #humanity to converge on climate action. Personally, I've already lost hope. We're just going to ride over that cliff. How big the drop is just depends on what we do to mitigate it. Currently we're not doing much, and the direction isn't necessarily going to improve. With right wing governments on the rise, climate action just isn't going to be a priority. And at least in the democratic countries, you can't go blaming "the government for not doing anything" when it's the voters who are gullible fools, voting populist right wing parties for very very selfish reasons. We, the citizens of these countries, are responsible for change not happening. Maybe this crisis is just too big for our species to handle.
2023 was also the most violent year in a long time, with more #conflicts globally than we have had since a long time. While the world should be converging on the big issues, we're doing what humanity knows best - building borders based on imaginary nationalist ideas and smashing each other to pieces.
Can we, as a species, improve in 2024? That remains to be seen.
The recent stormy weather has caused many #trees to shed large twigs and even whole branches onto the ground and in particular paths. Today a large twig, about 15 cm long and 1 cm in diameter wedged into the #spokes of the rear#wheel of my #bicycle, causing it to jam completely. Luckily, I wasn't going too fast and so was able to stop safely but it caught the #mudguard and bent it double. Though I managed to untangle it, I may have to replace it. Ho hum.
Last week, I took my old #bicycle to a #cycling charity shop that refurbishes old #bikes and then sells them at a low price to anyone who can't afford a brand new one. To me that's a much better way of giving it a new lease of life than to take it to a recycling centre where anyone who picks it up will have to spend more money repairing and replacing worn out parts to make it road worthy again. They also train volunteers to become bike mechanics.
It has been #windy all day with a strong north-westerly #wind gusting here to 80 km/h. On my usual #cycling circuit, there is about a 3 km stretch which is basically north-south and today I was travelling north on it. It was quite tough with me in the toughest parts travelling maybe 3 to 4 gears lower than usual and in parts feeling like I'd basically halted. On plus side, it was good exercise and of course in other parts the wind was behind me, making things very easy.
Another positive of the #weather is that half of the country's electricity has been being generated by wind power all day.
How Oulu became the winter cycling capital of the world - BBC Future
One of the most impactful changes is also one of the simplest: clear the roads of snow only when the cycle paths are done.
"Three to four centimetres [1-2in] of fresh snow is no issue for cars, but it might be a problem for cyclists and prevent elderly people from going outside at all," says Vaarala.
❤️🤩
FYI: Another presence at a different diaspora node (diaspora.psyco.fr)
Due to a recent event - diasp.org was offline for a while - I have now set up a duplicate of my diaspora profile at diaspora.psyco.fr
Aus gegebenem Anlass - diasp.org war eine Weile offline - habe ich nun ein zweites Diaspora-Standbein bei diaspora.psyco.fr
Ich beabsichtige die Alternative vorläufig nicht zu benutzen, oder nur sporadisch, um die Funktion zu testen. Um aber Kontakte nicht abreißen zu lassen oder für solche Auszeiten/Wartungsintervalle ist sie eventuell nützlich.
#fahrrad #fotografieren #radfahren #cycling #radverkehrspolitik #wolfgangstrobl
